Strange Sympathies: George Eliot and the Literary Science of Sensation

This essay argues that George Eliot's Romola (1862–63), an exhaustively researched historical romance, shares important concerns and generic conventions with her contemporaries' more popular sensation novels. Heavily influenced by the "science of sensation" developed by her partner George Henry Lewes, Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain, Eliot explores through plot and characterization the blurry distinction between sympathy and sensation. Her sympathetic heroine, whose feelings are too easily swayed by the mirroring presence of others, must become reattuned to her more instinctual self. Romola thus stands not only for the female reader, who might benefit from exposure to literary sensation, but also for her creator, who remains ambivalent about the unruly effects of double consciousness.