GEORGE ELIOT
Mary Ann Evans
1819-1880
The masculine sounding writer's pseudonym, GEORGE ELIOT, was adopted by Mary Ann Evans because she did not want to be known as a "woman writer," but judged for her work as the men writers of her times were. She wanted to bypass Victorian sexism. Still, she could not hide behind the name-of-the-plume forever, because with fame came interest in her as a woman and interest in her early upbringing and personal life.
"George" became known as a literary great and is held in high regard today as an author of several novels which have inspired plays and films. Her alternative lifestyle a century and half ago intrigues us and while I won't go deeply into her literary work, I want to start out by acknowledging her accomplishments. She was an intellectual woman who, according to John W. Cross in his work "George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and Journals", also read in several languages. She was the Literature Major's ideal, someone who read constantly, preferably in the original language of the author's publication, examining each sentence closely. He wrote, "In foreign languages George Eliot had an experience more unusual among women than among men. With a complete literary and scholarly knowledge of French, German, Italian, and Spanish, she spoke all four languages with difficulty, though accurately and grammatically; but the mimetic power of catching intonation and accent was wanting. Greek and Latin she could read with thorough delight to herself, and Hebrew was a favorite study to the end of her life."
George's life choices left her abandoned by a brother and sister who felt her immorality tainted their family reputation and status. After all, they had been raised to be devout Christians and no doubt about it, her poetry and literary work revealed a great faith in Christianity - at first. What happened then that George went against some of the most profound teachings of that faith as well as her family, her heritage, and the way most of her peers thought to live? How could she be with a married man, George Henry Lewes, a philosopher and also an author, and openly, for so many years? And how could she, at the very end of her life, marry, and marry a man twenty years younger than she, John W. Cross? Was she a 19th century "Cougar?" Or perhaps a bit like American artist Georgia O'Keeffe who had her much younger companion partner in her much older years? The answer is that she was influenced by the Free Thinkers.
Did George believe in marriage all along and simply not marry the man to whom she experienced mutual devotion because he could not divorce?
I was thinking "The Crown" on Netflix and how much that series reveals about The Church of England and marriage and what aristocrats, in particular the men, thought about marriage. Divorce was said to be unthinkable and so many persisted unhappy, while it was fine that the men have affairs or mistresses while the women kept the family together for the sake of the children, if not themselves. This was the case, as the series implies, with the marriage of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who is said to have had affairs. It would seem that Elizabeth and Philip by necessity of duty, lived quite a bit apart.
When a man is married and especially when he has children with the wife he married, he enters into a financial contract. Among the aristocrats, rank and money matter and so does keeping land and money in the family. So we often ask ourselves how such a man also finances having a Classic Mistress, a woman who often does not have money equal to his. We know that sometimes a mistress does have her own money and that today many women support themselves but their man's financial contributions to their welfare and that of their children elevate their lives. Eliot never had children and we do not know if that was by choice, through biological inability, contraception, agreement.
Born in 1819, to a comfortable but not especially rich family, Mary Ann Evans was considered exceptionally well educated - for a woman. However, we wonder at their expectations of her to fulfill the usual feminine role of wife and mother. There are still today people who see going to college as a way to meet a husband or who see education as personal achievement that makes them better mothers. Like other literary women featured here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, women who were bound by conventional feminine roles, Mary Ann lived in a world that considered women who earned their own money almost radical.
She first published a poem in 1940. In 1846, still a devout Evangelical Christian, she published a work on the Life of Jesus that was critically acclaimed. In 1848 she met the poet Emerson, indicating that she was considered worthy due to her talent to enter into the world of the male literary elite. It wasn't until 1849 that she began experimenting with a name change, first thinking Marianne or Marian would be better than Mary Ann.
By 1853, she and G. H. Lewes * became notably close. She traveled with him to Germany and then in 1855 the two began to live together in London. Then the two moved to the smaller, more isolated Richmond. In 1857, when she was about 38 years old, and already published under her given name at birth, she changed her name to George Eliot.
About this time, having openly traveled and been seen as a couple by London society, her brother, and then her sister, abandoned her. Together the unconventional couple continued European travel, visiting Rome, Naples, Florence, and Switzerland. She was also beginning to actively publish and so we can see that the relationship and lifestyle was one in which she as a writer could thrive. Her first acclaimed novel in 1861 was Silas Mariner. In 1870 the couple visited Germany, Prague, and Austria and by 1877 they were being socially introduced to royals. But Lewes had cancer and died in 1878 and George herself was physically failing with kidney disease and had bouts of pain.
Just a few months after the death of G.H., George married a man about twenty years younger than she, Johnny Cross. Talk about a May-December romance! They married in May and in December she died, only sixty-one.
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(*I want to mention her that in more than one account of their relationship it is specifically mentioned that the man was considered ugly. I have to say that after looking at many images of George, the image on the book cover is one of the most complimentary of her.)
If interested in Georgia O'Keeffe, who was first a mistress and photography muse and then, in her later years, seemed to keep a younger man who assisted her in her artist life. August 2011 was dedicated to Georgia.
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