艾略特，G.
Ail ete
艾略特，G.
George Eliot (1819～1880) [] 英国女小说家。原名玛丽*安*埃文斯。1819年11月22日出生于沃里克郡奇尔弗斯科顿附近的乡村。父亲年轻时当过木匠，后来是庄园主的代理人，政治观点保守。艾略特于1828至1835年先后在两所女子寄宿学校就读，笃信福音教，热衷于慈善事业。她学会法语、意大利语等多种外语，熟悉《圣经》和大量宗教、文学著作，并涉猎天文、地质、数学、昆虫等各类科学。1836年母亲去世, 她辍学为父亲管家。1841年随父迁居考文垂, 结识了自由思想家、缎带商查尔斯*布雷一家及布雷的姻亲海纳尔一家。查尔斯*海纳尔的著作《基督教起源的调查》(1838)很快地转变了她的宗教信仰。1842年初她宣布不再去教堂，不信上帝，但她仍深切理解、同情一切虔诚的宗教感情，这也成了她作品的基调。
1844年初开始翻译施特劳斯的《耶稣传》，于1846年匿名发表, 在思想界产生很大影响, 因而名噪一时。以后又翻译了斯宾诺莎的《神学政治论文》。1850年担任《威斯敏斯特评论》副编辑，与哲学家赫伯特*斯宾塞过从甚密，并认识了刘易斯和克罗斯。
乔治*亨利*刘易斯是著作家和评论家, 对哲学心理学、生理学等都有研究，写过《歌德传》。她和刘易斯志趣相投, 后与他公开同居。1854年7月她翻译的费尔巴哈的《基督教的本质》以真名出版。同月，与刘易斯去德国。她的哥哥姐姐同她断绝往来，朋友也对她疏远，她则甘愿承受她严肃抉择的后果。她们共同生活了24年，她的稿酬一直用以帮助刘易斯扶养他在瑞士的三个儿子和他的离异的妻子。
[《亚当*比德》插图]
她在德国时开始翻译斯宾诺莎的《伦理学》，回国后译完（未发表）；还为刘易斯翻译了《歌德传》中的大量引文，并为《威斯敏斯特评论》写专栏文章，所写的书评中已包含了她对现实主义小说的认识和理论。 1856年秋起，在刘易斯的鼓励下，她开始小说创作，写了3部回忆早年家乡生活的中篇小说,1858年结为一集名为《教区生活场景》出版，署名乔治*艾略特。她开始在创作中实践自己的小说理论，忠实表现平凡人物的生活，唤起人们的同情，在现实主义小说传统中别开生面，引起文学界普遍的重视。
1859至1876年, 她创作7部长篇小说。一般将她的作品分为前后两期，前期小说描写19世纪初期单纯质朴的乡村生活；后期小说内容复杂，采用了重大的历史、政治、社会题材。但她的创作思想前后一致，作品具有哲理性, 又富有幽默感。她在作品中探讨伦理道德问题, 对人们有深厚的同情，在道德上的判断却是严厉的。她的写作手法发展了属于现代小说特征的心理分析。
《亚当*比德》(1859)具有荷兰现实主义绘画的风格。平凡恬静的表面之下，蕴积着发生在普通人心灵深处的暴风雨。木匠亚当*比德爱着农家女海蒂，而海蒂好虚荣，被地主的少爷、军官亚瑟*道尼桑诱。她在寻找亚瑟的途中分娩，杀死婴儿，因杀婴罪被捕，判处流放。通过海蒂的悲剧，亚当痛切认识到人生的复杂与艰难，产生了博爱的思想。小说中对人物的心理分析细致入微，作者娴熟地使用方言，并写出了真诚的宗教感情和高尚的道德情操。
《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》(1860)是关于磨坊主塔利弗的子女托姆与麦琪的故事，写他们在父亲破产后逐渐疏远，最后在被洪水淹死前和解。作者突出了高尚的感情。前半部关于托姆与麦琪两人童年生活的描写，在英国文学中最为出色。
《织工马南》(1861)写马南曾受好友诬陷，对人丧失了信任，通过金币失窃、收养迷途孤女的事件，重又体会到了人生的温暖和同情。
1860年乔治*艾略特游览佛罗伦萨时决定以15世纪意大利宗教改革为背景写一部历史小说，后以罗慕拉为名于1862至1863年出版。但对它的反应却远不及她的其他小说。而其中关于提托由于利己主义泛滥而堕落的过程却写得极为深刻她的另一部作品《菲利克斯霍尔特
艾略特，G.
