George Eliot (1819-1880)

 British novelist, poet, translator and journalist. Author of novels such as Middlemarch (1871), Daniel Deronda (1876), The Mill on the Floss (1860).

"I think it is possible for this sort of impersonal life to attain great intensity - possible  for us to gain more independence, than usually believed, of the small bundle of facts that make our own personality. [...] We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life - some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed - because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this sort of defence against passionate affliction even more than men."

Geroge Eliot in "The George Eliot Letters"

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