Multiple Themes in Eliot's Adam Bede

Internal versus External Beauty: George Eliot makes a contrastive study of Hetty Sorrel and Dinah
Morris so as to depict the theme of the inner and outer beauty. Hetty represents the outer
beauty, she is physically attractive and has a grace in her every activity. Even she cries and
whenever she gets angry Adam Bede and Captain Donnithorne find love and some kind of
infatuation.But she is in heart cold and hard. She is emotionless when she leaves her newborn
baby to die in the jungle. She only cares for her own happiness. Her outer appearance hides her
cruel and selfish look. She does not have any respect to the religion and its value. She is so stiff
and arrogant that she does not admit her crime easily. On the other hand, Dinah Morris stands
for the depiction of the inner beauty. Adam does not find Dinah as beautiful as Hetty. She is plain
and is not so attentive towards her outer beauty. Her main concern is to serve people around
her and follow the ways of God. She provides comfort to Lisbeth when her husband dies. She is
the person who is able to convince Hetty to confess her guilt. She is there with Hetty when none
is with her in her hard time. Dinah exceptionally beautiful inwardly. Her inner grace and virtuous
beauty attract Adam. He also starts to see the beauty and elegance in Dinah.
Work is Worship
One of the most obvious theme is hard work. There are many characters who are the epitome of
hard work and for them work is everything. Adam Bede is shown as a gentle and laborious
carpenter for which he is renowned. For Adam, work is religion and it is worship to god if you do
your work sincerely. His carpentry work is unmatched. Another good example is Mrs. Poysers
who is engaged in dairy supplies. Her productions like cheese and cream are well known and
liked by all in the village. There are other minor characters who are involved in farming and keep
themselves busy. Those who are busy never harbor thought to harm others. It is Arthur
Donnithorne who is as lazy as a donkey and always complains that he does not have anything to
do. His idleness may be one reason for his evil behavior to Hetty and it has contributed a lot in
her fall. Had he been busy, he would not have much time to flirt with Hetty and she might not
have met that ugly situation. In this way, Eliot wants to make the reader clear that any kind of
work is respect worthy and it keeps your mind busy and saves you from the unnecessary burden.
Formative force: Love
G. Eliot's another focus of the novel Adam Bede is the formative force that is love. Love is shown
as a constructive force in the novel through some characters. Dinah is a symbol of love in the
novel. She loves all the people around her village and whenever they are in need she is there to
console them. Lisbeth is consoled and loved by Dinah. When Hetty is shunned by all for her
crime, it is Dinah, who loves her without being judgmental. She consoles her and listens to her
pain and agony and makes her feel free and relaxed at the end of the novel. She confesses her
sin and is free from the burden. Hetty even asks for forgiveness to Adam for her betrays. Dinah's
love has changed Hetty. Dinah's love and care has also changed Adam's view point to perceive
the beauty. He used to see only the outer beauty of Hetty and is blindly in love with her, but
when he notices Dinah with Hetty in the cell and her love for Hetty, he is totally changed. He
finds the inner beauty of Dinah more loving and eternal than the outer beauty of Hetty. His
perception to analyze and see the beauty has been changed because of Dinah’s loving behaviors.
In the same manner, Mrs. Poysers is shown as a harsh and rude lady, but in case of Hetty, she is
the only family member who loves her without questioning her guilt. She is transformed from a
critical woman to loving and accepting woman. Eliot proves that love has a power to change in a
positive sense. Nature
Eliot has made a constant use of nature in her novels. She is not influenced by the romantic
novelists whose characters' moods are described in terms of the nature and its moods. Opposite
to it, she presents the nature in her most beautiful way when her characters are suffering
through the hard times of his or her life. The disconnection of the nature from the human life
and suffering is part of Eliot's literary doctrine of painstaking realism. Instead of the nature and
the climate replicate her characters' mood and emotions, she makes her characters notice their
memories and experiences in the context of the actual environment. Adam grades his
movement from happiness to adulthood by the beech tree that he contemplated moments
before noticing 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." Motherhood
Adam Bede is necessarily about the theme of motherhood. Lisbeth is the strong figure of the
mother in the novel. She loves Adam too much that is why she is too worried about his
whereabouts. She takes much concern what he is doing, what he has eaten and whenever he is
in front of her, she starts nagging her. Because of her love, she nags on Adam and Adam feels
irritated about it. Neither Hetty nor Dinah has a mother in the novel. Both of them are orphaned
and they live with their uncle or aunt, respectively. The lack of a mother figure in their lives
affects each of them profoundly in their upbringing. Dinah is mature enough to control her and
she quickly grows into a mother figure herself, looking after others. Hetty, in contrast, lacking
strong guidance and because of the immaturity, she grows up vain and petty. When she has a
child of her own illicitly, 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 buries 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 detained as a criminal.
