Arthur’s Misuse of the Imagination: Sentimental

Benevolence and Wordsworthian Realism in Adam Bede

Mason Harris

ESC: English Studies in Canada, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1978, pp. 41-59
(Article)

Published by Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of

English
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.1978.0005

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/692699/summary

Access provided at 22 May 2019 10:53 GMT from UCLA Library

 A R T H U R 'S M IS U S E OF TH E IM A G IN A T I O N :
S E N T IM E N T A L B E N E V O L E N C E A N D W O R D S W O R T H IA N
R E A L IS M IN A D A M BEDE

MASON HARRIS
Simon Fraser University

^ 3 ecause Adam Bede is "a country story - full of the breath of cows and the
scent of h a y ,"1 it seems to invite oversimplified interpretations. Critics assume
that George Eliot's first novel lacks the complexity of her later work, or at least
that any complexity it possesses must be in conflict with its pastoral elements.
Part of the problem in getting a clear perspective on this novel arises from a
tendency to concentrate critical attention on the rather idealized Adam and
Dinah as representatives of the author's values, while passing over Arthur, who
does not belong to the pastoral community and whose affair with a tenant-
farmer's niece almost destroys it, as a rather ordinary seducer treated with
conventional Victorian moralism. In a recent book on George Eliot, Neil
Roberts expresses a widely-held view of the novel when he says that it presents
a "static moral drama" enacted in an "absence of social and historical analysis"
because Arthur's sin is only "a matter of private morality" unrelated to his
grandfather's acquisitiveness as landlord.2
I shall argue that this seduction is very much a matter of class, and that Eliot's
sense of historical process, if somewhat muted by nostalgia, is still active in the
novel. A close study of the psychology behind Arthur's crime will show the vital
thematic use Eliot makes of his aristocratic status and his participation in the
literary taste of the later eighteenth century (Arthur turns twenty-one in
1799). As the well-intentioned heir to his grandfather's estate, Arthur reveals
much about the influence of unconscious snobbery in rationalizing the exploita­
tion of social inferiors, while as a reader of fashionable fiction who scorns
the first edition of Lyrical Ballads he provides a contrast to the narrator's
Wordsworthian realism, revealing what the imagination should not be both in
art and life.
This contrast also suggests a turning point in the history of taste and
sensibility. The moral vision of Adam, Dinah, and their author has something
in common with the Romantic concept of the imagination (in Dinah's case
mixed with the best aspects of the religious revival), while Arthur, thoroughly
imbued with the aristocratic taste and social attitudes of his period, reflects the
limitations of the old order and thus helps to show how the novel's narrative

E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , iv , 1 , Spring 1978
42

vision looks forward to the needs of Eliot's own time as well as celebrating the
virtues of the past.
The timing of the action, with a leisurely account of the rustic community
through the summer of 1799, while crime, suffering, and new insight come in
the winter and spring of 1800, suggests a sense of transition between past and
present. Hetty, the "lost lam b," is rejected by the rustic community but
rescued by Dinah, whose Methodism has been nurtured in a bleak industrial
town and who recognizes no distinctions of rank.3 Again, the new insight which
enables Adam to bear the pain of Hetty's fall foreshadows Eliot's mid-Victorian
religion of humanity.4 On the other hand, Arthur's ideal vision of his future
reign as Squire is based on the world-view of a ruling class soon to become
obsolete.
In her depiction of the semi-feudal community of Hayslope, Eliot makes
much of the dignity of labour as manifested in the Poysers' farm and Adam's
workshop, while old Squire Donnithorne, whose income derives from posses­
sion of fields which others till, represents the least admirable aspect of this
society; as Mrs Poyser angrily remarks to the Squire, "I know there's them as
is born t'own the land, and them as is born to sweat on't" (353). The
limitations of the aristocratic world-view are most clearly revealed not through
the stingy Squire, but through his amiable grandson Arthur, who intends to
improve everything upon inheriting but remains unaware of the injustice
implied in Mrs Poyser's distinction.
Squire Donnithorne, who has no sympathy for his tenants but always spoke
"in the same deliberate, well-chiselled, polite way, whether his words were
sugary or venomous" (350), seems the product of an earlier and harsher period
of the eighteenth century. However, his grandson Arthur has become a "man
of feeling" - both in taste and sentiment he emulates the humanitarian ideal of a
later day: "he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous
kind - impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian ...
he couldn't bear to see anyone uncomfortable ... his aunt Lydia herself had the
benefit of that softness which he bore towards the whole sex" (124 -25). This
seems almost a paraphrase of the virtues of Tom Jones, whose moral sensibility
arises from his "good nature" and who, unlike the crafty Blifil, has only "the
vices of a warm disposition."5 Of course, one difference would be that Tom is
not aware of being so virtuous while this is the way Arthur sees himself - as he
analyzes his moral nature, he regards with satisfaction "his well-looking British
person reflected in one of the old-fashioned mirrors" (124). Tom unconsciously
stands for his author's concept of virtue, while Arthur admires himself as the
epitome of a literary ideal, extending his "love of patronage" to social inferiors,
especially his future tenants and the opposite sex.
Perhaps Arthur's story implies some criticism of Fielding's hero: Hetty's
ruin might be more typical of the fate of lower-class females pursued by the
Squire than Tom's happy resolution of his affair with Molly Seagrim. Tom's
 43

