Felix Holt: The Radical Book

4.5 stars
One of the least read of Eliot's novels; sitting in the middle of her output. I found it had a surprising resonance for today. It was published in 1866 but was set in the time of the Great Reform Act in 1832, when the vote was extended (not by much, the electorate increasing from about 500,000 to just over 800,000). As Eliot was writing the Second Reform Act was being promulgated. The landed classes and aristocracy were bringing on board some of the wealthier middle classes.
The plot centres around an election in a Midlands town in 1832; probably modelled on Eliot's home town Nuneaton; the riot in the book is very like the one in Nuneaton in 1832. The voices of the Tory side are as you would predict. On the other side is Harold Transome, a wealthy landowner just returned from abroad a widower with a son. He returns to find his estate is causing some concern and shocks his mother and friends by announcing he is standing as a Radical. Felix Holt is an educated, but poor Radical who has also returned from journeying (in Scotland) to stay with his mother and work as a watch repairer. Meanwhile the Rev. Rufus Lyon (a dissenting minister) and his step-daughter Esther make up the other main protagonists. There develops a sort of legal and electoral thriller with some twists relating to birth and inheritance and a significant riot on Election Day. Inevitably there is a love triangle involving Esther, Felix and Transome and Eliot works it all out in an interesting way. All the lawyers are corrupt and self-serving and true to type. The working class characters are a little less convincing.
There are some interesting lines of thought. Eliot looks at the situation of older women in the form of Mrs Transome and Mrs Holt, the mothers of the male protagonists. Both feel helpless in the face of their strong-minded sons who barely tolerate them: Contrast the very sympathetic relationship between Esther and her father, Rev. Lyon.
Another major theme is of course political change and the book (often in the form of Holt) asks difficult questions. Does the electorate always get things right? That brings us straight to the US and UK today! The political landscape in the novel is out of joint and all are aware of it and there is a good deal of anger at the grassroots level, often without direction. Holt himself is not arguing for extending the franchise; he believes in gaining power for the working class by building a movement from the bottom based on education. Partial change at the top was no change. Holt, of course was right, as there was now a larger electorate to bribe, so you had to be even richer to enter politics.
Of course there is a love story going on, but I was much more interested in the parallels with Trump and Brexit.