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Otis Webs of Middlemarch Studies in Literature and Science published in association with the Society for Literature and Science Editorial Board Co-Chairs: N. Katherine Hayles, University of California, NETWORKING Los Angeles, and Stephanie A. Smith, University of Florida James J. Bono, Stare University of New York at Buffalo Clifford Geerrz, Institute for Advanced Study Communicating with Mark L. Greenberg, Drexel University Evelyn Fox Keller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bruno Latour, Ecole Narionale Superieur des Mines, Paris Bodies and Stephen J. Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Machines In the Titles in the series Transgressive Readings: The Texts of Franz Kafka and Max Planck by Valerie D. Greenberg Nineteenth Century A Blessed Rage for Order: Deconstruction, Evolution, and Chaos by Alexander J- Argyros Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics by Michael Joyce The Artificial Paradise: Science Fiction and American Reality by Sharona Ben-Tov Laura Otis Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time by Michel Serres with Bruno Latour Genesis by Michel Serres The Natural Contract by Michel Serres Dora Marsden and Early Modernism: Gender, Individualism, Science by Bruce Clarke The Meaning of Consciousness by Andrew Lohrey The Troubadour of Knowledge by Michel Serres Simplicity and Complexity: Pondering Literature, Science, and Painting by Floyd Merrell Othermindedness: The Emergence of N t k C I e wor II ture by Michael Joyce Embodying Technesis: Technology Beyond Writing b M -k H Ann Arbor y ar arisen Dripping Dry: Literature, Politics, and Water in th D t S h by David N . Cassuto e eser out west THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS Networking: Communicating with Bodies and M h - - h Nin the ac mes tn t e e eent entur» by Laura Otis ,..t""ll'~?'-"""f GEORGr-~f'\\' for Sander JAN 092002 Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2001 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @ Printed on acid-free paper 2004 2003 2002 2001 432 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Otis, Laura, 1961- Networking: communicating with bodies and machines in rhe nineteenth century / Laura Otis. p. em. - (Studies in literature and science) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-11213_9 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Te1ecommunication-HistorY_19th century. l. Title. II. Series. TK5102.2 .088 2001 302.2-<1c21 2001002844 80 • Networki n9 tury later, however, it differed markedly from the French physiologist's in the role it assigned to cross-connecting links. For Golgi, the body's commu- nications system worked as well as it did because it maximized the number of connections among its dements. A structure in which each cell was joined Chapter 3 only to the center could never account for the nervous system's highly com- plex behavior. Writing during the era of national unification, Golgi believed The Webs of Middlemarch that only a network could explain how a system functioned as a whole. The fact rhat Lewes supported the neural-network model in the 1870s further suggests that scientists' images of social bonds affected the way they saw rhose in rhe body. The highly visible networks of the telegraph and the rail- In 1865, in a review of William Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, George ways offered an accessible model for anyone trying to understand how vast Eliot (1809-80) referred to "railways, steam-ships, and electric telegraphs, numbers of individuals could keep themselves informed and coordinate which are demonstrating the inter-dependence of all human interests, and their activities. making self-interest a duct for sympathy" ("Influence of Rationalism" 46). Ramon y Cajal's rejection of reticularism in the late 1880s, however, To Eliot, railways and telegraphs represented the best of what rarionalism proves that cultural influences never fully account for what scientists see. could achieve. By facilitating communications, these growing networks The histologist's description of telegraph wires as a "grid" (a word that Ger- increased people's awareness of their connections to others. If people could lach, Golgi, and Lewes never use) indicates either a major change in cultural see themselves as cross-points in a social network instead of as isolated par- perception or the action of an original mind. For the same reasons Golgi ticles, they might overcome their intrinsic selfishness and develop rhe higher favored a net, Ramon y Cajal favored a model based on the free association moral quality of sympathy. In Eliot's eyes, one fostered sympathy through of independent cells. Physiologically, this explained the nervous system's knowledge and experience of others, and England's new communications tendency to maximize connections so that cells worked together in groups; networks offered both. anatomically, it was what he observed. For Ramon y Cajal, any viable The webs of Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72) reflect this advocacy of com- model of the body's communications system must feature not just complex munication on many levels. Her vast knowledge of natural and physical sci- patterns of connections but the right kind of connections, those that could ence helped to create its structure and imagery, and the novel's networks be formed and broken at any time depending upon the body's activities. recall both Gerlach's nerve net and Faraday's lines of force. In its plot, Mid- Could a web represent a cross-connected system that was not just complex dlemarch relies on social and economic connections that bind the living and but dynamic? The Spanish histologist did not believe that it could. the dead, the reputable and the disreputable. Threads of gossip link charac- Two decades before Ramon y Cajal overthrew the reticular model, ter to character and chapter to chapter, so that the novel's structure reflects George Eliot created her own "fiction" of a communications net. Like the the bonds that hold society together (Beer; Shuttleworth; Stwertka). While Spanish scientist, Eliot carefully thought through the structures that might Middlemarch often depicts uncontrolled, unreliable, or obstructed commu- be used to represent communication, and she envisioned complex patterns nication, it celebrates the flow of information for the potential that it holds. of connections that could change from moment to moment. For Eliot, The novel offers the communications web as an epistemological and moral whose "particular web" took shape as Gerlach was seeing networks in the model, suggesting that the securest knowledge and the finest life are those brain, the reticular image could explain ongoing changes as long as one richest in connections. imagined a fluid, fluctuating mesh. Her consideration of dynamism in the In exploring Eliot's representation of communications nets, I do not hope early 1870s suggests that creative writers, like scientists, base their models to produce a complete, original reading of Middlemarch. Instead, I would both on cultural images and on original visions. Like the anatomists, Eliot like to analyze Eliot's use of web imagery in order to compare her under- thought through society's "fictions" of communication and reworked them to suit her own purposes. standing of networks to that of contemporaneous scientists. My study of Eliot's imagery reinforces Gillian Beer's and Sally Shuttleworth's fine read- -. ings of Middlemarch, both of which relate Eliot's depiction of society to her The Webs of Middlemarch • 83 82 • Networking knowledge of science. I will argue rhat Eliot, like the neuroscientists of the nections. Ir was while editing the Westminster Review that Eliot met George Henry Lewes in 1852 (Haight 128). 18705, saw webs in their tissues not because the scientists influenced her but because they all internalized the humming, ever-expanding communications Eliot and the physiological psychologist Lewes became partners in every networks that they saw functioning around them. sense, sharing all aspects of their research and writing. As two of the most highly respected intellectuals in nineteenth-century British society, they per- sonally knew the most prominent English scientists, including Charles Dar- The Problem of "Influence": Eliot and win (1809-82), Herbert Spencer, and physicist John Tyndall. While Contemporary Science immersed in their creative and scientific projects, Lewes and Eliot read aloud to each other and grappled with the same scientific and philosophical Eliot's knowledge of science was formidable. Always self-motivated, she problems. Eliot's fluency in German proved valuable in negotiating scientific , I systematically studied the most challenging scientific texts of her day and texts, since German scientists dominated neuroanatomy and neurophysiol- undertook an "intensive self-education in physics" when she was only in her ogy from the 1840s onward. In July 1871, while Eliot was writing Middle- early twenties (Brody, "'Pier-Glass' Image" 58). Eliot's biographer, Gordon march, she wrote in her journal, "every evening I read a German book of Haight, reports that she "read widely in mathematics, astronomy, chem- difficult science to my husband" (McCarthy 811). One such volume (which istry, geology, entomology, phrenology-whatever she could lay hands on" Eliot reports having read in February 1868) was Helmholtz's textbook on (29). While staying alone in Geneva in 1849, she went twice a week ro acoustics. Eliot and Lewes owned Helmholtz's popular scientific lectures, in physics lectures at the Athenee, including one by A. A. de la Rive (1801-73), German, as well as DuBois-Reymond's Animal Electricity. 11111 the inventor of electroplating (Haight 77). Electrochemistry especially inter- By the time Eliot wrote Middlemarch, she knew a great deal about com- ested her because of the relationships it revealed among different kinds of munication in the nervous system.
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