"The Marriage Question"

#2 Clare Carlisle on the life and love of George Eliot

Dear fellow obsessive re-readers,

Some books demand to be read, re-read, annotated, battered in your bag, re-read again, and finally recommended before they allow you to sleep peacefully—The Marriage Question is no exception. After obsessing over it for a while, I thought I’d share this maddeningly good piece of non-fiction in the hopes that you, too, will relish the many passages begging to be underlined. If you have any recommendations for books you religiously re-read, please leave them in the comments for others to discover!

Sending best wishes and sharp pencils,

E

Clare Carlisle’s The Marriage Question is that rare thing, a book about women and about marriage with absolutely no interest in seating charts, dress codes, or colour schemes. Through the letters and works of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Carlisle helps readers investigate not just the life of one of the most prolific and impactful writers of the 19th century, but provides a philosophical investigation into the state of marriage itself. 

Carlisle draws attention to how Eliot “brings a new elasticity to the concept of marriage” (xix) through her life and twenty five year long relationship with George Lewes. Eliot lived with Lewes, as his wife, until his death in 1878 although they were never legally married. Eliot inhabited a significant maternal role in the lives of Lewes’ children and asked her friends to call her Mrs Lewes. Eliot and Lewes’ relationship was long, literary, and, by most accounts, deeply loving although it effectively banished Eliot from polite society.

Eliot’s notion that “a woman of twenty-one is an independent creature... but if she unites herself to a man, she finds herself legislated for” (3) remains depressingly relevant. She reminds us that marriage is an agreement not just between two people, but between two people and the state—and only the state has the ability to change the terms of that agreement. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the crisis of maternal deaths in Sudan, and the thousands of civilian women who have died in Gaza, we are reminded that today “the state” remains as disinterested in the lives of women as ever.

But it is not just the legislative element of marriage that Carlisle helps us sift through, but the idea itself. After beginning her new “married” life with Lewes, Eliot writes to her dear friend Cara, “I am able to enter into your feelings and understand your life so much better. It is a great experience—this marriage!” (41) Carlisle notes:

This letter claims marriage—an ‘experience’ rather than a legal, social, public matter—as something she and Cara have in common. In declaring herself as ‘able to enter’ Cara’s feelings, holding the key to the meaning of her life, she asks her friend to use this same key to enter into *her* inner life—and not to see her as an outcast, a trespasser, a thief. Marian wanted Cara to receive her on the hallowed ground of marriage, to ‘read’ her as a wife.

The context of "thief" is an interesting one. It seems whenever someone redefines what marriage means and looks like for them, there will be some who feel this as an attack or an act of thievery. As if the commitment to a new set of terms somehow delegitimises any standing agreement. But there is also something radical in asking to be read and understood as what you know yourself to be; that does not detract from others, but invites them to do the same. This is especially true when we consider the thousands of people who have lived, and do live, together in a marriage that is not legal only because of the absence of marriage equality. This is not only true of queer couples but also interracial couples and people with disabilities who are prevented from marrying because doing so would reduce their rights to government support.

To read of Eliot and Lewes’s deep connection, their “solitudes à deux,” and Eliot’s proclamation that the simple “secret to (Lewes’s)  lovableness is that he was happy in being kind,” is to sharpen your own sentiment and felt truth about your relationship to the institution we have only just begun to truly question. Marriage has always been contended and debated and controlled. It has been a statement of intent, and a tool for abdication of responsibility by what should be protective institutions. But I don't think that is what marriage was for Eliot.

I have read a great deal of digital discourse about the commodification of weddings. I have seen essays on bridal culture from economic, feminist, racial and religious lenses. We are collectively thinking, and talking, about weddings and how they need to change but not, as far as I can see, about marriage. We ask our friends if they want to “get married” not if they want to “be married” a semantic but I think important distinction. Eliot was never wedded to Lewes, but I think she was married to him—in the way fragrances and flavours can’t be separated once united. This book will provide you with a solid argument for and against marriage. You can paint Eliot as a wife, a thief, an interloper, and a mistress—or any combination of those roles—but not without revealing your beliefs about marriage; not without exposing what lives in you beneath the facts, and the rules, and the law.

Thank you for reading,
Don’t forget to leave your favourite re-reads in the comments if you would like to share!

Dedication:
For N who makes an art of friendship, and D who is happy in being kind.