The performative aspect to Victorian mourning is evident both through the advertisements for goods that surround Middlemarch, exemplified by the above advertisement for “Mourning Stationary for Ladies,” and the strict mourning etiquette required of women throughout the nineteenth century ("Dentelle" 21). However, Eliot distances herself from these realities of Victorian mourning and seeks to deny the “cult of mourning” and minimize the performativity of mourning or perception of death as a “fetishized event” (Zigarovich 289). Although Victorian mourning etiquette was anticipated throughout the nineteenth century, Eliot’s contemporary readers would have been particularly familiar with this societal expectation in light of Prince Albert’s death as “[t]here is no doubt that the influence of the widowed Queen was one of the prime reasons for the widespread use of mourning etiquette and dress in the second half of the nineteenth century” (Taylor 154-5). Eliot’s omission of commercialized funerary goods, at a time when “[e]ven the width of the black edges on stationery was graded by funerary etiquette,” functions to create dissonance between the paratext of Middlemarch’s original publication and the text, which would likely have been noticed by Eliot’s first readers (Richardson 106).  For example, Eliot denies the inclusion of all references to Casaubon’s funeral besides a contextual note in the chapter following his death that “[i]t was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been buried,” in addition to an entire lack of mourning description besides clothing (391).¹ In so doing, Eliot rejects the connotation between mourning and commercialization in Middlemarch by rebuking the “[f]ormalized mourning codes and rituals … aimed to appease loss,” including “funeral processions, burials, erections of tombstones, and subsequent visits to the grave [that] are often the focus of Victorian social and literary convention” (Zigarovich 290).

           Similarly, Mitchell has identified that “[a]dvertisements and the wares they touted are often credited with the commodification of mourning, by encouraging middle-class emulation of the mourning habits of the upper classes and tethering mourning attire to current fashion trends rather than to emotional sobriety” (605). However, Eliot rebukes this emphasis on the commodification and performativity of mourning by focusing instead, to an extent, on Dorothea’s “emotional sobriety” of grief rather than her outfits. Although her widows weeds are referenced generally, such as her “black dress and close cap” (Eliot 436) or the “three folds at the bottom of [her] skirt and a plain quilling in [her] bonnet” (607), Dorothea’s grief is expressed by her “talking deliriously” after Casaubon’s death (390), being “not yet able to leave her room” after his funeral (391), and appearing to be “much too sad” for those who cannot imagine Dorothea ever loved Casaubon (394). Dorothea’s grief is one of her key similarities to Queen Victoria, who’s preference for widow’s weeds was also a visual reminder of her grief and “overwhelming [love for and] powerful emotional dependency” on her husband Albert (Jalland 173), and who “might have been appalled by the suggestion that widow’s weeds could be used to heighten feminine desirability” (Mitchell 614).

Although this advertisement has been taken from Book IV of Middlemarch, iterations of “Imperial Black Silks” that “can only be procured at Chapman’s” are found in four of the eight volumes of Middlemarch, always following the text ("Chapman’s" 6). This continuation suggests the sustained importance of mourning wear for women throughout the period during which Middlemarch was published, for whom “the rules governing mourning attire, especially those rules applicable only to the widow … [were] framed in terms of its oppressive or repressive nature … thus aligning the signifier (mourning attire) with the signified (heteronormative social customs and gender expectations)” (Mitchell 596). And to be sure, widows “were bound by the labyrinth of mourning dress etiquette for a much longer period than their menfolk” and were thus expected to wear mourning dress for “two and a half years” (Taylor 134;136). These years were comprised of four distinct stages:

When the one-year and a day of the First Mourning stage was over, a woman would have to adapt her entire wardrobe to Second Mourning. In the approximately nine months of Second Mourning, she could omit some of the heavy crepe from her dresses and add jet jewelry and trimming to her outfits. In the Third or Ordinary Mourning stage, which had a three-month duration; a widow could omit crepe trim and use black ribbon, lace, and embroidery trim on her dresses. Then she could go into half-mourning … which would last anywhere from six months to a lifetime. (Bedikian 39)

And yet, both Queen Victoria, the figurehead of Victorian mourning etiquette, and Dorothea reject prescribed mourning etiquette, although their rational and subsequent social consequences differ.

