SOURCE: Wilt, Judith. “Felix Holt, The Killer: A Reconstruction.” Victorian Studies 35, no. 1 (autumn 1991): 51-69.

In the following essay, Wilt explores the transformation of Felix Holt from doctor to radical and the role of secrets within the narrative in accounting for that transformation.

What on earth happened in Glasgow in the spring of 1832, to turn Felix Holt the Doctor into Felix Holt the Radical? This mystery remains well after a first reading of George Eliot's 1866 “political” novel has brought to light, more or less satisfactorily, the other secrets which have been guarded for generations by characters, and for many chapters by a narrative engaged, perhaps more than most, in that “blackmail,” “the management and exploitation of secrets,” which Alexander Welsh has identified as fundamental to George Eliot's novels (George Eliot 4).

Three of the secrets in Felix Holt have to do with births, and behind that, of course, with sexual...