Biography on Biography

I'm wondering to what extent our author's own views of biography are relevant to the paper? Kelsey's comments in class last Wednesday on Gaskell and biography got me thinking, and now it seems like every book I read (or maybe it's just because I'm reading Rosemarie Bodenheimer's biography of Eliot and she seems so concerned with it) talks about Eliot's views on biography. Like everything else in her life, they're complicated (also starting to think this woman never had a simple thought in her life) - she read biography extensively and grappled with her own feelings about autobiography. Eventually she wrote of biography "The best history of a writer is contained in his writings - these are his chief actions." I'm wondering how relevant Eliot's own views of biography are to this paper? I feel like, on the one hand, they are peripheral, but at the same time, if she was conscious of her complex feelings about biography, I feel like that would affect the way she portrayed biographical elements in her own writing. Any other Eliot-ers have thoughts about this?

Fragments

Does anyone else feel like researching how biography informs the novel is like piecing together hundreds of little tiny fragments into a larger picture? It seems to me that every time I sit down to do research, I find another sentence here or there about "someone in Eliot's life who could have possibly inspired X/Y/Z" and then a longer explanation about what Middlemarch is as a book (thanks, read it, feel semi-comfortable with the plot). I'm not sure how to put these little snippets together into a more coherent picture. It's kind of maddening.

Strange theories

In skimming through the introduction to Middlemarch, a critical text by Kerry McSweeney (no relation to the Egger's publishing house, I'm pretty sure) I stumbled upon an anecdote by F. W. H. Myers, who claims that Eliot, when asked about the basis for Casaubon "with a humorous solemnity, which was quite in earnest...pointed to her own heart." I've never in a million years thought of Casaubon's character as having any sort of bedrock in Eliot herself, but maybe this makes sense? I know Eliot, before publishing Middlemarch and following the less-than-spectacular showing of some of her other novels/works, was concerned about her own status as an author and thinker...I wonder if Casaubon's inability to produce any kind of meaningful work is in fact some sort of representation of Eliot's own insecurities as a writer? Probably just the nonsensical musings of my mind after a solid 5-hour Middlemarch marathon today.