George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science

This study explores the ways in which George Eliot''s involvement with contemporary scientific theory affected the evolution of her fiction. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Comte Spencer Lewes Bain Carpenter von Hartmann and Bernard Dr Shuttleworth shows how as Eliot moved from Adam Bede to Daniel Deronda her conception of a conservative static and hierarchical model of society gave way to a more dynamic model of social and psychological life.