"violent animal spirits" tend to amorous entanglement but his sympathetic

concern for the lady makes all well in the end, "fo r though he did not always act
rightly, yet he never did otherwise without feeling and suffering for it ." 6
Arthur claims a similar virtue for himself: "I'm a devil of a fellow for getting
myself into hobbles, but I always take care the load shall fall on my own
shoulders," to which Eliot remarks that "unhappily there is no poetic justice in
hobbles" (125). Later Arthur refuses to contemplate the possibility that Hetty
might become pregnant because he has "a sort of implicit confidence ... that he
was really such a good fellow at bottom, Providence would not treat him
harshly" (322), but the plot of Eliot's novel lends no providential assistance to
the young Squire's good intentions. Hetty flees Hayslope to escape the shame of
unwed motherhood, abandons her child, and is tried for its murder.
The "gratitude" and "compassion" Tom feels for M olly correspond to A r­
thur's conscious attitude towards Hetty, but an ironic reduction occurs when
Eliot describes him as "a handsome generous young fellow - who ... if he should
happen to spoil a woman's existence, will make it up to her with expensive
bon-bons, packed up and directed by his own hand" (126). After marrying
Sophia, Tom continues his generous financial support of M olly and her fam ily;
when Arthur decides to end his affair with Hetty he reflects that "she would owe
the advantage of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred
now. So good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful arrangement of things!"
(320). Eliot's sarcasm in the last two sentences seems directed at that
eighteenth-century notion of cosmic harmony which justifies the social order -
and is manifested in the "poetic justice" of the plot of Tom Jones.1
Eliot has not told us exactly what she thought of Fielding, but she probably
liked him; at least in Middlemarch she admires the "lu sty ease of his fine
English" (Book 1, Chapter xv). As Thomas A. Noble has demonstrated, Eliot is
the direct heir of those eighteenth-century thinkers who founded ethics on "the
relationship of sympathy and imagination"8 - a tradition which also inspired
Tom Jones. Eliot and Fielding both believe that virtue springs from sympathetic
identification with others; that, as Fielding puts it, "good nature" consists of a
"benevolent and amiable temper of mind which disposes us to feel the misfor­
tunes and enjoy the happiness of others" without assistance from "any abstract
contemplation on the beauty of virtue, and without the allurements or terrors
of religion."9
However, Eliot escapes the limitations of upper-class benevolence by endow­
ing this humanistic morality with a psychological dimension that seems absent
in Fielding and his more sentimental successors. Walter E. Houghton observes
that Eliot is not a sentimentalist because for her sympathetic feeling must be
accompanied by a real understanding of the other person: in her fiction effective
sympathy "originates in a clear and compassionate perception of human suffer­
ing ... The sentimental indulgence of pity and love is really self-centered ...
George Eliot's benevolence presupposes a forgetfulness of self in the recognition
44

