George Eliot<Mary Anne Evans>

By: Ashley Rodriguez

Victorian Era• England->Wealthiest Nation• Center of banking, insurance and shipping• Technology and scientific inventions• Living and working conditions in cities

were terrible• Working class and lower class had no

voting rights yet• Late 1870’s congress passed child labor

laws and limited hours of employment for the rest.

Childhood• Born November 22, 1819

• 3rd child to Robert and Christina Evans• Family were very religious

• Religious practices took over there life• Working Class-> Her dad being a

farmer• Miss Latham’s Boarding School

• She started to read books

New Teachings• Befriended,

Charles Bray, Robert Owens, and Herbert Spencer

• All free thinkers w/ radical views towards religion

• She began to think more liberal thoughts which contradicted her church teachings

Family Troubles• Stopped going to

church• Caused a split

within her family• Even in her disbelief

she started to attend again knowing her father was ill

• She stopped going to church for good after her father’s death in 1857

Scandalous • Met George Henry

Lewes• Open Marriage• Anges Jervis and

children• Sin Under God’s

eyes• Family disowned

her• Town Shunned her

From Church and society

Open Marriage-Marriage in which both partners agree that each other may engage in outside sexual relationships without divorce

Later On…

• Evans got a job at the Westminster Review, which was a public journal mainly for radical views, as Assistant Editor in 1858

• Lady Novelist Writing Fairytales

“Silly Novels By Lady Novelist”

“The fair writers have evidently never talked to a tradesmen’s except from a carriage window: they have no notion

of the working class except as “dependents”… they have no idea of feeling interest in any man who is not at least a great landed proprietor, if

not a prime minister.”

Westminster Review, October 1856

George Eliot• After the chaos that her essay created

Evans decided to take it upon herself and write

• Also knowing that her private life was too scandalous for her readers she wanted to keep a line from her profession and her home life also knowing women didn’t get any recognition she wrote under a pen name->George Eliot!

Thesis

• Mary Anne Evans was one of the best writers in the Victorian era because of her simplistic writing style and how she was the first to write fictional stories depicting issues and problems of society instead of the everyday fairytale. She created a style in its own called realism which changed literature forever.

Silas Marner-1861• Banished from his town• Became a Weaver in a town named

Raveloe / Outcast• Godfrey secretly marries opium

addict Molly• Adopts Eppie• After 16 years later Godfrey admits

that Eppie is his daughter• Will Eppie stay with silas or leave

with her biological father?

Other Works…

• Adam Bede-1859

• The Mill on the Floss-1860

• Middlemarch-1871-72

• Romola-1863

• Felix Holt, the Radical-1866

• Daniel Deronda-1876

Writing Style• Realistic Storytelling• She made her sentence structures clear,

patient and well balanced for lower class readers

• Simplistic• She depicted rural life society making

people feel as though there was someone who put interest and importance in the simple details of ordinary people

• She also mirrored her own life within her novels

(Ex.Silas being shunned from town)

After Math• Lewes died in 1878• Afterward she

married John Water Cross in May 1880

• Even more controversy

• 7 months later now Mary Anne Cross Died December 1880.