》(1866)写1832年选举中的动乱，其中关于特兰桑姆太太的悲剧写得十分成功。《但尼尔*狄隆达》(1876)
是唯一一部写当代生活，并以英国都市和欧洲为背景的小说。这部小说以犹太复国为主题，一般认为写得不成功，而小说中对葛安陀琳性格的分析显示了艾略特艺术上的独特成就。
长篇小说《米德尔马奇》(1871～1872) 普遍认为是她的代表作，小说围绕两个想为社会造福的青年在婚姻、事业上的失败, 全面勾划了一幅英国地方生活的画面作者运用对比、对称、平行、重复等手法，使“社会挫败人”这一主题异常鲜明。她不相信资产阶级竞选对社会的改革作用，她强调的是个人的高尚道德对周围人发生的潜移默化的影响。
艾略特的小说中有大段的议论，但并不给人以抽象说教的印象, 这主要是因为她笔下的人物并不公式化, 大多有比较复杂的性格，而且性格的发展、人物的思想动机、行为和效果的分析都有可靠的心理和社会依据，人物形象逼真, 他们所处的环境也真实典型她对人物活动的环境的描写非常重视。她的细腻的心理分析影响了许多作家，如托马斯*哈代、亨利*詹姆斯、约瑟夫*康拉德、戴*赫*劳伦斯和马塞尔*普鲁斯特等。 她的其他作品还有短篇小说、诗剧西班牙吉卜赛及一些诗与散文。
1878年刘易斯病逝1880年5月她与比她小十几岁的约翰*克罗斯正式结婚。1880年12月22日于伦敦逝世。
参考书目 George Eliot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other people of the same name, see George Elliot (disambiguation).
George Eliot
Aged 30 by the Swiss artist Alexandre Louis François d'Albert Durade
(1804–86)
Born Mary Anne Evans
22 November 1819
So uth
England Farm, Arbury Hall , Nuneaton , Warwickshire ,
Died 22 December 1880(aged 61)
4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, England
Resting
place Highgate Cemetery(East), Highgate , London
Pen name George Eliot
O ccupation Novelist
Period Victorian
Notable
work(s) The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), Daniel
Deronda (1876)
Spouse(s) John Cross (m. 1880)
Partner(s) George Henry Lewes(lived together 1854–1878)
Relative(s) Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson (parents); Christiana,
Isaac, Robert, and Fanny (siblings)
Influences [show]
Influenced [show]
Mary Anne (Mary Ann, Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot , was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and well known for their realism and psychological insight.
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works were taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.[1]
Contents
[hide ]
o o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o 1 Biography 1.1 Early life and education
1.2 Move to Coventry 1.3 Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review 1.4 Relationship with George Lewes 1.5 First publication 1.6 Marriage to John Cross and death 2 Writing 2.1 Literary assessment 2.2 Works 2.3 Novels 2.4 Poetry 2.5 Other 3 Notes 4 References 5 Further reading 5.1 Context and background 5.2 Critical studies 5.3 External links
[edit ]Biography
[edit ]Early life and education
Eliot's birthplace at South Farm, Arbury
Mary Anne Evans was the third child of Robert Evans (1773–1849) and Christiana Evans
(née Pearson), the daughter of a local farmer, (1788–1836). When born, Mary Anne, sometimes shortened to Marian,[2] had two teenage siblings, a half-brother, Robert (1802–64), and sister, Fanny (1805–82), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (?1780–1809). Robert Evans was the manager of the Arbury Hall Estate for the Newdigate family in Warwickshire , and Mary Anne was born on the estate at South Farm. In early 1820 the family moved to a house
named Griff, part way betweenNuneaton and Coventry . Her full siblings were Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–59), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who survived a few days in March 1821. The young Evans was obviously intelligent and a voracious reader. Because of Evans' lack of physical beauty and thus slim chance of marriage, and because of her intelligence, her father
invested in an education not often afforded females[3] From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough , from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis—to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed. In the religious atmosphere of the Miss Franklin's school, Evans was exposed to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.[4]
After age sixteen, Eliot had little formal education.[5] Thanks to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek
tragedy". [6] Her frequent visits to the estate also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a narrow low church Anglican family, but at that time the Midlands was an area with a growing number of religious dissenters.
