Review: The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism, by S. Pearl Brilmyer

Book Review| March 01 2024 Review: The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism, by S. Pearl Brilmyer S. Pearl Brilmyer, The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 289. 105 cloth; 30 paper. Andrea Henderson Andrea Henderson University of California, Irvine Andrea Henderson is a Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Romantic Identities: Varieties of Subjectivity, 1774–1830 (Cambridge University Press, 1996) ; Romanticism and the Painful Pleasures of Modern Life (Cambridge University Press, 2008) ; and Algebraic Art: Mathematical Formalism and Victorian Culture (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her latest essay, "Victorian Equations, " appeared in Critical Inquiry's winter 2024 issue. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Literature (2024) 78 (4): 327–331. https: //doi. org/10. 1525/ncl. 2024. 78. 4. 327 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures Review: The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism, by S. Pearl Brilmyer. Nineteenth-Century Literature 1 March 2024; 78 (4): 327–331. doi: https: //doi. org/10. 1525/ncl. 2024. 78. 4. 327 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search In The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism, S. Pearl Brilmyer sets out to redefine realism by centering our attention on the handling of character in British novels from 1870 to 1920. As she compellingly demonstrates, these novels work according to a logic that is quite different from that of mid-century high-realist novels on the one hand and modernist novels on the other, and as a result its protocols and aims have remained largely invisible. Unfamiliar as it might be, however, this logic is internally coherent, consistently pursued, and in keeping with contemporary scientific paradigms. It reflects a fundamental shift in conceptions of personhood, for rather than presenting character in terms of interiority and development, later realists pursued a dynamic materialist account of character as plastic, impressible, spontaneous, impulsive, relational, and vital. Brilmyer's chapter on Eliot's Middlemarch establishes the central claims and methodological protocols. . . You do not currently have access to this content.