[Originally published in 1876, the following excerpt lauds Eliot's characterization of Hetty Sorrel for its artful power and poignance.]

(This review of Daniel Deronda prefaced its unfavourable notice of the book with a leisurely survey of G. E.'s other novels, and selected Hetty Sorrel as one of her masterpieces.) …

The figure of Hetty is like nothing that art had before developed out of nature, and yet it is profoundly true, with a reality in it which makes the heart ache. The very landscape, hitherto so broad and large and calm, changes and intensifies round this being, so tragical in her levity and shallowness. Never was the hapless simpleton, strange mixture of innocence and that self-love which is the root of ill, deserving of her fate, yet not deserving, in her lightness and reckless ignorance, of any such tremendous encounter with destiny and the powers of evil, so wonderfully set forth. In most cases, when a human soul, either in history or fiction, is brought face to face with the darker passions and calamities, it is of a nature lofty enough to cope with and combat them; but George Eliot was the first to thrill the spectator with the sight of a helpless, frivolous, childish creature, inadequate even to understand, much less to contend with, those gigantic shadows, confronted all at once by despair, crime, remorse, and destruction—things with which her soft childlike foolishness and baby character had nothing to do. The effect produced is much like that which would be roused in us did we see a child set in motion, by some heedless touch, a whole system of grim machinery, such as must crush it into a thousand pieces, and before which we stand trembling and appalled, not only by the horror itself, but by the shock of those tremendous forces employed for such a result. The anguish of pity in such a case is not mingled with any of those nobler sentiments which make the heart swell when we watch a worthy struggle, but is sharp and sore with our inability to assist, and with yearning over the helpless victim. There is nothing finer in modern literature than the power with which this contrast is kept up, and the slightness and frivolity of poor Hetty's being, preserved consistent through all the tempest of woe that comes upon her. A lesser artist would have made this trifling country girl develop into a heroine in face of the terrible emergency; but genius knows better; and the tragedy gains in depth and solemn force from the helpless weakness of the central figure. We have seen a spotless Desdemona, a lovely dream like Juliet perish with a less pang and shiver of feeling than that with which we watch this poor, pretty, self-regarding fool crouch helpless and dumb before the awful fates. …