"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."
If faithfulness that no one will remember still has value, where do you think that value remains?
What If the World Rests on People History Forgot?
George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who published under a man's name in Victorian England, where women writers were not taken seriously. She believed that the moral choices of ordinary people, not heroes, move society.
She lived for over twenty years with George Henry Lewes, a married man who could not legally divorce, and was shunned by polite society. Her brother Isaac cut off contact for more than two decades, writing to congratulate her only when she formally married in 1880.