Life & Wisdom Quote by George Eliot

Eliot lands the line like a teacup thrown with perfect aim: polite grammar, sharp impact. On the surface it reads as a mischievous epigram about domestic life, but the real target is the era's smug certainty that a woman's "proper function" can be neatly defined at all. She borrows the language of propriety and duty only to make it wobble. If society insists on assigning women a function, she replies, then watch how absurd the assignment becomes when phrased honestly: women are expected to be both adhesive and accelerant, the charm that keeps husbands indoors and the spectacle that pushes unattached men into the world.

The joke turns on that double bind. Wives must be captivating enough to compete with the public sphere, yet also soothing enough to neutralize it; single women must be alluring in a way that flatters male freedom while never threatening male control. Eliot's phrasing "make reasons" is especially telling. It suggests the emotional labor behind the performance: not simply being, but manufacturing explanations, moods, comforts, and incentives so men can feel their choices are natural and justified.

Context matters. Eliot, a woman who lived openly outside conventional marriage and built a serious intellectual career, understood how "proper function" talk operates as social fencing. Her wit here isn't decorative; it's a critique dressed as a compliment, exposing how Victorian gender roles conscript women into managing men's domesticity and men's restlessness at the same time. The line smiles while it indicts.