Adam Bede

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Title Adam Bede
Author George Eliot
Country England
Language English
Genre(s) Historical novel
Publisher John Blackwood
Released 1859
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN NA

Adam Bede is the first novel written by George Eliot and was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Eliot (whose real name was "Mary Ann Evans") was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time. The novel has remained in print ever since, and is used in university studies of 19th century English literature.[1][2]

Contents

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1967),

"the plot is founded on a story to George Eliot by her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris of the novel, of a confession of child-murder, made to her by a girl in prison."

The story's plot follows four characters rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love triangle between beautiful but thoughtless Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged lover, and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent Methodist lay preacher.

Adam is a local carpenter, in love with Hetty. She is attracted to the local squire's grandson and falls in love with him. When Adam interrupts a tryst between them, Adam and Arthur fight. Arthur leaves Hayslop to return to his militia. After he leaves, Hetty discovers she is pregnant. She agrees to marry Adam but shortly before their marriage, has second thoughts and leaves in search of Arthur. She cannot find him; unwilling to return to the village and shame her family, she delivers her baby anonymously. She kills the child by abandoning it in a field, where it dies of exposure.

She is caught and tried for child murder. She is found guilty and sentenced to hang. When Arthur Donnithorne, on leave from the militia for his grandfather's funeral, hears of her impending execution, he races to the court and has the sentence commuted to transportation.

Ultimately, Adam and Dinah, who has always loved the carpenter, marry and live peacefully with his family.

Spoilers end here.

The importance of the Lyrical Ballads to the way Adam Bede is written has often been noted. Like its model, Adam Bede features minutely detailed empirical and psychological observations about illiterate "common folk" who, because of their greater proximity to nature than to culture, are taken as emblematic of human nature in its more pure form. So behind its humble appearance this is a novel of great ambition.[3]

Genre painting and the novel arose together as middle-class art forms and retained close connections until the end of the nineteenth century. According to Richard Stang, it was a French treatise of 1846 on Dutch and Flemish painting that first popularized the application of the term realism to fiction.[4] And certainly it is with Dutch, Flemish, and English genre painting that George Eliot's realism is most often compared. She herself invites the comparison in chapter 17 of Adam Bede, and Mario Praz applies it to all of her work in his study of The Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction.[5]

Immediately recognized as a significant literary work, Adam Bede has enjoyed a largely positive critical reputation since its publication. An anonymous review in The Athenaeum in 1859 praised it as a "novel of the highest class," and The Times called it "a first-rate novel." Contemporary reviewers, often influenced by nostalgia for the earlier period represented in Bede, enthusiastically praised Eliot's characterizations and realistic representations of rural life. Charles Dickens wrote:

"The whole country life that the story is set in, is so real, and so droll and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you." (Hunter, S. 122)

In fact, in early criticism, the tragedy of infanticide has often been overlooked in favor of the peaceful idyllic world and familiar personalities Eliot recreated.[6]

Other critics have been less generous. Henry James, among others, resented the narrator's interventions. In particular, Chapter 15 has fared poorly among scholars because of the author's/narrator's moralizing and meddling in an attempt to sway readers' opinions of Hetty and Dinah. Other critics have objected to the resolution of the story. In the final moments, Hetty, about to be executed for infanticide, is saved by her seducer, Arthur Donnithorne. Critics have argued that this deus ex machina ending negates the moral lessons learned by the main characters. Without the eleventh hour reprieve, the suffering of Adam, Arthur, and Hetty would have been more realistically concluded. In addition, some scholars feel that Adam's marriage to Dinah is another instance of the author's/narrator's intrusiveness. These instances have been found to directly conflict with the otherwise realistic images and events of the novel.[6]

Character list sourced from GradeSaver[7]