Appearance vs. Reality
Eliot uses the omniscient narrator against which to contrast the limitations of the individual
point of view. The omniscient narrator, knowing everything about the characters, can expose
their innermost thoughts to the reader. The characters, however, do not have this advantage.
They deal with their preconceptions of each other and with their own illusions blindly.
Eventually, time and circumstance force the individual out of illusion into a more mature and
realistic evaluation of life.Adam, Hetty, and Arthur form a romantic triangle that becomes more
and more entangled and complicated by their conflicting fantasies and dreams. Each considers
his or her own inner drama as primary and the other people as supporting actors. Adam
assumes because Hetty is pretty she must also be lovable and virtuous. He has dreamed of her
as his wife in their own little cottage, never thinking Hetty is ambitious for material wealth and
station. Arthur thinks of Hetty as a gentleman’s flirtation, which he can conveniently leave off
when he is finished. Hetty thinks Arthur is going to change her world, and suddenly she will have
money and power. The tragedy tears apart these illusions in a painful way. Of the three, Adam
alone is able to rise from the ashes to a better life, for he is an unselfish person and has not been
the cause of injury.Arthur’s birthday party shows the dynamic of the overlapping illusions. Hetty
believes Arthur loves her and is going to acknowledge her. Arthur watches Hetty but pretends
not to know her, playing his part as the gentleman. Adam is excited about dancing with Hetty,
who is indifferent to him. The accident with the locket at the dance begins to give him a clue that
all is not as it seems. When Adam actually sees Arthur kissing Hetty in the wood, he realizes he
has been “measuring my work from a false line” and has to begin again (Chpt. 29, p. 319). He
speaks as a carpenter, who, once he sees a mistake, tries to rectify it. But it takes him a long time
to change his perception. Even during the trial, he continues to think the tragedy is only Arthur’s
fault. He cannot believe Hetty is evil. The narrator tells us, “He created the mind he believed in
out of his own, which was large, unselfish, tender” (Chpt. 33, p. 354).The theme of self-delusion
comes out strongly in the metaphoric scene where Hetty is in her room secretly looking at
herself in a mirror at night with all her finery. She has only a little light and a blotched mirror in
which to look; she cannot see her whole self at one time. She goes through great exertions with
several mirrors trying to see herself. Symbolically it describes the characters without self-
knowledge, especially Arthur and Hetty. They are the ones who suffer most.

The Consequences of Actions

Adam suffers when Hetty sins and goes to prison, for he knows “it can never be undone (Chpt.
41, p. 424).” Arthur only begins to understand “the irrevocableness of his own
wrongdoing”(Chpt. 29, p. 313) after Adam sees him with Hetty and knocks him down. The
physical blow makes him see, “Adam could receive no amends; his suffering could not be
cancelled” (Chpt. 29, p. 313). This refers to the fact that Arthur knows he has already deflowered
the bride that Adam had been hoping for. In fact, the consequences have not yet reached their
worst limit. Like a stone thrown in a pond, the ripples move out and out and affect the whole
pond. Mr. Irwine tries to explain to Adam how “The evil consequences that may lie folded in a
single act of selfish indulgence” (Chpt. 41, p. 424) affect more than the single person. Adam’s
desire to revenge Hetty’s wrong on Arthur is part of the evil and could be a seed of further
evil.Where does it start and where does it stop? Eliot is the psychologist who tracks wrongdoing
and its consequences from the innermost thought to the external result. Arthur’s desire for
Hetty and the seduction take place in spring and summer of one year. The results last a lifetime.
