“Never Too Late…”

Today I serendipitously came across a wonderful quotation by writer/novelist George Eliot. To wit:

“It is never too late to become what you might have been.”

I could write for hours on its implications, but that may be for another time. What was serendipitous was learning something of George Eliot.

First, he was not a man. She was a British woman who wrote and reflected English culture during the Victorian era – a time in which women’s writings were not always respected. She chose a male pseudonym in an attempt to avoid this problem, and it proved quite successful. Her real name was Mary Ann (Marian) Evans; her photo is shown.

Eliot was primarily a novelist whose works revealed her independent-thinking life. She was well educated and very bright, but she was also very affected by her lack of comeliness and self assurance. Her best works were written during the 1860’s while she was in a common-law relationship with philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes.

Her greatest fame occurred posthumously following a biography about Eliot written by her second husband, John Walter Cross. Years later, literary critic Virginia Woolf observed that Eliot’s popular novel, Middlemarch was "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Over the last 20 years, a few of Eliot’s works have been made into movies or TV productions.

Her pith and poignancy is reflected in another of her quotes, and I offer it with my own degree of cynicism with regard to the Fall of this year:

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”

O yes, Happy New Year!