George Elliot

George Elliot (born Mary Ann Evans, B 1819 – D 1880) was one of the most talented and prolific authors of the Victorian era. How talented a writer was the author of Middlemarch and Silas Marner? When Charles Dickens died in June of 1870, the cry went up ‘Dickens is dead; long live George Elliot!’, the implication being that now George Elliot was the greatest living English novelist. Personally, I always felt that, despite Dickens’ incredible popularity, Elliot was much the superior writer.

Her lengthy masterpiece, Middlemarch (1872) was described by the novelist, Virginia Woolf, as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language. All of her prose reflects tremendous psychological insight, graphic detail and a stark realism lacking in much of earlier British writing.

The young Evans was a voracious reader. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, Evans was not thought to have much chance of marriage, and this, coupled with her intelligence, led her father to invest in an education not often afforded to women. As a teenager, Evans had little formal education, but thanks to her father's important role on a wealthy landowner's the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature, and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy"

While contributing pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans resolved to become a novelist, and in one of her final non-fiction essays for the Review titled "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" criticized the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary fiction written by women. In other essays, she praised the realism of novels that were being written in Europe at the time, an emphasis on realistic storytelling confirmed in her own subsequent fiction. She also adopted a nom-de-plume, George Eliot; as she explained to her biographer J. W. Cross, George was Lewes's forename, and Eliot was "a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word".

Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances or other blithe fare not to be taken very seriously. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as a translator, editor, and critic. Another factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny.

One indication of a world-class writer’s true worth is when an author writes passages or scenes that are truly unforgettable. In a much-anthologized short story the Russian writer, Turgenev, wrote such an utterly evocative scene describing an elderly doctor caring for a dying girl. Tolstoy in his novel the Resurrection fleshes out a chapter toward the end of the book where a coach transporting two rich children to their summer villa must wait while a band of chained and filthy criminals are led through the streets on their way to a distant village prison. Both scenes are burned into my memory as examples of both superlative prose and introspective thoughtfulness on the part of the writer.

George Elliot created a similar, unforgettable scene in her lengthy (i.e. some might suggest cumbersome) novel, Daniel Deronda, where the poverty-stricken, disheveled Jewish piano teacher, Herr Klesmer, falls hopelessly in love with one of his students, Catherine Arrowpoint. Catherine, the daughter of the richest aristocrat in the English countryside, eventually marries Herr Klesmer against her horrified parents’ wishes, is promptly disowned by both parents and denied any future inheritance. What the reader understands early on is that the seemingly outlandish newlyweds are twin souls fated to idyllic happiness. They fill their modest home with cheerful children and are eventually reconcile with the alienated parents, who desperately long to meet their grandchildren.

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Below is a collection of quotes by the author.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

“There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.”

“Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.”

“What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?”

“Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.”

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

“He was of an impressible nature and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself.”

“Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.”

“The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof.”

“Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.”

“It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never.”

“He had the superficial kindness of a good-humored, self-satisfied nature that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties.”

“The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.”

“Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.”

“The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.”