of action involved, by marrying Shelley. When George Eliot chose
to pass her life with Lewes on terms of equal freedom, she defied
the man-made law; but still, there was his wife to prevent the
possibility of a legalized union. As soon as Lewes was dead,
George Eliot showed she had no principle involved, by marrying
another man. Now, _I_ have the rare chance of acting otherwise; I
can show the world from the very first that I act from principle,
and from principle only. I can say to it in effect, 'See, here is
the man of my choice, the man I love, truly, and purely, the man
any one of you would willingly have seen offering himself in lawful
marriage to your own daughters. If I would, I might go the beaten
way you prescribe, and marry him legally. But of my own free will
I disdain that degradation; I choose rather to be free. No fear of
your scorn, no dread of your bigotry, no shrinking at your cruelty,
shall prevent me from following the thorny path I know to be the
right one. I seek no temporal end. I will not prove false to the
future of my kind in order to protect myself from your hateful
indignities. I know on what vile foundations your temple of
wedlock is based and built, what pitiable victims languish and die
in its sickening vaults; and I will not consent to enter it. Here,
of my own free will, I take my stand for the right, and refuse your
sanctions! No woman that I know of has ever yet done that. Other
women have fallen, as men choose to put it in their odious dialect;
no other has voluntarily risen as I propose to do.'" She paused a
moment for breath. "Now you know how I feel," she continued,
looking straight into his eyes. "Say no more at present; it is
wisest so. But go home and think it out, and talk it over with me
tomorrow."