[edit ]Move to Coventry
In 1836 her mother died and Evans returned home to act as housekeeper, but she continued
correspondence with her tutor Maria Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Isaac married and took over the family home, so Evans and her father moved to Foleshill near Coventry. The closeness to Coventry society brought new influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray. Charles Bray had become rich as a ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth in building schools and other philanthropic causes. Evans, who had been struggling with religious doubts for some time, became intimate friends with the progressive, free-thinking Brays, whose home was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. The people whom the young woman met at the Brays' house included Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this society, Evans was introduced to more liberal theologies, and writers such as David
Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach, who cast doubt on the literal veracity of Biblical stories. In fact, her first major literary work was translating into English Strauss' Life of Jesus (1846), which she completed after it had been begun by another member of the Rosehill circle. A road in
Coventry, George Eliot Road was named after her in Foleshill .
Geneva, plaque at George Eliot's residence
When Evans lost her religious faith, her father threatened to throw her out, although that did not happen. Instead, she respectably attended church for years and continued to keep house for him until his death in 1849. Five days after her father's funeral, she travelled to Switzerland with the Brays. She decided to stay in Geneva alone, living first on the lake at Plongeon (near the present United Nations buildings) and then at the Rue de Chanoines (now the Rue de la Pelisserie) with Franço is and Juliet d’Albert Durade on the second floor ("one feels in a downy nest high up in a good old tree") (her stay is recorded by a plaque on the building). She read avidly and took long walks amongst a natural environment that inspired her greatly. François painted a portrait of her.[7]
[edit ]Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review On her return to England in 1850, she moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer and calling herself Marian Evans. She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the radical publisher whom she had met at Rosehill and who had printed her translation. Chapman had recently bought the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review, and Evans became its assistant editor in 1851. Although Chapman was the named editor, it was Evans who did much of the work in
running the journal, contributing many essays and reviews, from the January, 1852 number until the dissolution of her arrangement with Chapman in the first half of 1854.[8]
Women writers were not uncommon at the time, but Evans's role at the head of a literary enterprise was. The mere sight of an unmarried young woman mixing with the predominantly male society of London at that time was unusual, even scandalous to some. Although clearly strong-minded, she was frequently sensitive, depressed, and crippled by self-doubt. She was considered to have an ill-favoured appearance,[9] and she formed a number of embarrassing, unreciprocated emotional attachments, including that to her employer, the married Chapman, and Herbert Spencer.
[edit ]Relationship with George Lewes
The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was married to Agnes Jervis, but they had agreed to have an open marriage, and in addition to the three children they had together, Agnes had also had several children by other men. Since Lewes was named on the birth certificate as the father of one of these children despite knowing this to be false, and was therefore considered complicit in adultery, he was not able to divorce Agnes. In July 1854 Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin together for the purpose of research. Before going to Germany, Evans continued her interest in theological work with a translation of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics , which she completed in 1856, but which was not published in her life-time.[10]
The trip to Germany also served as a honeymoon as Evans and Lewes now considered themselves married, with Evans calling herself Marian Evans Lewes, and referring to Lewes as her husband. It was not unusual for men and women in Victorian society to have affairs; Charles Bray, John Chapman, Charles Dickens, Friedrich Engels and Wilkie Collins all had affairs, though more
discreetly than Lewes and Evans. What was scandalous was the Leweses' open admission of the relationship.
