This is neither here nor there, but after finishing this book, I was startled to realize that I already owned another one by Clare Carlisle: biography of Kierkegaard, Philosopher of the Heart. Or maybe there is a point to this: it's nice to see philosophy professors write about the personal as it intersects with the philosophical. That book, like The Marriage Question brings up a very important question: what kind of philosophical work we have yet to do because so many philosophers were unmarried men with no children? What is the domain of phenomena that we take for granted but have largely not prodded philosophically because of what philosophy has meant or how it has been circumscribed for the past ... well, for centuries really. And what better way to prod the philosophical issue(s) of marriage, and all that it entails (love, relationality, vulnerability, loyalty) than through the writer who upended them all in her fiction and her real life? This was such an enjoyable book. Erudite and accessible, without ever feeling trite, like someone is dumbing down a complex issue just clarify it. If you are interested in the existential question of what it means to make a life with one another, I highly recommend this one.

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

I’m slowly embarking on reading biographies of writers I admire. So I was happy to receive a galley of The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life by Clare Carlisle for review. This biography intertwines the life story of Mary Anne Evans/Marian Evans Lewes/George Eliot with her writing, leaving me with the sense that her novels included a good deal of semi-autobiographical…not events, but emotions.

Eliot was the longtime partner of a man who was legally married to someone else (George Lewes.) However, they were devoted to one another and she always considered herself to be his wife. This was in the mid-nineteenth century, so the scandal it caused cannot be overstated. Running away with Lewes meant breaking with her family and a good many of her friends.

This was also a time wihen women writers were considered to be “silly female novelists.” In order to find a publisher, and to be taken at all seriously, she had to write under a male pseudonym.

Carlisle makes all this abundantly clear. She also emphasizes both the positive and negative aspects of their partnership while bringing up philosophical questions about marriage and relationships. Eliot (and her husband) read, studied, and even translated philosophy. These themes found their way into her novels. Carlisle traces the chronological development of Eliot’s writing and correlates it to the philosophies she was engaging with at the time.

This makes for a fascinating literary study, but one that is also fairly dense. Usually when I read author biographies, I come away wanting to add all their work to my TBR pile. This time, I came away more daunted than inspired. I loved Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss. But now I feel like I didn’t read them slowly and carefully enough. And I think that to tackle more of Eliot’s work, I need to be in a classroom.

George Eliot is a fascinating person, widely regarded as a brilliant novelist who pioneered psychological fiction. This biography explores Eliot’s own psyche and the impact of marriage and her views of marriage on her life and her work.

“Marriage is rarely treated as a philosophical question,” writes scholar Clare Carlisle. The topic “has seemed too trivial a subject for deep thinking,” perhaps because concern with domestic relationships has long been associated with the feminine—and more recently with conservatism. But Carlisle argues that the study of marriage—both as a concept and in particular practice—can illuminate “great philosophical themes: desire, freedom, selfhood, change, morality, happiness, belief, [and] the mystery of other minds.”

In The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life, Carlisle does not explore these abstractions. Instead, she interrogates how Victorian author George Eliot thought about marriage—how she constructed her own domestic alliances and also how she chose to write about the circumstances of marital relations in novels such as The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, and Middlemarch. Although Carlisle’s training as a philosopher might give her insights into Eliot’s philosophical mind, what she constructs here is not philosophy but instead a thoughtful literary biography.

See the rest of my published review on Open Letters Review: https://openlettersreview.com/posts/the-marriage-question-by-clare-carlisle

This book has taken me months of on and off reading but was definitely worth the time. If you are a fan of George Elliot’s work, then this adds so much about her writing, her relationship with her husband and and her relationship to religion and philosophy. I have read Middlemarch, Silas Marner and Mill on the Floss which definitely improved the reading experience of this book but it also made me want to read Daniel Deronda and Adam Bede that much quicker. Both books have been on my shelves for years. The author does a tremendous job of fleshing out George Elliot (Mary Ann Evan and Mariann Lewes). I do recommend reading one of her novels before reading this book. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

I really enjoyed this well written biography of George Eliot. It covers her life and works with particular focus on marriage. Of course George Eliot was unable to marry her partner George Henry Lewes but they lived as a married couple suffering the judgement of her family and Victorian society. An interesting read.

I so loved this look into Eliot's life -- and am sorry I missed giving it a shout-out on publication day. Just gave it a shout out on facebook and Insta. Wonderful. Thanks for the early read.