Arthur creates the tragedy step by step. His illusion is that he can stop the momentum
somewhere in its trajectory.First, he believes he can control the impulse through good
intentions; then by leaving town; then by confession. When he can’t control the impulse, then
he will control the extent of the action: he will just give Hetty a present; he will just give her a
kiss, and so on. His lack of control over himself is always excused with the thought that if he
can’t avoid the wrong, at least he can make up for it. He will give money, favors, something to
make amends. His greatest suffering is that he never can undo the wrong to Hetty, and he can
never make up for it. She dies. Arthur is not bad, but he is a mushy thinker and does not
understand what the more scientific narrator knows about the laws of cause and effect: they
operate in the physical realm, and in the moral realm.Eliot is not exactly a fatalist. She does
believe in free will. Adam was able to reject his desire for revenge before it got out of hand. In
Arthur’s case, however, she presents the slippery slope of the weak person’s fall. Each step
makes the person less and less capable of withdrawing: “There is a terrible coercion in our deeds
which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for
this reason—that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable
right” (Chpt. 29, p. 315).

Higher Human Nature and the Mystery of Love

Although evil cannot be undone, it can be transmuted. Hetty’s sacrifice becomes the means for
Adam to rise. The first five books are like a five-act tragedy, ending with Hetty’s conviction of
murder. The sixth book is anti-climactic but necessary to show Eliot’s full philosophy of human
development and how good comes from evil.

Dinah and Mr. Irwine are the primary agents for helping Adam and the community to heal from
the shock of Hetty’s fall. Both are developed human beings and models for Eliot in that they
accept the weakness of others with sympathy. They do not preach at people; they forgive and
show how to forgive. Adam slowly uses his sorrow to grow into a better person. If there is a
slippery slope down, there is also a way upwards: “The growth of higher feeling within us is like
the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength: we can no more wish to return
to a narrower sympathy” (Chpt. 54, p. 530). Dinah is the one who gives him the steady love and
trust that frees him to go forward.Dinah tells Adam we must “learn to see the good in the midst
of much that is unlovely” (Chpt. 50, p. 486). Is this unwarranted optimism? It is, rather, Dinah’s
ability to see potential. She does not even give up on Hetty, but helps her to confess and regain
her human nature. Dinah tells Seth in a letter, “Infinite Love is suffering too. . . . sorrow is then
part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off” (Chpt. 30, p. 329). This is the secret of
sympathy and acceptance that allows life to grow. On the other hand, Hetty’s response of pride
and fear shuts her down and turns her to stone. She has already died before the trial.In an early
scene, the narrator explains how Dinah uses her imaginative and intuitive prayer to help others.
She feels, for instance, the “blank in Hetty’s nature” (Chpt. 15, p. 157) but feels it in the context
of an unbounded sympathy and love, moved thus to warn Hetty of her coming danger. She
explains her method of sympathy to Hetty: “I feel their [other people’s] lot as if it was my own,
and I take comfort in spreading it before the Lord and resting in His love, on their behalf” (Chpt.
14, p. 141). Dinah stays with Hetty in this way up till the moment of execution, trying to bear her
spiritual burden and lift her up.Love is the counter force to evil and selfishness. It is a mystery
that one does not need to label as a doctrine or sect, but it is real. Eliot presents a sort of ladder
of love when she speaks of Seth’s love for Dinah. His love for someone or something greater
than his small ego enlarges him in the same way religion or a Beethoven symphony makes
people experience “they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and
beauty” (Chpt. 3, p. 39). Thus does Eliot present in Adam Bede her vision of the full range of
human tragedy and human glory. Humans can fall, but they can also rise.
