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The Hidden Abortion Plot in George Eliot’s Middlemarch

This essay suggests that Rosamond Vincy, George Eliot’s paradigm for failed feminine education, intentionally terminates her pregnancy by deciding to go horseback riding and thus illegally assumes control of the Lydgates’ family planning. By exploring the moral and political consequences of Rosamond’s supremely transgres-sive action, this piece argues that abortion discourse in Victorian literature not only obscures its own existence to appease hyper-restrictive editorial pressures, but is uniquely suited to showcase the precariousness of middle-class social and biological reproduction. Simultaneously unmentionable and extensively narrated, Rosamond’s calculated miscarriage avoids catastrophic revelation when Rosamond manages to make the event appear accidental, reenacting—and reinforcing—a family planning strategy common among middle-class Victorian women.