From the archives: George Eliot in Heroines of Freethought

Published in 1876, Heroines of Freethought was activist and writer Sara A. Underwood‘s catalogue of admiration. The collection held chapters on a host of humanist women, including Harriet Martineau, Frances Wright, Ernestine Rose, and Margaret Chappellsmith, who Underwood selected for their bravery in expressing unorthodox ideas, and in championing causes from women’s rights to the abolition of slavery. The last chapter of the book, Underwood devoted to Mary Ann Evans, known to the world as George Eliot. The essay is testament to the impact of one humanist woman on another, first printed just four years before Mary Ann Evans’ death, and re-published here on what would have been her 205th birthday, in November 2024.

It is with a feeling of considerable deprecating delicacy that I venture to write of this woman, whom I so much admire. She has been heretofore so persistently reserved and reticent as to her past life that I cannot avoid feeling as if this sketch were almost an unwarranted infringement upon the personal privacy she so evidently courts. But this series of sketches would not be anything like what I wish it to be with this eminent name omitted; and although my materials for the sketch are necessarily scant and incomplete, yet I feel assured that the little I have been able to glean in regard to her antecedents will be of interest to all those who care at all to read these brief biographies.

are questions which I am wholly unprepared to answer. Of her birth and youth I have been unable to glean any definite information. One newspaper paragraph states that she is the only daughter of a poor but learned clergyman, who educated her himself thoroughly in the classics and sciences. Another, with less appearance of reliability, declares her to be the ward and adopted daughter of her warm friend and admirer Herbert Spencer, and that it is to his tuition and companionship that she owes her thorough education. Neither of these stories is, perhaps, correct. All that we do know certainly of her youth are the facts that her maiden name was Marian Evans, and that she has a thorough and classical education; and so must have enjoyed from childhood superior advantages to obtain such education, in addition to her wonderful natural genius and philosophical bent of mind; for although genius is a gift of nature, yet without opportunity, industry, and perseverance, it is a gift thrown away upon its possessor.

“Few indeed are the beings who have ever combined so many high qualities in one person as Mrs. Lewes does,” says Justin McCarthy, in his sketch of her in his “Modern Leaders”: “she is an accomplished linguist, a brilliant talker, a musician of extraordinary skill. She has a musical sense so delicate and exquisite that there are tender, simple, true ballad melodies which fill her with a pathetic pain almost too keen to bear; and yet she has the firm, strong command of tone and touch without which a really scientific musician cannot be made. I do not think this exceeding sensibility of nature is often to be found in combination with a genuine mastery of the practical science of music. But Mrs. Lewes has mastered many sciences, as well as literatures. Probably no other novel-writer, since novel-writing became a business, ever possessed one tithe of her scientific knowledge… Mrs. Lewes is all genius and culture. Had she never written a page of fiction, nay, had she never written a line of poetry or prose, she must have been regarded with wonder and admiration by all who knew her, as a woman of vast and varied knowledge – a woman who could think deeply and talk brilliantly, who could play high and severe classical music like a professional performer, and could bring forth the most delicate and tender aroma of nature and poetry, lying deep in the heart of some simple, old-fashioned Scotch or English ballad.”

Some fourteen or sixteen years ago I remember taking up Feuerbach’s “Essence of Christianity,” and noting the name of Miss Marian Evans as the English translator thereof. My curiosity was at once aroused as to who this woman was, whose name I had never before heard. It seemed almost marvelous that any woman could feel interested enough in this deep philosophical German work, with its boldly-avowed Atheism, and its mysticism of expression, to translate it into our blunt, direct English language. Few men at that time would have dared or proved equal to the task, and it was certainly strange work for a woman to choose, from a feeling of fitness for the work, or from a sense of pleasure in her undertaking. I looked eagerly for some further mention of this unknown Marian Evans, and found it a few days later on the title-page of another heterodox German work, Strauss’ “Life of Jesus,” of which she is the translator. But this meager mention only whetted, without in the least alleviating, my curiosity in regard to her. I wished so much to know more of her. Was she young? Did she compose as well as translate? Was Marian Evans her real name? Was she known anywhere as a writer? These were the questions I asked over and over, but it was some years later before I found any reply to them. She was evidently, from her unpopular choice of works to translate into English, a Freethinker herself, as well as a thinker.

