Episode 1: George Eliot and deceptive appearances

Introducing the theme: what is appearance?

Today is not about a book but about an author, George Eliot. Because she is a fascinating woman and her life offers a good lesson about how we see appearances and let them influence our lives.

Before we begin let's define what the word appearance means. Appearance is basically how others see us, but there are different ways of seeing. It can be our literal physical appearance or we can talk about appearances as the way others see and judge our behavior and, consequently, – though not always rightfully – our character.

And I think George Eliot's life shows how to be free of any limits of those both kinds of appearances.

George Eliot: being smart

George Eliot is one of the main Victorian writers and she is considered to be a very intellectual writer. Some call her a genius and her novel Middlemarch the greatest English novel. Virginia Woolf famously called Middlemarch

"one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."

So George Eliot was and is famously smart but she was also kinda famously unattractive. So let's look at how these two characteristics influenced her life.

And yes, George Eliot is a pseudonym that she adopted when she started writing fiction. Her real name is Mary Ann Evans but I will refer to her as George Eliot all the time, just for clarity.

George Eliot was outstandingly smart and extraordinarily educated, especially for a woman of her time. And this is the first thing that has to do with her appearance. Evidently her father invested into her education because she wasn't very pretty. So everyone thought that she wouldn't be able to marry well, or at all. In reality it was probably not the main reason because Eliot was obviously very smart from an early age and curious and eager to learn.

But her formal education was interrupted by the illness of her mother. Eliot was 16 and had to leave school. After that she was mostly self-educated though she had some advantages like tutors and access to a good library and of course the leisure time necessary to study. I will cover this in more detail in the next episode.

In the end she became not just an unusually educated woman but one of the most educated people of her time. Her knowledge was never superficial. Her notebooks, letters and critical articles reveal that her studies were always in-depth and very well organized. Researchers say that she would hardly learn more or better if she was able to go to Oxford. Apparently no researcher of Eliot read everything that she read. Eliot knew German, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and she read widely in all those languages. She read difficult theological and philosophical works in those languages and later was especially influenced by German philosophy. She clearly absorbed all this knowledge because her books are full of allusions and hidden quotes to all of those texts and her writing reflects how deeply she internalized their ideas.

"the reputation of being so great and intellectual did a disservice to her"

But the great thing about her is that it's not necessary to notice any of those allusions to enjoy and appreciate her books. When I picked up Middlemarch I was a bit apprehensive because I'd heard that the writing was really dense and on the whole she's not as enjoyable as Dickens or the Brontës. And I totally disagree. I think the reputation of being so great and intellectual did a disservice to her. Her style is beautiful, her stories and especially her characters are fascinating. Her books are full of shrewd observations about human nature but they are not dry, they are often very funny. She's both wise and witty in her writing; and the mood in her books ranges from deeply poignant and tragic to hilarious and absurd.

But today is about her and not her books.

We've already seen how her physical appearance might have played a role in her ability to get a better education. So let's look at how those two kinds of appearances played out later in her life.

Being unattractive and subverting expectations

Let's look at a famous quote by Henry James describing his first impressions of George Eliot:

"... To begin with she is magnificently ugly — deliciously hideous. ... Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth & charms the mind, so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her."

Henry James uses strong expressions to talk about her physical appearance. These words, "magnificently ugly — deliciously hideous", are quoted all the time when one talks about George Eliot and they are so unpleasant. For me this statement reflects the view that a woman should first of all be pretty – this is what Henry James mentions first of all writing about his impressions of a person. But at the same time it proves even more the irresistible charm of Eliot, if even a man so appalled by her appearance can look beyond it and even feel like he fell in love with her after the first meeting.

Honestly I also don't at all see why her appearance provoked such strong language. We have a couple of portraits and photos of George Eliot and there's really nothing that appalling about her.

"despite all the common notions and stereotypes about beauty (which exist to this day, by the way), her intellectual superiority won her a prominent place in the literary world and her personality charmed men throughout her life"

But anyway, she was considered ugly and she considered herself so. But despite all the common notions and stereotypes about beauty (which exist to this day, by the way), her intellectual superiority won her a prominent place in the literary world and her personality charmed men throughout her life.

Her only legal marriage took place when she was 60 and her husband was 20 years younger. And despite her father's expectations in her youth, she remained unmarried before 60 not at all because she was single, lonely and unlovable. Before that she had made women jealous and afraid lest she should steal their husbands and lovers and then had lived in a committed relationship with a married man for over 20 years. His name was George Henry Lewes and he was actually separated from his wife, who had had children with another man by that time, but he couldn't obtain divorce by the laws of the time. So he and Eliot could not marry legally but they both considered their relationship a marriage.