[edit ]First publication
Geor ge Eliot lived at 4Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, the house where she died in December 1880
While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans had resolved to become a novelist, and she set out a manifesto for herself in one of her last essays for the Review , Silly Novels by Lady Novelists[11] (1856). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of
contemporary fiction by women. In other essays she praised the realism of novels written in Europe
at the time, and an emphasis placed on realistic storytelling would become clear throughout her subsequent fiction. She also adopted a new nom-de-plume, the one for which she would become best known: George Eliot. This masculine name was chosen partly in order to distance herself from the lady writers of silly novels, but it also quietly hid the tricky subject of her marital status.[citation needed ]
In 1858 Amos Barton, the first of the Scenes of Clerical Life, was published in Blackwood's
Magazine and, along with the other Scenes , was well received. Her first complete novel, published in 1859, was Adam Bede and was an instant success, but it prompted an intense interest in who this new author might be. Scenes of Clerical Life was widely believed to have been written by a country parson or perhaps the wife of a parson. With the release of the incredibly popular Adam Bede , speculation increased markedly, and there was even a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. In the end, the real George Eliot stepped forward: Marian Evans Lewes admitted she was the author. The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised and shocked many of her admiring readers, but this apparently did not affect her popularity as a novelist. Eliot's relationship with Lewes afforded her the encouragement and stability she so badly needed to write fiction, and to ease her self-doubt, but it would be some time before they were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1877, when they were introduced to Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria, who was an avid reader of George Eliot's novels.[citation needed]
After the popularity of Adam Bede, she continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a year of completing Adam Bede, she finished The Mill on the Floss, inscribing the manuscript: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book,
written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21 March 1860."
Her last novel was Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, whereafter she and Lewes moved to Witley , Surrey; but by this time Lewes's health was failing and he died two years later on 30 November 1878. Eliot spent the next two years editing Lewes's final work Life and Mind for publication, and she found solace with John Walter Cross, an American banker whose mother had recently died.
[edit ]Marriage to John Cross and death
Eliot's grave inHighgate Cemetery
On 16 May 1880 George Eliot courted controversy once more by marrying a man twenty years younger than herself, and again changing her name, this time to Mary Anne Cross. The legal
marriage at least pleased her brother Isaac, who sent his congratulations after breaking off relations with his sister when she had begun to live with Lewes. John Cross was a rather unstable character, and apparently jumped or fell from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal in Venice during their honeymoon. Cross survived and they returned to England. The couple moved to a new house in Chelsea but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease she had been afflicted with for the past few years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.[12] Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey because of her denial of the Christian faith and her "irregular" though monogamous life with Lewes. She was interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London in the area reserved for religious dissenters, next to George Henry Lewes. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets’ Corner. Several key buildings in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named after her or titles of her novels. For example George Eliot Hospital, George Eliot Community School and Middlemarch Junior School.
[edit ]Writing
[edit ]Literary assessment
Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town
persecution. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis is at the heart of Middlemarch , in which she presents the stories of a number of denizens of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832; the novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits.
Readers in the Victorian era particularly praised her books for their depictions of rural society, for which she drew on her own early experiences, and she shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much interest and importance in the mundane details of ordinary country lives. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to her bucolic roots. Romola , an historical novel set in late 15th century Florence and touching on the lives of several real persons such as the priest Girolamo Savonarola , displays her wider reading and interests. In The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot made a foray into verse, creating a work whose initial popularity has not endured.
The religious elements in her fiction also owe much to her upbringing, with the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss sharing many similarities with the young Mary Anne Evans's own development. When Silas Marner is persuaded that his alienation from the church means also his alienation from society, the author's life is again mirrored with her refusal to attend church. She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final printed
work Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By the time of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the biography written by her husband after her death, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with the scandalous life people knew she had led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics, most notably by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one of the few
English novels written for grown-up people".[13] The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to the wider-reading public.
[edit ]Works
[edit ]Novels
Adam Bede, 1859 The Mill on the Floss, 1860 Silas Marner, 1861 Romola , 1863 Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866 Middlemarch , 1871–72 Daniel Deronda, 1876
[edit ]Poetry
The Spanish Gypsy (a dramatic poem), 1868 Agatha , 1869 Armgart , 1871 Stradivarius , 1873 The Legend of Jubal, 1874 Arion , 1874
A Minor Prophet, 1874 A College Breakfast Party, 1879 The Death of Moses, 1879 From a London Drawing Room Count That Day Lost I Grant You Ample Leave
[edit ]Other
艾略特，G.