I had known and admired the novelist George Eliot for several years, as the author of “Adam Bede,” and “The Mill on the Floss,” before I came to know that George Eliot and Marian Evans, my unknown translator, were one and the same person. Marian Evans had been to me the greater mystery. Why I had never heard more of her than as the translator of these two philosophical German books puzzled me. 1 felt that she must have a strong individuality, from the fact that she had dared to make her public appearance as a translator of heretical and unorthodox works: and it was with a sense of supreme satisfaction that I found her at last—a woman—one of my own sex—and a George Eliot! I gloried in the reality of her literary power, and in her grandeur of genius, as if she had been a near and personal friend, instead of an entire stranger, whom I had neither seen, nor ever expected to see. And because she is a woman, and has proved herself so great, and in proving herself so has demonstrated the capabilities of her sex to all the world, I have continued to glory in every fresh triumph she has since achieved. And I am the more proud of her that she has dared to throw off those shackles of superstition and bigotry which weigh so much heavier on women than on men; and has with quiet, unassuming strength of character dared to own herself a Positivist and a Freethinker.

Miss Evans began her literary career as translator and essayist. Her first contributions to magazine literature appeared in the Westminster Review, edited by Dr. John Chapman, and awakened considerable attention from their force and polish. After awhile she became assistant editor of that magazine, residing in the family of the editor-in-chief. Here she was necessarily brought into personal acquaintance with many literary people as well as philosophical writers. It was in Dr. Chapman’s home that she first formed that acquaintance with George Henry Lewes, already a well-known and popular writer, which finally deepened into love, and culminated in their union for life. Here, too, she met Herbert Spencer, and other radical and earnest thinkers.

Miss Evans’ first attempts at fiction-writing were the series of short stories and sketches, now known under the title of “Scenes of Clerical Life,” published in serial form in magazines.

Previous to this she had been known only as a translator and writer of essays and reviews. Of her original writings she seems to have had no very high opinion. “For years,” she remarked to a friend, “I wrote reviews because I knew so little of humanity.”

It was not until the publication of “Adam Bede” by the Harpers, a little more than a dozen years ago, that a new writer, whose nom de plume was George Eliot, began to attract the attention of American readers. In England, Thackeray had already spoken of her as “a literary star of the first magnitude just risen on the horizon”; but her fame was not assured until after the publication of “Adam Bede,” which she sold to the publishers of Blackwoods Magazine for £300; and, to their credit be it told, when they found that it was for them a successful venture, and likely to remain such, they presented her with £1,500 more, as her share of the proceeds of its sale.

The pseudonym of “George Eliot,” under which she first appeared as a novelist, and the careful assumption of masculinity throughout the pages of “Adam Bede,” while it puzzled and led astray the public as to her identity, did not long deceive as to her sex. The woman’s tender heart and keen sense of injustice made palpable the true woman’s nature all through her book. Theodore Parker, writing to Frances Power Cobbe, in 1859, remarks: “I am reading ‘Adam Bede,’ a quite extraordinary book. But I wonder that any one should have doubted that a woman wrote it. Strange is it that we tell the universal part of our history in all that we write!”

Since the publication of “Adam Bede,” every successive work from the pen of George Eliot has intensified the interest excited by that work, and strengthened public opinion in its first estimate of her literary ability. Her late effort, “Middlemarch,” is causing her name to occupy the chief place in literary reviews, and sets the seal upon her as the greatest of living novelists. Even previous to its appearance, the Chicago Evening Journal, in an elaborate and carefully-prepared editorial on woman’s genius, gives her this high praise: “It is undoubtedly in the genius of George Eliot that English womanhood has its largest and most wonderful illustration. There are no novels in English literature which can be compared with hers for that which is by far the best feature of a good novel—thorough appreciation of the deeper meaning of human life, of the divine laws which underlie, and penetrate, and overshadow, human experience. It would not be easy to name anything written since Shakespeare and Milton more thoroughly alive with great moral passion, more instinct with the consciousness that righteousness is the soul of the Universe, than George Eliot’s sketches of human life as we have them in her novels. She is a preacher greater than any in the Established pulpits of England, and will be remembered and read after men shall have ceased to preserve the recollections of the discussions and controversies which now fill the English ecclesiastical State.”

