Intro
Ah, those stuffy old Victorians. They're just such easy targets. We could spend all day talking about why a woman with such a remarkable intellect had to use a man's name to get any of her books published. (Newsflash, in case you didn't know: George Eliot's real name was Mary Anne Evans.)
Of course, at the time, the message was: Women do not write books. They have babies and sit up straight while drinking tea. No, really, that's what many great thinkers of the day thought, including Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. (Newsflash number two: equality is a long way away.)
Because Darwin saw females of different species doing certain things, and males doing other things, he assumed those were the roles "Nature" gave all females and all males of every species. Um. You went a little overboard, dude.
Science was a big deal to the Victorians, to say the least. But only men did science, so they thought a scientific mind could only belong to a man. They saw it as their masculine duty to pursue rational thought though scientific inquiry, classification, and theorizing. Women were, to put it mildly, viewed as too emotional and stupid to be scientists.
What these guys didn't get was that their blatant sexism was blinding them to other ways of seeing the world. And you know what a good scientist does? She considers all perspectives. So really, if you're a sexist and heterosexist scientist, then you're probably a bad scientist.
George Eliot—or Mary Anne Evans, if you prefer—was all about critiquing the Victorians' silly, oppressive views of the "biological capabilities" of men and women. Sing it, sister.
Quote
For Rosamond never showed any unbecoming knowledge and was always that combination of correct sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note writing, private album for extracted verse, and perfect blond loveliness, which made the irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date. Think no unfair evil of her pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or mercenary, in fact, she never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide. She was not in the habit of devising falsehoods and if her statements were no direct clew to fact, they were not intended in that light—they were among her elegant accomplishments, intended to please.
Analysis
Dr. Tertius Lydgate chooses his mate, Rosamond, like he's buying a horse at an auction. Gross. As a rational man of science, he wants to couple up according to his "strictly scientific view"… because that's how we decide who we're crushing on, Shmoopers.
Many see the Dr. Lydgate character as a critique of Herbert Spencer. See, Eliot was dating this Darwinist philosopher dude, but she said she'd never marry him because Spencer saw her as too ugly. You read that right.
"Science" was twisted around in the Victorian dude-guy's mind to mean that only cute women should breed. If they believed in the "survival of the fittest," per Darwin, they thought that only attractive people should have babies.
Science and rational thought was for boys, "elegant note writing" was for girls… and so was having babies, but only if you were a hottie. Got it? Stick to your assigned performances, ladies, or the menfolk might get angry.
One can imagine that Judith Butler might've walked around like one ragey feminist Hulk if she had to live in Victorian England. There was nothing comfortable to wear. And women were expected to say silly, uneducated things; a woman's statements, if they "were no direct clew to fact," were to be viewed as an "elegant accomplishment."
Rosamond dons her gender role—her elegant "entertaining" ignorance—just as she laces up a corset or pulls on stockings.
Here, Eliot seems to have paved the way for Butler way back in the Victorian Era. When we think of Butler's idea of gender as a costume, we can imagine Rosamond fixing her hair in the mirror, deciding just what kind of a lady she will be that evening. Which dress will she wear? Which of the "correct sentiments" will she discuss?
Certainly she would never discuss money because business was too harsh a topic for a lady. That "hat" doesn't fit a woman. Finance was something only those superior male brains could handle. You can practically imagine some gentleman in the drawing room remarking, "Rosamond says a lot of silly things, but her posture is perfection."
The Victorian period still haunts us; strict gender roles linger. And our gender costumes are beat to shreds. Though many women are well educated and hold powerful jobs, they still feel pressure to perform their gender. (Don't even consider not wearing make-up to a shareholders meeting, are we right?)
Eliot directly critiques these Victorian masculine and feminine performances. She read much of Origin of a Species before Darwin published it, and had a lot to say on the subject.
She had a remarkable intellect. But because scholarship and authorship were reserved for men during that time, she had to mask her true identity. And not in a playful, Mardi Gras kind of way.
Like we said, Eliot's real name was Mary Ann Evans. So you can think of "George Eliot" as Ms. Evans's own personal closet. And George Eliot, well before Judith Butler, used her characters to critique the science of her time.
"I need not crush myself…within a mould of theory called Nature!"