Ail ete
艾略特，G.
George Eliot (1819～1880) [] 英国女小说家。原名玛丽*安*埃文斯。1819年11月22日出生于沃里克郡奇尔弗斯科顿附近的乡村。父亲年轻时当过木匠，后来是庄园主的代理人，政治观点保守。艾略特于1828至1835年先后在两所女子寄宿学校就读，笃信福音教，热衷于慈善事业。她学会法语、意大利语等多种外语，熟悉《圣经》和大量宗教、文学著作，并涉猎天文、地质、数学、昆虫等各类科学。1836年母亲去世, 她辍学为父亲管家。1841年随父迁居考文垂, 结识了自由思想家、缎带商查尔斯*布雷一家及布雷的姻亲海纳尔一家。查尔斯*海纳尔的著作《基督教起源的调查》(1838)很快地转变了她的宗教信仰。1842年初她宣布不再去教堂，不信上帝，但她仍深切理解、同情一切虔诚的宗教感情，这也成了她作品的基调。
1844年初开始翻译施特劳斯的《耶稣传》，于1846年匿名发表, 在思想界产生很大影响, 因而名噪一时。以后又翻译了斯宾诺莎的《神学政治论文》。1850年担任《威斯敏斯特评论》副编辑，与哲学家赫伯特*斯宾塞过从甚密，并认识了刘易斯和克罗斯。
乔治*亨利*刘易斯是著作家和评论家, 对哲学心理学、生理学等都有研究，写过《歌德传》。她和刘易斯志趣相投, 后与他公开同居。1854年7月她翻译的费尔巴哈的《基督教的本质》以真名出版。同月，与刘易斯去德国。她的哥哥姐姐同她断绝往来，朋友也对她疏远，她则甘愿承受她严肃抉择的后果。她们共同生活了24年，她的稿酬一直用以帮助刘易斯扶养他在瑞士的三个儿子和他的离异的妻子。
[《亚当*比德》插图]
她在德国时开始翻译斯宾诺莎的《伦理学》，回国后译完（未发表）；还为刘易斯翻译了《歌德传》中的大量引文，并为《威斯敏斯特评论》写专栏文章，所写的书评中已包含了她对现实主义小说的认识和理论。 1856年秋起，在刘易斯的鼓励下，她开始小说创作，写了3部回忆早年家乡生活的中篇小说,1858年结为一集名为《教区生活场景》出版，署名乔治*艾略特。她开始在创作中实践自己的小说理论，忠实表现平凡人物的生活，唤起人们的同情，在现实主义小说传统中别开生面，引起文学界普遍的重视。
1859至1876年, 她创作7部长篇小说。一般将她的作品分为前后两期，前期小说描写19世纪初期单纯质朴的乡村生活；后期小说内容复杂，采用了重大的历史、政治、社会题材。但她的创作思想前后一致，作品具有哲理性, 又富有幽默感。她在作品中探讨伦理道德问题, 对人们有深厚的同情，在道德上的判断却是严厉的。她的写作手法发展了属于现代小说特征的心理分析。
《亚当*比德》(1859)具有荷兰现实主义绘画的风格。平凡恬静的表面之下，蕴积着发生在普通人心灵深处的暴风雨。木匠亚当*比德爱着农家女海蒂，而海蒂好虚荣，被地主的少爷、军官亚瑟*道尼桑诱。她在寻找亚瑟的途中分娩，杀死婴儿，因杀婴罪被捕，判处流放。通过海蒂的悲剧，亚当痛切认识到人生的复杂与艰难，产生了博爱的思想。小说中对人物的心理分析细致入微，作者娴熟地使用方言，并写出了真诚的宗教感情和高尚的道德情操。
《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》(1860)是关于磨坊主塔利弗的子女托姆与麦琪的故事，写他们在父亲破产后逐渐疏远，最后在被洪水淹死前和解。作者突出了高尚的感情。前半部关于托姆与麦琪两人童年生活的描写，在英国文学中最为出色。
《织工马南》(1861)写马南曾受好友诬陷，对人丧失了信任，通过金币失窃、收养迷途孤女的事件，重又体会到了人生的温暖和同情。
1860年乔治*艾略特游览佛罗伦萨时决定以15世纪意大利宗教改革为背景写一部历史小说，后以罗慕拉为名于1862至1863年出版。但对它的反应却远不及她的其他小说。而其中关于提托由于利己主义泛滥而堕落的过程却写得极为深刻她的另一部作品《菲利克斯霍尔特
艾略特，G.