George Wm. Curtis says of her that, “for all the higher qualities of the story-teller; for sustained imagination, insight, knowledge, and exquisite skill of narration—the woman who writes under the name of George Eliot is the master of all living men.” Mr. John Morley says that “no woman has ever impressed him so profoundly as George Eliot; there is something almost apostolic in her moral character, while her intellect is of the first order.”

Richard Grant White finishes a critique of “Middlemarch” thus: “Of George Eliot herself our final and summary judgment is that in her the introspective spirit of the age has become incarnate, and attained its completest development.”

How much of passionate pain her life has held; what disappointments, what sorrows, what baulked aims, what unsatisfied desires, what hopeless loves, what terrible struggles— we do not know, and may not even guess. But that these things have been in her life her writings bear ample witness. However sympathetic her nature may be, and however observing her mind, no sympathy, nor any power of observation, can supply, without bitter personal experience, the keen, sympathetic knowledge she displays in her portrayal of all these. She has been taught the shades of meaning in all these in the school of experience—a school which to her high, grand nature, her keen susceptibilities, has been a thousandfold more thorough in its teachings than we duller scholars have found it. Does she not herself confess as much when in “Felix Holt” she says: “The poets have told us of a dolorous enchanted forest in the under world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have human histories hidden in them; the power of unuttered cries dwells in the passionless-seeming branches, and the red, warm blood is darkly feeding the quivering nerves of a sleepless memory, that watches through all dreams. These things are a parable.”

The one romance in George Eliot’s life which she has found it impossible to keep from the inquisitive world is the romance which culminated in her marriage to a kindred spirit, Mr. George Henry Lewes, himself a power in the literary world. I say her marriage, although it is well known that by force of circumstances it was for many years a marriage to which the law refused its sanction, though in every other respect a true, pure, honorable union—a union which demanded from both the parties high courage and faith in each other to venture upon. If, however, marriage means anything more than a formula of words, theirs is one of the truest of marriages, which the legal ties that now unite them do not render one whit more binding.

Until she had passed the first buoyancy, brightness, and bloom of youth, Mrs. Lewes was unknown. The world never knew the girl Marian Evans; and what beauty, if any, she had ever possessed belonged not to the world’s George Eliot, for she is described by many as being positively homely; while even her friends and admirers soften the truth in loving phrase. The nearest approach to praise of her personal appearance which I have ever seen I find in a letter of Moncure D. Conway to The Round Table, in which he says: “What Margaret Fuller’s father said of her when she was a girl —‘incedit regina’— may be said of the mature woman who writes under the name of George Eliot. She is a finely-shaped woman, and quite large, though not in the sense in which Hawthorne describes English female largeness. She is by no means corpulent, nor are there any suggestions of steaks and sirloins about her, but she is of large skeleton. She is not meager, either, but has the look of being made out of fine clay. She is blonde, with very light auburn hair; clear, serene, smiling eyes; beautiful teeth. She has also gracious and easy manners, with an undefinable air of unworldliness—of having been made for large and fine societies, but never entered them. In a word, she is a woman who, though not handsome, would personally satisfy her most ardent admirers.”

A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1864 (Miss Kate Field, I think), who met Mrs. Lewes in Italy, describes her thus: “It was at Villino Trollope that we first saw that wonderfully clever author, George Eliot. She is a woman of forty, perhaps, of large frame, and fair Saxon coloring. In heaviness of jaw, and height of cheek-bone, she greatly resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and amiable, and her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In conversation Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining.”

It is asserted that she is nervously sensitive as to her lack of beauty, and will not on that account consent to sit for any kind of picture; but I am inclined to doubt as to her refusal being in consequence of this feeling; it, more probably, is the result of that modesty which is so charming and beautiful a trait in her character, a modesty which will not permit her to do anything which may appear like self-glorification; which lets the world seek her out, if so be it thinks her worthy of being sought after, but which will always prevent her from trying to make herself in any way conspicuous, save by those works which are the natural expression and outlet of a deep, grand, philosophical nature, the emanations of a true genius. It was that same modesty which prevented her from avowing her sex or name until success crowned her work, and genuine admiration inquisitively ferreted her out, through all disguise.