In the case of Queen Victoria, she remained in full mourning for the remainder of her life and even “appeared at [Princess Alice’s wedding] … wearing a white cap, streamers and lots of black crape, contrary to all rules of etiquette which permitted and even encouraged widows to set aside mourning at weddings, so as not to cast a gloom over the proceedings” (Taylor 159). While Queen Victoria’s subversion of social mourning etiquette was a reflection of her deep grief for her husband’s death, Dorothea’s refusals are more nuanced. For example, it is her sister Celia who physically removes Dorothea’s widow’s cap while she is still within her first year of full mourning, which the narrator describes as “a pretty picture to see this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow’s cap from her more majestic sister” (Eliot 436). Although a social indiscretion, this provocative action is done under the guise that Dorothea must be too warm, since “the heat was enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls reflect with pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and close cap” (Eliot 436). While Sir James expresses a “tone of satisfaction” when “[h]e looked at the released head,” Celia is quick to take responsibility for the transgression with the rationale that “Dodo need not make such a slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any more among her friends” (Eliot 436). It is evident through the use of the word “slavery,” the description that her “coils and braids of dark-brown hair had been set free,” and the approval of Dorothea’s inner circle that Eliot is critical of the arbitrary strictness of mourning etiquette and sought to undermine it (436). However, Eliot also includes a chastisement from Lady Chettam, a representative of the upper-class, in that “a widow must wear her mourning at least a year” (436) as a mild warning of the “[s]ocial ostracism … [that] could be caused through the absence of the correct black or half-mourning wear” (Taylor 122). Although Middlemarch is set thirty years prior to Albert’s death, Victorian mourning etiquette was prevalent throughout the nineteenth century to different degrees, and Eliot’s contemporary readership would be incredibly familiar with such due to its recent re-popularization and royal influence. 

Although not a ‘lady’ herself, Dorothea’s “connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably ‘good’” (Eliot 33). Dorothea’s economic and social position is further strengthened through her marriage to Edward Casaubon, despite the gossip and scorn that surrounds the “frightful” coupling of a beautiful young woman with a man who is “no better than a mummy” and has a soul akin to a “great bladder for dried peas to rattle in” (Eliot 72;74). However, while she is not technically a member of the upper echelon proper, Dorothea is equated with “queenly recognition” by Eliot throughout the text (198). In fact, there are eight instances of the word ‘queen’ being used to describe Dorothea, seven of which occur after the death of Casaubon: trice in connection to Will Laidslaw, either by the narrator or through Will’s direct thoughts, once by Sir James, twice by Celia in reference to James’ description of Dorothea, once by Mrs. Cadwallader, and once by Rosamond’s servant Martha. Significantly, multiple levels of society express this identification between Dorothea and her queenly looks or behaviour, from the landed gentry to the lower-class house servant, which is also reflected in external suggestions that Dorothea remove or limit her use of mourning wear, including by Celia, Mrs. Cadwallader, and Tantripp. Thus, these descriptions of Dorothea as a queen, particularly during her widowhood, would likely draw a further link to Queen Victoria for the contemporary reader since “[t]he importance of the royal influence on Victorian mourning etiquette was supreme … It was Victoria, the middle-class ideal of Christian widowhood, who fanned the cult of mourning, spreading it to all classes of society during her lifetime” (Taylor 122).

            However, this connection of the shared queenly status and grief between Dorothea and Queen Victoria is clouded by the previous description of Celia’s attempts to remove Dorothea’s widow’s weeds, which directly contradict Queen Victoria’s notion of mourning; when her “husband Albert died, she wore black ‘weeds’ for the rest of her life and was, in many respects, defined by her grief” (Schillace 108). Interestingly, Mrs. Cadwallader directly invokes this imagery of overwhelming grief when she entreats Dorothea not to “go mad in that house alone,” to “exert [her]self a little to keep sane,” and to “think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely” (Eliot 429). These barbs would no doubt be evident to the contemporary reader as Eliot’s reference to and chastisement of the extensive grief and subsequent self-imposed isolation of Queen Victoria:  

In the first years of her widowhood she never appeared in public at all, remaining wrapped in the memory of her husband and her plans to preserve his name for posterity … [t]he unease over the Queen’s years of isolation reached such a pitch that she was finally obliged to take part in a public function and did so in February 1866 … over four years since the death of Albert. (Taylor 160-1)

Eliot is referencing this “unease” through Mrs. Cadwallader’s warning that Dorothea herself not become entranced with what is evidently a dangerous trap of widowhood, identified as “her intense and almost demented grief,” likely in part due to her young age, propitious economic situation, and supposition that she could not have loved Casaubon to the same extent that Queen Victoria loved Albert (Taylor 155). These cutting remarks also challenge the hitherto “unchallenged assumption” that “[u]nderlying all aspects of the prescribed mourning behaviours is … that the widow’s husband and marriage were worthy of mourning,” which Eliot, through the words of Mrs. Cadwallader and her entreaties that Dorothea marry again and quickly, suggests is not always the case (Mitchell 599).