In Adam Bede, George Eliot sets out her commitment to realism as a literary genre – a
commitment she would continue to develop over the course of her career. Dr Rohan
Maitzen explains how detailed research and Eliot’s own experience fed into the realist
project, enabling her to express her beliefs about religion, sympathy and understanding .
Adam Bede (1859) was George Eliot’s first full-length novel but not her first fiction: that
distinction goes to Scenes of Clerical Life, a collection of three novellas published in 1856. By that
time Eliot had established herself as an editor, essayist, and reviewer, but though, as she later
reflected, ‘it had always been a vague dream of mine that some time or other I might write a
novel,’ she feared she was ‘deficient in dramatic power’.[1] Adam Bede’s gripping story of
seduction and infanticide proved Eliot had no need to worry – and while Scenes of Clerical Life
had been well-received, it was Adam Bede that became a bestseller. George
Eliot’s realism
Adam Bede is an early example of the realism for which George Eliot became celebrated. The
exact meaning of ‘realism’, however, has been much debated. In an essay on the artist and critic
John Ruskin (1819-1900), Eliot herself defined realism as ‘the doctrine that all truth and beauty
are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature.’ To her, realism did not mean a naïve
belief that writing can transparently represent the real world, but the conviction that writing
should not falsify or romanticise it. Eliot regarded realism as a moral choice, as well as an
aesthetic one; as she explains in her essay ‘The Natural History of German Life’ (1856), ‘Art is the
nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our
fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.’
In Chapter 17 of Adam Bede, Eliot pauses her unfolding story to expand on this principle, urging
artists not to focus only on ‘divine beauty of form’ but to ‘give the loving pains of a life to the
faithful representing of commonplace things’, so as to help us all learn to accept and sympathise
with our ‘fellow-mortals, every one . . . as they are.’ Because for Eliot realism is a philosophy
rather than a literary style, it is compatible with this kind of metafictional interruption. Indeed,
by prompting us to think about how a novel is written, rather than immersing us in its illusions,
narrative intrusions can enhance the realistic effect. Adam Bede opens with just such a moment:
‘With this drop of ink at the end of my pen,’ says the narrator,I will show you the roomy
workshop of Mr Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared
on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.
Realism and Research
The specificity of that date points to another important dimension of Eliot’s realism: giving a
‘faithful account’ includes paying scrupulous attention to contexts and settings, especially
historical backgrounds. Though for some aspects of Adam Bede, such as the landscape and local
dialects of the Midlands, Eliot could draw on her own childhood memories, she also (as scholar
Joseph Wiesenfarth has documented) took research notes on late 18th-century fashion, on
details of the weather in 1799 (‘August seems to have been a rainy month’), and on national and
international events, including the publication of Wordsworth’s first volume of poetry, the
building of Joseph Arkwright’s spinning mill and the death of George Washington.[2] She
immersed herself in the culture and practices of rural life, reading agricultural texts such as The
Book of the Farm and A Six Month Tour through the North of England, as well as issues of the
Gentleman’s Magazine from 1799 to 1801. The January 1799 issue of this publication contained
a description of the 21st birthday celebrations of the Duke of Rutland, which Eliot used as the
inspiration for Arthur Donnithorne’s Birthday Feast. From A Six Month Tour, she copied into her
notebook that ‘all [in the north of England] drink tea’ – and she used that detail in Adam Bede.
Eliot’s research had a greater purpose than simple accuracy: she believed that only through a
rich understanding of their actual conditions (including the history that led to them) could
people work effectively — realistically — for social or political change.
Methodism and the Church in Adam Bede
Much of Eliot’s research for Adam Bede focused on Methodism, the evangelical form of
Protestantism founded by John Wesley in the early 18th century. One of the central characters in
Adam Bede is the young Methodist preacher Dinah Morris, who is as passionate in her service to
God as she is selfless about bringing comfort to those in need or sorrow. As Eliot had long ago
given up her own Christian faith, her idealised picture of Dinah might seem paradoxical. But Eliot
had an abiding interest in religion’s social function as well as deep respect for the church as an
institution which had, at its best, given form and direction to people’s highest moral aspirations.