Her position on the Westminster Review, and residence in the family of its chief, rendered her accessible to those who frequented Dr. Chapman’s house. Among those who availed themselves of the privilege was George Henry Lewes, whose philosophical writings had previously won her respect. The intimate friendliness into which their mutual likings drew them resulted first in his hearty admiration of her as a thinker; then in his ardent love and tenderness for her as a pure, grand woman. But there were obstacles to their union even when he found that she reciprocated his passion. He was peculiarly situated: He was a married man, although for long years he had not lived with his wife. His wife was living with another man, for the marriage had been an uncongenial one, and the first Mrs. Lewes had proved false to her marriage vows; “but,” says a writer in the Golden Age, “Mr. Lewes himself was equally guilty of infidelity to his wife, and the law of England does this equal justice to man and woman, viz., it absolves neither from a marriage bond, on account of the infidelity of the other, unless the one who asks freedom can claim to have been faithful to his or her own vow. The marriage tie between this disloyal husband and wife was broken in fact, but not in law. They had long lived separate lives, when Mr. Lewes met and loved Miss Evans. It was her mind and heart which first won Mr. Lewes’ love, and the nobility of this most pure spirit lifted that love into a reverence he had never before felt for woman. His love was returned, and the question of their future was discussed by these loving friends and friendly lovers. They asked the advice of the wisest and best of their friends in this emergency, and at last, after much thought and discussion, it was decided by themselves and their counsellors that this being an exceptional case, it must be dealt with in an exceptional manner. A legal marriage between them was impossible, but since the affection which united them was no more youthful passion, but the stable bond of a love founded on mutual congeniality and respect, they would be justified in uniting their lives outside of the law, if they were strong enough to bear the social consequences which must naturally follow from the infraction of the law.

“This they resolved to do, and from that time they have lived happily, contentedly, and helpfully together. All their friends approve of their course, and no truer wife to her husband, no more tender mother to his children — for she has none of her own — is to be found in all England than this brave and true woman.”

Thus far testifies the nameless writer in the Golden Age concerning their marriage. But other and later writers in regard to this matter, writing since the death of the first Mrs. Lewes and the legal marriage of George Eliot to Mr. Lewes, give a different version of the story; averring that after Mr. Lewes had, with rare generosity, forgiven his former wife’s first sin against him and taken her back to his heart and home, she again eloped with another lover, and the English law debarred him from a divorce. The Golden Age writer may be mistaken as to the children of George Lewes, as nowhere else have I ever seen any mention of children by either marriage, though there can be no doubt that one who can portray so vividly as she does the true depths of maternal love would make a devoted mother, or stepmother, even.

When they thus joined their fates together, both were mature in years and in experience of the world; both in the possession of their ripest genius. That she, at least, thinks this riper love as rich in blessing as the vaunted love of youth, witness this question occurring in “Adam Bede”:

Mr. and Mrs. Lewes have not, since their marriage, sought, or cared for, recognition by society. Indeed, on the contrary; Mrs. Lewes shrinks from any overflow of the outside world into her quiet, busy, loving home. The few who know and love them thoroughly, who have largeness enough of heart and brain to make them forget that in their union there is anything but obedience to that which is fittest, in whose society complete oneness of aim is felt, and that aim self-improvement and the happiness of others—these true, congenial friends are the only ones admitted or welcomed to their home circle, and these are all-sufficing for their need of friendship. If there be outside sneerers at their marriage, world-people who feel that a marriage such as this is an outrage upon and a detriment to “society,” they keep themselves too far apart from such to be hurt or annoyed by what they may say or think.

Of George Henry Lewes, Justin McCarthy speaks as follows:

Mr. Lewes, having been born in 1817, is, at the present time, about fifty-nine years of age, while George Eliot is not more than two or three years his junior, perhaps not even so much, and he is said to be even less favored in the matter of personal beauty than she is—so that in these respects they are on an equal footing. That their union is a happy one no one seems to doubt.

