The probing Victorian novels of George Eliot (1819 – 1880; nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans) sealed her reputation as one of the greats of English literature. The insightful essay following argues that (masculine pen name notwithstanding) George Eliot wrote as a woman, as only a woman could, without any outlook that could be construed as a man’s.

George Eliot drew her characters with great compassion. Her politically and socially driven stories were populated with characters drawn with great psychological depth whether they were free thinkers, eccentrics, intellectuals, or complex women straining against societal strictures.

Eliot never looked down on her characters, whatever social class they belonged to, and she was especially compassionate to the women in her stories. From Adam Bede (1859) her first novel, through Daniel Deronda (1876), her last, her female characters were imagined fully formed, with dreams and desires of their own. Read More→