In a letter to her friend Francois d’Albert-Durade, written in 1859, she explained the place of
religion in Adam Bede by saying that she ‘no longer [has] any antagonism towards any faith in
which human sorrow and human longing for purity have expressed themselves… I have the
profoundest interest in the inward life of sincere Christians in all ages’.She followed this,
however, by saying that despite her interest in Christianity, her ‘most rooted conviction is, that
the immediate object and the proper sphere of all our highest emotions are our struggling
fellow-men and this earthly existence’. In Eliot’s humanistic view, ordinary people (not
supernatural agents) shape the world for better or worse. Because of this, people’s religious
beliefs are much less important than — and may even impede — their capacity for sympathy.
Thus her novels often feature clergyman of imperfect faith, like Mr Irwine in Adam Bede, or
imperfect behaviour, like Mr Farebrother in Middlemarch, whose flaws do not unfit them for
their sacred duties but rather highlight that theirs is a fundamentally human benevolence. Dinah
may be devout, but the good she does is attributable to her, not to God. When the pretty dairy-
maid Hetty Sorrel — seduced and then abandoned by the local squire, Arthur Donnithorne — is
imprisoned for infanticide, Dinah’s compassion, rather than divine intervention, brings about the
small miracle of Hetty’s repentance. Some readers find it disappointing that, at the end of the
novel, Dinah (who until then has been determinedly single, dedicating herself to her public
work) gives up preaching and retreats into domesticity as Adam’s wife. However, this step not
only reflects historical developments in Methodism, but also confirms Eliot’s commitment to a
secular morality: the apparatus of the church and the authority of the preacher yield to a
recognition of our own personal accountability for what she calls in Middlemarch ‘the growing
good of the world’ (Finale).
The politics and literature of infanticide
Dinah was based in part on Eliot’s Methodist aunt Elizabeth Evans, who told her niece the story
that became the germ of Adam Bede. In 1802, Evans had visited in prison a young woman
named Mary Voce, who was to be executed the following day for the murder of her baby. Evans
stayed with Voce throughout the night, praying with her and eventually bringing about her
confession. The next day, she accompanied Voce to the gallows.Alarmed (and alarmist)
discussions of infanticide in the press in the 1850s and 1860s made Eliot’s historical plot highly
topical, but infanticide was hardly a new literary subject. Eliot’s readers would have been familiar
especially with Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian (1818), to which Adam Bede was
frequently compared — and not usually to Eliot’s advantage. In Scott’s novel, heroic Jeanie
Deans walks to London to seek a pardon from the queen for her condemned sister Effie: all of
the novel’s sympathies are on virtuous Jeanie’s side, while erring Effie remains peripheral to the
action. In contrast, Eliot focuses on Hetty, so that we see not just her crime but the complicated
mixture of selfish motives and social contexts that lead up to it. The pressure on readers to
understand rather than simply to judge Hetty seemed morally dubious to many Victorian critics,
but this approach is consistent with the moral demands of Eliot’s realism: the challenge is to see
Hetty clearly, with all her faults, and then to sympathise and forgive. Dinah is a model in this
effort, including for Adam Bede himself, who had hoped to marry Hetty and who had loved and
trusted Arthur Donnithorne, her seducer. Adam’s suffering at Hetty’s catastrophe humanises his
initially rather rigid morality, while his eventual marriage to Dinah completes her transformation
into an agent of domestic rather than divine influence.
Social Realism in George Eliot's Adam Bede
George Eliot's Adam Bede is a realistic novel of Victorian society, including the social problem of
highlighting the poor social presentation together with the retrace of rural areas of the country.
