"
Felix Holt, the Radical" is a social novel by
George Eliot, published in 1866. It is about the political disputes in a small
English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832.
Felix Holt is a respectable and educated. Having decided to relinquish a materially rewarding life, he returns to his native village in North Loamshire and pursues the humble trade of watch- and clock-keeping in order to maintain his needy mother. He wants to participate in the political life to improve whatever needs be done to his fellow artisans and encourage them to be more assertive in life.
Harold Transome is an intelligent and financially secure fellow who has just returned from the Middle East. He is suppose to assume responsibility for Transome Court, the local manor-house. The place is almost falling off into decay. He is a widower with a small son. A good businessman, Transome wants to enter Parliament as a Liberal, contrary to the family's traditions as Torys.
The time was the early 1930s. Transome is against the questionable electioneering paractices of the time, and his growing dislike for the dishonesty of his agent, the lawyer Jermyn, forms an important narrative in the story.
Esther, a virtuous and charming young woman, is the supposed daughter of Rufus Lyon, the dissenting minister. Felix Holt and Harold Transome are both vying for her hand in marriage. Eventually she chooses to marry Felix Holt.
The story centres much on the hassling, unruly and drunken behaviour of the mob, which Felix tries best to stop. Unsuccessfully he fails. For his efforts and in trying hard, he is arrested for alleged manslaughter and receives a four-year prison sentence.
The narrative in "Felix Holt, the Radical" is enhanced by character studies that
George Eliot injected in the story, that of Harold Transome's mother and the corrupt political agent Johnson, and by the lesser figures in Mr Christian, Sir Maximus Debarry and the loyal servant Denner.
In January 1868, Eliot wrote an article entitled "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt." This came at the height of the Second Reform Act of 1867 which expanded the right to vote beyond the landed classes, written in the character of, and signed by, Felix Holt. He can truly claim himself as a radical, brilliantly titled by George Eliot.