How much thought, dear Reader, do you put into the choices you make? No doubt some choices require more thought than others. Whether to have broccoli or brussels sprouts with your dinner tonight won’t take up nearly as much time or brain power as whether to take one job offer over another.
The decisions we make quickly and easily involve much lower stakes than the choices that require a considerable amount of our time and attention. Making the wrong choice of side dish has the potential to result in a slightly lower level of satisfaction with our meal, whereas the wrong choice of job could result in lower pay now, or in the future as a result of reduced prospects for advancement. It could mean a longer commute, the difference between working in a cubicle or an office with windows, or working with people we like rather than people we can’t stand. Some of these results we won’t even know about until the decision has already been made, and that’s what can make the decision so difficult to make.
Most of us think of the consequences of the decisions we make in terms of how they’ll affect us, but what about how they affect others? What about the effects those decisions could have on people long into the future, decades, even centuries after we’re gone?
If we accept the possibility that the choices we make now can have a profound impact on people not yet born, it stands to reason that the decisions made by people long ago affect the world in which we now live. I don’t mean where your ancestors chose to settle down or laws passed by the government of the country in which you now reside. I mean the seemingly innocuous decision of whether to write under a pen name.
Consider the writer Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot. What if she had decided not to use a man’s name? What if, instead, she had chosen to write under the name her parents gave her? How would that have affected our ability to read her work now?
Thanks to the fame and well-established respect for her writing, you can easily access any one of her books at almost any library or bookstore. There are even digital versions available online for free. But would that be the case if she had kept her name?
Consider a world in which you have to hunt down the few surviving copies of her work? What might that alternate reality be like?
Let’s listen in on a conversation between two people in that alternate reality as they discuss the merits of a little-known writer named Mary Ann Evans.
“So, tell me more about this Mary Ann Evans. I’m sure she’ll be of great interest to our listeners.”
“Absolutely, from what I know of your listeners, Mary Ann Evans is right up their alley. She was a Victorian novelist whose work was very well-known during her lifetime, but stopped getting published after her death, probably because of her scandalous love affair with her publisher.”
“Oh, that sounds juicy.”
“Very juicy, especially since he was married.”
“Really?”
“Yes, at least legally. He and his wife had separated, but at that point in time, there was a window of time in which you could get divorced, and he and his wife missed that window. So they remained legally married, but they lived apart and led lives completely separate from each other. She was off living the Bohemian dream, if you will, and he was living with his mistress in London, and they both seemed pretty happy with that arrangement. The only one who was not happy was Mary Ann, who was shunned by polite society due to the fact that she was living with a married man. Of course, he did not suffer any real consequences as a result of their relationship. As usual, it was the woman who bore the brunt of society’s disapproval. But then she started publishing her novels and they were hugely successful, and then she was suddenly accepted by polite society.”
“So, she got the last say.”
“Well, sort of. In her lifetime, yes. But after she died, her work fell out of favor and was almost forgotten. And it’s such a shame because her writing is so, so good. It can be a little difficult to get through sometimes, but it’s well worth the effort. She was such a master of psychology and the inner mind and how it comes through in the things we say and do – and in the things we don’t say or do.”
“So, where can our listeners find one of her books if they’re interested?”
“Right now her books can be pretty hard to track down, but I’m working with some of my colleagues to get her work back in print. Those of us who are familiar with her work consider Middlemarch to be her masterpiece, but it’s very long, so right now we’re focusing on one of her shorter works, and that’s called The Mill on the Floss, which is also very, very good. If your listeners are interested in supporting our efforts, they can go to our Patreon page to make a donation. Every little bit helps.”
“Excellent. And we will include a link to your Patreon page in the show notes, so anyone interested in being a part of bringing history back to life can go there to do their part to make it happen. Thank you so much for coming on our show to tell us about this little-known author.”
“Thank you so much for having me. The more people who know about Mary Ann Evans, the better.”
The end.