Faced with the task of writing an introduction to this collection of scholarship meant to introduce readers to George Eliot, I have been thinking of an introduction of another sort. For today’s reader, George Eliot may seem inaccessible. Her writing is steeped in nineteenth-century intellectual, political, and cultural contexts and laden with the gravitas and pacing of the exploration of psychological complexities. And then there is the matter of size: her novels are massive. When I approached a trusted colleague and Eliot scholar to write an essay for this anthology, she thought about it and, with a sigh, said, “I would just have to reread so much.” Eliot’s work can seem difficult to the reader who has yet to be acquainted with her. How much moreso, one might say, to a child reader: the lengths of Eliot’s work, the dearth of whimsy, the Victorian contexts, the gravitas of subject—Virginia Woolf, after all, did name Middlemarch “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people” (“George Eliot”).

The story of this project begins with an artifact I found while browsing in the children’s literature section of a used bookstore. I came across a version of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda remarkably less hefty than the 800-page tome with which I was familiar. What I had discovered was a 119-page children’s edition of Daniel Deronda, adapted by Philip Zimmerman in 1961, and consisting solely of the “Jewish section” of Eliot’s novel.

This piqued my interest, and I began to seek other children’s adaptations of Victorian novels. A popular series right now called BabyLit ™ publishes board books including Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre (both notably light on plot, the former is subtitled “A Fashion Primer,” and there is no mention of Bertha in the latter). As is evident by the frequency with which these board books appear at English department baby showers, they are much more for the adult reader in the baby’s life than the baby itself. Some of my other favorites include tiny versions (two inches by two inches) of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, two different versions of Little Women in which Beth lives (she gets better and hangs out on the couch), and a film version of David Copperfield played entirely by a cast of cats.² As a Victorianist, I was appalled. As a scholar of children’s and young adult literature, I was intrigued. These two responses produce the areas of enquiry for this essay: what happens to a reader’s experience with narrative when a text is adapted from a version intended for an adult to one for a child? Can an adaptation of a Victorian novel be anything but reductive?

The adaptation of adult literature for young readers is nothing new. From the Bowdler family’s creation of a family Shakespeare minus the naughty bits, to children’s versions of Bible stories and Paradise Lost, to today’s baby board books, adaptations of adult narratives for younger readers have long made up a portion of the children’s literature market. The Victorians themselves loved to adapt narratives; Dickens’ own granddaughter, Mary Angela Dickens, adapted his works for children. Many Victorian novels adapted for children are about child characters, making them a seemingly appropriate source for interpretation into children’s narrative. Many of Dickens’ novels, for example, have been abridged so that the stories focusing on the childhood of a character exist as stand-alone children’s narratives. What I find particularly curious, though, are the adapted novels that are not for the most part about children or childhood. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda all exist in various forms for young readers. Even if the source text and adaptation are similar, though, their implied readers, or, in the words of children’s literature scholar Perry Nodelman, the reader best equipped to understand the narrative based on the narrative’s subject and style, are different (Pleasures 16).³ This raises the question of what the narrative presumes about the young reader and how it changes both the narrative and narrative experience. These questions take on additional significance in the study of children’s literature when we think about the presumptions that adults—the primary producers but not necessarily the target demographic of children’s literature—have about children and childhood. Furthermore, what does this particular adaptation indicate about the continuing importance of George Eliot?

Adult Agenda and the Landscape of Adaptation

Adaptations are artifacts of the historical and cultural moment of their production. Furthermore, adaptations of adult narratives for younger readers raise questions that other adaptations—for example, that of a book into a film for the same-aged audience—do not. Adaptations shed light on adult agendas for young readers and lead us to consider what the adults’ concepts of childhood are. These ideas regularly serve an adult’s best interest, as Nodelman notes in his essay “The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children’s Literature,” in which he argues that the relationship between adult and child can be read as one between colonizer and colonized.

