SOURCE: Mermin, Dorothy. “Clough and Meredith.” In The Audience in the Poem: Five Victorian Poets, pp. 109-44. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983.
In the following excerpt, Mermin sees Modern Love as a turning point in Meredith's career, from poet to novelist. Mermin proposes that the narrative style of the poem suggests a type of psychological realism and awareness of time that is characteristic of Victorian novels.
