George Eliot.

This volume is part of a series offering accessible reassessments of key women writers by feminist critics, and aimed at 'academic circles and beyond'. The 'beyond' would present problems for any author juggling the already contradictory aims of an introductory yet scholarly book.

Brady succeeds admirably, however, in giving lively and convincing new readings of Eliot's novels, by focusing on the female characters and the limitations imposed on their desires by patriarchal power structures. She demonstrates that alongside the main plot of each novel is a gender plot which 'constantly interrogates' and subverts it. What is said of Felix Holt applies to all: 'The novel is a continual dialogue of conflicting plots, and the triumph of one over the others at the end never successfully suppresses the …