Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

George Eliot And The Victorian Woman, Vicki Kirkland

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

After an examination of the typical Victorian woman was made from available authoritative sources it was found that George Eliot deviated from this standard and presented several views of the anti-Victorian woman in her novels. While the Victorian woman was pious, content with her role in life, poorly educated, dependent on the man in her life for answers to all problems, frail, feminine, attractive and frivolous, Eliot, on the other hand, contradicted these characteristics at almost every point. She refused to write the sort of entertaining stories the Victorian reader demanded, and furthermore, she viewed the Victorian home realistically.

Eliot …