  • The Bede family
    • Adam Bede: The hero of this novel is an upright and moral carpenter. He is Seth's brother and Lisbeth's son. He is a great friend of the Captain, who makes him steward of his estate. Adam is in love with Hetty Sorrel.
    • Seth Bede: Seth Bede is Adam's younger brother. He is also a carpenter, but, unlike his brother, he is a Methodist. Seth is very patient with his mother, and he is in love with Dinah Morris.
    • Lisbeth Bede: Lisbeth is married to Thias Bede, and is mother of Adam and Seth. She has a fretful personality and is always worrying, particularly about her oldest son. She is worried about either of her sons getting married because she is afraid that this will render her useless in the household.
    • Thias Bede: Thias is Adam's and Seth's father. He used to be a very good father and taught his boys carpentry, but towards the end of his life he became an alcoholic. He dies by drowning in a stream early in the novel.
    • Gyp: Adam Bede's faithful dog.
  • The Poyser family
    • Mr. Martin Poyser (the elder): Martin Poyser's grandfather lives with the Poyser family on their large farm. He generally just watches the action, being too old to participate.
    • Mr. Martin Poyser (the younger): This dairy farmer is a jolly man whose only hard words are reserved for farmers who do not do their jobs well. Hetty is his niece, and, being very fond of Adam Bede, Martin hopes that the two might marry.
    • Mrs. Poyser: Mrs. Poyser is an excellent dairy farmer. She speaks her mind quite strongly and can be hard on her family, but generally she is fairly wise.
    • Hetty Sorrel: Hetty lives on Mr. Poyser's dairy farm because she is his niece. She is an extremely pretty girl, admired by Mr. Craig and Adam Bede as well as the Captain. She does not have many attractive personal qualities, however, and is very vain and selfish.
    • Dinah Morris: Dinah is a quiet, pious young woman who is a Methodist preacher. At the beginning of the novel, she lives at the Poyser Farm because she is Mrs. Poyser's niece. Despite the fact that she is an attractive woman, she seems to show no signs of self-consciousness while she preaches.
    • Totty: Totty, whose real name is Charlotte, is the Poysers' youngest child. She is a fat toddler who is quite spoiled.
    • Marty: A nine-year-old son of the Poysers.
    • Tommy: A seven-year-old son of the Poysers.
    • Judith: Mrs. Poyser's dead sister, Dinah's aunt. She was also a Methodist.Dinah strongly reminds Mrs. Poyser of Judith.
    • Molly: Molly is the Poysers' housemaid.
  • The Donnithorne family
    • Arthur Donnithorne (the Captain): The Captain is the heir to the estate of his grandfather and therefore is the future landlord of many of the characters in the novel. At only twenty-one, he is a healthy, attractive boy who has very little self-control. He is in love with Hetty Sorrel.
    • Squire Donnithorne (the old Squire): The old Squire is the Captain's grandfather. He is a formal old man who dislikes his grandson and who is disliked by most of his tenants because he manages the land badly.
    • Miss Lydia: Miss Lydia is a formal woman who is Arthur's aunt. Arthur surmises that his grandfather will cut her off in his will to improve Arthur's inheritance, despite the fact that Miss Lydia has waited on the old Squire for his whole life.
    • Mr. Casson: A stout man, Mr. Casson has been a butler for the Donnithornes for fifteen years.
    • Mr. Craig: Mr. Craig is the Donnithornes' gardener. He is in love with Hetty Sorrel, but his first love is hot house plants. He is vaguely Scottish; Eliot says that this is because "all French teachers are Parisian and all gardeners are Scottish."
    • Mrs. Best: Mrs. Best is the Donnithornes' housekeeper.
    • Gawaine: This young nobleman is a friend of Arthur Donnithorne's, whom he often dines with.
    • Mrs. Pomfret: Mrs. Pomfret is Miss Lydia's lady's maid. Hetty has tea with her every Thursday and is learning from her how to knit lace.
  • The Irwine family
    • Parson Irwine (the vicar): The old vicar is a comfortable sort of person who has remained a bachelor for his whole life. He is not religious in an intense way, and he is respected and well liked by his parishioners. He takes very good care of his mother and invalid sister.
    • Mrs. Irwine: The parson's mother is a stately old woman. One can see her good breeding in the noble cut of her face and chin. She has no patience for unattractive people. She encourages her godson, Arthur, to marry a "handsome" woman.
    • Miss Anne: The vicar's invalid sister has a very small role in the novel, usually being too sick to leave her bed.
  • The Burge family
    • Mr. Jonathan Burge: Mr. Burge is the master carpenter whom Adam Bede works for. Many people expect Adam to marry Mary Burge so that he can become partners with her father.
    • Mary Burge: Mary is in love with Adam Bede. She is a sallow-faced, unremarkable girl.
  • Wiry Ben: Wiry Ben is a joker who works in the shop with the Bede brothers. He thinks that his solo dancing is very good.
  • Chad Cranage: Chad, the town blacksmith, has an extremely silly wife.
  • Chad's Bess: Chad's wife is extremely buxom and red cheeked. Like Hetty, she is extremely vain and wears gaudy earrings, which Dinah's preaching convinces her to take off temporarily.
  • Joshua Rann: The village shoemaker is very proud of his skills on the fiddle and plays at the Chase while Wiry Ben dances.
  • Timothy's Bess: Timothy's Bess should really be called after her husband, who is Sandy Jim. She is the cousin of Chad's Bess.
  • Sandy Jim: Sandy Jim is a local man who also works in Mr. Burge's shop.
  • Will Maskery: A contentious wheelmaker, Will Maskery was a lot less responsible until he "found" Methodism.
  • Bartle Massey: Bartle Massey is the slightly lame schoolmaster. He is a confirmed bachelor, but he only moved to Hayslope twenty years before, so it is unclear whether he was married previously. He teaches Adam Bede at night school.
  • Vixen: Vixen is Bartle Massey's female dog, which has just had pups.
  • Mr. Thurle: A possible new tenant for the old Squire.
  • Colonel Towley: This magistrate rides through Hayslope and hears Dinah preach there.

