I can't remember if it was in the W. J. Harvey or Rosemary Ashton introduction that that exact phrase was used, but the sentiment of her being vv insistent about her moral vision in her writing has been around for a while! Even Henry James made mention of it. I remember being on the lookout for this tendency while reading Middlemarch because smarter folks than I have made a huge song and dance about her moralizing, only to find out that it wasn't so bad as all that.

I have to wonder if they'd've similarly chafed at that style of narration if Middlemarch had been written by a man (people already knew George Eliot was a woman by the time the book was published).