CHAPTER XIII - FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH

Summary

In ‘Felix Holt,’ which was published in 1866, George Eliot returned once more to her own peculiar field, where she stands supreme and unrivalled—the novel of English provincial life. This work, which, however, is not equal to her earlier or later fictions, yet possesses a double interest for us. It is the only one of her writings from which its author's political views may be inferred, if we exclude a paper published in Blackwood's Magazine in January 1868, which, indeed, seems to be part of the novel, seeing that it is entitled, “Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt.” The paper contains, in a more direct and concise form, precisely the same general views as regards the principles of government which were previously enunciated through Felix the Radical. It was an appeal to the operative classes who had been only recently enfranchised by the Reform Bill. Its advice is mainly to the effect that genuine political and social improvements to be durable must be the result of inward change rather than of outward legislation. The writer insists on the futility of the belief that beneficial political changes can be effected by revolutionary measures. She points out the necessity of a just discrimination between what is curable in the body politic and what has to be endured.