Revolution, liberation and upheaval were to have no place in Mary Ann’s moral world.

Revolution, liberation and upheaval were to have no place in Mary Ann’s moral world.

Nor were they to have any in her fiction. George Eliot’s heroes and heroines may struggle against their small-minded communities, but in the course of their lives they learn that true heroism entails giving up the glory of conflict. Reconciliation with what previously seemed petty is the way that leads to moral growth.

K. Hughes, George Eliot: the last Victorian (1998), 78