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

GEORGE ELIOT: THE AUTHOR AND HER TIMES

George Eliot was not her real name. She was born in 1819 as
Marian (or Mary Anne) Evans, the youngest child of a prosperous
estate manager in the rural English Midlands. Even as a child,
it was apparent that she was very bright--and unfortunately
homely. She craved affection, but her proud, strong-willed
mother showed her little love. Her father was fond of her but
was often too busy to pay her any attention. And so she clung
dearly to her older brother Isaac, her constant childhood
companion. Playing in the meadows and by the riverbanks of an
unspoiled, fertile countryside, she found happiness of a kind.

When they grew up, however, Isaac became narrow-minded and
conservative, and he felt little in common with his bookish
sister. Marian had become simply a provincial, middle-class old
maid. In a society where wifehood and motherhood were still the
main roles for women, an unmarried daughter in her twenties like
Marian was in many ways a second-class citizen. Her older
brothers and sisters all moved away and started their own
families. After Mrs. Evans died, Marian was left alone with
her father. In ailing health, he retired, left the country home
Marian loved, and moved to the nearby city of Coventry. There,
Marian's days were spent in charitable "good works" and in
keeping house. Between jam-making and needlework, visiting the
poor, and nursing her crotchety father, she had little time to
herself. Yet she managed somehow to read books--poetry
(especially Wordsworth and Shakespeare), novels, and dense works
of theology and philosophy, in several languages.

Soon, however, Marian made friends with Coventry's most
progressive thinkers, who encouraged her intellectual interests.
One day she calmly announced to her father that she would no
longer go to church with him, since she didn't believe in God
anymore. Apparently this change had been brewing in her mind
for some time, but it was a surprise and an outrage to
conventional Mr. Evans. Only after several weeks of family
tension did Marian give in, reasoning with herself that, if she
didn't believe in Christianity, it was no sin to go to church
just to keep the peace.

Rejecting Christianity was still a daring thing for a single
woman to do in nineteenth-century England. It would ruin her
marriage prospects, as well as her chances of obtaining a
teaching job (teaching was one of the few careers open to
women). Luckily, however, Marian's new friends introduced her
to a circle of people who shared some of her unorthodox views.

While most of the English still followed Queen Victoria in