SOURCE: Bode, Rita. “Power and Submission in Felix Holt, the Radical.” SEL 35, no. 4 (autumn 1995): 769-88.

In the following essay, Bode suggests that Eliot's use of “politics” in Felix Holt extends beyond the scope of government and public life into the private relationships between men and women, and parents and children.

In Felix Holt, the Radical, George Eliot considers carefully the difficult political demands, with all their troubling and threatening implications, that beset the era of Reform in nineteenth-century England. If we acknowledge, however, that politics involves the continual struggle between authority and submission, freedom and curtailment, assertion and compromise, then George Eliot's “political” novel moves beyond the sphere of public affairs and systems of government to encompass the dynamics of human interaction at every turn. From the steward's room at Treby Magna, where Scales and Christian engage in their battle of “wits,” through the questionable maneuverings to captivate...