A woman who belonged to herself. There was nothing stopping George Eliot from gaining popularity as a novelist. No the remarks upon her private life or her personal appearance. Even though critics where blond about her looks:
“It must be a terrible sorrow to be young and unattractive: to look in the mirror and see a sallow unhealthy face, with a yellowish skin, straight nose, and mouse-coloured hair,” Wrote the critic Anne Fremantle.
“A woman with next to no feminine beauty or charm or of countenance or person,” William Michael Rossetti, critic.
“Exceedingly plain, with her aggressive jaw and her evasive blue eyes.”Grace Greenwood, American novelist.
However, after his first encounter with her. Henry James, wrote “when she began to converse, her expression was one of such tenderness and sympathy that it left her interlocutor with an abiding sense of beauty. “Behold me, literally in love with this great horse-faced bluestocking!”
Novelist, Lucy Clifford commented about Eliot “a strange variety of horse that was full of knowledge, and beauty of thought, and mysteries of which the human being had no conception.”
There is no doubt that Eliot’s soul outshone to making life worth while.
Making Life Worth While
by George Eliot
Every soul that touches yours –
Be it the slightest contact –
Get there from some good;
Some little grace; one kindly thought;
One aspiration yet unfelt;
One bit of courage
For the darkening sky;
One gleam of faith
To brave the thickening ills of life;
One glimpse of brighter skies –
To make this life worthwhile
And heaven a surer heritage.
“The truth about Eliot’s private life surprised and shocked many admiring readers but did not affect her popularity as a novelist. It’s said that Queen Victoria was an avid reader of Eliot’s novels, adoring Adam Bede so much that she commissioned artists Edward Henry Corbould to paint scenes from the book”.
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