of our common hum anity."10 No character in Eliot's fiction illustrates self-

centered benevolence as clearly as Arthur, for whom "deeds of kindness were as
easy ... as a bad habit; they were the common issue ... of his egoism and his
sympathy. He didn't like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes
beaming on him as the giver of pleasure" (3 17 -18 ). Fielding's formula does not
in itself enable us to distinguish between true sympathy and gratification
derived from the "grateful eyes," a shortcoming even more evident in the
sentimental fiction of Arthur's day. On the other hand, Arthur's complete
identification with his social rank obscures awareness of the "common human­
ity" he shares with Hetty and thus he fails to appreciate the emotional and
physical consequences their romance might inflict on her.
Sentimental benevolence is a transaction that can be carried out entirely
within the self: it does not require a distinction between experiencing the other
as a "th ou" - an individual consciousness different from one's own - or merely
as an object of warm-hearted charity. As it appears in eighteenth-century
fiction (and many Victorian novels), benevolence usually depends on and is
protected by a sense of social superiority to the recipient of one's kindness.
Arthur's dream of future patronage reveals his class-oriented view of his
relation to Hayslope and humanity in general. He compensates for his present
sense of bored aimlessness by imagining himself as a Squire Allworthy-to-be:

He was nothing if not good-natured; and all his pictures of the future, when he
should come into the estate, were made up of a prosperous, contented tenantry,
adoring their landlord, who would be the model of an English gentleman -
mansion in first-rate order, all elegance and high taste - jolly housekeeping, finest
stud in Loamshire - purse open to all public objects - in short, everything as
different as possible from what was now associated with the name of Don-
nithorne. (125)

His vision of the future actually represents the way he relates to people in the
present; this picture of a perfect Squire surrounded by adoring dependents
allows no place for the intrusion of an equal. To maintain his ideal self he cannot
acknowledge any motive incompatible with "good nature" and thus must
convince himself that his interest in Hetty consists only of generous concern for
her welfare.
Arthur's "pictures of the future" also ignore the economic basis of his class.
The old Squire's wealth must be at least partly the result of his cold-blooded
meanness with his tenants, while Arthur, in his "m odel" world, intends to
maintain an expensive establishment while being worshipped because he has so
improved his tenants' farms. (The tenants imagine that when he inherits there
is to be "a millenial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and returns of
ten percent" [85].) When Irwine points out that Arthur's neighbour Gawaine
 45

has made himself unpopular with his improvements and that one must choose
between "popularity or usefulness," Arthur objects: "O ! Gawaine is harsh in
his manners; he doesn't make himself personally agreeable to his tenants. I
don't believe there's anything you can't prevail on people to do with kindness"
(17 3).11 In this definition of "kindness" the emphasis falls entirely on "m an­
ners," on being "personally agreeable," which rather easy form of benevolence
also seems a method for insuring that one's inferiors will do "anything" one
wishes.
Arthur is as interested as any other Squire in having his way with his tenants
but imagines that because he means well he can get what he wants through
charm rather than intimidation. He intends to be "different" yet manages to
disguise as benevolence a pursuit of a tenant's pretty niece which is quite typical
of young Squires. On the other hand, his sentimental vision really does make
him a more sympathetic fellow than his grandfather; while his soft-heartedness
can rationalize the seduction, it also prevents him from responding to the result
with the usual callousness of his class.
In Arthur's drift towards seducing Hetty, Eliot presents her first extensive
study of unconscious motivation. She asks whether his failure to confess to
Irwine was not due to a "motive ... which had a sort of backstairs influence ? Our
mental business is carried on in much the same way as the business of State: a
great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not acknowledged" (176).
Early in the novel we discover the real motive behind Arthur's pursuit of H etty;
he complains that "It's a desperately dull business being shut up at the Chase in
the summer months, when one can neither hunt nor shoot, so as to make
oneself pleasantly sleepy in the evening" (63). (Hunting is out of season, and
Arthur's physical activity is further curtailed by a broken arm.) If Arthur
admitted to himself that frustrated sex was keeping him awake nights, he might
also have been more realistic about the consequences of fornicating with the
Poysers' niece, but he sublimates this natural need into sentimental musing
over Hetty and thus can never acknowledge his real object.
Unable to hunt, Arthur pursues Hetty instead and the horse he rides becomes
associated with his runaway feelings. He gallops out to dispel his frustrations:
"Nothing like 'taking' a few bushes and ditches for exorcising a demon; and it is
really astonishing that the Centaurs, with their immense advantages in this
way, left so bad a reputation in history" (129). The Centaurs' famous crime was
their attempt to ravish the Lapith women, resulting in a battle which the ancient
Greeks considered symbolic of the struggle between rational and animal ele­
ments in human nature. When Arthur loses a bout in his own struggle by
returning prematurely from his ride, his horse suddenly seems to be controlling
him. Eliot remarks that "it is the favorite stratagem of the passions to sham a
retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us" (129), and in the next chapter he feels
that when he gallops back to meet Hetty after resolving not to, "it was as if his
46