According to Linda Hutcheon, author of A Theory of Adaptation, we cannot assume that those who adapt aim to simply reproduce; nor are derivations necessarily derivative or bad: “an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative—a work that is second without being secondary” (9). In thinking about this shift in genre from adult to children’s literature, we also confront the obstacle familiar to those of us who work with children’s literature: the assumption that children’s literature itself is derivative. Elizabeth Thiel, scholar of nineteenth-century and children’s literatures, has worked with contemporary adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and finds that, “While adaptations necessarily reflect, to some degree, contemporary ideologies of the child, such emphases can seemingly result in a sanitization that significantly impoverishes the source text and simultaneously undermines its value as a socio-historic artefact of relevance to a contemporary reader” (143, italics mine). See Anna Karenina as fashion primer, and Jane Eyre sans Bertha.

When considering the adaptations of Victorian novels focused on adult issues and concerns, we might ask why someone would want to adapt them for a young reader. Not only does this act privilege adult literature, but often canonical literature, and thus white, heteropatriarchal values. Certainly nostalgia plays a role. Jane Eyre has a near cult-like following, particularly amongst adult women who, having identified with the character Jane, want to pass this book and reading experience down to young girls in their lives. For academics, this feeling may be further underscored by their experiences encountering the landmark work in feminist literary criticism, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic.

For publishers, there is not only the cultural cachet of these canonical texts, but the fact that they pose a relatively low financial risk, especially given that adults are the primary purchasers of children’s books. Not only are the publishers thinking about the commercial appeal for adult consumers, though, but also the role that these kinds of adaptations can play in education and literacy. Indeed, publishers often cite “whetting the appetite” for such literature as a premise, and many readers have had these experiences. My wife distinctly remembers reading a dramatized Weekly Reader version of Richard Wright’s Native Son in school and then walking to the library to check out and read the novel in full. In the wake of the most recent film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, I have talked to a number of adults who have realized that they recognize elements from neither the novel nor the Broadway production, but vignettes that had been presented to them as children.

The publishers for such adaptations of Victorian novels offer a few other goals, but they tend to underestimate young readers. The Readable Classics website states that, “Readable Classics gently edits the great works of literature, retaining their essence and spirit, and making them more enjoyable and less frustrating to the modern reader.” The Usborne Publisher website insists that its classics are “Clearly written in a modern, approachable style to introduce young readers to much-loved classic stories.” Such adaptations are designed based on the premise that the nineteenth-century language will prove too difficult for young readers, as well as the fact that such literature can be used in literacy training. Dalmatian Press writes that “This Great Classic for Children by Dalmatian Press has been carefully condensed and adapted from the original version (which you really must read when you’re ready for every detail).” This, of course, takes for granted that young readers are not ready for the detail-heavy Victorian novels. It also suggests that using such adaptations as training wheels for the adapted text is good, but using them as a crutch in lieu of the adapted text is bad. This publisher’s approach, then, actually supports Thiel’s findings that adaptations are derivative and impoverished versions.

Adaptation Theory and Children’s Literature: No Palimpsest, So Just Reduction?

Adaptation theory, while focusing mostly on the adaptations of written texts for stage and screen, celebrates the relationships and conversations created between source text and adaptation. Hutcheon writes that “we experience adaptations […] as palimpsests through our memory of other works that resonate through repetition with variation” (8). This palimpsestuous relationship, however, requires a familiarity with and prior knowledge of the source text. Likewise, Julie Sanders, author of Adaptation and Appropriation, also emphasizes the hybridity of the adaptation. Drawing on the work of Gérard Genette, Sanders writes that appreciating an adaptation’s hybridity entails, “celebrating its ongoing interaction with other texts and artistic productions” (18). Again the enjoyment of this relies on readers’ familiarity with the source text (Sanders 17). Such hybridities are less likely to be recognized in the case of adaptations for young readers, particularly when publishers are intending these texts to be substitutes for the source texts, that is, to be read in lieu of, not in addition to, the source texts.

In the case of classic children’s texts, for example Alice in Wonderland or Winnie the Pooh, this relationship amongst versions can be possible because of the existence of Lewis Carroll’s and A. A. Milne’s full-length novels (still read by and to children), the various film reincarnations, and a multimedia life including toys and games (though we can ask what happens when the characters become free-standing identities and not necessarily bound to Carroll’s and Milne’s narratives). Of course, children might be flipping television channels and come across any of the many film versions of Jane Eyre, but this seems less likely than a young reader encountering another version of Alice in Wonderland or Winnie the Pooh.

