"Throughout George Eliot's fiction, not only do a remarkable number of her characters act under the influence of unwise consumption of alcohol and opium, but these drugs also recur often as metaphors and allusions.".

"George Eliot's constructions of drug-consuming characters (especially parental characters), analyzed in a context freshly drawn from a variety of Warwickshire local histories, demonstrate how intricately she connects medical, aesthetic, political, cultural, and gender issues of her period through references to intoxication.

Kathleen McCormack also describes George Eliot's forward-thinking theory of addiction and concludes with a radical biographical speculation concerning Christiana Pearson Evans, the novelist's shadowy mother."--BOOK JACKET.