ABSTRACT
This chapter examines George Eliot's 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’, demonstrating ways that it contributed to the debate over the status of women authors in Victorian society. It also examines Eliot's career in the 1860s, demonstrating ways that her authorial identity was shaped within the context of debates over authorial signature and controversies over female suffrage. Eliot's work in periodical journalism played an important role in shaping her identity as a cultural critic and reader of contemporary literature. The chapter explores how Eliot's novel Felix Holt emerges from within this context, emphasizing self-culture as a prerequisite for political representation. The debates over women's legal status during the 1860s were connected to debates over political representation associated with the second Reform Act, which enfranchised thousands of working-class citizens. Eliot thus proposes the activity of mutual cultivation and self-improvement as a replacement for selfish acts of self-advocacy based on class or gender.