When we talk about storytelling, especially in children’s literature, we talk about repertoire, performance, repetition, imitation, and versions of stories. Many instructors begin children’s literature courses with fairy tales, narratives for which we have no originals. We are used to talking about adaptation as part of children’s narrative experience. We lose intertextuality, however, when we move from adult to children’s narrative, and with this, we lose the potential pleasure derived from the combination of the familiar and the new. In his discussion of children’s literature, Nodelman, drawing from the work of Roland Barthes, refers to this as plaisir, as opposed to jouissance, or the pleasure of the familiar, versus the pleasure of the strange (Pleasure 23–6). We see this today with online memes: we delight in the recognition of the familiar, as well as the novelty of the change to that which is familiar. This particular pleasure of adaptation is removed from the young readers’ experiences, leaving the pleasure of encountering the narrative alone.

Adaptations for children function like palimpsests only for readers who have encountered other versions of the narrative. In this case, these readers are more likely to be the older or adult reader reading to or with the young readers, buying the book for the young reader and putting it into their hands. The interactive narrative relationship, then, happens for this more experienced reader and not for the young reader first encountering the narrative. Later, of course, when the young reader encounters the source text, this kind of interaction can happen, though in reverse, which raises other interesting questions. For example, what happens when the young reader finds out that (spoiler alert) Beth does die in Little Women?

So, with publishers abridging and children reading adaptations without a prior referent, what can be gained from a reading experience that differs so greatly from that offered by the adapted text? While many adapted texts might, indeed, be impoverished versions of their source texts (à la the Baby board books), what we tend to overlook as adults are the actual reading experiences of young readers.

There are regular disconnects between the intentions of authors, publishers, and adult consumers and the actual reading experiences of children. Children’s literature scholar Margaret Meek writes, “What we need is an analysis of narrative discourse which does not say that children’s stories are simpler forms of adult telling, but insists that they are the primary kinds and structures of later telling” (176). Thinking about children’s narrative in this way can affect our understanding of the potential offered by adaptations. A narrative without an earlier referent does not necessarily have to result in an impoverished text. While, at first glance, such narratives might look reductive, particularly from a formalist standpoint and in terms of what it does to the author’s art, we ought to leave some room for the potential that we as adults cannot even imagine about a child’s reading experience. In applying the fundamentals of narrative theory to children’s reading practices and literature, Margaret Higonnet and Margaret Meek both argue for a particular dimension to interactivity in children’s reading experiences. Meek specifically argues that narrative gaps allow for children to ask their own questions and make their own sense of the material (as opposed to adults’ directed, specific questions that cannot anticipate young readers’ experiences). Gaps in children’s literature, according to Meek, thus allow children to “create a tissue of collaborative understandings for each other in a way that no single question from an adult makes possible” (176). This inability to anticipate what a young person’s reading experience will be like means that we as adults should not rush to be dismissive of all adaptations. Furthermore, there is always the chance that the new narrative has something to offer, content-wise, to the new reader.

The Case of Daniel Deronda

Which brings me back to where I began, with this children’s edition of Daniel Deronda. This edition was published in New York by the Herzl Press in 1961, specifically for a Hebrew school demographic. What makes it so small is that it consists of only the “Jewish section” of the narrative. Daniel Deronda is a novel about Gwendolen Harleth, a young English woman and her relationship with Daniel Deronda, a young man who was raised as an English gentleman, but discovers late in the novel that he is, in fact, Jewish. Daniel meets Mordecai, a Jew living in London, who ultimately becomes his spiritual guide. Having discovered his vocation and a bride, Mirah, Daniel departs for the East in order to help his newfound people. One of the main critiques of the novel both at its time of publication in 1876 and still today is that it lacks cohesion. Readers tended to agree with F. R. Leavis’ verdict that the novel was constructed of two distinct parts, the “Jewish section” and the “English section.” Leavis went on to explicitly prefer the “English section,” writing that, “As for the bad part of Daniel Deronda, there is nothing to do but cut it away” (122).