"The Marriage Question" by Clare Carlisle is a very academic look at the "marriage" of George Eliot--how it came about, what it cost her, and how it influenced her stories and novels. If you've read and enjoyed "My Life in Middlemarch," by Rebecca Mead, as I have, know that while "The Marriage Question" also mixes biography with literary criticism, this time it is without the element of memoir that characterized Mead's earlier book and made it perhaps a little more breezily readable--"The Marriage Question" is much more like Lucasta Miller's "Keats" book in that it is straightforwardly academic. Note that you don't need to have read all of Eliot's books to learn from "The Marriage Question," but I do think a familiarity with her works will enhance your enjoyment of this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

I'll be honest, I tend to get very bored with writings about George Eliot that end up sounding like hagiographies. (Maybe I wouldn't mind it so much if I enjoyed Eliot's novels more, but anyway ....) Credit goes to Clare Carlisle for doing everything she could to avoid the temptation, though you can tell it was a struggle sometimes! Her Eliot, though indeed inhabiting a lofty plane of moral earnestness, is still human and dealing with complex human dilemmas, not always in the wisest way.

I was also a bit curious about how Carlisle was going to handle Eliot's "marriage" when it wasn't actually a marriage. But she handles that well too, showing how Eliot's relationship with George Lewes was both similar to and different from an actual marriage, and tracing its effects on their perspective and characters for -- well, for better and for worse. One intriguing angle that is touched on, but could have been explored more, is Eliot's takeover of the "mother" role with Lewes's sons, apparently with no serious thought or concern about how their own still-living mother might have felt about it. (Granted, Agnes hadn't been a faithful wife, but then Lewes hadn't been a faithful husband.) What Carlisle does say about Eliot's actions and Agnes Lewes's position is intriguing; I wish she had said more.

One more thing (minor, but important to me): Lewes deserved to be kicked around the block for what he said about Dickens, after Dickens had been friendly to Eliot, and at a time when she badly needed friends!

You may be wondering by now why I read about Eliot at all. Sometimes I wonder myself. :-) I suppose it's just because she was an interesting person living in an interesting time. And because some writers, the ones who don't get too caught up in hagiography, have very interesting things to say about her, her writing, and her era. Count Clare Carlisle as one of those writers.

This is a very well-researched examination of marriage - over 30% of my ebook is references and notes. It is written in very readable, accessible prose.

Clare Carlisle explores the concept of marriage mainly by considering Marian Evans’/ George Eliot’s relationships with George Lewes (who already had a wife and never married Eliot) and, after Lewes’ death, with John Cross, a much younger man who she did marry. The author also reviews aspects of marriage in each of Eliot’s novels in relation to Eliot’s own experience of co-habitation. This encourages me to re-read those books to see how her fiction might reflect Eliot’s own experiences.

In "The Marriage Question," Clare Carlisle scrupulously researches and documents George Eliot's relationship to art, marriage, love, and philosophy. Through Carlisle, we see George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) strive to connect her artistic and intellectual life with her scandalous "marriage" to George Lewes (who comes across as an opportunist and a control freak to my modern eyes although Carlisle is more evenhanded in her assessment of him). The book is a real treat for those who are a fan of Eliot's novels and writing as Carlisle connects her work to her intellectual pursuits as well as her love connection to Lewes.

Carlisle has an impressive amount of endnotes and documentation which makes me safe in her hands. If I have a criticism, I wish Carlisle had ended the book sooner. The ending goes on a bit too long, and it reads like a rehash of her main argument. That quibble aside, it's an impressive book and I hope it inspires readers to (re)discover all of Eliot's writing.

This book is written with insight and flair. The extent of Carlisle’s research is astonishing and I learned many new things and interesting things about George Eliot from reading it. There is empathy and feeling in the text and a number of thoughtful philosophical ideas are raised which I enjoyed wrestling with.

It is clear that Carlisle wanted to get to grips with the real Mary Ann Evans and in doing so has provided the reader with a wealth of insights. The author of one of my favourite books, Adam Bede, has long been an unknown quantity in many ways to her readers. Whilst there are still questions to be answered, Carlisle has gone a considerable way in revealing the thoughts, motives and attitudes of Mary Ann Evans. I agreed with many of Carlisle’s suggestions and thoroughly enjoyed the extensive biographical detail.

I would certainly recommend this book to readers of George Eliot but Carlisle has also written a book that encourages those who have not enjoyed the delicate and deft authorship of Eliot to do so.

This is a wonderful book. Exceptionally insightful, revelatory, and, above all, accessible to all. It is not a dusty academic work, and I encourage anyone with even a passing interest in George Eliot to add it to their collection.

George Eliot was an intellectual and a truly gifted author. She fully deserves to be recognised in the same breath as Shakespeare. I agree with those who rank Middlemarch as the greatest novel in the English language. I am understandably enamoured at her capacity to entertain readers with such additionally brilliant works of fiction, such as The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Daniel Deronda.

