"Cliff Notes - Silas Marner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

preserving the values of home, church, and empire, new ideas
were beginning to sweep through England. Scientific discoveries
were shattering established ideas about the natural world.
(Charles Darwin's revolutionary On the Origin Of Species by
Means of Natural Selection would be published in 1859.) Not only
nature, but human social systems as well, were subjected to
scientific analysis. Theories such as social Darwinism,
rational humanism, and Marxism would eventually grow out of
this. Philosophers were suggesting entirely new moral systems
to go with the revolutionary scientific views. In place of an
orderly universe ruled by God, justice, and the class system,
these Victorians contemplated the possibility of a vast, bleak
void where nothing but scientific principles applied.

This was a heady environment for Marian Evans. Her new
friends, impressed by her powerful mind, gave her a sense of
self-worth. Eventually she was asked to translate a book, then
to write reviews for intellectual journals. After her father
died she moved to London and began to edit one such journal. In
the thick of the literary scene, admired by famous people, she
came into her own. Interesting men paid her attention; she had
a couple of awkward romances. Then she fell in love with George
Henry Lewes, a prominent journalist and critic--and a married
man.

Lewes fell in love with her, too, but under the laws of those
days it was impossible for him to get a divorce, even though his
wife was flagrantly unfaithful to him. Marian, gravely weighing
all factors, decided to defy society and live with Lewes. This
made Marian a figure of scandal in London. No "decent" ladies
would receive her in their homes (though due to a cruel double
standard Lewes was still invited). Only a few radical women and
progressive men kept up friendships with Marian. Her family
disowned her. In her isolation she depended on Lewes' loyal,
protective love. They had decided not to have children
(although she soon became a second mother to his sons).
Shrewdly, Lewes realized that Marian needed something to engage
her emotions as well as her immense intellect. He began to urge
her to write fiction.

Self-conscious, afraid of criticism or rejection, Marian
wrote her first story, "Amos Barton," in 1856. Before she would
send it to a publisher, however, she and Lewes invented a pen
name--George Eliot. She didn't want to publish under her real
name, fearing readers would read it only because of her
scandalous reputation. She deliberately chose a man's name,
too. Many Victorian women wrote novels, but these were often
looked down upon as slight, feminine stories. Marian hoped her
books would be judged seriously if readers thought a man had
written them. (Similarly, a few years earlier, the Bronte