Portrait of George Eliot
National Portrait Gallery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

In the final sentence of her novel Middlemarch, George Eliot describes Dorothea, the novel’s most important character. According to Eliot, heroes aren’t grand historical figures but ordinary individuals.

Dorothea’s goodness radiates like ripples in the world, and her actions are daily choices of integrity that help bring about moral progress. While people like her may be forgotten, we all benefit from the good people who went before us. She wants to achieve something historic but learns to temper her ambitions by helping to ameliorate the suffering that surrounds her. The final sentence resonated with me. It was at least a temporary reminder of all those good but forgotten people who made the world a little better by their presence.

Most of all, it reminded me of my wife Jane, who has helped raise our autistic grandson these past 9 years and now cares for both him and his two-year-old brother. She does this for neither pay nor praise. She does it for love. She is simply the best person I’ve ever known, and my life has been enriched and blessed by being with her for 46 years. I don’t deserve her, but fortune has shone upon me.

It is unlike me to quote the Bible, but Jane is “a lily among thorns.” Song of Solomon 2:2

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