EVIDENCED ASPECTS OF GEORGE ELIOT’S ENDURING LEGACY AS A WRITER
Keywords:
George Eliot, Victorian realism, Middlemarch, literary authority, psychological realism, feminism, intellectual novelistAbstract
George Eliot’s works occupy a significant position in 19th-century realism, marking a shift from mimetic representation—“reproducing reality in the forms of reality itself”—to an analytical reconstruction of time, social consciousness, and the individuals who embody these ideas. Unlike her contemporaries Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and the Brontë sisters, whose creative processes were often rooted in instinct and imagination, Eliot was an intellectual writer whose themes were shaped by analysis and reflection. Her artistic imagination was inspired not by isolated thoughts or picturesque scenes but by profound themes that redefined the Victorian novel’s intellectual and moral scope.
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