Eloquent and original.

Intriguing, often brilliant.

Eliot’s imaginative attraction to violently cruel and thwarting marriages, in contrast with her personal investment in a trustful, lasting intimacy, is a fascinating paradox that Clare Carlisle’s interesting book sets out to investigate.

Fascinating.

The paradoxical nature of Eliot’s personality—forthright and elliptical, realistic and spiritual, passionate and analytical—emerges and then recedes, leaving us captivated.

Careful but impassioned..

Excellent.

Does not tell us much about her philosophy of anything, much less her philosophy of love. The book’s broader claims are largely platitudes.

Thrilling.

As Clare Carlisle has shown, balancing breadth of knowledge with an empathetic close reading of her subject’s life and work, Eliot’s greatness – her continuing relevance – needs no special pleading..

Wonderful.

Carlisle’s magisterial book has many facets to it: biographical, philosophical, literary.

Scholarly and thoughtful..

Perceptive and suggestive.

Offers no new information on a life already so well mined, but explores these conflicts, and Eliot’s relationship with Lewes, in a philosophical context.

The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life is Carlisle suggesting, via Eliot, that marriage is perhaps the most ambitious thing an individual might do.

A richly textured and absorbing biographical study.

Carlisle has waded deep into the correspondence, novels, and journals, as well as Eliot criticism old and new.

The Marriage Question really sparkles when Carlisle uses these limited details about Eliot’s private life to inspire her own readings of Eliot’s novels.

The tumultuous love lives of some of English literature's most memorable heroines are examined through a dazzling intellectual prism by Clare Carlisle.

Carlisle explores, in depth, themes of philosophy and marriage in Eliot’s art and life, highlighting dynamics like desire and morality, in a book that combines biography, philosophy, history, and literary interpretation. A listing of illustrations, which includes rare copies of photographs and manuscripts, is a bonus.

Highly illuminating.

Captivating.