George Eliot's Feminism. "The Right to Rebellion"

The question of whether or not George Eliot was what would now be called a feminist is a contentious one. This book argues, through a close study of her fiction, informed by an examination of her life's story and by a comparison of her views to those of contemporary feminists, that George Eliot was more radical and more feminist than commonly thought.

Each chapter of the book is devoted to one of Eliot's major works. It argues that Eliot espouses one or more of the causes of the contemporary Women's Movement in each text: the right to marry on one's own terms (entailing the right to choose one's partner and to live without abuse), the right to child custody, and the right to education and a vocation. Each of these rights presupposes that a woman does not suffer from patriarchy's double sexual standard, enforced by law or custom, encapsulating the revolutionary nature of nineteenth-century English feminism.