George+Eliot

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=George Eliot=



Born Mary Anne (Mary Ann, Marian) Evans 22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880 Pen name George Eliot Novelist, journalist, translator Used male pen name to be taken seriously Lived in South Farm, Arbury Hall, Nuneaton , Warwickshire, England Notable works: // The Mill on the Floss // (1860), // Silas Marner // (1861), // Middlemarch //(1871–72), // Daniel Deronda // (1876) Spouse: John Cross (m. 1880) Partner: George Henry Lewes (lived together 1854–78) Wikipedia Link

Daniel Deronda (excerpt)
media type="file" key="Brit lit.mp3" width="240" height="20" Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?

In a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely:

when women on the other side of the world would not mourn for the husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause, and men stinted of bread on our side of the world heard of that willing loss and were patient:

a time when the soul of man was waking to pulses which had for centuries been beating in him unheard, until their full sum made a new life of terror or of joy.

What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions?

They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affection.

Discussion Questions: 1: What does Eliot think of women in her time period? 2: Why does Elliot believe that the consciousness of a girl is insignificant? 3: Does Eliot think that women have any worth?