GEORGE ELIOT

The Victorian novelist George Eliot lived for 24 years with a man who was legally married to another woman, and throughout her life she displayed certain characteristics of the 'mistress-type'. From her early adulthood she evinced a pattern of falling for married men, including the elderly Dr Robert Brabant and the publisher John Chapman. The latter lived at 142 The Strand, with his wife, children and the children's governess - who was also his mistress. The addition of another woman to the household proved explosive.

The novelist eventually found in George Henry Lewes a man to satisfy all her requirements. The fact he was married enabled her to satisfy her desire to act unconventionally, even to shock, and thereby demonstrate her superiority to the common herd. And secondly here was a man prepared to devote himself to her completely, so that her capacity for love would at last be allowed its full expression; the positive side to her flouting of convention was her ability to place her love for Lewes above the dictates of respectable society and to pay the price of exclusion from that society. Eliot and Lewes left together for Weimar in July 1854, and at that time and for many years afterwards their life together was a subject of great scandal.

Yet George Eliot was, on her own terms and certainly by modern standards, very moral indeed. She entered into a partnership with Lewes which was quite as committed as any formal marriage could have been, regarding herself as his wife and insisting on being called Mrs Lewes.

A chapter is devoted to George Eliot in The Mistress.

©Victoria Griffin, 2000

Books by George Eliot include:

The Mill on the Floss
Middlemarch
Daniel Deronda
Adam Bede
Felix Holt, the Radical
The Lifted Veil

Books about George Eliot include:

George Eliot: the last Victorian by Kathryn Hughes

Links to other websites featuring George Eliot:

George Eliot: An Overview: excellent compilation of all aspects of her times, life & work.
Malaspina.com - George Eliot: research bibliography, books & links.
'Creative Quotations' from George Eliot

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