Eliot, however, was quite open about both her intentions and her frustration with readers who resisted: she writes that, “I meant everything in the book to be related to everything else there” (qtd. in Perkins 73). Her goals of encouraging compassion amongst the British Gentiles and the Jews and presenting the British readership with an “Other” in their midst is evident in her letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe on October 29, 1876:

Here Eliot makes her project explicit: she aimed to counter ignorance and encourage compassion and the appreciation of difference. Both sections of the novel, integrated, contribute to these goals.

We can also apply Eliot’s appreciation of art that represents responsibly to her aims for Daniel Deronda. In her essay “The Natural History of German Life” (1856), Eliot outlines her commitment to representing people, particularly those of the working classes, as faithfully as possible:

In this essay, she is writing about middle-class readers and their perceptions of working-class people and peasants, but her argument can be extended to her project regarding middle-class, Gentile readers and their perceptions of Jews. People who do not identify as the offered subjects need the narrative in order to understand; people who do identify as the subjects need the narrative in order to live. Her work, then, aims not only to educate, but to validate.

When the “Jewish section” is removed and presented as a stand-alone novel, the narrative itself changes. In the adaptation, there of course are some changes in the plot and notable exclusions. What we have in this version is the coming-of-age story of a young man who finds his vocation in his spiritual calling. More time is spent on Daniel’s youth in the adaptation, which is disproportionate to the amount of space it is given in the source text. Eliot’s novel is a story about adults, with Daniel’s childhood mentioned in passing retrospect. The connection in the adaptation is ostensibly to young readers seeking their vocations and finding spiritual callings.

When reducing the number of characters in the adaptation primarily to Jewish ones, the proportions of representations change. In terms of presenting parental failings and the roles of adults, which tend to carry weight in books aimed at a young readership, the adaptation does offer an interesting discussion of Jewish parents. In the book, both parents who neglect their filial duty (Daniel’s birthmother and Mirah’s father) are Jewish. When reading Eliot’s full novel, we see lots of other bad people and other good Jews. This adaptation places more weight on the characters of Daniel, Mirah, and Mordecai to offer a counter to these representations. That said, Daniel’s birthmother, the Alcharisi, tells him “I want you to think of me as a tender mother” (Eliot/Zimmerman, Daniel 90), which is definitely a softening of the antimaternal feeling with which Eliot endows her. In Eliot’s novel, not only does the Alcharisi plan on separating from Daniel and never having any further contact, but she tells him openly, “‘I am not a loving woman’” (Eliot, Daniel 571). Evidently, this lack of maternal feeling is too monstrous for a children’s book.

Other, darker issues that are usually the terrain of adult literature are softened in the children’s version of Daniel Deronda. In terms of representations of Jewishness, in the adaptation, Daniel feels less revulsion, and his feelings are not nearly as complex as in the adapted novel. He is less conflicted in the new version. Similarly, the anti-Semitic sentiment is present, but gentler. When she first meets Daniel, Mirah asks, “‘I am Jewish. You’ll not think less of me because of it?” (Eliot/Zimmerman, Daniel 13), when in Eliot’s text she asks “I am a Jewess. Do you despise me for it?’” (Eliot, Daniel 164). In terms of adult issues, Mirah’s suicide attempt is also rendered obliquely (Eliot/Zimmerman, Daniel 12), as is the act that makes her flee Prague. Her father wants her to marry the count (Eliot/Zimmerman, Daniel 19), which is less sinister than Eliot’s adapted text, in which exists the threat of her father selling her to the count in order to pay off some of his own gambling debts (Eliot, Daniel 186).

One of the most curious omissions is that of Herr Klesmer, the Jewish musician that Gwendolen meets at the Arrowpoints’ estate. Now, it makes sense that we would lose him in the excision of the “English section” of the novel, but when we lose Klesmer, we lose not only a prominent man of culture but a significant voice of worldly understanding and tolerance. The narrative also loses his intermarriage with the heiress Catherine Arrowpoint. This leaves us with the Jews marrying Jews at the end of the novel, supporting a less assimilationist point of view, which works with the Herzl company’s mission, but not necessarily Eliot’s desire to demonstrate connection.

