Woman of Contradictions: The Life of George Eliot

Taylor, Ina"

ISBN 10: 0688094058 / ISBN 13: 9780688094058

Published by William Morrow & Co, 1989

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Synopsis:

A biography of the nineteenth-century novelist who flew in the face of Victorian convention, based on newly discovered sources and including a recently recovered portion of "The Mill on the Floss"

Reviews: Claiming that her perusal of primary sources has "yielded a welter of new information and exploded many myths," Taylor ( Victorian Sisters ) here promises to reveal the "real woman" behind the "smokescreen" erected by previous biographers around the 19th-century British novelist. (The chief villain cited is John Cross, Eliot's husband and first biographer.) But in Taylor's eagerness to prove Eliot less stodgy than rumored--she "found herself the object of lesbian affection, yet loved men and experienced several love affairs before she finally married"--the biographer fails to make clear just how new is her information. She takes Gordon Haight ( George Eliot ) to task for his reliance on Cross, yet herself refers frequently to Haight's edition of Eliot's letters, not clarifying adequately how her conclusions differ from his. The volume's brevity also works against Taylor's purposes; she skims over her subject's life, too often piquing the reader's curiosity (e.g., implicating Cross in Eliot's death) without fully developing her thesis. A less than graceful style further mars her effort. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

With two major biographies of George Eliot already available (J.W. Cross's intimate George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals and Gordon S. Haight's standard George Eliot: A Biography ), one would think a new life unwarranted. Taylor suggests, however, that both biographers were more interested in hagiography than in the "real" author of Middlemarch. Considering the early years as crucial to Eliot's later intellectual, social, and creative development, Taylor presents a woman who was "everything a Victorian female was not supposed to be": sensual, materialistic, assertive, and subtly deceptive. Ironically, Taylor's Eliot is much more attractive to our contemporary tastes. Although this biography seems sketchy at times, it sheds new light on a major novelist whose very name and appearance is under dispute.
- Donald P. Kaczvinsky, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Woman of Contradictions: The Life of George ...
Publisher: William Morrow & Co
Publication Date: 1989
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: New
Edition: First Edition.
Book Type: Book