Adam Bede is an example of Victorian literature aiming to reflect the social realism.Almost every
literary genre of Victorian literature is engaged to reflect the realism of the contemporary
society. So does this novel too.At the central position of Eliot's Adam Bede there lies the basic
tenant of social realism. The very rigid Victorian society has been reflected in the novel. The
entire gamut of Victorian literature is inseparably linked with realism. Poetry, novel, drama and
all pieces of Victorian writings are engaged in the representation of realism of either kind. In the
same vein, George Eliot's Adam Bede aims at representing social realism. At the core of Adam
Bede lies the basic tenant of social realism. Let's examine the narrative where the fundamental
tenant of social realism lies.Victorian society was rigid. It had a strict view concerning women.
Victorian society was afflicted with blazes and prejudices. It has baize against women. If any
women tried to move in the world of freedom and employment, she was mocked and ridiculed.
Women were also expected to work in confined circles live household work. In this novel George
Eliot represented a character Dinah Morris. She was a Methodist preacher. When Dinah Morris
becomes a preacher, many people indirectly criticized her. Dinah Morris was beautiful in
appearance. People were attracted towards her. Many people used to listen to her preaching.
But it was simply pretense. They actually went to listen to her because they were actually
tempted to see her beautiful face. Most of those who attempted Dinah Morris's preaching were
hypocritical, under the mask of religious devotion of those Sermon listeners ran the sexual
intention and corrupt selfish psyche.Victorian age was the age of Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle was
extremely critical of the growing Victorian attachment with materialism. People were
distractingly crazy for comfort and happiness. They hardly believed in the dignity of work.
Victorian people were neglectful of the fact that the worker should derive pride and joy from the
work they do. During Victorian times the workers were becoming increasingly mechanical. To
correct his age Carlyle introduced, the most repeated and very much hallowed maximum work is
worship. To work is equal to worshipping, God. Through your absolute belief in work you can
make God happy. It is a work which links you with God. The impact of this maxim of Carlyle was
unbelievably pervasive. George Eliot must certainly have been influenced by the motto of Carlyle
work is worship. That is why her character Adam Bede is shown climbing the ladder of social
success by virtue of his belief in the work. Adam Bede is a carpenter. He has achieved excellence
in his profession. He was popular as a good carpenter. His name spread far and near. Due to his
growing popularity, he was invited to attend the birthday party of Arthur Donnithorne. Even the
owner of Hall farm was eager to accept Adam Bede as a partner. Adam had a vision to leave the
world more livable for the further progeny through cultivating an eternal belief and pride in the
work. Respect, dignity and prestige, not from birth, but from good and excellent deeds were the
guiding principle of Adam Bede. And Eliot shows Adam is successful in society by virtue of his
cherished beliefs and ideals. From this view point also we can catch a glimpse of one extra brand
of social realism.Social chasm was another problem. The vestige of feudalism was still alive in
Hayslope village. Hetty Sorrel belonged to the working class. Arthur Donnithorne belonged to
the feudal class. Feudal class had still certain fascinating charm of the working class people.
Hetty Sorrel was madly attracted to Arthur Donnithorne. She was from a poor family. Her family
background was not nice. So she had a dream to marry Arthur Donnithorne and be a wife of a
respectable feudal man. But such a fantasy driven effort by Hetty ruined her own life. Her tragic
end created a deep wound in the psyche of Hayslope people. This accident in the personal life of
Hetty Sorrel suggests one bran of harsh reality the society faces when two different, unequal
classes try to meet at a point through emotion not through reason.Social realism in the novel is
depicted as the characters were conscious of their class status at a significant social gathering. At
the time of Arthur Donnithorne's birthday several people came to see and celebrate their feudal
master's son's birthday. People were represented as conscious of their class background. Only
Adam was given a respectable place in the birthday celebration because Adam had elevated his
position through hard work and labor. This moment of birthday celebrations serves as screen in
which social realism concerning the class consciousness of several people get reflected. In this
way, whether it is the position of Adam or it is the position of caption Donnithrone or Dinah or
Hetty, even characters gives a symbolic reflection of Victorian society. Their depiction has been
highly colored with the image of Victorian society. Overall novel is realistic. It includes the
elements like realistic, social presentation, reflection of social problems, highlighting the poor
people, setting in rural areas, presentation of Victorian morality, sense of brotherhood, religious,
truth etc. are objective correlative to show the social realism in Eliot's Adam Bede.