》(1866)写1832年选举中的动乱，其中关于特兰桑姆太太的悲剧写得十分成功。《但尼尔*狄隆达》(1876)
是唯一一部写当代生活，并以英国都市和欧洲为背景的小说。这部小说以犹太复国为主题，一般认为写得不成功，而小说中对葛安陀琳性格的分析显示了艾略特艺术上的独特成就。
长篇小说《米德尔马奇》(1871～1872) 普遍认为是她的代表作，小说围绕两个想为社会造福的青年在婚姻、事业上的失败, 全面勾划了一幅英国地方生活的画面作者运用对比、对称、平行、重复等手法，使“社会挫败人”这一主题异常鲜明。她不相信资产阶级竞选对社会的改革作用，她强调的是个人的高尚道德对周围人发生的潜移默化的影响。
艾略特的小说中有大段的议论，但并不给人以抽象说教的印象, 这主要是因为她笔下的人物并不公式化, 大多有比较复杂的性格，而且性格的发展、人物的思想动机、行为和效果的分析都有可靠的心理和社会依据，人物形象逼真, 他们所处的环境也真实典型她对人物活动的环境的描写非常重视。她的细腻的心理分析影响了许多作家，如托马斯*哈代、亨利*詹姆斯、约瑟夫*康拉德、戴*赫*劳伦斯和马塞尔*普鲁斯特等。 她的其他作品还有短篇小说、诗剧西班牙吉卜赛及一些诗与散文。
1878年刘易斯病逝1880年5月她与比她小十几岁的约翰*克罗斯正式结婚。1880年12月22日于伦敦逝世。
参考书目 George Eliot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other people of the same name, see George Elliot (disambiguation).
George Eliot
Aged 30 by the Swiss artist Alexandre Louis François d'Albert Durade
(1804–86)
Born Mary Anne Evans
22 November 1819
So uth
England Farm, Arbury Hall , Nuneaton , Warwickshire ,
Died 22 December 1880(aged 61)
4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, England
Resting
place Highgate Cemetery(East), Highgate , London
Pen name George Eliot
O ccupation Novelist
Period Victorian
Notable
work(s) The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), Daniel
Deronda (1876)
Spouse(s) John Cross (m. 1880)
Partner(s) George Henry Lewes(lived together 1854–1878)
Relative(s) Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson (parents); Christiana,
Isaac, Robert, and Fanny (siblings)
Influences [show]
Influenced [show]
Mary Anne (Mary Ann, Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot , was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and well known for their realism and psychological insight.
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works were taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.[1]
Contents
[hide ]
o o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o 1 Biography 1.1 Early life and education
1.2 Move to Coventry 1.3 Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review 1.4 Relationship with George Lewes 1.5 First publication 1.6 Marriage to John Cross and death 2 Writing 2.1 Literary assessment 2.2 Works 2.3 Novels 2.4 Poetry 2.5 Other 3 Notes 4 References 5 Further reading 5.1 Context and background 5.2 Critical studies 5.3 External links
[edit ]Biography
[edit ]Early life and education
Eliot's birthplace at South Farm, Arbury
Mary Anne Evans was the third child of Robert Evans (1773–1849) and Christiana Evans
(née Pearson), the daughter of a local farmer, (1788–1836). When born, Mary Anne, sometimes shortened to Marian,[2] had two teenage siblings, a half-brother, Robert (1802–64), and sister, Fanny (1805–82), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (?1780–1809). Robert Evans was the manager of the Arbury Hall Estate for the Newdigate family in Warwickshire , and Mary Anne was born on the estate at South Farm. In early 1820 the family moved to a house
named Griff, part way betweenNuneaton and Coventry . Her full siblings were Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–59), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who survived a few days in March 1821. The young Evans was obviously intelligent and a voracious reader. Because of Evans' lack of physical beauty and thus slim chance of marriage, and because of her intelligence, her father
invested in an education not often afforded females[3] From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough , from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis—to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed. In the religious atmosphere of the Miss Franklin's school, Evans was exposed to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.[4]
After age sixteen, Eliot had little formal education.[5] Thanks to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek
tragedy". [6] Her frequent visits to the estate also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a narrow low church Anglican family, but at that time the Midlands was an area with a growing number of religious dissenters.