Substance over appearances in relationships

Eliot was unconventional enough to live with a man without marriage but didn't want to publicize it and that's one of the reasons why she first adopted the pen name. The second reason was that she was already known in the literary circles under her own name as an editor and a critic and she wanted her fiction to be judged separately.

The truth, however, came out and some people were very much offended and Eliot was considered bad company so she wasn't received in respectable society. Most painfully to her, she was rejected by her own family and friends, including her brother with whom she had always been very close. She described a lot of her childhood experiences with him in The Mill on the Floss. Her brother refused to have any communication with her, and they wouldn't talk for over 20 years, until she did get married at 60 and just a year before she died. At the same time the position of her partner, Lewes, didn't change at all and he was accepted in society as usual.

And – surprise! – despite the social condemnation, they were happy together because they were a good match and they loved each other. They considered themselves married and didn't need any official bonds.

Eliot wrote about her decision:

“Women who are content with light and easily broken ties do not act as I have done. They obtain what they desire and are still invited to dinner.”

And for her it was a conscious, thought-through decision, not an impulsive act. Here's another quote illustrating how rational that decision was, how clearly she saw the consequences:

"I have counted the cost of the step that I have taken and am prepared to bear, without irritation or bitterness, renunciation by all my friends. I am not mistaken in the person to whom I have attached myself. He is worthy of the sacrifice I have incurred, and my only anxiety is that he should be rightly judged."

And this is what she wrote during her marriage:

“The very possibility of a constantly growing blessedness in marriage is to me the very basis of good in our moral life.”

So the "immoral woman" in the eyes of society was most concerned with morality. With her own example she shows the difference between keeping appearances and concentrating on the actual content of life, its substance, the meaning of our actions. Many people around her would rather sacrifice their happiness and the sense of fulfillment for the good opinion of society. And society would rather have marriages without love, without any deep relationship, any substance but with the appearance of propriety, whereas Eliot chose real love and a meaningful relationship over an empty appearance of a marriage.

"her relationship with Lewes was very successful and productive"

And her relationship with Lewes was very successful and productive. Lewes encouraged her writing, he was the one who first pushed her to start writing fiction, he became her literary agent and supported her throughout her career when she always doubted herself and was very sensitive to criticism. They read together and discussed philosophy and their London home on Sunday afternoons turned into a literary salon that welcomed such guests as Emerson, Longfellow, Wagner and Turgenev. Dickens enjoyed his time there. Eliot was admired by them, fans sent her presents and one of her admirers, a young journalist and critic Edith Simcox, fell hopelessly in love with her.

"Queen Victoria read and loved Eliot but would not meet her."

The couple had a happy strong relationship for over 20 years until Lewes's death. But all this time Eliot was shunned by higher society, even when she became one of the most respected writers and thinkers of her time. Queen Victoria read and loved Eliot but would not meet her.

It's important to note that she didn't want to violate social conventions. In truth she respected legal marriage and valued it highly, perhaps more than any other kind of human relationship. And relationships with others were very important to her. She was deeply hurt when her family and a lot of her friends turned away from her but she accepted it as her necessary suffering, exactly because she respected social rules. Considering this, that she was actually willing to be conventional, her decision seems the more unusual and brave. It wasn't an impulsive decision, she saw the consequences and it was against her own ideas to live without marriage. Still she considered the benefits of their relationship were bigger. She wrote:

"It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult."

It makes her decision more adult and profound. She didn't rebel for the sake of rebellion; didn't do this for fame or to spite anyone. She did this because all her life she searched for truth and she followed what was to her understanding truly right whether it was conventional or not and however it might look to others. In the next episodes I will follow the journey of her philosophical development and we will see the proofs of this again and again.

"She did this because all her life she searched for truth."

And the good she got from this alliance shows that she was right. This relationship contributed a lot to her personal growth, including her becoming a successful author as Lewes was the one who first encouraged and advised her. So Eliot chose substance over the appearance of respectability and she lost in public opinion and status but she won in personal growth and happiness.

Physical appearance is overestimated in romantic relationships

I think her story also highlights how much physical appearance is overestimated in romantic relationships. It is not appearance that makes relationships stronger, that makes people comfortable with each other or promotes real love. The example with Henry James shows that even in initial attraction appearance does not play the only or even the biggest role.

"the way we traditionally tell romantic stories teaches us to pay so much attention to appearances"

In life I am often surprised that people do constantly say things that promote this idea of appearances playing a decisive role, even when their own attitude towards others proves the contrary. I think the way we traditionally tell romantic stories teaches us to pay so much attention to appearances. And originally, like in fairy tales, physical beauty actually symbolized goodness of character. But in the end this tradition created this strong association between being pretty and being lovable. And as we basically plot our relationships according to the plots of the stories that we consume, we tend to think about prettiness the same way.