Critical Evaluation
One of the major issues in George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede is a binary opposition in
characterization: Adam Bede versus Arthur Donnithorne and Hetty Sorrel versus Dinah Morris. In
contrast to Adam’s hardworking, staunch personality, Arthur comes from money and, though he
does hold a military position, does not have to work. Dinah is similar to Adam in her zest for her
cause, preaching, but Hetty’s cause is her beauty, about which she obsesses.From the beginning
of the novel, Adam is presented as a hardworking, ethical man who encourages others to behave
in similar ways. For example, when the workday draws to an end, Adam’s coworkers stop work
and begin to collect their belongings before the final toll of the clock. Adam alone continues to
work, chastising his mates for their lack of work ethic. His responsibility extends to his family
relationships. Though he teases Seth for neglecting to complete his work, he also provides a
lesson in proper labor. He continues to mentor Seth by commenting on Seth’s interest in Dinah’s
preaching and its relevance to religious beliefs that Seth had been exposed to prior to her
arrival.Adam’s familial responsibility stretches further as his father dies, and he is left with his
mother’s care. Despite his mother’s clinging possessiveness and open dislike of the woman he
believes himself in love with, Adam prepares to provide for her needs. His love for Hetty allows
for another instance of his constancy. When Adam spies Arthur kissing Hetty and later finds
evidence that the kiss has been the least of their relations, he forces Arthur to do the right thing
and let Hetty know that there will never be a chance for their relationship to be legally
consummated. Later, when Adam is informed of Hetty’s imprisonment, he refuses to believe that
she could be so wicked and vows to go after Arthur for his part in Hetty’s downfall.When Adam
goes to the jail where Hetty is being held, he is horrified by the story presented to him and
refuses, even when irrefutable evidence is presented to him, to believe that Hetty would be so
selfish and evil. Adam’s purity of heart is yet again displayed when he and Hetty talk for the last
time and she asks his forgiveness, which he willingly gives. He is continually more concerned
about her loss than his own. He is also able to forgive Arthur, and in doing so regrets what he
perceives as his own previous shortcomings.While Adam truly cares for Hetty and wants to marry
her, even after she has been involved with another man, Arthur uses her and is willing to let her
go to Adam. The only truly selfless action Arthur takes is to get Hetty’s sentence changed to exile
rather than execution. He feels sorry for the damage he has done to others only after that
damage has been done; prior to Hetty’s imprisonment, he had never stopped to think about the
consequences.
Critics dissatisfied with Adam Bede have singled out the rescue of Hetty Sorrel by Arthur
Donnithorne and Adam's marriage to Dinah Morris as especially glaring imperfections. However,
such criticism generally ignores the relationship of those two crucial incidents to the form of the
novel. Because Adam Bede concerns principally its title-character's acquisition of sympathy, the
story of Arthur serves as a subplot, to induce behavior in Adam indicative of his moral state, and
to create, through the crisis involving Hetty, an inescapable condition of suffering, from which his
reversal of character can arise. His marriage to Dinah near the end of the novel represents not
only a reward for his reform, but the culmination of his growing attraction to the quality of
sympathy which Dinah epitomizes. The rescue reflects the subordinate position of Hetty and
Arthur, for having created a crisis which renders the change in Adam plausible, George Eliot
sought to get Hetty out of the way without the diverting pathos of an execution. Thus the rescue
is meant to solve the dilemma posed by a condemned Hetty, just as the marriage helps alleviate
the problem of a solitary Adam. Each device contributes to a non-tragic line of development
featuring Adam.
Adam Bede as psychological novel
Introduction: GEORGE ELIOT is one of the founding-fathers of the modern psychological
novel. As W.J. Long points out, “GEORGE ELIOT sought to do in her novels what Browning
attempted in his poetry. That is, to represent the inner struggle of a soul, and to reveal the
motives, impulses and hereditary influences which govern human action.

