When I read the passage I quote below (from her essay “Madame de Sablé” in Selected Essays, Poems, and Other Writings), it struck me that she just might. If you don’t get why these words might indicate an opposition to same-sex marriage, then you have little understanding of the serious arguments against extending state recognition of the institution to include same-sex couples.
So, please try to figure out why I typed up this passage so you can better understand my point and their argument.
Without further ado, George Eliot on the complementarity of the sexes:
Let the whole field of reality be open to woman as well as to man, and then that which is peculiar in her mental modification, instead of being, as it is now, a source of discord and repulsion between the sexes, will be found to be a necessary complement to the truth and beauty of life. Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness.
George Eliot recognized that the sexes are very different in their nature – and the joining of the two would make a harmonious whole.
These days it is popular to simply say it’s only religious people who are against gay marriage, since they are tied to an obsolete dogma.
Many secular people will bring up the issue that joining the very different sexes is what makes marriage work – it isn’t about ‘love’.
Those same people and many religious people as well want to see a legal option for gay couples – since it is clear that two men or two woman can create a wonderful loving supportive union.
But when the issue is ‘marriage’ or nothing, these same people will chose nothing.
Indeed, one reasonable measuring stick for the value of a social law or institution is the projected effect if every member of society were to adopt it. In the case of same-sex marriage, quite aside from the difficulty our race would have in procreating itself, one effect would be a total divorcement of the sexes–humanity split in two. The (challenging) union of male and female abilities and the channeling of their combined energies in behalf of the family unit (society’s foundation and future) is uniquely within the power of heterosexual marriage.
Your willingness on this blog to acknowledge the opinions and thought processes of others as valid even when you disagree with their conclusions is the reason I read. Keep it up!
It does sound as though George Eliot wouldn’t have supported gay marriage, but she’s a complicated case. She chose her pen name in large part because she was living with a married man and wanted to avoid scandal; she’s a defender of marriage, but hardly a traditional one.
It’s always tricky to think of what a historic figure would have done today. Does anybody really know, for example, what Abraham Lincoln would have thought of the War on Terror? One could argue that, based on his House Divided speech, that he would support making all the world free. One could also argue that his opposition to the Mexican-American War was a sign that he would oppose foreign adventuring.
More politics please……
It may happen sooner rather than later that we are debating a President Biden first term. What happens if a President is tainted by scandal before inaugeration? Does his VP automatically get elevated? Any constitutional scholars out there?
Hubbard, good points. I just re-read The Mayor of Casterbridge and at several points, I wondered about the implications of the roles of the sexes in a traditional relationship, at the time of the novel’s setting, at the time the novel was written, and now. How much of the idea of the natural complement (necessary, says Eliot) of man and woman is due to cultural roles and how much to biology? The novel is a searing portrait of a man who, after making a tragic mistake, is doomed to love too much, too passionately and without the ability to show it — and is thereby estranged from love itself. He is most hurt by the rejection of a male friend to whom he gave his start in his business and when coupled with his own rejection of women, I had to stop myself from reading an implied latent homosexuality.
Eliot mentions a marriage of minds and I believe that to be free of gender, of roles (excepting that of respect), and of expectation. But a marriage of minds can mean many things.
I really wish this conversation were taking place on a larger stage. I would so prefer civilized debate to “hiding in the closet” as my friends rail against “bigotry” and “homophobia.” And Mormons.
Hubbard, Eliot did break with the conventions of her day by living with a married man. She is also one of the greatest defenders of marriage. Not everyone can live up to the ideal – she is a clear case of such a person.
My impression is that most people who do not want to see a radical change in the definition of marriage are like Eliot. They recognize the good this institution does for society, but are willing to find a way to compromise for the good of individuals – i.e. civil unions for gay couples.
Eliot took a great risk in living with a married man, she literally had to hide behind her pen name. She probably faced a lot of loneliness and ostracism from the society around her. In the last year of her life she actually did marry – probably not for love but simply because as an older woman in the 19th century – with no immediate family – she needed a form of support. (not financial, but as an older woman who had rejected the norms of society for too long).
If anything her personal experience probably taught her that yes, one can take great risks for love – but one also ends up paying a high price. Marriage is a contract within society, it isn’t a stand alone institution.
I guess nowadays George Eliot would have been considered a “gender feminist,” somewhere along the lines of a Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter.
ATTN Gene in PA – regarding the implications of a President-Elect who cannot be inaugurated, the House of Representatives would then select a President per Article II of the Constitution.
Regards,
Peter H.