Implied Readers

Just as the “Jewish section” lies at the heart of Eliot’s novel, the Hand and Banner Pub passage is the heart of the adaptation (Eliot/Zimmerman, Daniel 49–64). This passage consists of Mordecai’s discussion with his philosopher friends about the state of Jews in England and abroad and presents arguments for and against cultural assimilation. It is a conversation heavily philosophical and political. The conversation remains largely intact in the adaptation, which is telling about the implied reader, or, again, the reader presumed by the narrative itself. In this version intended for a Hebrew school readership, there is no condescension, omission, or sugar-coated material. The adaptation presumes that the young readers will be able to understand this conversation, and if they cannot, that it is still appropriate for them to read. It treats the child reader seriously.

The Hand and Banner Pub passage offers a moment in which the implied reader of the adaptation overlaps with the implied reader of the adapted text. The two implied readers are not exactly the same, but rather their texts presume that they can handle the same material. In adaptations of adult literature for young readers, the implied readers are, from the outset, different than the implied readers of the adapted text. In the Hand and Banner passage, however, these implied readers coincide. This could be accidental, of course; there are adaptations in which an adapter does little work to modify the narrative for a different readership. Because the other chapters of this version of Daniel Deronda are explicitly modified, though, the Herzl Press offers a curious case. In this particular adaptation, we have a moment in which the implied child reader is treated as the implied adult reader of the adapted text. This matters because, at the moment of the most philosophical and political arguments, young, twentieth-century readers are given the credit of adult, nineteenth-century readers.

Given the difference in lengths, we might be tempted to argue that this Daniel Deronda is a reductive adaptation. When considering the implied reader, however, this changes. Eliot’s implied reader is an outsider, a nineteenth-century adult who probably knew little about Judaism. Herzl’s implied reader is an insider, an American Hebrew school student in the early 1960s. These young readers, familiar with the Old Testament, might get Daniel Deronda in a way that nineteenth-century adult readers might not and certainly better than some adult and young readers today.

In her Oliver Twist adaptation study, Thiel writes that, “If a classic text is to endure in popularity, it must remain relevant to subsequent generations” (151, italics mine). In the case of this children’s version of Daniel Deronda, this relevance exists. The young Jewish reader will have referents and cultural associations, a web of context ready to place this narrative into. For example, Daniel’s relationship with Mordecai is still the primary one of the text. Mordecai quotes Book of Ruth: “Where thou goest Daniel I shall go” (Eliot/Zimmerman, Daniel 119). The story of Naomi and Ruth is commonly used in Hebrew school education, particularly during the time of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, in the late spring, celebrating the receiving of the Ten Commandments. Themes of loyalty, loving kindness (hesed), and redemption are celebrated, as are the creation of kin between women and acceptance of converts. The average, Gentile, Victorian adult reader, while likely recognizing the story from the Old Testament, most likely did not have this fuller context, which is one among many reasons why Eliot was writing this novel to begin with.

The adaptation responds to contemporary anxieties and concerns. Thomas Recchio makes this argument about a series of school editions of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford. Popular in the early decades of the twentieth century, Cranford was used, Recchio writes, in response to anxieties about nation and race in the face of an immigration surge. The Herzl Press has a similar project, and in this instance, we can see how adaptation, as Julie Sanders asserts, is a political act (97). The website for the Herzl Press reads: “Through its publications, which deal with Zionism, with Israel, and with Jewish subjects in general, the Herzl Press aims to strengthen the ties between Jews everywhere and in Israel. […] the Herzl Press encourages research that will enrich the understanding of the Jewish intellectual heritage and of the complex problems now confronting all Jews today” (Herzl Press). This adaptation of Daniel Deronda was published in 1961 and bears a Zionist message, and we can think of the role this might have played in an American Hebrew school lesson in the wake of the Holocaust.

