George Eliot, 19th century novelist

George Eliot was one of the foremost novelists of the 19^th century, ranking alongside the Brontës and Dickens in her skill at characterisation and plot-making, but bringing to the novel something new, namely a moral purpose that went beyond the prime motive of most of her predecessors, which was to entertain.

She is almost universally referred to by her pen name, adopted more as a device to achieve anonymity than a pretence to masculinity.  She was born as Mary Anne Evans, although she used several variants on her given names (such as Marian) and took the surnames of her two husbands.

She was born on 22 November 1819 near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, the third child of an estate manager.  Her mother was the daughter of a local farmer.  She grew up in a semi-rural environment, aware both of the life of the agricultural community and the developing industry of nearby cities such as Coventry, as well as the busyness of the local coalmines and the canals and railways that criss-crossed this area in the heart of England.

She was educated locally, and soon developed a strong sense of religion, with a definite evangelical bias.

Her mother died when she was only sixteen, after which she stayed at home to help her elder sister keep house, becoming a full-time housekeeper when her sister left home to get married.  Her education now had to come from her own reading, and the occasional services of visiting tutors.

When her father retired, leaving the estate management business to his son, he and his daughter moved to a village near Coventry. She soon came under the influence of Charles and Cara Bray and their circle, renowned for their religious free-thinking, and her religious views changed markedly, from piety to agnosticism.  Her father nearly turned her out of the house when she refused to attend church, but relented.  Mary Ann (she had by now dropped the “e”) continued to keep house for her father until his death in 1849, with her unconventional opinions and less than beautiful appearance making it unlikely that she would find a husband very quickly.

Her contacts with many free-thinkers and liberals led to her first literary work, a translation from German of a critical examination of the life of Christ, and this led to a second commission of a similar kind.

Her father proved to be a demanding invalid during the long illness that ended with his death in 1849.  She was left with just enough money to live on, but only just, and the problem of what to do next. The Brays took her with them on a tour of Europe, but when they reached Geneva she decided to stay put, and spent the winter on her own, mostly devoted to reading and walking.

On returning to England she decided to try her hand at journalism, under the name Marian Evans, and moved to London, where she lodged with the publisher John Chapman.  This was a huge boost to her prospects, and she impressed her landlord so much that he asked her to edit his journal, the Westminster Review. 

However, Chapman, who had a wife and a mistress living under the same roof, paid more attention to Marian than could be tolerated by either woman, and she found herself back in Coventry for a time, although the rift was soon healed and she was allowed to return to London, where she continued to work on the Westminster Review, as both editor and frequent contributor. She became introduced to many of the leading lights of London’s literary, social and political scene, including Herbert Spencer and George Henry Lewes.

Her relationship with Spencer was more ardent on her behalf than his, and by 1853 her interest had turned towards Lewes, who was far more accepting of her attentions.  However, Lewes was a married man who was not able to divorce his wife, and the liaison with Marian led to a considerable scandal. 

This came about mainly because Marian and Lewes decided to live openly as husband and wife, with Marian even taking the surname of Lewes, which was not the way these things were done in Victorian England. This experience of flouting the accepted social norms was later to prove valuable in literary terms, with George Eliot’s portrayals of characters such as Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss. The couple left England for a time, spending about nine months in Germany. Returning to England in July 1855, they found life to be much more difficult in social terms, with invitations being offered to one or the other, but rarely both together. 

Up to this point, Marian had written a huge amount of anonymous journalism, in the form of essays, articles and reviews, although it was widely known that she was the author.  She was now encouraged by Lewes to have a go at writing fiction, the result being three stories under the title Scenes of Clerical Life. The stories were published by Blackwood’s Magazine in 1857, with the name George Eliot being used for the first time.

The stories were well received, and she embarked on her first full-length novel, Adam Bede, which was published in 1859.  This was also a success, resulting in instant fame for the new author.

Marian’s authorship was guessed by some readers, but by no means all.  There was considerable speculation, with claims and counter-claims, but it was not long before Marian felt constrained to admit openly that she was George Eliot. This caused problems for some readers who knew about the scandalous Marian Evans/Lewes, and found it difficult to accept that such a person could be taken seriously when making moral judgments about fictional characters.  This in turn caused problems for Marian, who seriously considered giving up writing altogether and leaving the country.

It is just as well that she persevered, for her next novel was one of her greatest, namely The Mill on the Floss (1860), with its wonderful combination of humour and tragedy.  Personal tragedy interfered in Marian’s life whilst George was writing the novel, because her sister Chrissy, to whom Marian had been close at periods in their lives, died of TB.

The Mill on the Floss was another huge success in terms of sales, making Marian a rich woman.  She found that she was becoming more socially acceptable as her fame increased.

The next novel was Silas Marner (1861), another critical and financial success, but after that came Romola (1862-3), based on the story of the Italian monk Savonarola, and this proved to be difficult to write, as well as having a much less happy result in terms of literary merit and critical acclaim.

Felix Holt, The Radical (1866) marked a return to English rural life for her inspiration, and this was a more successful book, although not as well received as her first two novels.

A visit to Spain led to The Spanish Gypsy (1868), which, for some reason, she chose to write as a dramatic poem, a strange and unwise decision. 

With her career in apparent decline, it was as well for her lasting reputation that her next novel, Middlemarch (1871-2), would prove to be her abiding masterpiece.  This was in part due to a return to her safest ground, as far as novel-writing was concerned, namely life in a midland community, the repressed emotions of lower-middle-class women, and the clergy as targets of criticism.

Her final novel, Daniel Deronda (1876) showed her courage in tackling difficult material, in that she had become interested in the ‘Jewish question’, namely the aspirations of the growing Zionist movement in England.  Her sympathetic portrayal of Jewish characters in the novel was unlikely to win her many friends in Victorian England, but the book was still a commercial success.

Marian, now aged 57, wealthy, and exhausted, was happy to enter a semi-retirement with Lewes in the Surrey countryside. This lasted for only two years before Lewes died and Marian became lonely and depressed. Indeed, she was now almost a recluse, allowing only a tiny number of people to visit her, one of them being the banker John Walter Cross, who was nearly twenty years younger than herself.

She married Cross in 1880, and made another change to her name, reverting to Mary Ann and taking Cross’s surname.  On honeymoon in Venice, Cross apparently attempted suicide, not a good sign for a forthcoming long and happy marriage.  This proved to be the case, for Cross’s depression was coupled with Mary Ann’s increasingly bad kidney disease.  Only three weeks after they moved into a new house in London she died on 22 December 1880.

Her religious views and her unconventional private life made it impossible for her to be buried in Westminster Abbey, and it was only 100 years later, in 1980, that a memorial to her was eventually placed in Poets’ Corner.

© John Welford