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Let’s Meet Mary Anne: A MonologueBy Ruth Livesey, with Natalie Reeve (Centre for Victorian Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London)Dear friends! It’s a joy to be here today. I’m with you because it’s my 200th birthday this year – don’t you think I look good for my age? – and people in Nuneaton and all over the world are remembering me and my books. They all know the famous name: [sounding sententious] ‘George Eliot!’ But round here I was always plain old Mary Anne Evans. I once wrote a poem in which I said the only real heaven was living on in people’s thoughts, living again ‘in minds made better by their presence’. So here I am, still trying to encourage us to be a bit more generous about other people, and always reach for the good, however hard it might be. It’s strange for me to be back in this place where it all began. I was born just up the road, and my parents got married in the church here. My mother’s family worked farms in Astley, and my father helped the Colonel manage the castle. I’d visit aunts and uncles here, sit in the church, walk the muddy lanes – or, sometimes, I’d go with my father, and visit farms, woods, big halls and cottages. I was always listening, picking up stories, remembering the pictures of places I’d seen. Sometimes, when I was much older, I’d drift off in my chair in London and it was all so clear to me: the bushy hedgerows, the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and the trees leaned, the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture, the high bank where the ash-trees grew, the red slope of the old marl-pit, the huddled roofs of farms…I never felt I fitted in when I was growing up. I was never pretty enough, good enough, sweet enough – never what people thought a girl should be. I should hope people don’t think like that now! [wink] I was always getting in trouble with my big brother and making him cross, even though I loved him. After my mother died I had big rows with my father about religion, and when I refused to keep going to church with him, it looked like I might end up being homeless. I was just trying to do what I thought was right! In the end, I stayed to care for my father when he became ill. I was with him when he died, and I was so glad to be. After that, I got the train to London! The provincial life I had here was starting to make me feel trapped, always being watched and talked about by some cousin or aunt. I left – but when I told my family I’d moved in with a man I hadn’t married, they never spoke to me again. I realised then that I could never come back here, not in real life. I was with my partner for the rest of his life – I was rich, and read and celebrated by people all over the world! But my brothers, my sisters, my cousins in Nuneaton – they just couldn’t forgive me. Maybe that’s why in my dreams – and in my stories – I’m always back here. My first stories, Scenes of Clerical Life, were about the people who worked here at Astley, and at Chilvers Coton and Stockingford, though I made up different names for them. I was nearly forty when I got my first stories published – writing and telling good stories really is the work of a lifetime! But I knew I couldn’t publish the stories as Mary Anne Evans, because I had such a bad reputation. So I made up a false identity as ‘George Eliot’, a respectable old clergyman, and used that for all my books. I think my brother and sister guessed it was me though, and they were furious! They thought I was sharing all sorts of old family skeletons and scandals just to sell my stories. I always tried to say that art is not the same as life, and that the old family stories were just inspiration… mind you, I was a bit embarrassed when I based one of my characters on a really, really boring man in Coton, and he read the book and recognised himself! I wonder how you’d feel if you recognised yourself in a story – whether you’d try and write to the author like he did? Though he was probably right to be annoyed: in my story, I’d described him as the most boring, mediocre, dull man there ever was, and told all my readers about how much he sniffed and how the only good thing about him was his lovely wife who he didn’t appreciate properly. I don’t think you’d like it if someone wrote that about you, would you?! I thought he’d died – but it turned out he’d only moved to Yorkshire. After that, I started to look a bit further afield for my stories… But I stay with what I said in my first novel, Adam Bede. We’ve got to have stories with characters that feel real and which make us have real feelings for them, stories about what happens to us – or could happen to us in different circumstances. If we only come across stories in which everyone is perfect, beautiful, clever – always in the best light with no spots – or if bad people are wicked through and through… well, it’s a struggle to get on with everyday life after those sorts of stories, isn’t it? I want stories that show everyday middling mixed sorts of people. Some might have lumpy noses, but they’re the smartest person you’ll meet if you listen carefully. Some are quite good-looking, but they’re still terribly annoying before breakfast. Some are real hypocrites and cheats, but also loving fathers. My stories don’t just show you a character who seems real – I want stories to pull you into the middle of things, until you feel what it might be like to be that person, even if they’re someone you’d cross the road to avoid in real life. I wanted to write about Nuneaton for the same reason. It was what I knew best, but it’s also right in the middle of England. We’re right in the middle in every sense: our landscape doesn’t have any big mountains or stormy seas, and we get on quietly with fairly ordinary everyday working lives. But that’s why I wanted to write about it. Just because something seems everyday and ordinary, that doesn’t mean it’s not important or beautiful, if we look at it with care and love! Workshop Leader Notes:Reading Room: 11.00; 11.45; 1.15Meet Mary Anne EvansWe’re going to ask Mary Anne to introduce herself to you. In front of you have slates and slate pencils, just like she would have had at her first school in the Victorian period. Once you’ve listened to what Mary Anne has to say, I want you to work in pairs and come up with two follow-up questions for Mary Anne and write them on your slate.The first question should be about her life: where she lived, her family, what she did at school or something like that. If you were writing a biography of Mary Anne Evans, what question would you start with to get to know her?The second question should be about her writing: try and find something out about the sorts of things she wrote, what interested her, when she wrote her books, what they were called, what they were about, where they were set. If you were interviewing a favourite author of yours now, what would you want to ask them to find out more about the books you love?So – just to remember, write a heading on each side of your slate: LIFE/biography and WRITING/books. ................
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