out. Eliot writes,
Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractions, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it (Middlemarch).
In this passage, we are exposed to several of the themes running through Eliot’s work—her emphasis on women’s education, the poor state which is referred to several times in the novel, the role of religion in daily life and how this is often linked with rapturous states and a self-abnegating martyrdom, and the need for a moral code separate from religion, which in failing to find, the individual must needs throw herself into a frantic search for knowledge.
As Virginia Woolf pointed out, the story of George Eliot’s heroines is “the incomplete version of the story that is George Eliot herself”; the above themes, therefore, are not only found in George Eliot’s oeuvre but also in her life which, for a Victorian woman, was an unconventional one. Born in 1819, George Eliot’s real name was Mary Anne Evans, later changed to Marian Evans, and finally to George Eliot to ensure that the knowledge of her sex would not detract from the favorable reception of her novels. Although her true identity came to light shortly after her work was deemed a success, the pseudonym “George Eliot” has endured, a significant fact according to her biographer Rosemarie Bodenheimer who writes, “Exactly because it is an assumed name, it brings into play the odd quality of a life that could develop its great capacities only under the cover of partly fictional social roles”. As Mary Ann Evans, the author was limited to the only roles available to women in the Victorian era, and although she never entirely gave up this identity, becoming George Eliot allowed her to shed the fetters and view herself and those around her more clearly—to pin down a whole social structure as though viewing it through the eyes of a stranger.
George Eliot had a middle-class rural upbringing, a somewhat humdrum affair compared to the child labor that her contemporary Charles Dickens experienced after his parents, unable to pay their debts, were imprisoned. Eliot’s father was the manager of the Newdigate estate in Warwickshire; her mother, the daughter of a local farmer. The Evans’ family position was such that it brought the young George Eliot in contact with people from many walks of life, including the squire, local farmers, coal miners, clergy, tradespeople etc., allowing her to store up the memories she would later utilize in writing her novels. Until the age of sixteen, Eliot went to boarding school, a somewhat unusual practice for a girl at that time. It’s possible that Eliot’s parents realized the extent of her genius, as she was a bookish girl thirsting for knowledge which wasn’t always within her reach. However, biographers have attributed her extended education to her lack of good looks and, by extension, her poor matrimonial prospects. Her father apparently reasoned that if his daughter couldn’t have the life conventionally assigned to a woman, she might as well develop her mind enough to be able to do something else.
While at school, Eliot began to think seriously about religion, pouring her heart and soul into the practice of a faith that promised rewards in the hereafter in exchange for the renunciation of material things in the present. However, when she was sixteen, her mother died and her sister Chrissey got married, forcing Eliot to return home and manage the house for her father and brother. At first, Eliot’s reading and her correspondence with her evangelical teacher Maria Lewis only contributed to her increasing religious fervor. However, her views changed as she was exposed to works that were more skeptical towards Christianity, and was left to care for her ailing father while her brother got married. Her growing friendship with Charles and Cara Bray, a progressive couple who hosted various intellectuals and reformers at their home in Coventry, gave Eliot the space that she required to air out the views that had hitherto been festering within her. Thus it came about that, at the age of 22, she refused to go to church with her father, creating a rift between them which threatened, for a time, to be serious. Eventually, Eliot was forced to succumb to family pressure and go through the motions of practicing, if not devoutly, Christianity for the remaining eight years that she lived with her father. Inwardly, however, Eliot did not renounce her new beliefs and she continued her association with the Brays.
Eliot’s father died in 1849, when she was 30. After a short time in Geneva, recuperating from the intense nursing she had undertaken the previous year, Eliot moved to London. She had already published a translation of Strauss’ The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined and her publisher, John Chapman, ran a lodging house which served as a hub for a number of broad-minded intellectuals. When Chapman bought The Westminster Review, it was Eliot who ran the enterprise even though it was Chapman’s name on the masthead. Thus, even before she started writing novels, Eliot had already begun to make a name for herself in literary circles.
During this period, Eliot also had a few romantic entanglements, one with Chapman himself. The exact extent of their relationship is not known but it was apparently strenuously objected to by Chapman’s wife and mistress, forcing the pair to redefine their interaction as purely professional. Another fondness developed, this time to the biologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer. Spencer didn’t return Eliot’s affections but the two managed to remain friends. Finally, Eliot met Spencer’s good friend, George Henry Lewes, a philosopher and critic who had published several books and articles, and was himself the editor of a journal called the Leader. Lewes had a checkered past, as he was illegitimate by birth and already married with three children, which prevented him from asking for Eliot’s hand. Lewes could, at one point, have divorced his wife, for she was having an affair with his friend Thornton Hunt, but being a free-thinking man, he had recognized Hunt’s children as his own, thereby relinquishing his right to a divorce. At first, Eliot kept her relationship with Lewes secret, but eventually the truth was revealed and Eliot was cut off from her family.
Eliot lived with Lewes for the next twenty years and often signed her name “Marian Evans Lewes” even though they were not technically married. Lewes was the ideal partner, encouraging Eliot to continue writing even when she felt depressed or unsure of herself. It was with his support that she finally made her foray into fiction-writing, beginning anonymously with the novella The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton which, combined with two more novellas, were eventually published under the pseudonym George Eliot as Scenes of Clerical Life. As the title suggests, each story involved a different Anglican clergyman but attempted to portray their “human” aspect rather than their “theological” leanings. It might have been the strength of the female characters in these works that prompted Dickens to see through the façade in a letter he wrote to the author, saying, “I should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman”.
A few years later, Eliot wrote Adam Bede, which was an immediate best-seller as it explored the somewhat sensation topic of infanticide. The story of Adam Bede is a moving one, in which one can’t help but sympathize with the woman who murders her own child in order to retain her respectability. In his critique on the novel, Henry James wrote, “she [George Eliot] is neither Dickens nor Thackeray. She has over them the great advantage that she is also a good deal of a philosopher; and it is to this union of the keenest observation with the ripest reflection that her style owes its essential force”. Adam Bede was drawn largely from life, and many of the characters depicted in it were real people who, as it turned out, recognized themselves in the novel. This led to controversy about the true identity of George Eliot. When Joseph Liggins, a poor, disreputable clergyman, was rumored to be the real author behind the pseudonym, Eliot was forced to reveal her true identity.
Given Eliot’s sensitivity to remarks by the press, Lewes began to act as the buffer between her and the outside world. He would only show her favorable reviews, and gave her the time and space she needed to produce more writing. The next decade was a very productive one for Eliot, despite her emotional ups and downs. She wrote The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, both of which fall within the parameters of the realist tradition i.e. the depiction of things as they were, eschewing the tendency to romanticize occurrences.
