Fresh threads of connection: The role of imagery in George Eliot\u27s Middlemarch

Although the novels of George Elliott enjoyed great contemporary success, both with the reading public and the critics, by the end of the nineteenth-century they had fallen into disfavor with both. Here they remained for many years, largely due to what was regarded as heavy-handed didacticism. They were criticized for the large amount of commentary by the author, which was felt to be overly moral an often unnecessary. George Eliot herself was held in high regard as a philosopher and moralist, but was not felt to be much of a literary artist. She wrote to preach and did not worry about artistic presentation