Claudia FitzHerbert

What can we learn of George Eliot through her heroines?

Eliot guarded her privacy closely, but her novels explore themes of sacrifice and restraint, and her heroines are studies in the impossibility of having it all

Frederic William Burton’s portrait of George Eliot (1865) captures her melancholy and earnestness. [Alamy]
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  • The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life

    Clare Carlisle

    Allen Lane, pp. 368, £25

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