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| By Sir Frederick Burton [Public domain] |
Smart and determined lady who gave no fucks. Now who does this remind me of?
I struggled with this one, to be honest. I have promised myself that I will write these cards in the order in which they appear in the box. No one jumped out at me, at first, and much of the biographical information that you read on Eliot concentrates on her physical appearance, the unkind things people said. There is a degree of internalised sexism that stayed my hand a few times before addressing the card; would the recipient think that I was being similarly unkind, in some way? But George Eliot, she was a lady who gave no fucks. Whose great love was technically still married - he and his wife weren't able to be divorced as he allowed himself to be named on the birth certificate of her children by another man, thus making him complicit in adultery. Eliot called him her husband anyway, convention be damned. And I know a few folk who similarly have no time for rubbish. Who do not suffer fools. Who are damn good at what they do. One woman in particular, in fact, whose determination and dedication to her work, to her life's goals, is steadfast.
Her job is hard. Emotionally draining, but she does incredible things. She helps people in the most severe of need, and she is good at it. May she keep on doing it, because we need more people like her.
I never did read Mill on the Floss, or Middlemarch, or Adam Bede. That era of literature was one which failed repeatedly to grab my attention, despite being lauded as classics. I think perhaps that's why I didn't want to read them, I'm not wholly sold on the conventional.
And neither, really, was Eliot. Perhaps I should re-visit...
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