British novelist Mary Anne Evans, aka George Eliot, was born today in 1819. Typical of secretive Scorpio, she created a male pen name so she’d be taken seriously as a writer. She also wanted her career separated from her private life, because she lived openly with George Henry Lewes, a married man. This independent streak and disregard for social propriety was the outcome of having Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Neptune in freewheeling Sagittarius. These fiery placements also made her a gifted and outspoken writer. She often tackled political issues of Victorian society in her books. After Lewes’s death, she created controversy once again when, at the age of 60, she married a man 20 years younger. She died of an infection and kidney disease just seven months later.
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Silas Marner was an incredible novel, a really magnificent creation. Miss Evans was indeed a highly progressive individual and one cannot help admire her elegance and wit in prose. Last winter, when my wife was ill with the flu, I amused her by reading passages from ‘the Mill on the Floss.’ High level of wit, indeed, and this was one author who didn’t mind poking more than a bit of fun at conventional Victorian mores and beliefs. Great bio of her. Thanks for sharing it.