horse had wheeled round from a leap and dared to dispute his mastery" (139).
This imagery suggests a disjunction in Arthur's being: he is, like the Centaur,
both horse and rider, with the horse secretly in control. The sexuality he
sublimates into sentiment takes over at crucial moments, prompting actions
opposed to his conscious intent.
We have seen that Arthur, a university man, is concerned to maintain not
only high living but "high taste" in his future establishment. In the latter point
his imagination has been shaped by the taste of his age - Neo-classical esthetic
plus exotic fiction. Eliot subtly relates Arthur's false taste to his capacity for
rationalization.
We have already noted that dividing the action between 1799 and 1800
suggests transition between two centuries, and that Dinah's evangelicalism
presents one form of new sensibility. A casual reference by Arthur early in the
novel reveals a literary event of the previous year which, for Eliot especially,
would be of great importance in shaping the thought and feeling of the new era:

I've got a book I meant to bring you, godmamma. It came down from London the
other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizard-like stories. It's a volume of
poems, "Lyrical Ballads:" most of them seem to be twaddling stuff; but the first is
in a different style - "The Ancient M ariner" is the title. I can hardly make head
nor tail of it as a story, but it's a strange, striking thing ... and there are some other
books that you might like to see, Irwine - pamphlets about Antinomianism and
Evangelicalism, whatever they may be. (64)

Wordsworth is always an important influence on Eliot's fiction; this novel in

particular, with its rustic setting and lower-class characters, seems to partake of
his belief that the depiction of ordinary life could serve the highest purpose of
art.12 Eliot marks her affinity with Wordsworth's kind of realism by prefacing
her novel with a quotation from The Excursion that promises "Clear images ...
Of nature's unambitious underwood / And flowers that prosper in the shade."
Both Eliot and Wordsworth refuse to separate art from life: the emphasis both
place on the value of everyday experience makes the classical dictum that
serious literature must deal with an exalted subject in a heightened style seem
not only artistically wrong, but also immoral in its implied contempt for the
lives of ordinary people. In her first full-length novel Eliot, already an experi­
enced critic of fiction, is concerned with setting an example of how novels should
be written. B y emphasizing the importance of the commonplace and pointedly
eschewing the exotic, she seeks to exercise the same influence on fiction that
Wordsworth had on poetry; her essay on realism in Chapter Seventeen could be
taken as the "Preface" to her own career.13
In her first novel Eliot provides a striking example of her fondness for using
styles of painting as a metaphor for perception.14 She describes the Words­
worthian esthetic in terms of visual art in that famous passage in Chapter
 47

Seventeen where she extols the

rare, precious quality of truthfulness ... in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-
minded people despise ... I turn, without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels,
from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her
flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened
perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her
spinning-wheel, and her stone jug, and all those common things which are the
precious necessaries of life to her. (180)

