SOURCE: "A Lady to the End: The Case of Isabel Vane," in Victorian Studies, Vol. XIX, No. 3, March, 1976, pp. 329-44.

In the essay that follows, Elliott evaluates the ways in which the attitudes and influences of a period are revealed through its popular literature. Focusing particularly on East Lynne by Mrs. Henry Wood, Elliott discusses the presence of a desire for change in women's roles in the domestic novels of the 1800s.

Many of the best-known novels of the Victorian period are distinguished by a concern for the problems of women's duties and spheres of action. Perhaps the most brilliant exposition of the conflict between the established patterns of domestic life and an intense if formless yearning for wider horizons can be found in the struggles of George Eliot's ardent heroines, Dorothea Brooke, Romola, and Maggie Tulliver. Also memorable, though depicted on a less elevated scale, are the...