SOURCE: Horowitz, Lenore Wisney. “George Eliot's Vision of Society in Felix Holt the Radical.” In Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17, no. 1 (spring 1975): 175-91.

In the following essay, Horowitz discusses the way Eliot uses Felix Holt to articulate her personal vision for reform of English society.

Not until Felix Holt the Radical does George Eliot bring industrial England from the periphery of her novels into the center. This is a dramatic shift in emphasis and brings to the forefront for the first time the profound concern with the problems of Victorian England characteristic of her mature fiction. Set in the year of the first election under the Reform Bill of 1832, Felix Holt presents a wide range of social problems and political philosophies. There is not only conflict among the social classes but intense rivalry among leaders who seek their support. But while the novel poses the problem of...