The Technical Aspects of Garie’s Novels

Theresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life . . . Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

—Middlemarch by George Elliot (Prelude)