Have you ever wanted to know more about your favorite classic authors? Each month, we share various facts about the lives and works of our Author of the Month.
During November, we honored George Eliot as our Author of the Month. She was born on November 22nd 1819 in Nuneaton and 2019 marks the bicentenary of Eliot’s birth. Some of the most interesting things we learned about her this month were…
Mary Ann Evans, known more widely by her pen name George Eliot was the third child of Robert Evans, the manager of the large estates of the Newdigate family. The young Mary Ann was strongly religious, in contrast with her only somewhat observant Anglican family.
While living in London, Eliot fell in love with George Henry Lewes. Lewes was a regular contributor to the magazine Eliot wrote for, the Westminster Review. Lewes had an open marriage but by 1853 Eliot and Lewes were living together as man and wife despite his married status. It was in 1856, encouraged by Lewes, that Eliot began to write fiction.
Eliot did not achieve fame until the publication of her first novel, Adam Bede. Charles Dickens admired the novel and guessed that its author was a woman; Elizabeth Gaskell was flattered when she was asked if she were the author.
George Henry Lewes died in November of 1878, sending Eliot into a deep depression. She married a friend, John Walter Cross, whose mother had died at the same time as Lewes in an attempt to get over her grief, however Cross became depressed on the honeymoon and fell, or threw himself, from the balcony of their Venice hotel into the Grand Canal.
On December 22nd 1880, Eliot died of a kidney disease she had suffered from for several years. She was buried beside Lewes in Highgate Cemetery, and is known to this day as one of the greatest Victorian writers who deftly and unflinchingly captured the social change that occurred in her lifetime.
For the month of December, we are exploring the life and work of Louisa May Alcott. Be sure to follow the#ClassicsInContext hashtag onTwitterandFacebook to learn more!
Celebrating International Women’s Day (March 8), we’ve got a handful of 19th century (and one 20th century) literary quotations by, for, and about the position and power of women:
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” –George Eliot (Marian Evans, 1819-1880), Middlemarch(1872)
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” –Charlotte Bronte(1816-1855), Jane Eyre(1847)
“‘I am sure I am,’ said Margaret, in a firm, decided tone. ‘Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used-not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.’” –Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell(1810-1865), North and South(1855)
“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.” –Jane Austen(1775-1817), Persuasion(1817)
“The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.” –Queen Victoria (1819-1901) [source unknown]
“Give us back our suffering, we cry to Heaven in our hearts — suffering rather than indifferentism; for out of nothing comes nothing. But out of suffering may come the cure. Better have pain than paralysis! A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore!” –Florence Nightingale(1820-1910), Cassandra(written 1860; published posthumously)
“'What help?’ I asked. 'You’d scorn my help,–as Nature’s self, you say, Has scorned to put her music in my mouth, Because a woman’s. Do you now turn round And ask for what a woman cannot give? […] –am I proved too weak To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think, Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought? Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can, Yet competent to love, like [GOD]?’" –Elizabeth Barrett Browning(1806-1861), Aurora Leigh(1856)
" As all virtues nourish each other, and can no otherwise be nourished, the consequence of the admitted fallacy is that men are, after all, not nearly so brave as they ought to be; nor women so gentle. But what is the manly character till it be gentle? The very word magnanimity cannot be thought of in relation to it till it becomes mild, Christ-like. Again, what can a woman be, or do, without bravery? Has she not to struggle with the toils and difficulties which follow upon the mere possession of a mind ? Must she not face physical and moral pain, physical and moral danger ? Is there a day of her life in which there are not conflicts wherein no one can help her— perilous work to be done, in which she can have neither sympathy nor aid? Let her lean upon man as much as he will, how much is it that he can do for her ? from how much can he protect her ? From a few physical perils, and from a very few social evils. This is all.” –Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), “WOMAN. General Treatise on the Education, Morals, Religion, and Overprotection of Women.” (1834-7)
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.” –Mary Wollstonecraft(1759-1797), A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
’“Our country,”’ she will say, 'throughout the greater part of its history has treated me as a slave; it has denied me education or any share in its possessions. “Our” country still ceases to be mine if I marry a foreigner. “Our” country denies me the means of protecting myself, forces me to pay others a very large sum annually to protect me, and is so little able, even so, to protect me that Air Raid precautions are written on the wall. Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect either myself or my country. For,’ the outsider will say, 'in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.’“ –Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Three Guineas(1938)
Every year, I return to these gems. Ten doesn’t even scratch the surface of these texts, these authors, or the glorious history of women whose thoughts have changed the world.
HUFFLEPUFF: “Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring.” –George Eliot (Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story)
“Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name… Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.”
“Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch.
I’ve been letting a lot of books pile up on my shelf recently. If I won’t be getting reviews out anytime soon, I thought I could at least show everyone the books I’m constantly “getting to!” Here goes!
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (halfway there, living on a prayer)
The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry by Lady Elizabeth Cary
“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.”
So I got exactly nothing done yesterday, which was really bad for me mentally but probably good like physically/in terms of my project because it let things stew and develop a little bit. Still made me kind of frustrated and upset with myself though, because my project is due in just over a week and I still have more than half of it to write.
(Calling myself entirely unproductive yesterday isn’t strictly true, because I folded my laundry and finished a book and went grocery shopping with my mom, but I didn’t work on my essay because I was just so tired and couldn’t focus on it and it made me feel awful.)
So today’s all about getting stuff done–at least something, though realistically I need to write two sections/long paragraphs a day in order to finish my draft on time so that’s the minimum goal–and I’m still struggling but at least I’m getting somewhere today. Still feel a bit like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew though (and that’s my fault bc I basically didn’t work on the project all summer/autumn and have left it to the last minute like an idiot).
So I hope everyone else’s day is going better than mine!
My plant is blooming! (Came unidentified but my mom says it’s a spider plant and like she’s probably right. Pictures are two of the three flowers that have bloomed so far–the first is done–but there’s more buds so more to come! Also it probably needs to be repotted lol)
Also hard at work on my honors thesis, due in less than two weeks (the first draft) and which is almost entirely unwritten because apparently I have no self control and also hate myself. So I’m writing it by hand because somehow it seems to help me work on it? Idk y'all. I’m trying to not be too hard on myself–my advisor is phenomenal and it’s only a first draft so if it’s not fully finished or like spectacular that should be okay, but I do need to have something of like revisable quality to hand in so I’m working on making myself do it.
Also considering scheming a way to go visit my girlfriend this weekend (unlikely but like I miss her so…), which is maybe not the best choice for productivity but I can’t find it in me to care. (Also it’s unlikely so not too worried but a girl can dream)