Honour is an ancient theme with special resonance in mediaeval times, which is fitting in a novel set in a town that has an almost feudal landlord. There are two types of honour in this novel: that of females, and that of males. Female honour is fairly passive and relies entirely on chastity. If women lose this chastity, they are helpless to regain their honour. Male honour is more complicated and more active. Honor is tied up in their profession, land, and overall identity. When Adam runs away as a young boy because of family unhappiness, he chooses to return partially in order to maintain the honor of his family by keeping it economically afloat. He knows that the only way to provoke Arthur to fight is by insulting his honour, so instead of reproaching him, he calls him a coward.[7]

The novel includes a few examples of true love based on mutual attraction. One positive example of mutual love is the relationship between Adam and Dinah at the end of the novel. But it takes others around them to work out their feelings for them, showing that it is not only mutual love that is important, but also a mutual love that is recognized and supported by both of the families of the lovers. Indeed, society matters for love; in other relationships, the complicating factor is always socioeconomic class, because the novel is set in a time period when marriage was more of a contract than a romantic affair. This problem extends to both men and women. Adam Bede is expected to marry Mary Burge merely because it would be an advantageous business proposition. Afterwards, he could become partners with her father, a man who had been his boss. What is more, there are two class-related barriers to a love affair between Arthur and Hetty. The first is obvious: Arthur cannot easily marry someone so far below his social class. The second is more subtle: it is unclear whether Hetty would be as attracted to Arthur if it were not for his wealth. When she does dream of their future together, she imagines the luxuries that he could provide her with, rather than the life that they could have together. There is even an impediment to Adam's courtship of Hetty, a pair who might seem to be of the same social stratum. Before his promotion to steward of the forest, some townspeople say that Adam is reaching too high trying to land the niece of a large dairy farmer.[7]

Nature is a constant presence in all of Eliot's novels. Unlike many romantic novelists, she does not make the weather correspond directly with her principal characters' moods or feelings. Rather, she comments on the sort of injustice that the weather always seems to be at its most beautiful when man is going through a particular hardship. This disconnection of natural life from human life is part of Eliot's literary doctrine of painstaking realism. Rather than have the weather reflect her characters' feelings, she quite accurately has her characters mark their memories and experiences in the context of their actual environment. Adam marks his movement from happiness to adulthood by the beech tree that he contemplated moments before seeing Hetty and Arthur kiss under it. Hetty marks her homeward journey not to return to the family farm, but to regain some scenery that is familiar to her. Dinah and Adam always refer to his interception of her in Snowfield and their agreement to marry as "the meeting on the hill."[7]

Eliot wrote Adam Bede at the time that the Industrial Revolution was beginning to change the face of life in Britain. More and more ingenious inventions meant that farmers were caught up in industry, and many moved away from their small towns into bigger cities. The village that Eliot portrays is a holdout against this new lifestyle, but the presence of new industry is indicated by the mill that Dinah works at when she is home. Eliot comments that Dinah is drawn to this town as well as to the industrial town of Leeds which, along with Manchester, was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. Dinah is drawn to such towns because of the great misery in them. Eliot seems to side with many poets and authors in lamenting the onset of industry insofar as it alienates people from nature. Eliot personifies the spirit of Leisure in contrast to this new industry, describing him as a portly old gentleman with excellent digestion.[7]

As a novel which centers on an infanticide by a mother, Adam Bede is necessarily preoccupied with motherhood. The most obvious example of a strong mother figure is Lisbeth Bede, who loves her son, Adam, almost too much. She is constantly worried about where he is, what he is doing, and whether he has had enough to eat. Her constant nagging, which irritates Adam, also shames him. Lisbeth's relationship with Seth is a much easier one, perhaps because she loves him just a little less — and therefore nags him just a little less. It is important to note that neither Hetty nor Dinah has a mother anymore. Both of them were orphaned and live with their uncle or aunt, respectively. The lack of a mother figure affects each of them profoundly. Dinah quickly grows into a mother figure herself, looking after and waiting on others before herself. Seth describes a young boy even climbing into her lap to be held during one of her preaching sessions. Hetty, in contrast, lacking strong guidance, grows up vain and petty. When she has a child of her own, admittedly under extremely tough circumstances, she kills it by burying it. She does have some motherly feelings, however, noting that she could not bear to look at its "little hands or little face" before she buried it. She imagines that she continues to hear it crying. This is why she returns to the spot where she buried it, and this is why she is apprehended as a criminal.[7]

