The Marriage Question

George Eliot's Double Life

By: Clare Carlisle

Narrated by: Clare Carlisle

In her mid-thirties, Marian Evans transformed herself into George Eliot—an author celebrated for her genius as soon as she published her debut novel. During those years she also found her life partner, George Lewes-writer, philosopher, and married father of three. After "eloping" to Berlin in 1854, they lived together for twenty-four years: Eliot asked people to call her "Mrs Lewes" and dedicated each novel to her "Husband." Though they could not legally marry, she felt herself initiated into the "great experience" of marriage—"this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength." The relationship scandalized her contemporaries, yet she grew immeasurably within it. Living at once inside and outside marriage, Eliot could experience this form of life-so familiar yet also so perplexing—from both sides.

In The Marriage Question, Clare Carlisle reveals Eliot to be not only a great artist but also a brilliant philosopher who probes the tensions and complexities of a shared life. Through the immense ambition and dark marriage plots of her novels, we see Eliot wrestling—in art and in life—with themes of desire and sacrifice, motherhood and creativity, trust and disillusion, destiny and chance. Carlisle's searching new biography explores how marriage questions grow and change and joins Eliot in her struggle to marry thought and feeling.

©2023 Clare Carlisle (P)2023 Tantor

Beautiful, thoughtful commentary on life and marriage

It took me a while to adjust to the author’s voice and the rather slow pace of its beginning chapters, but by the end I was completely drawn in and appreciative of George Eliot and the author’s incredible analysis of her life and her philosophy as applied to us all.

The Marriage Proposal

I, too, loved this book. Seventy years ago when I read “Silas Miner in high school, I immediately sought to read every thing she wrote.
Reading this wonderful biography, I am again going back to her books. Thank you.

Superb

Deep, perceptive, learned, humane account of a towering intellect and novelist. The author is also an excellent reader.

Loved it loved it loved it

This is a transformative work ! So much to think about and a gorgeous listen on a fascinating subject -

Stunning

One of the best books I’ve ever read! The biography is beautifully and sensitively written and the philosophical investigation of marriage is satisfying. The author skillfully narrates the audible version!

Brilliant

Have read many books on the life and relationship of George Eliot and George Henry Lewes. “The Marriage Question” is truly an amazing analysis of that life as it was lived and as it was reflected in Eliot’s work. A stunning achievement.

Impressive work and reading

So much scholarship and careful analysis make this a work of art in itself; one comes away from reading with at least a sense of who George Eliot really was and why her works are so permanently established.