"the manner, the vibe, the personality can seduce much better"

I don't say that appearance plays no role in romantic attraction, of course it does. But I argue that it is not at all the most important feature. People get much more hooked by something curious, something original or charming and endearing in a person's character. Even sexy is not necessarily about the appearance; the manner, the vibe, the personality can seduce much better. Sometimes there's nothing less sexy than someone pretty but completely bland and boring.

And love is about something else entirely so if you want a real strong loving relationship attracting someone superficially with your appearance is the last thing you actually want. So for me George Eliot is just another proof and illustration of all of this, not an exception.

"physical appearance is not even something constant"

I also think that physical appearance is not even something constant. We all know that we look differently at different times, we all have our good and bad days. And I always notice with interest how my perception of a person's appearance changes with the change of my attitude. How a person who seemed attractive acts in a mean way or they do something I really don't respect and they immediately look physically unattractive to me. And vice versa, when I start liking a person whose appearance I didn't like at first or just didn't notice then I start noticing nice features about their appearance. Don't you experience the same?

"to describe their faces in one word is impossible, to put them on some "prettiness" scale is ridiculous."

And the people who are close to me and whom I've been seeing daily for years, in my head, they exist beyond any measures of prettiness. They are distinct individuals with a million of different faces with different expressions. When I look at them I don't see any single appearance anymore: I see momentary moods behind those expressions, I see glimpses of their thoughts, their character. It's like with time you can see through the surface. And then to describe their faces in one word is impossible, to put them on some "prettiness" scale is ridiculous. You look at the people you really know and you see that they are so much deeper than their appearance, so much more meaningful than any possible label.

So, George Eliot's story, in my opinion, shows well that there are more important things than appearance even in romantic relationships and even in initial attraction, despite all the conventional ways in which people often talk about attraction and love.

George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë

I also think it's interesting how Eliot's own attitude to this contrasts with that of Charlotte Bronte.

Eliot called herself "ugly" but it didn't prevent her from attracting men or having an affectionate relationship. Neither did she explore the theme in her writing. Whereas Charlotte seemed to brood over this and made ugliness an important characteristic feature of her heroines. And I love those heroines and the way she comments on being unattractive. I'm going to talk about her in another episode, here I just wanted to note how much attitude often means and what different approaches you can take to the same problem.

"And neither of those approaches is wrong."

And neither of those approaches is wrong. Well, in this case, Eliot's way is probably happier, but Charlotte's way is so important. She addressed her insecurity so bravely, she analyzed it and shared her reflections with the world suggesting a new perspective to some and strength and support to others. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to be happy and have a full life despite made-up reasons why you shouldn't. And it's beautiful to address your insecurity and through this – some weird and sometimes harmful conventions of society.

"they all add something to our understanding of the bigger picture; they bring in new pieces of the puzzle of this world"

It just shows how different we all are and how important this diversity is. Every writer suggests something of their own and brings something new to the table. And nobody is wrong in their choice of subject; they all add something to our understanding of the bigger picture; they bring in new pieces of the puzzle of this world.

George Eliot's legacy

Eliot's popularity decreased by the end of her life. She died in 1880 and was quite forgotten by the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf, wrote a book about George Eliot and later she was championed again by the critics – first and most notably, by Virginia Woolf herself. And then Harold Bloom included her into his Western canon – one of the few women that made it into his list. Since that time Eliot was never forgotten and now she is not only recognized as one of the most prominent English writers but is claimed to be one of the most outstanding thinkers of her time.

When she died the Church of England refused to bury her in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey because of her extramarital relationship with Lewes, or, as they put it, her

“notorious antagonism to Christian practice in regard to marriage”.

Incidentally, Charles Dickens was buried in the Poets’ Corner and his notorious adultery wasn't an issue in his case.

So instead Eliot was buried in the unconsecrated portion of Highgate Cemetery where she rested by the side of her love, George Henry Lewes. Highgate Cemetery is famous for its natural beauty – it's a natural reserve in fact – and also for the graves of a number of famous people. Karl Marx is also buried there, as well as Michael Faraday, Christina Rossetti, John Galsworthy and the family of Virginia Woolf.

And in 1980, a century after her death, George Eliot was commemorated in the Poet's corner of Westminster Abbey.

***

So that's my introduction to George Eliot. In the next episodes I will look at her education in more detail and at the sources of her philosophy that later informed her novels. I wondered what made her as a person and a thinker. And when I started looking for answers I did not imagine how interesting this was going to be. So you can join me next time.

Visit the podcast's instagram @no_inkling for fun visual materials and to share your own opinions. You can DM me there too – I really want to hear from you!