AQA (A) Literature: ‘Victorian literature’
It has long been accepted that George Eliot (1819–80) personally and relentlessly rebelled against Victorian gender norms. She developed her mind through rigorous selfeducation at a time when formal learning was a male preserve and women were considered weak-minded. She earned a living as a translator, reviewer, essayist, editor and novelist in the male-dominated world of work, which believed women to be naturally unstable, delicate and dependent. She renounced her faith and lived with a married man when women were expected to be pure moral agents, like the heroine of Coventry Patmore’s widely read and highly esteemed narrative poem The Angel in the House (1854–62).
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