The spirit of George Eliot ...

... D.G. Myers writes In Praise of Prose.

The topical subject matter and contemporary habitats of Prose’s later work have confused many critics, who continually stumble into the error of describing it as “satirical.” Michiko Kakutani started the habit of getting it wrong, remarking in the New York Times that Primitive People “veers sharply between sentiment and satire.” Little in Prose, though, is the stuff of satire, and there is even less sentiment.