George Eliot

George Eliot (1819-1880), pseudonym of Mary Ann or Marian Evans, Victorian English novelist, whose works, with their profound feeling and realistic portrayals of simple lives, give her a place in the first rank of 19th-century English writers. Her fame was international, and her work greatly influenced the development of French naturalism.

George Eliot was born in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, the daughter of an estate agent. She was educated at a local school in Nuneaton and later at a boarding school in Coventry. At the age of 17, after the death of her mother and the marriage of her elder sister, she went to live with her father. In addition to the strict religious training she received at the insistence of her father, Eliot read widely on her own, teaching herself philosophy, theology, and foreign languages. In 1841 she began reading rationalist works, which influenced her turn away from dogmatic religion. Although it caused an estrangement from her father, she abandoned her faith and remained a rationalist throughout her life (see Rationalism).

Eliot's first book was a translation of German theologian David Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1846). After traveling for two years in Europe, she returned to England in 1851 and wrote a book review for the Westminster Review. She subsequently became assistant editor of that publication.

Through her work on the Review Eliot met many of the leading literary figures of the period, including Harriet Martineau, John Stuart Mill, James Froude, Herbert Spencer, and George Lewes. Her meeting with Lewes, a philosopher, scientist, and critic, was one of the most significant events of her life. They fell in love, despite the fact that Lewes was married. Although Lewes did not divorce his wife, Eliot lived openly with him, scandalizing the rigidly conservative society. Nevertheless, Eliot looked upon their long and happy relationship, which lasted until Lewes died in 1878, as a marriage.

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During this period Eliot wrote numerous reviews, articles, and translations. In 1855 she wrote Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft, an essay on the roles and rights of women. Then, with encouragement from Lewes, she began to write fiction in 1856. Her first story, “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in January 1857. It was followed by two additional stories in the same year, and all three were collected in book form as Scenes from Clerical Life (1858). The author signed herself George Eliot and kept her true identity secret for many years.

Among Eliot's best-known works are Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Silas Marner (1861). Each of these novels is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between the individual and society. They draw from Eliot’s own experiences living in the Warwickshire countryside, and they reveal her instinctive understanding of human nature.

Extremely popular with Victorian readers, Adam Bede is the story of a love triangle. Adam Bede, a good peasant workman, secretly loves the beautiful but foolish farm girl Hetty Sorrel, who is also pursued by the squire Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty’s unexpected pregnancy leads to dramatic and unexpected consequences.

The heroine of The Mill on the Floss, idealistic, intelligent, passionate Maggie Tulliver, resembles Eliot herself as a young woman. Both experience difficulty expressing themselves in callous social environments and both face painful decisions in love. Marked by humor and sadness, the novel analyzes the full scope of Maggie’s imperfect humanity while presenting a sharp yet understanding view of society.

Silas Marner tells the story of a weaver, Silas Marner, who is falsely accused of theft as a young man. His fiancée then leaves him, only to marry his accuser. As a result of these events, Silas becomes a reclusive and embittered miser until an orphaned girl, Eppie, comes into his life. Through her Silas begins to reconnect with people. Power, human love, and justice are central to this moral fable.

Travels in Italy inspired Eliot’s next work, Romola (1863), a historical romance about the Italian preacher and reformer Girolamo Savonarola set in 15^th-century Florence. She began writing the work in 1861, and it first appeared as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine.

Following the completion of Romola, Eliot wrote two outstanding novels, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), concerned with English politics, and Middlemarch (1871-1872), dealing with English middle-class life in a provincial town. Often considered Eliot’s masterpiece, Middlemarch was first published serially in eight parts. Through a colorful cast of characters led by the young, unhappily married Dorothea Brooke, Eliot explores the intricacies of motivation, the gap between aspirations and limitations, and the far-reaching effects of even the simplest of human actions.

In the years following the completion of Middlemarch, Eliot wrote Daniel Deronda (1876), a novel attacking anti-Semitism, and The Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879), a collection of essays. Her poetry, which is generally considered to have less merit than her prose, includes The Spanish Gypsy (1868), a drama in blank verse; Agatha (1869); and The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (1874). Eliot was admired by contemporaries such as Emily Dickinson and later writers such as Virginia Woolf, and has generated much favorable contemporary feminist criticism.

During the period in which she wrote her major works, Eliot was always encouraged and protected by Lewes. He prevented her even from seeing unfavorable reviews of her books. After his death in 1878 Eliot stopped writing. In May 1880 she married John Cross, an American banker, who had long been a friend of both Lewes and herself and who became Eliot's first biographer. But seven months after her marriage, Eliot died in London.