exceptional new biography that shows how George Eliot wrestled with the question of marriage, in art and lifeWhen she was in her mid thirties, Marian Evans transformed herself into George Eliot an author celebrated for her genius as soon as she published her debut novel.
During those years she also found her life partner, George Lewes writer, philosopher and married father of three, After eloping to Berlin inthey lived together for twenty four years: Eliot asked people to call her Mrs Lewes and dedicated each novel to her Husband.
Though they could not legally marry, she felt herself initiated into the great experience
of marriage this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength.
The relationship scandalized her contemporaries yet she grew immeasurably within it, Living at once inside and outside marriage, Eliot could experience this form of life so familiar yet also so perplexing from both sides.
In The Marriage Question Clare Carlisle reveals Eliot to be not only a great artist but a brilliant philosopher who probes the tensions and complexities of a shared life.
Through the immense ambition and dark marriage plots of her novels we see Eliot wrestling in art and in life with themes of desire and sacrifice, motherhood and creativity, trust and disillusion, destiny and chance.
Reading them afresh, Carlisles searching new biography explores how marriage questions grow and change, and joins Eliot in her struggle to marry thought and feeling.
During those years she also found her life partner, George Lewes writer, philosopher and married father of three, After eloping to Berlin inthey lived together for twenty four years: Eliot asked people to call her Mrs Lewes and dedicated each novel to her Husband.
Though they could not legally marry, she felt herself initiated into the great experience
of marriage this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength.
The relationship scandalized her contemporaries yet she grew immeasurably within it, Living at once inside and outside marriage, Eliot could experience this form of life so familiar yet also so perplexing from both sides.
In The Marriage Question Clare Carlisle reveals Eliot to be not only a great artist but a brilliant philosopher who probes the tensions and complexities of a shared life.
Through the immense ambition and dark marriage plots of her novels we see Eliot wrestling in art and in life with themes of desire and sacrifice, motherhood and creativity, trust and disillusion, destiny and chance.
Reading them afresh, Carlisles searching new biography explores how marriage questions grow and change, and joins Eliot in her struggle to marry thought and feeling.
Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at Kings College London, and the author of Spinozas Religion, On Habit, and Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard.
Clare is also the editor of Spinozas Ethics, translated by George Eliot, She grew up in Manchester, studied philosophy and theology at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and now lives in London.
Her new book, The Marriage Question: George Eliots Double Life, will be published in springin the UK and summerin the USA.