Eliot's affection for the jug, spinning-wheel, and other "common things"
recalls Wordsworth's description of the rustic interior, supper, and fireside
work in Michael (lines 8 0 -14 1). The image of clear light illuminating everyday
objects recurs many times in Adam Bede ; it is associated with clear vision and
the "light of heaven" (182) which falls on the ordinary world "in which we get
up in the morning to do our daily work" (179 ).15 The subjects turned away from
- "prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors" - are the stock in trade of that
Neo-classical style which dominated Arthur's age but which Eliot, as heir to
Wordsworth, would find particularly sterile.16
When Arthur, blindly following the taste of his age, dismisses Lyrical
Ballads, he excludes from literature (and from the realm of the serious in
general) the whole motivation behind Eliot's novel - before becoming sadder
and wiser he would probably have found Adam Bede as "twaddling" as
Wordsworth. Furthermore, his separation of the imagination from everyday
life is of great assistance in rationalizing the pursuit of Hetty; a close look at his
vision of nature and his literary taste will help explain how he could manage a
seduction so opposed to his conscious ideals.
After admiring Hetty at the Poysers' butter churn, Arthur describes her in
terms of Neo-classical art: "Sh e's a perfect Hebe; and if I were an artist, I would
paint her" (102). Irwine replies, " I have no objection to your contemplating
Hetty in an artistic light," but in fact there may be some danger if this is the
deceptive light of unreality, at furthest remove from the "noonday light" of
Dutch painting.
Arthur arranges a meeting with Hetty in

the delicious labyrinthine wood ... called Fir-tree Grove ... It was a wood of
beeches and limes, with here and there a light, silver-stemmed birch - just the sort
of wood most haunted by the nymphs: you see their white sunlit limbs gleaming
athwart the boughs, or peeping behind the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lim e;
you hear their soft liquid laughter - but if you look with a too curious sacrilegious
eye, they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you believe their voice was
only a running brooklet, perhaps they metamorphose themselves into a tawny
squirrel that scampers away and mocks you from the topmost bough. (130)
48

Such a depiction of nature represents Arthur's consciousness rather than

Eliot's; as Reva Stump points out, this is one of those scenes associated with
Arthur and Hetty "where light is used to heighten shadows, point up darkness,
and create a haze - where, in short, it distorts rather than assists visio n ."17
Further, it should be noted that contrary to Eliot's usual practice, the actual
wood is not described but only used as a backdrop for fantasy - "seeing" here is
making-believe - and that the literary imagery seems far-removed from real
nature. In a review of Ruskin's Modern Painters, Eliot insists that "all truth and
beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by
substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place
of definite, substantial reality." 18 Arthur's vague nymphs arise from the wrong
kind of imagination.
The main force of this description of Fir-tree Grove stems not from what is
seen, but from something beneath the surface, an underlying sensuality which
the imagery intimates while glossing over. Arthur sees the wood only as a
backdrop for his mood, for his real interest lies elsewhere: as he "strolled along
carelessly, with a book under his arm ... his eyes would fix themselves on the
distant bend in the road, round which a little figure must surely appear before
long" ( 13 1, Eliot's italics). The motion of the eyes suggests an involuntary
element in Arthur's search; he is not free to look about in a disinterested
manner.
On the other hand, the brooklet and scampering squirrel possess a life and
motion lacking in the imaginary nymphs, but these genuine aspects of the scene
can be perceived only by the "too curious sacrilegious eye" which would disrupt
this Temple of Nature (later Arthur, trying to deceive Adam, calls it the "sacred
grove" [303]) and discover a real nature that "m ocks" the fantasist. Arthur is
embarking on a love-affair which will result in the birth of a child, but no
anticipation of this natural process can intrude on his sentimental view of
Hetty.
Eliot's strategy here is to entrance the reader for a moment and then awaken
him with the rather blunt observation that on such an afternoon "destiny
disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil ... and poisons us with
violet-scented breath" (13 1), a process repeated more subtly at a later meeting
with Hetty which Arthur has arranged in order to explain that he does not mean
anything serious. He quickly forgets his good intentions: "A h , he doesn't know
in the least what he is saying. This is not what he meant to say ... his lips are
meeting those pouting child-lips, and for a long moment time has vanished. He
may be a shepherd in Arcadia for aught he knows, he may be the first youth
kissing the first maiden, he may be Eros himself kissing the lips of Psyche - it is
all one" (138).
This pagan paradise, independent of space, time, and experience, suggests the
mood of a certain style of Neo-classical painting. The breathless prose repre­
sents Arthur's state of mind, in which we me temporarily caught up only to
 49