I have called George Eliot a Freethinker. In the best sense of that much-abused word, I think she can truly be called so; but her freedom of thought has not raised within her mind any desire to curtail or circumscribe the thoughts or opinions of any one else. She is no image-breaker; rather by sweet persuasiveness, or the gentlest of ridicule, does she endeavor to show us that our images are senseless, hideous daubs of clay, instead of the immortal gods we had taken them for; and so shame us into putting them aside, of our own free-will. She evinces none of that animosity toward religionists or the clergy which is, unhappily, too often a trait of those who dissent from the doctrines and dogmas of orthodoxy. For the clergy, indeed, she shows often a tender, reverent feeling of pity, as toward a misunderstood, much-abused class of men, rather than any disposition to brand them as willful hypocrites, and wolves in sheep’s clothing. She aims ever to show the folly and weakness of the belief, instead of the sins and shortcomings of the believers.

What a writer says of Mr. Lewes is equally true of his wife, viz. “that he is a thorough skeptic and disputer of the supernatural; and we have little doubt that he has done more than any other two men living in his time in England to diffuse skepticism—especially among the refined and cultivated classes. This he has effected by the inferential, as distinguished from the explicit, character of his teachings.”

While there is in the writings of George Eliot no direct attack upon the Christianity of to-day, no outright declaration of antipathy toward its teachings, such as would shock or hurt the feelings of any sincere believer, yet there runs through them all an undercurrent of liberal and inquiring thought, calculated to suggest and encourage inquiry. Perhaps she makes Felix Holt express her views in regard to this matter better than I could hope to, in his reply to Esther Lyon’s retaliatory queries, after he had taken her to task for the uselessness of her life:

All through her works we can open the pages at random, and find passages expressive of her lack of faith in churches and creeds, similar to these quiet sarcasms, from “Felix Holt”:

And again: ‘‘He did not grapple with the paradox; he let it pass with all the discreetness of an experienced theologian or learned scholiast; preferring to point his whip at some object which could raise no questions.”

Her portrayal of Bulstrode’s character and religion in “Middlemarch” is eminently characteristic of her charitable judgment, and of her keen insight into human nature. I give two or three extracts:

One of George Eliot’s critics has said that “her nature is decidedly religious,” and I am inclined to agree with him in this opinion. But the religion of a nature like hers is not the religion which is usually understood by that word —it is the higher, broader, profounder “religion of humanity”; which cares nothing for sects, or forms, or creeds; which ignores priesthoods and dogmas, and cares only for the moral and physical welfare of her fellow-men. Both herself and Mr. Lewes are said to be followers of Auguste Comte, but they are of those who can never become “followers” of any one man or creed, though it is doubtless true that in the philosophy of Comte they find the nearest assimilation to their own philosophical conclusions.

George Eliot’s literary success has been remarkably rapid. Wonderfully so, when we consider the multitude of new novelists who demand attention, and the long list of romance writers whose names we forget from year to year. To make so decided an impression on the public mind in such an era of fiction-writing speaks volumes for her fitness for her chosen work. Yet hers has not been an easily won, easily earned fame. For years before her success, she had served a long, faithful, and apparently ill-paid apprenticeship to her vocation as writer for the press; but at last came her reward and appreciation, and, if she is not already, she soon will be placed above the need of writing for pecuniary gain. Let us hope that her love for her work will prevent competence from paralyzing her ready pen, and active, vigorous brain.

The following list comprises her published works up to this date;

“Scenes of Clerical Life.”

“Adam Bede.”

“The Mill on the Floss,”

“Felix Holt, the Radical.”

“Romola.”

“The Spanish Gypsy.” (A poem.)

“The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems.”

“Middlemarch.”

The last-mentioned work is thought by her critics to be her best, also. For myself, I think “Romola” shows her varied genius in the strongest light. She is yet in the prime of her intellectual life, and capable of giving her admirers new lessons and new delight. The foregoing sketch was so far written before “Daniel Deronda” was begun. That novel, now completed, shows no falling off in strength or literary merit. It is destined to be even more popular than “Middlemarch.” Every sentence is polished and freighted with meaning. The critical sense is soothed and satisfied by the perfection in the smallest details of the pen-pictures drawn by this greatest of living novelists. This is a result in part of her careful writing, ‘She writes slow or fast, according to her intellectual temper,” says the London correspondent of the New York Herald, “but never without frequent revision. She does not permit a line, proof, or autograph to leave her, until she has made it precisely what she wants. In addition to composition, she studies hard, and is constantly in pursuit of knowledge.