George Eliot is known as an exceptional writer now and of her time. George Eliot is not what most people think of her, when they hear the name George Eliot; most think that she is a he but the case is that George Eliot used the name as a pen name, because back in her time female writers were not even common or thought of really. George Eliot was born to Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson Evans. George Eliot’s father was a carpenter but later got a better job as an estate agent for Arbury estate in Warwickshire. Mr. Evans also had two older children from a previous relationship.
Eliot’s mother was just a stay at home mom.Eliot’s mother was the daughter of a yeoman farmer. It is told that there are traces of Robert Evans in the character of “Adam Bede,” and f Mrs. Evans in “Mrs.
Poyser,” but the characterizations are not photographic. Childhood George Eliot was born Mary Anne Evans on November 22, 1819. George Eliot was born at Arbury Farm in Warwickshire, England, on the edge of the Forrest of Arden. She was the youngest of three.
When she was a few months old, the family moved to Griff, a 'cheerful red-brick, ivory-covered house', and there Eliot spent 21 years of his life among people that he later depicted in her novels.Eliot was real close to her brother Issac. In 1824-35 she was first educated at a local dame school, then at boarding schools in Attenborough, Nuneaton and Coventry. In 1832 she witnesses the election riot caused by the first reform Bill. In school teachers would describe her as a queer, three-cornered, awkward girl, who sat in corners and shyly watched her elders.
Mary Anne grew close to teacher Maria Lewis. Lewis identified the young woman's gifts and took her under her wing. The two remained close friends for years, corresponding long after Mary Anne had completed her studies.She learned piano, and spoke French. She finally left school at age sixteen. In 1836 Eliot’s mother died she was nineteen years old.
All her brothers and sisters had married and left home, and she became her father’s household manager and companion, developing ability that in another period would have made her a successful executive. She did not, however, neglect her intellectual growth; she studied Italian and German with a teacher from near-by town of Coventry, and read Latin and Greek with the headmaster of the town’s grammar school. In 1836 Eliot visits London for the first time ith her brother Issac.In 1841 after reading Charles Hennell’s Inquiry into the Origins of Christianity and Bray’s The Philosophy of Necessity she converted from Evangelical Christianity to “a crude state of free-thinking. ” In 1842 Eliot refuses to go to church with her father but later returns to Coventry and attends church but not with her old beliefs.
Career/Adult Life In 1843-44 Eliot stays with Dr. and Mrs. Brabant at Devizes, and works on translation of Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu. Eliot Leaves Mrs. Brabant, because of her strong infatuation for Mr. Brabant.
She returns to Coventry, and continues work on translation. 1845 rejects marriage proposal from artist friend. In 1849 George Eliot’s father dies and brother takes over business. Eliot also begins translation of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and travels to Geneva, where she remains until 1850.
Eliot returns to England, becomes assistant editor of Westminster Review. In between the years of 1850-53 she had a relationship with her boss Herbert Spencer which they talked about marriage but never actually got married. Also in between them years she met George Henry Lewes who was a critic and author.Lewes who would be her companion until his death in 1878. Lewes’s wife was mentally unbalanced and she had already had two children by another man. In 1854 Eliot went to Germany with Lewes.
Their unconventional union caused some difficulties because Lewes was still married and he was unable to obtain divorce. After Lewes's death Eliot married twenty years younger friend, John Cross, an American banker, on May 6, 1880. They made a trip to Italy and according to a story; he jumped in Venice from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal. Cross was then carried back to the hotel suite.He was unharmed. After honeymoon they returned to London, where she died of a kidney ailment on the same year on December 22.
Cross never married again. In her will she expressed her wish to be buried in Westminster Abbey, but Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey rejected the idea and Eliot was buried in High gate Cemetery next to George Henry Lewes. Eliot died at the age of 61. Works and Critiques Eliot had great works and critiques such as Adam Bede which was published 1859. Eliot also wrote The Mill on the Floss which is said to be about her and her family’s life.George Eliot also wrote the book Silas Marner (1861).
Which was about Silas Marner, a linen-weaver, has accumulated a goodly sum of gold. He was falsely judged guilty of theft 15 years before and left his community. Squire Cass' son Dunstan steals Marner's gold and disappears. Marner takes care of an orphaned little girl, Eppie and she becomes for him more precious than the lost property.
Sixteen years later the skeleton of Dunstan and Marner's gold is found. Godfrey Cass, Dunstal's brother, admits that he is the father of Eppie. He married the girl's mother, opium-ridden Molly Farren secretly before her death.Eppie and Silas Marner don't wish to separate when Godfrey tries to adopt the girl.
In the end Eppie marries Aaron Winthrop, who accepts Silas Marner as part of the household. George Eliot published Middlemarch(1871-72), her greatest novel, was probably inspired by her life at Coventry. Eliot combined the work from a tale of a young doctor, which she started in 1869, and then abandoned, and the satirical story of the frustrations of Dorothea Brooke. Eliot weaves into her story several narrative lines, which throw light on the aspirations of the central characters.Middlemarch tells of English provincial life in the early nineteenth century, just before the Reform Bill of 1832.
The book was called by the famous American writer Henry James a 'treasure-house of detail. ' One of Eliot's main concerns is the way which the past moulds the present and the attempts of various characters to control the future. Harold Bloom has noted in The Western Canon (1994) the implicit but clear relation of the work to Dante's Comedy. Dorothea, an idealistic young woman, marries the pedantic Casaubon.
After his death she marries Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's young cousin, a vaguely artistic outsider. Doctor Tertius Lydgate is trapped with the egoistic Rosamond Vincy, the town's beauty. Lydgate becomes involved in a scandal, and he dies at 50, his ambitions frustrated. Other characters are Bulstrode, a banker and a religious hypocrite, Mary Garth, the practical daughter of a land agent, and Fred Vincy, the son of the mayor of Middlemarch.
For modern feminist readers Middlemarch has been a disappointment: Dorothea was not prepared to give up marriage. 'I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties, I never thought of it as mere personal ease,' said poor Dorothea. " However, Eliot's lament for Dorothea left no doubts about her views: "Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the nature of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, the limits of variation are really much wider than anyone would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love stories in prose and verse. " - The book is required reading in university English courses.
Significance of Works The Significance of George Eliot’s work is that she is considered as one of the best writers now and back in her time. It was said that if George Eliot had never met George Henry Lewes that she would never became famous. Mary Anne Evans b. k. a.
George Eliot gave a great contribution to literature.