Browning generally stops when he tells his story and either lets you draw your own conclusion or
else gives you his in a few striking lines But GEORGE ELIOT is not content until she ahs minutely
explained the motives of her characters and the moral lesson to be learnt from them. It is the
development of a soul, the slow growth or decline of moral power, which chiefly interests her.
The Characters of Dickens and Thackeray are already formed when we meet them and we know
what they will do under certain circumstances, but GEORGE ELIOT’s characters develop
gradually as we come to know them. They go from weakness to strength and vice versa. ” Her
novels are a study of mental processes. As A.E. Baker rightly points out, “GEORGE ELIOT’s sphere
was the inner man, she exposed the internal clockwork. Her characters are not simply passive.
They are shown making their own history, continually changing and developing as their motives
issue into acts and acts become a part of the circumstances that condition, modify and purify or
demoralize the will. ” GEORGE ELIOT’s power of psycho-analysis and her understanding of
mental processes are fully exposed in AB. Therefore, many critics have called AB the first
psychological novel as later exemplified by Joyce and Woolf because the psychology of the main
characters, Adam, Hetty, Arthur and the Poysers is the theme.
Analysis of causes and motives: The chapter called A Journey in hope; GEORGE ELIOT
spends far more time in Hetty’s poor brain and heart than Hetty spends on the road in her
unwise search for her runaway lover. This is psychology and the chapters immediately before and
after this sufficient activity to keep the story rolling; there is much more inner activity than outer.
GEORGE ELIOT is deft in her psychological approach. Shortly after the death of Thias Bede, his
wife Lisbeth was in the Bede Home alone with the body. After doing the necessary ritual
cleansing and purification of the chamber where Thias lay, she slumped into a chair and
contemplated her grief. When GEORGE ELIOT’s characters think we share their thoughts. When
Adam accidentally comes upon Arthur and Hetty embracing in the woods, Hetty scurries away,
and Arthur saunter forwards to Adam. He thought, “After all, Adam was the bet who could have
happened to see him and Hetty together: he was a sensible fellow and would not babble about it
to other people. Arthur felt confident that he could laugh the thing off, and explain it away. ” But
he misunderstood him. GEORGE ELIOT’s grip on psychological essentials enables her to draw
complex characters much better than her predecessors.
Temptation and Moral Chaos: The filed of her most characteristic triumphs is the moral
battlefield. Her eagle eye can penetrate though the entire sock and the smoke of struggle. She is
particularly good at showing how temptation triumphs. No other English novelist has given as so
vivid a picture of the process of moral defeat, as Arthur’s gradual yielding to his passion for
Hetty. She, with clearness, shows how temptation insinuates in the mind. David Cecil says, “Her
characters always hang together, are of a piece, their defects are the defects of their virtues. We
are not surprised that a man, so anxious for the good opinion of others as Arthur Donnithorne,
should selfishly seduce Hetty, because we realize that the controlling force in his character is the
desire for immediate enjoyment.” With equal insight, she can portray the moral chaos that takes
possession of the mind after wrong has been done. The guilt ridden conscious of Arthur is
analyzed and we are shown the scorpions that sting him and prevent sleep. She lays bare the
conscious and semi-conscious motives of Arthur. We see the workings of his innermost mind: He
had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our yesterdays are too
oppressive, if a man can only get up, though it is but to whistle or smoke, he has a present which
resists the past. For Arthur, the loss of Adam’s respect was a shock to his self-contentment,
which suffused his imagination with the sense he had sunk in all eyes; as a shock. Arthur would
so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm if no one had told him the contrary.
Conclusion: It is GEORGE ELIOT’s psychological insight into the springs of human action, the
subtle analysis of character and motive accompanying the external action, which gives her
peculiar and individual place among the Victorian novelists. She is one of them and yet how
every different and original. She is the first of the great modern novelists who have a high
conception of their art, who regard the novel as a serious art form, and who are given to the
probing of the human psyche, to the subtle analysis of the subconscious and unconscious.
This quote is by arthur when he is confessing his feelings about hetty to Mr Irwine in chapter 16 .
“A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature.”