Mary Ann Evans wanted to escape the stereotype of women’s writing being limited to lighthearted romances. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her widely known work as a translator, editor and critic. Her use of a pen name may also have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny, avoiding the scandal that might have arisen from of her relationship with the marriedGeorge Henry Lewes.

Lewes met writer Mary Ann Evans in 1851 and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes and his wife Agnes Jervis had agreed to have anopen marriage. Jervis had three children with Lewes and four with an unnamed lover . Lewes, having assumed the role of father to all the children, was unable to divorce Jervis but he and Eliot remained together until death.

Eliot was not what society considered beautiful however Henry James…

From the window of my house

as quiet as as a river I can watch

the moon shiver in the breeze

through the fronds of palm trees.

Hibiscus wave like children

their mouths move silently,

hands of garland reach out to

one another.

I am grateful for the sweet

drape of your eyes that like

fluttering wings of birds lift

the shawl of darkness where in

the light prismatic butterflies

breach their chrysalis and

vanish in the arching sky.

These are the riches

the golden sunlight passing through us.

Pink sand pulls away

from the glistening shore

melting fondant in the

sticky heat

Minute ecosystems inhabit

tiny grottoes in tide pools

of wet sand

Some days I stroll the coast alone

escaping into secret realms of lovers

where there is no logic but

an aching crush I hold to my breast

a passage betweena heart and the

mountains where I left you

Allow me to come undone beneath

tender hands on eggshell

the gentle quake of a sigh upon your

unshaven cheek

Let me   drown in the green river of

your eyes where there

is no threat of war hard silence

or the burden of forgiveness