Vocation and Desire

First published in 1989. Generations of critics have seen George Eliot as a conservative Victorian high moralist and sybil. Vocation and Desire questions that image, and finds in her work elements of anger, feminism, subversiveness, revenge, iconoclasm, wit, and eroticism – elements that we have been taught not to expect. Barrett's study of the heroines of the six major novels and issues of language and desire provides a refreshing and acute analysis of the contradictions and strengths of Eliot’s work. title will be of interest to students of literature.