George Eliot in Women's Literature
Introduction
George Eliot was the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), one of the most intellectually ambitious novelists of the nineteenth century. Her adoption of a male name was a practical necessity in a literary marketplace that dismissed women’s writing, but it was also a strategy that allowed her to claim a kind of intellectual authority that would have been denied to a woman writing under her own name. Eliot’s career illuminates both the obstacles faced by women writers in the Victorian period and the extraordinary achievements of which they were capable.
The Necessity of the Pseudonym
Mary Ann Evans was painfully aware of the prejudice against women writers. In 1856, she wrote an essay on “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” in which she criticised the condescension with which women’s fiction was received. She argued that the vast majority of novels written by women were intellectually frivolous, and she implied that serious women writers were damaged by association with them. The essay is a complex document: it criticises the constraints that produced silly novels while also implicitly asserting Evans’s own superiority to them.
Her adoption of the name George Eliot was intended to signal that her work was to be taken seriously. The name combined her partner George Henry Lewes’s first name with a surname that sounded substantial and masculine. When her gender was revealed after the success of Adam Bede, there was considerable surprise and some resentment from readers who felt they had been deceived. But the pseudonym had served its purpose: the novels had been judged on their merits.
The Woman Question in Eliot’s Fiction
Eliot’s novels engage extensively with what Victorians called “the woman question,” though her treatment is characteristically complex. She was not a campaigner in the manner of later feminists; her novels explore the constraints on women’s lives with sympathy and understanding, but they do not offer easy solutions.
Dorothea Brooke
The central figure of Middlemarch, Dorothea Brooke, is a woman of extraordinary intelligence and idealism whose aspirations are thwarted by the limited roles available to her. Her marriage to Casaubon is a disaster of mismatched expectations, and her eventual marriage to Will Ladislaw represents a compromise of her earlier visions. The novel’s famous “Finale” notes that Dorothea’s life was “dispersed among hindrances” and that the world never knew what she might have become.
Dorothea’s story is the most powerful fictional treatment in Victorian literature of the waste of women’s potential. Eliot does not sentimentalise Dorothea or present her as a simple victim; she shows how Dorothea’s own idealism is partly responsible for her mistakes. But the novel’s critique of a society that offers women no meaningful outlet for their abilities is unmistakable.
Maggie Tulliver
The Mill on the Floss (1860) is Eliot’s most autobiographical novel. Maggie Tulliver, the brilliant and passionate heroine whose intelligence is constantly thwarted by the narrowness of provincial society, reflects Mary Ann Evans’s own experience as a gifted girl in a world that had no use for her gifts. Maggie’s tragedy is that her intelligence and emotional intensity cannot find an appropriate outlet. She is drawn to men who cannot appreciate her and is destroyed by the conflict between her desires and society’s demands. The novel’s controversial ending — Maggie drowns with her brother Tom in a flood — can be read as a recognition that there was no place for a woman like her in the world of her time.
Eliot and the Feminist Movement
Eliot was ambivalent about the organised feminist movement of her day. She supported women’s education and women’s property rights but was cautious about suffrage. Her novels reflect this ambivalence: they show the damage done to women by patriarchal institutions but offer no programmatic solutions. Some feminist critics have been frustrated by this caution, but others have argued that Eliot’s insistence on the complexity of moral choice is itself a feminist position.
Eliot’s greatest contribution to women’s literature may be the example of her career. She demonstrated that a woman could produce work of the highest intellectual ambition, that the novel could be a vehicle for philosophical and social analysis, and that women’s experience was worthy of the most serious literary treatment. For more on her life and novels, see the George Eliot guide and Middlemarch analysis.
The Intellectual Woman
Eliot’s example was crucial for later generations of women writers. Virginia Woolf wrote about Eliot’s achievement in A Room of One’s Own, noting that the example of Middlemarch made it easier for women who came after her. The figure of the intellectual woman — serious, learned, ambitious — that Eliot embodied and represented in her fiction opened possibilities that earlier women writers had not been able to claim. Eliot showed that women could be intellectuals without ceasing to be women, and that the novel could be a vehicle for the most serious philosophical and social thought.
