The Discourse of Darwinism in Felix Holt, the Radical

The present paper focuses attention on an influence of Darwinism as seen in the discourse of Felix Holt, the Radical. True George Eliot’s early and middle-period novels show signs of a vision of Natural History with its emphasis on scientific observation of the natural world. But as the impact of The Origin of Species (1859) sent a shock wave among the intellectual circle across Europe, she became growingly aware of its farreaching implications. Inevitably Eliot’s novelistic discourse has become permeated with the evolutionary outlook and terminology. Felix Holt marks a turning point in the sense that it is structurally conceived by the method of experimental science, and is clothed in its phraseology. We see how the writer’s moral and religious vision finds itself subtly reconciled with scientific world view.