come down again when we pause to consider the incongruity of the myth of Eros
and Psyche in such a context. With the advent of Freud this myth of Love
leading the Soul towards perfection has lost its impact, but it played a significant
role in the imagination of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and seems to
have interested Eliot, who uses it again in Middlemarch . 19 Here, however,
Psyche is only the mask for an everyday seduction ; in Arthur's imagination
Hetty seems to have graduated from Hebe the wine-girl to the beloved of the
God of Love.
Cupid and Psyche fascinated Neo-classical artists as a symbol of the ideal, but
also underwent a rapid deterioration as decorative pornography, Divine Love
being a most acceptable excuse for getting voluptuous representations of naked
lovers inside the house. In both Arthur's time and Eliot's the pair could
frequently be found embracing not only on canvas, but also in bronze on
mantelpieces and over the tops of clocks. Arthur is an ordinary fellow and the
"artistic light" in which he views Hetty reveals this lower, more popular use of
the myth. The most famous and widely-copied example of this genre, the
painting of Cupid and Psyche done by Gérard in 1798, with its pretty surface
and sensuous undertones, would be a good example of Arthur's consciousness
(as different as possible from Dutch realism).20
Two months later, as Adam walks through the woods towards a chance
encounter with Arthur and Hetty, his carpenter's vision of the Grove becomes
an equivalent to realist painting. He views the Grove under

the magnificent changes of the lig h t... What grand beeches ! Adam delighted in a
fine tree of all things ; as the fisherman's sight is keenest on the sea, so Adam's
perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He kept them in
his memory as a painter does, with all the flecks and knots in their bark, and all the
curves and angles of their boughs. (30 1-2)

As he pauses to examine a tree more closely, Adam catches sight of the lovers
"in the eastern light," understanding their relation with a clarity with which
they have never seen themselves. Arthur, somewhat befuddled with wine, tries
to "laugh the thing off' and throw "dust ... in honest Adam's eyes," but the
"strange evening light" shows things too clearly and Adam experiences an
inner illumination: "a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters
that changed the meaning of the past" (303). Here Adam represents the
author's vision as well ; the contrast between Adam's Grove and Arthur's could
be taken as the difference between true and false perception.21
Arthur's taste in literature also has some relevance to the ease with which he
yields to temptation. There are signs of interest in the Gothic and exotic: he
plans to restore the last remaining "piece of the old abbey" (261) and Hetty
succumbs in a summer-house in the Grove dubbed "the Herm itage," in which
monastic retreat Adam is surprised to find a "snug room" equipped with brandy
5°

