Dear Marian: What I learned from George Eliot

George Eliot was a great scandal in her time. Mary Anne Evans (or Marian, she wasn’t fussy; she’s always Marian to me) would become the author George Eliot not because of any crises of gender or sexuality. She did it for a terribly old-fashioned reason: she was a woman who meant business when it came to her writing, and the business of writing was definitely, solidly, of and for men. Like so many other literary women before and after, she had a pseudonym.

But back to her gossip-worthy life. As a single lady of five and 30 years – practically a fossil in those days – she set up house with one George Henry Lewes, a married man with three children. His wife was off setting up house with another man.

And that is the end of her salacious tale.

For all that drama, Marian led an inordinately dull life. Of course, it being the mid-1800s and all, she was not invited to parties or received in good homes. People – as people are wont to do – thought much worse of her than she ever was.

But the thing is, being a social pariah entirely suited her. Even before her novels, she was known as a critic, editor and translator. Being shunned by society meant she didn’t have the social obligations other women of her class had to make time for: morning visits, tea visits, arranging gatherings and entertainments, endless dinners.

Being on the outside liberated her (as many outcasts discover) and allowed her to do only what it pleased her to do. She was dead boring. Many famous writers left behind wonderful journals filled with thrilling escapades and dark fantasies.

Marian wrote more of a report. At this hour she worked on her translations. Later, she went for a walk with George Henry – I believe he was collecting shells at one point and the walks were for that purpose. Then, if you can believe such a thing, Marian catalogued the shells. A debauched life indeed.

From this life of would-be-could-be shame, Marian Evans – George Eliot – wrote the most intelligent, insightful, compassionate, exquisite novels. Middlemarch, long considered one of the greatest novels in the English language, was described by another extraordinary woman, Virginia Woolf, as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”

Apart from developing a strong belief that living the life you want is possibly the best thing you can do for your sanity and self-preservation – despite the cost, or maybe because of it – Marian gave me other things.

“Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it,” she said. Yes, yes, you’re not wrong.

This sounds like the moral high ground might be higher than most of us can manage. But I think it only seems impossible if the “right” we have our eyes on is, say, world peace or a puppy for every child.

There are smaller, simpler things that can be right. Don’t laugh at someone when they fall down. Don’t hurt animals. Don’t disregard or hate what you don’t understand. Don’t stick chewing gum under chairs. Say “thank you,” “please,” and “I’m sorry” as necessary.

In Middlemarch she writes, “Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.” True, this one is included mostly because it’s an irresistible line, but also because it is both horrifying and hilarious how little we have changed.

This is the ongoing stigma of mental illness. In the old-timey days they didn’t pretend to comprehend what they did not, nor act as if they were not ashamed when they definitely were. We don’t want to be them. Do you want to be trapped in a Victorian novel?

When she said, “What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self,” I just said, “Preach it, sister.”

Self-deception does not equate with delusions in a clinical sense. But in many ways it can be just as harmful, or more. And low self-esteem, well, that one always bites no matter the century.

The thing she said that you may already know, because it’s on posters and postcards and memes, is, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

It – living, life, existing – it’s a process, isn’t it? Or a series of projects. I’m still looking for what I might be.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.