Because religion (in particular, Methodism) is of such importance in this novel, the issue of sacrifice — and its nobility — comes up quite often. The character most inclined toward sacrifice, Dinah, is also the most religious. Dinah is content to spend her life serving others if she thinks that she can bring them some comfort. This notion of sacrifice is parodied by Mrs. Poyser, who thinks that Dinah takes the idea to an extreme. Mrs. Poyser is upset that Dinah moves back and forth between different parishes, trying to calculate in which one the life is hardest so that she can choose the one needing the most help. Her aunt says of Dinah that she would only marry if the man were a Methodist and lame, consistent with her doctrine of help and sacrifice. Dinah must struggle against her conscience in order to allow herself to marry Adam, because she thinks that she loves him too much--it would be too little of a sacrifice. Eliot makes it clear that this argument (if not Dinah's whole perspective on sacrifice) is somewhat ridiculous, and besides, Dinah changes her mind in a short time and agrees to marry Adam. Eliot suggests that sacrifice is worthwhile for the most part, but not to an extent whereby it prevents overall personal happiness or other goods such as the creation of a family.[7]

The issue of female identity is often at the forefront of George Eliot's novels, even in one named after a man, such as Adam Bede. Of course, in the mid-Victorian period Eliot was writing in a male-dominated world; for instance, she saw a need to assume a male pen-name in order to protect her identity and popularize her writing. Among the most memorable characters in the novel are women with strong voices who are attached to men.[7]

The most confident female character is Dinah Morris , who asserts her identity to Lisbeth Bede in Chapter Ten, announcing:

"I am Dinah Morris and I work in the cotton-mill when I am at home."

Dinah is also a confident and effective female preacher. Her resistance to marriage because she is worried that it will curtail her religious teaching is resolved by Eliot in a manner calculated not to upset the male hierarchy. It turns out that Dinah was not in fact prevented from a traditional marriage by religiosity, but rather by the fact that no man that she truly loved had yet asked her to marry him. Indeed, she quiets into a typical housewife at the end of the novel, even consenting to discontinue her preaching because the Methodist men have decided that it is not a good idea.[7]

Another strong female voice in Adam Bede is Mrs. Poyser. She is much more intelligent than her husband, and she has much more control over their farm than he does. She inevitably has her "say out," which involves working up her courage to tell her hated landlord what everyone in the community thinks of him. She prefaces this opinion with,

"Then, sir, if I may speak--as for all I'm a a woman, and there's folks as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men sign her soul away, I've a right to speak..."

Still, Mrs. Poyser's marriage to Mr. Poyser gives her an added ethos in contrast to that of an outspoken maiden or, in Victorian fiction, the stock character of a dangerous widow.[7]

Hetty Sorrel, in contrast to these stronger women, lacks the power or the initiative to speak up for herself. Hetty does not speak very much, and her preferred method of seduction is to burst into tears rather than to have a conversation. She pays dearly for this quietness, because she is not able to ask for help when she becomes pregnant. When she finally admits to Dinah in the jail cell that "I did it," this first instance of her assertion of agency comes far too late.[7]

  1. ^ Oberlin College: The 19th Century Novel
  2. ^ University of Arizona: Women Mystics and Preachers in Western Tradition
  3. ^ Nathan Uglow, Trinity and All Saints, Leeds. "Adam Bede." The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 Mar. 2002. The Literary Dictionary Company. 2 March 2007.
  4. ^ Stang, The Theory of the Novel in England, p. 149, refers to Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise (1846; 2d ed., Paris: Jules Hetzel, 1866). Houssaye speaks (p, 179) of Terborch's "gout tout hollandais, empreint de poesie realiste," and argues that "I'oeuvre de Gerard de Terburg est le roman intime de la Hollande, comme I'oeuvre de Gerard Dow en est le roman familiere." See also Peter Demetz, "Defences of Dutch Painting and the Theory of Realism," Comparative Literature, 15 (1963), 97-115.
  5. ^ Witermeyer, H. 1979. George Eliot and the Visual Arts Yale University Press
  6. ^ a b Adam Bede, George Eliot: INTRODUCTION." Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Juliet Byington and Suzanne Dewsbury. Vol. 89. Thomson Gale, 2001. eNotes.com. 2006. 11 Mar, 2007
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Etext and study guide with summary, analysis and quizzes.

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