            Other instances Dorothea’s queenly interpretation invoke her perception as a woman of higher class than those with whom she interacts. For example, Rosamond’s servant Martha “collected enough to be sure that ‘mum’ was not the right title for this queenly young widow with a carriage and pair,” so she consequently addresses Dorothea as “my lady” (Eliot 596). Because “[m]ourning costume was created to convey a message to the beholder” (Bedikian 36) and “the primary function of mourning wear was to identify the bereaved” (Schillace 113), Martha is able to immediately identify Dorothea as a widow despite “being a little confused on the score of her kitchen apron” (Eliot 596). Dorothea’s identification as a “lady” on the basis of her transportation and dress is also indicative of the class element to mourning wear because, during the timeframe of the novel but to a lesser extent at the time of the novel’s publication, mourning wear was associated exclusively with the upper-class. Eliot’s contemporary readers would have been aware of the connotation of mourning wear with “high society” because “[d]uring the 1850-90 period mourning became such a cult that hardly anyone dared defy it … [m]ourning wear was considered so essential a part of a lady’s wardrobe that upper-class women were never without it” (Taylor 122). However, “[w]ith the rise of cheaper manufactured goods, formal mourning wear became readily affordable to the lower classes. Many middle-class women copied the deep mourning of Queen Victoria to feel more included in aristocratic society,” which was “bolstered by advertisements and editorials in all the fashion magazines,” and also seen in the ads for cloth, stationary, and other novels that surround the original publication of Middlemarch (Bedikian 39-40).

As suggested by the title of this novel advertised in Book ­I of Middlemarch, the “fictional widow is the ultimate catch – chaste and faithful yet sexually knowledgeable and available … [i]nterest in or admiration of the beautiful widow is thus often articulated by men, the elderly, or the disembodied narratorial voice” (Mitchell 604). Although the extent of Dorothea’s sexual knowledge is left purposefully vague by Eliot, her identification as the trope of the beautiful young widow is undeniable through her descriptions by Mrs. Cadwallader, Lydgate, the narrator, and her maid Tantripp. For example, Mrs. Cadwallader claims Dorothea “looks handsomer than ever in her mourning” while the narrator finds that “this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the younger, with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of her eyes” (Eliot 429;431). These descriptions hearken back to, and even exceed, Dorothea’s physical description as “so handsome” and “bewitching” while still in a virginal state (Eliot 35-6).

The duplicitous existence of being “the beautiful widow [who] embodies two qualities that would otherwise be contradictory in a Victorian woman, maintaining her dignity and status as angelic, devoted wife at the same time that her clothed body can be read as sexually experienced, desiring, and desirable” is evident in Dorothea’s perception by both Lydgate and Sir James (Mitchell 602). In an example of the former idea that mourning wear is “a visual reminder of the desexualized stolidity of Victorian fidelity” (Mitchell 595), Lydgate recognizes in Dorothea “what I never saw in any woman before – a fountain of friendship towards men – a man can make a friend in her” (Eliot 592). And yet, Lydgate is still drawn to “wonder if she could have any other sort of passion for a man,” suggesting the inescapability of the beautiful young widow from her externally sexualized nature (Eliot 592). However, Sir James espouses the opposite argument:

To his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a woman’s second marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it a sort of desecration for Dorothea. He was aware that the world would regard such a sentiment as preposterous, especially in relation to a woman of one-and-twenty; the practice of “the world” being to treat of a young widow’s second marriage as certain and probably near, and to smile with meaning if the widow acts accordingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse her solitude, he felt that the resolution would well become her. (Eliot 438-9)

Similar to his mother Lady Chettam’s traditional expectations that Dorothea must maintain her full mourning for at least a year, Sir James echoes that to remain a widow is to retain dignity, chastity, and most importantly, availability, in line with the example set by Queen Victoria to the contemporary reader’s memory.

Finally, it is interesting to consider that “Victorian etiquette manuals told their readers that displaying grief outwardly would soothe them – and would ‘protect’ women from unwanted advances” in the context of both Dorothea and Queen Victoria (Schillace 113). While this is certainly the case for Queen Victoria because she never remarried, Dorothea initially views her widow’s cap as “a sort of shell” that she feels “rather bare and exposed” without but nonetheless receives advances from Ladislaw while in her first period of mourning, although they are far from unwanted (Eliot 436). This could perhaps be explained by the idea that “[w]idows generally had an even tougher time than widowers, with … no social expectations of re-marriage, except for the very youngest and prettiest,” of which Dorothea most certainly is (Jalland 178). More important than her beauty, however, is the fact that “Dorothea’s first marriage was, unlike Queen Victoria’s, a failure. And to the extent that her mourning dress marked the loss of her husband, it also signaled the possibility for future happiness with another, more appealing man” (Mitchell 602). This idea is supported by Tantripp’s observation that despite Dorothea’s evident grief over the death of her husband, it is only after witnessing Rosamond and Will together and hypothesizing his unfaithfulness that “she had more of a widow’s face than ever” (Eliot 607). Thus, while Eliot parallels the grief of Dorothea in Middlemarch with that of Queen Victoria, which would be evident to her contemporary readers, it is finally through Dorthea’s second marriage that her connection with Queen Victoria is severed.