SOURCE: Viera, Carroll. “‘The Lifted Veil’ and George Eliot's Early Aesthetic.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 24, no. 4 (autumn 1984): 749-67.

In the following essay, Viera asserts that many of Eliot's aesthetic theories found in her early letters and essays are manifest in fictional form in “The Lifted Veil.”

Richard Stang's observation that “George Eliot was perhaps unique in that she formulated her ideas about life and art before she started to write her first novel”¹ has received unqualified acceptance. But despite their interest in George Eliot's early aesthetic,² critics have neglected its links to her third work of fiction, “The Lifted Veil.”³ This neglect is curious since “The Lifted Veil” contains the only artist-protagonist in the fiction of an author who, throughout her career, remained intensely concerned with the function of art and who created many artists and artist figures.⁴ Thus, “The Lifted Veil” occupies a prominent position in...