[edit ]Move to Coventry
In 1836 her mother died and Evans returned home to act as housekeeper, but she continued
correspondence with her tutor Maria Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Isaac married and took over the family home, so Evans and her father moved to Foleshill near Coventry. The closeness to Coventry society brought new influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray. Charles Bray had become rich as a ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth in building schools and other philanthropic causes. Evans, who had been struggling with religious doubts for some time, became intimate friends with the progressive, free-thinking Brays, whose home was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. The people whom the young woman met at the Brays' house included Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this society, Evans was introduced to more liberal theologies, and writers such as David
Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach, who cast doubt on the literal veracity of Biblical stories. In fact, her first major literary work was translating into English Strauss' Life of Jesus (1846), which she completed after it had been begun by another member of the Rosehill circle. A road in
Coventry, George Eliot Road was named after her in Foleshill .
Geneva, plaque at George Eliot's residence
When Evans lost her religious faith, her father threatened to throw her out, although that did not happen. Instead, she respectably attended church for years and continued to keep house for him until his death in 1849. Five days after her father's funeral, she travelled to Switzerland with the Brays. She decided to stay in Geneva alone, living first on the lake at Plongeon (near the present United Nations buildings) and then at the Rue de Chanoines (now the Rue de la Pelisserie) with Franço is and Juliet d’Albert Durade on the second floor ("one feels in a downy nest high up in a good old tree") (her stay is recorded by a plaque on the building). She read avidly and took long walks amongst a natural environment that inspired her greatly. François painted a portrait of her.[7]
[edit ]Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review On her return to England in 1850, she moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer and calling herself Marian Evans. She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the radical publisher whom she had met at Rosehill and who had printed her translation. Chapman had recently bought the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review, and Evans became its assistant editor in 1851. Although Chapman was the named editor, it was Evans who did much of the work in
running the journal, contributing many essays and reviews, from the January, 1852 number until the dissolution of her arrangement with Chapman in the first half of 1854.[8]
Women writers were not uncommon at the time, but Evans's role at the head of a literary enterprise was. The mere sight of an unmarried young woman mixing with the predominantly male society of London at that time was unusual, even scandalous to some. Although clearly strong-minded, she was frequently sensitive, depressed, and crippled by self-doubt. She was considered to have an ill-favoured appearance,[9] and she formed a number of embarrassing, unreciprocated emotional attachments, including that to her employer, the married Chapman, and Herbert Spencer.
[edit ]Relationship with George Lewes
The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was married to Agnes Jervis, but they had agreed to have an open marriage, and in addition to the three children they had together, Agnes had also had several children by other men. Since Lewes was named on the birth certificate as the father of one of these children despite knowing this to be false, and was therefore considered complicit in adultery, he was not able to divorce Agnes. In July 1854 Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin together for the purpose of research. Before going to Germany, Evans continued her interest in theological work with a translation of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics , which she completed in 1856, but which was not published in her life-time.[10]
The trip to Germany also served as a honeymoon as Evans and Lewes now considered themselves married, with Evans calling herself Marian Evans Lewes, and referring to Lewes as her husband. It was not unusual for men and women in Victorian society to have affairs; Charles Bray, John Chapman, Charles Dickens, Friedrich Engels and Wilkie Collins all had affairs, though more
discreetly than Lewes and Evans. What was scandalous was the Leweses' open admission of the relationship.
