Summary

Mary Anne Evans was born in the middle of England in 1819. Her father was a carpenter, and she admired his hard work and wisdom. Her mother was often ill after childbirth, and sent her children away to boarding school when she was too weak to raise them. This left her needy for love, and she constantly followed behind her older brother, who soon grew annoyed. This pattern of “her desperate need for love and some man’s exasperated refusal” haunted her life for the next several decades (154).

She desperately craved an outlet for all the love that she had inside of her, and she became obsessively religious as a teenager. At the same time, she was self-aware and criticized her own teenage shortcomings. She began to teach herself Italian and German, while reading a wide variety of literature in many languages. She read books...