The Invention of George Eliot: Is her late marriage a resignation from strong-minded woman?

How should Mary Ann Evans' marriage to John Cross be read?  Her various biographers offer a range of interpretations.  Haight interprets it straightforwardly, as an act of sincere affection. Bodenheimer reads her marriage to Cross as a pragmatic, but also essentially conservative, step.  Redlinger proposes that she married from “a fear of losing her power to love”. . . .Affection, need and practicality are not mutually exclusive, but I believe Evans was motivated less by conservatism than by a desire to assure her recognition in posterity.  In John Cross, loyalty, devotion, attention to detail, knowledge of her private finances, appropriate reverence were all to be found.  When Lewes died, Evans lost the advocate who would have arranged for George Eliot to be handed down to later generations, whether by burial in Westminster Abbey or through the publication of her life and letters.  Her marriage, therefore, continued these efforts and assured her future reputation.