ABSTRACT
There is no more difficult test of a writer’s imagination than money — an old subject, but too important to take for granted. Money is a symptom, and an embarrassment, to Victorian writers, even to George Eliot; it is also the essential subject of Victorian realism. Even in contemporary cultures dominated by money, it is harder to be absolutely frank about it than about sex (these days, it is no doubt much easier to talk about sex). It was particularly difficult for the Victorians, whose society was being reshaped by money, but by understanding its importance and its difficulties one is in a strong position to understand not only the implications of (and problems with) the social and moral assumptions governing Victorian novels, but the very form of the novels. Nothing more thoroughly exposes and tests crucial if often unacknowledged attitudes towards almost everything important, from marriage to God, than money.