Eliot and the Woman Question
Eliot’s fiction engages extensively with what the Victorians called the “Woman Question.” Her novels explore the limitations placed on women’s lives, the lack of educational and professional opportunities, and the ways in which marriage could be both a fulfillment and a trap.
Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch is a woman who longs for a meaningful vocation. Her marriages — first to Casaubon, then to Ladislaw — are attempts to find purpose through relationship.
The Women of Middlemarch
Middlemarch contains a remarkable gallery of female characters. Mary Garth is sensible and independent. Rosamond Vincy is beautiful, selfish, and trapped by her own limited imagination. Mrs Bulstrode embodies the moral contradictions of her society.
The Women of the Later Novels
Eliot’s later novels continue her exploration of women’s lives. Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda is a brilliant study of a woman who is both a product and a victim of her society. Romola, in the novel of the same name, is an intellectual woman in Renaissance Florence.
Eliot’s Influence on Feminist Thought
Eliot’s fiction has been important for feminist criticism. Her analysis of the ways in which social structures limit women’s lives anticipated later feminist theory.
Eliot and the History of Feminism
Eliot’s relationship to feminism is complex. She was not a feminist in any straightforward sense; she opposed the women’s suffrage movement and was critical of some forms of feminist activism. But her fiction is deeply engaged with questions of gender.
Eliot’s intellectual independence and her willingness to defy social convention made her a model for later feminists. Her refusal to accept traditional gender roles in her own life was as significant as her fictional explorations of women’s experience.
The Language of Eliot’s Female Characters
Eliot’s female characters speak and think with a complexity that was rare in Victorian fiction. Dorothea Brooke’s intellectual aspirations, Maggie Tulliver’s passionate nature, Gwendolen Harleth’s moral awakening — these are rendered with psychological depth.
Eliot’s free indirect discourse allows us to enter the consciousness of her female characters, to experience their thoughts and feelings from within. This technique gives her representations of women an authority that earlier fiction had not achieved.
Eliot and the Marriage Plot
The marriage plot was the central narrative convention of the Victorian novel, but Eliot used it with unprecedented seriousness. Her novels treat marriage as a moral and intellectual partnership, not merely a romantic or economic arrangement.
Middlemarch is a searching examination of two marriages. Dorothea and Casaubon’s marriage is a disaster, a union based on a mistaken belief in intellectual compatibility that blinds Dorothea to Casaubon’s emotional limitations. Dorothea and Ladislaw’s marriage is hopeful but uncertain. Eliot’s treatment of marriage as a serious moral and intellectual partnership was ahead of its time. Her analysis of the economic and social dimensions of marriage anticipated later feminist critiques of the institution.
FAQ
Why did Mary Ann Evans write as George Eliot?
She adopted a male pseudonym to ensure her novels would be taken seriously and to avoid the prejudice faced by women writers. The pseudonym also protected her privacy after the scandal of her relationship with George Henry Lewes.
How does Eliot’s fiction address women’s issues?
Eliot’s novels explore the constraints on women’s lives, the waste of women’s potential, and the social pressures that shape women’s choices. However, she was ambivalent about organised feminism and did not offer programmatic solutions.
What is the significance of Middlemarch for women’s literature?
Middlemarch is the greatest English novel about the costs of patriarchal limitation. Dorothea Brooke’s story of thwarted idealism is a powerful critique of a society that denied women meaningful outlets for their abilities.
How did Eliot’s personal life affect her writing?
Her relationship with George Henry Lewes and her resulting social ostracism gave her firsthand experience of the consequences of defying convention. This deepened her sympathy for outsiders and her critique of conventional morality.
What is Eliot’s legacy for women writers?
Eliot demonstrated that women could produce work of the highest intellectual seriousness. Her example made it easier for later generations of women writers to claim their place in the literary tradition.