stands for an escape from the zero-sum game of Victorian social codes, at the price of such amenities of civilization [closed]

I don't understand the part in italics. I have no idea what message the writer is trying to convey. I'd appreciate an explanation on this.

Another important metaphor for Maggie is the gypsy queen, a fantasy that Eliot realistically and humorously undercuts. The myth of the gypsy camp, which Eliot along with Bronte and other Victorian novelists adapted from romantic poetry and painting, stands for an escape from the zero-sum game of Victorian social codes, at the price of such amenities of civilization as tea, books, and groceries. Maggie's contact with this world, briefer, more disillusioning, and more humiliating than Jane's experiments with rebellion, is instructive.

A literature of their own, Elaine Showalter

It is unnecessary to repeat the definitions of game that may be found easily, for example, in

Merriam Webster

The use of the word here is similar to that of Eric Berne in his book The games people play

Penguin Books

Life is seen as a game that involves a mix of entertainment, rules and competition.

Victorian social codes are seen as rigid and convention-governed rules for the game of life. In such codes, transactions may be economic, social or emotional but every transaction is controlled by convention, every gain is balanced by a loss, everything has a price. This is the zero-sum game: one man's gain is another's loss; even one's own gain may be balanced by one's own loss. There is little room for free personal expression, for ungoverned adventure, for reckless generosity of spirit or body, for the exploration of hormone-driven emotions.

In contrast to this, Maggie as the gypsy queen of a gypsy camp stands for an imagined alternative, one in which the Victorian rules do not apply, where there is more uninhibited freedom, more personal expression, more colour, more emotion (perhaps by implication, more sex?). There is the possibility of risk, reward, loss and all those chance things that the Victorian code tried to exclude from its tightly structured view of society.

Hardy recognizes that these imagined freedoms of the fantasy gypsy camp come at a price: if we drop too many conventions we also lose many of the benefits of civilized society, the reliable supplies of books tea and groceries upon which we rely.