For the nineteenth-century, Gentile, adult reader of Daniel Deronda, the “Jewish section” might be new. To the twentieth-century, Hebrew-school demographic, this is most likely not new. These young readers are familiar with this discourse, rhetoric, history, and culture. It is neither foreign nor threatening to them. Additionally, this adaptation of Eliot’s story takes on a new weight in a post-Holocaust world. Jewish children growing up in the years shortly after the attempted destruction of their people, culture, and history and following the establishment of the nation of Israel will experience this narrative with new and urgent significance. The Herzl Press makes this part of their own mission:

This one, shared, Hand-and-Banner-Pub passage in the adapted version serves the “insider” reader, just as it serves the “outsider” reader in the adapted text. For the nineteenth-century reader, the narrative is didactic in nature. For Jewish readers regardless of century, the narrative is one of validation. Indeed, Eliot herself noted the favorable reception of Daniel Deronda by various Jewish communities:

J. Russell Perkins also comments on the role Eliot’s novel played not only in validating the experience of Jewish readers, but offering them a new literary presence:

When it came to assessing how her novel might have met her goals of encouraging compassion, Eliot looked to the letters of thanks that she received from her insider readers: “Words of gratitude have come from Jews and Jewesses, and there are certain signs that I may have contributed my mite [sic] to a good result” (Journals 146). Interestingly, chances are that the Jews who sang Deronda’s praises were actually reading a version of the novel much like this Herzl Press adaptation. When Daniel Deronda was first translated into Hebrew in the nineteenth century, the Gwendolen material was removed, leaving readers with a version quite similar to this one for young readers (Himmelfarb 139).

Although considerably different from its source narrative, this Herzl Press version does have something to offer its readership, and it is not a watered-down, plot-only version of a fuller text. It carries part of what pleased Eliot about the reader reception of her novel: the validation of contemporary Jewish experience.

Conclusion

Indeed, in lifting the “Jewish section” from Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, a few things happen narratively. We lose larger contexts, and granted, these are larger contexts of the Gentile world, but it is George Eliot: many of the larger contexts have to do with more universal aspects of the human experience. While the narrative itself is not assimilated, which works with Mordecai’s pre-Zionist message and vision, we lose the texture offered by the whole fabric.⁴ In considering Daniel’s search for vocation, we no longer have the connection to Gwendolen’s plight when she has no vocation herself or the potential to develop sympathy for the woman character who, unlike Daniel, has been educated only to marry. Likewise, in the adaptation, Sir Hugo tells Daniel to “‘Always keep an English outlook’” (Eliot/Zimmerman, Daniel 9–10). What does this mean when we are missing the “English section” of the novel? Some of Eliot’s intentions of connection are thwarted by the new adapter’s agenda, which focuses on validating the insider reader.

While we lose the explicit connections to Englishness in the adaptation, something more is offered to a specific readership: a historical community in the face of destruction and the solace of the phoenix. Because of the historical context of the Holocaust, this adaptation is particularly significant. While assimilation and connections to European life would also be significant, in the face of the destruction of their people, the presence of a Jewish community and a homeland can be especially culturally resonant for young Jewish readers.

Regarding a responsibly-executed, realistic representation, Eliot writes that, “[M]ore is done toward linking the higher classes with the lower, toward obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations” (“Natural History”). Eliot’s full-length Daniel Deronda has the potential to educate outsider readers—actually decreasing the gap in understanding and feeling between different groups of people—as well as validate insider readers. As twenty-first century readers, we all have a position different than those of our nineteenth-century subjects; they will necessarily be “Others” to us. To an extent, we are all outsiders with this text: it is about a world that we do not identify as our own contemporary reality. Ours is a leap of faith, then, and we must trust the work of our authors. What better, then, than to know that one author has committed deeply to rendering a faithful representation of her subjects, specifically because she wants to encourage understanding and compassion?

Eliot explicitly builds connections for those not in the know and validates for those who are. Her commitment to exploring and valuing humanity, offering empathy and compassion, are not only timeless, but certainly needed today. In the case of Daniel Deronda specifically, not only is Eliot’s a lesson of valuing others, but also valuing difference. It’s the social action that much of our teaching is about; it is the basis of the humanities, as well as our latest call to work to enact social justice. Thus, George Eliot is supremely relevant to today’s readers, as Thiel argues adaptations must be. And who better to put into the hands of readers today than someone who cares to understand human complexity, the good and the flaws, who strives to faithfully represent all people, particularly the marginalized, with nuance and compassion, in a time marked by doubt, anxiety, and incredible technological transformation? An adaptation, or interpretation, presumes that there is something of value to be shared with another audience. In this case, that which is shared with young readers is exactly why we ought to introduce readers of all ages to the work of George Eliot.⁵

Notes

Works Cited