GUEST

George Eliot (Marian Evans) did not write under a man's pseudonym "because a Victorian woman couldn't do things like that". In fact, woman novelists were particularly popular in Victorian England - the shining(?) examples being the Bronte sisters.

Unfortunately, most woman novelists in Victorian England were writing books which Evans felt were not sufficiently serious literature, as she indicates in her own essay Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. She wrote under a male pseudonym to get away from this stereotype and did this quite openly (there was never any secret that she was a woman).

She was, in fact, quite radical - having as personal friends many of the women who were later to become suffragettes. She also did one other thing which Victorian women certainly did not do, which was to live openly for 24 years as the mistress of a married man.

:-)
Ian