It was fascinating to read about her fiery and resolute character – how she stood up for women’s rights, how she was a victim of social judgement - her ‘impropriety’ shocked and scandalised the ‘civilised’ Victorian society of the day. She was years ahead of her time. Yet I was intrigued to learn how modest and vulnerable she was too. The likes of Bronte inspired her writing and I wonder whether Eliot was conflicted – that personal happiness versus responsibility to others was mutually dependent?

It is satisfying to know that she finally and rightfully received a memorial stone at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. However, as I write this on International Women’s Day, the irony is not lost on me that a female author was forced to adopt a male pen name in order to be taken seriously.

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for granting this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the Kindle ARC. The Marriage Question is an in-depth and interesting study into the life of George Eliot - a woman who claimed a male name in order to help get her written works published. Prior to becoming George Eliot, she was known as Mary Anne Evans and Marianne Evans. Her decision to leave England to travel Europe with a married man, George Lewes, who was separated from his wife, was scandalous at the time. She was part of a group of forward-thinking artists and writers who believed that there should be no restrictions on how a person choose to live his or her life, thus making Ms. Eliot years ahead of the time. I read The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner as a teenager - pleasure reading, not required, and was interested to find out more about a woman who was advanced in her thoughts about relationships and marriages and chose to live life as she wanted, regardless of public opinion.

It was George Eliot’s personification of the marriage question in her own life that excited as much, if not more, curiosity as her depiction of it through the characters in her books. This is impressively documented in a new book “The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life”, written by Clare Carlisle and to be released by Farrar Straus & Giroux in August this year. Carlisle gives us an account of George Eliot’s life through the prism of her twin identities, both inside and outside what she herself called the “great experience of marriage”. Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College, London and has authored six books previously.

In this book she mixes remarkable insights into the influences that shaped and determined Eliot’s life with astute analysis of her literary development and the philosophical thought that informed her fiction. Emphasising the deeply scholarly nature of Eliot’s preparation for and development of the works that have rightly established her as one of the greatest English novelists, Carlisle sheds light on the genesis of books, stories and poems that earned Eliot the reputation of a genius. Informed by her rigorous classical education in literature, philosophy, science and religion, Eliot created fictional works that not only became popular bestsellers, but appealed to a culturally sophisticated and scholarly audience and are still loved and admired today.

To what extent Eliot’s literary career was dependent on the support and promotion of George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived in a common law marriage for 24 years, has been the subject of considerable debate and is examined in the book, in particular in regard to the financial benefits that accrued to Lewes by virtue of his protegée’s growing fame and commercial success. Carlisle notes several times that Eliot consented to her income, both from her family inheritance and the royalties from her publisher, being paid into Lewes’s account. Without directly implying that Lewes’s interest in his wife’s continued success was prompted largely by self-interest, the inference can easily be made that Eliot’s surrender of her independence, both financial, and as an active participant in the wellbeing of her own literary career was strongly encouraged by Lewes. It’s astonishing to read, especially in light of Eliot’s blazing ambition from a young age to become a great writer, that she happily consented to him shielding her from reviews of her work by cutting them out of publications before she saw them. Such a practice hints strongly at manipulation rather than protection. If she read too many unfavourable reviews, presumably she might become discouraged enough to give up writing altogether and so deprive Lewes of the benefits of her labour.

Giving Lewes such unfettered control of every aspect of her career, as Carlisle suggests, may have been her way of assuaging the disjunction between them in terms of their “improper” alliance, and even of compensating, in a way, for the fact that she was widely perceived, at least in the physical sense, as an unattractive and undesirable mate. (Interestingly Henry James apparently referred to her as “a great horse faced bluestocking”). While her intellectual gifts were unquestionably superior, Eliot was never confident about her womanly appeal.

The great strength of Carlisle’s book is her insightful reading of Eliot’s emotional nature which makes clear that the price of success for her was a physically, emotionally and intellectually demanding striving to coexist as both woman and artist. Contrary to Eliot’s somewhat rapturous statement that “this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength”, Carlisle’s account suggests it wasn’t as straightforward as that.

Compromise, it’s clear, was essential on many levels for Eliot to resolve the contradiction between her longing for a loving soulmate and her yearning for “creative fulfilment”. Such a dilemma posed uncharted challenges to a nineteenth century woman schooled in the belief that dependency on a man (hopefully through marriage) was a worthy ambition or even a necessary precondition to finding the kind of fulfilment her intellect demanded.

Much of Carlisle’s evaluation and interpretation is presented through the perspective of philosophy, not surprisingly as this is her field. It’s not however so heavily academic that it’s beyond the reach of the layperson. On the contrary, Carlisle writes lucidly and with obvious passion about the brilliance of Eliot the writer and the lesser known, but much speculated upon, Eliot the woman. Both aspects of her life were inevitably interdependent however readers who may be more interested in the life and the legend than the literary canon will not be disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar Straus & Giroux for providing me with an advance review copy of the book.