[edit ]First publication
Geor ge Eliot lived at 4Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, the house where she died in December 1880
While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans had resolved to become a novelist, and she set out a manifesto for herself in one of her last essays for the Review , Silly Novels by Lady Novelists[11] (1856). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of
contemporary fiction by women. In other essays she praised the realism of novels written in Europe
at the time, and an emphasis placed on realistic storytelling would become clear throughout her subsequent fiction. She also adopted a new nom-de-plume, the one for which she would become best known: George Eliot. This masculine name was chosen partly in order to distance herself from the lady writers of silly novels, but it also quietly hid the tricky subject of her marital status.[citation needed ]
In 1858 Amos Barton, the first of the Scenes of Clerical Life, was published in Blackwood's
Magazine and, along with the other Scenes , was well received. Her first complete novel, published in 1859, was Adam Bede and was an instant success, but it prompted an intense interest in who this new author might be. Scenes of Clerical Life was widely believed to have been written by a country parson or perhaps the wife of a parson. With the release of the incredibly popular Adam Bede , speculation increased markedly, and there was even a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. In the end, the real George Eliot stepped forward: Marian Evans Lewes admitted she was the author. The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised and shocked many of her admiring readers, but this apparently did not affect her popularity as a novelist. Eliot's relationship with Lewes afforded her the encouragement and stability she so badly needed to write fiction, and to ease her self-doubt, but it would be some time before they were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1877, when they were introduced to Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria, who was an avid reader of George Eliot's novels.[citation needed]
After the popularity of Adam Bede, she continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a year of completing Adam Bede, she finished The Mill on the Floss, inscribing the manuscript: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book,
written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21 March 1860."
Her last novel was Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, whereafter she and Lewes moved to Witley , Surrey; but by this time Lewes's health was failing and he died two years later on 30 November 1878. Eliot spent the next two years editing Lewes's final work Life and Mind for publication, and she found solace with John Walter Cross, an American banker whose mother had recently died.
[edit ]Marriage to John Cross and death
Eliot's grave inHighgate Cemetery
On 16 May 1880 George Eliot courted controversy once more by marrying a man twenty years younger than herself, and again changing her name, this time to Mary Anne Cross. The legal
marriage at least pleased her brother Isaac, who sent his congratulations after breaking off relations with his sister when she had begun to live with Lewes. John Cross was a rather unstable character, and apparently jumped or fell from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal in Venice during their honeymoon. Cross survived and they returned to England. The couple moved to a new house in Chelsea but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease she had been afflicted with for the past few years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.[12] Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey because of her denial of the Christian faith and her "irregular" though monogamous life with Lewes. She was interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London in the area reserved for religious dissenters, next to George Henry Lewes. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets’ Corner. Several key buildings in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named after her or titles of her novels. For example George Eliot Hospital, George Eliot Community School and Middlemarch Junior School.
[edit ]Writing
[edit ]Literary assessment
Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town
persecution. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis is at the heart of Middlemarch , in which she presents the stories of a number of denizens of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832; the novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits.
Readers in the Victorian era particularly praised her books for their depictions of rural society, for which she drew on her own early experiences, and she shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much interest and importance in the mundane details of ordinary country lives. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to her bucolic roots. Romola , an historical novel set in late 15th century Florence and touching on the lives of several real persons such as the priest Girolamo Savonarola , displays her wider reading and interests. In The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot made a foray into verse, creating a work whose initial popularity has not endured.
The religious elements in her fiction also owe much to her upbringing, with the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss sharing many similarities with the young Mary Anne Evans's own development. When Silas Marner is persuaded that his alienation from the church means also his alienation from society, the author's life is again mirrored with her refusal to attend church. She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final printed
work Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By the time of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the biography written by her husband after her death, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with the scandalous life people knew she had led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics, most notably by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one of the few
English novels written for grown-up people".[13] The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to the wider-reading public.
[edit ]Works
[edit ]Novels
Adam Bede, 1859 The Mill on the Floss, 1860 Silas Marner, 1861 Romola , 1863 Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866 Middlemarch , 1871–72 Daniel Deronda, 1876
[edit ]Poetry
The Spanish Gypsy (a dramatic poem), 1868 Agatha , 1869 Armgart , 1871 Stradivarius , 1873 The Legend of Jubal, 1874 Arion , 1874
A Minor Prophet, 1874 A College Breakfast Party, 1879 The Death of Moses, 1879 From a London Drawing Room Count That Day Lost I Grant You Ample Leave
[edit ]Other