Mary Ann Evans, the woman behind the pen name George Eliot, is most famous for the seven novels that she wrote, including Silas Marner and Middlemarch. However, much of her work and focus contained a heavy moral bent. Early in her life, her family invested in her education because they assumed that she would be too ugly to marry well; later on, she became infamous for a scandalous public affair conducted with a married man, even as she was one of the most well-respected writers of her time. She was influenced by various philosophies that she worked with closely, including Rationalism and Baruch Spinoza’s work on ethics.