and showing "all the signs of frequent habitation" (310). Arthur remarks that
as a child "I used to think that if ever I was a rich Sultan, I would make Adam my
grand-visier. And I believe now, he would bear the exaltation as well as any
poor man in an Eastern story" (61). (The Sultan's ministers were also his
slaves.) Arthur enacts this fantasy when he rather fulsomely bestows the
management of the woods on Adam at the Birthday Feast (272).
Eliot insists that her novel will have no "heroes riding fiery horses, them­
selves ridden by still more fiery passions" (36), "romantic criminals," or other
exotic characters who are not "half so frequent as your common labourer . . . "
(182). However, Arthur, who sometimes rides his grandfather's horses rather
hard, seems to enjoy stories of romantic crime and passionate violence.
On the morning of his first secret encounter with Hetty, Arthur decides to
spend a week fishing instead, but as he strides towards the stables he sings in his
"loudest ringing tenor ... his favorite song from the 'Beggar's Opera,' 'When
the heart of man is oppressed with care.' Not an heroic strain; nevertheless
Arthur felt himself very heroic . . . " (124). The second line of this song happens
to be "The mist is dispelled when a woman appears." It is sung by Macheath,
the heroic highwayman, who observes in the same soliloquy, "W hat a fool is a
fond wench! ... I must have women. There is nothing unbends the mind like
them ," and reflects on his prowess in turning virgins into ladies of the town (Act
II, Scene iii). Arthur's resolve to ride away from temptation seems half-hearted
from the beginning. (After discovering that his favorite horse is lame, Arthur
decides to keep away from Hetty by riding to visit his friend Gawaine. This
resolution also fails in the "Centaur" episode already discussed.)
A significant reference to Arthur's reading occurs at the crucial moment
when he rationalizes spending the afternoon in the Grove where he knows
Hetty will pass: "it was just the sort of afternoon for lolling in the Hermitage,
and he would go and finish Dr. Moore's Zeluco there before dinner" (130) - this
is the book under his arm during his first tryst with Hetty. Moore's tale of
criminal adventure was published in 1786 and went through several editions,
remaining popular into the nineteenth century - another edition came out in
18 10 . Its main interest lies in the persistent wickedness of the title character, the
degraded heir of a noble Sicilian family. Handsome and eloquent, but driven by
the lowest passions, which he always indulges without restraint, Zeluco perpe­
trates an extraordinary series of seductions and betrayals, finally tricking a pure
and beautiful maiden into marriage against her will. He abuses her out­
rageously and strangles their infant in a fit of rage, after which she goes mad,
becoming unable to accuse him of the crime: the intrigues which arise from this
situation provide the climax of the novel. Moore pauses occasionally to present
some flat moral commentary of the kind Eliot deplored in fiction.
In his circumstances Zeluco has some resemblance to Arthur - both are
fatherless, spoiled, rich, idle, and go into the army. Their story also concerns
seduction and child-murder followed by madness.. However, the point is not
 51

that Arthur failed to heed Moore's warning, but that such fantastic tales can
have no kind of moral impact. Arthur could never identify with the exotic
crimes of such a villain, nor learn anything from him about impulses to
self-indulgence that might lurk in good intentions. The allusion to Zeluco
contains a double irony: the novel does foreshadow Arthur's fate but also makes
it seem impossible in the real world.22 Zeluco seems a good example of those
"frantic novels," designed to gratify a "craving for extraordinary incident,"
which Wordsworth cites in the "Preface to Lyrical Ballads” as evidence of
degraded taste in contemporary literature.
U.C. Knoepflmacher has pointed out the many links between Hetty and
Martha Ray of "The Thorne," another tale of seduction, infanticide, and
madness - and also one of the homeliest of Wordsworth's narratives in Lyrical
Ballads.23 Arthur enjoys Zeluco while refusing to read a book which contains a
realistic representation of his own future sin. Later, in a mood for serious
meditation on his problem with Hetty, he comments on the moral relevance of
exotic fiction by flinging " Zeluco into the most distant corner" (134).
The lovers seem to kiss in a static Arcadia but they are not free from social or
biological consequences; as Eliot notes, it is only "for a long moment that time
has vanished." When he returns to the temporal world of cause and effect
Arthur ponders the incompatibility of their social rank:

To flirt with Hetty was a very different affair from flirting with a pretty girl of his
own station: that was understood to be an amusement on both sides; or, if it
became serious, there was no obstacle to marriage. But this little thing would be
spoken ill of directly... And even if no one knew anything about it, they might get
too fond of each other, and then there would be the misery of parting after all. No
gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer's niece. There must be an end to
the whole thing at once. It was too foolish. (139-40)

The thought of "parting" shows that he has descended from the timeless realm
of Eros and Psyche. The reality to which he returns is quite prosaic; his
undemocratic concept of a "gentleman" takes absolute class-barriers for
granted. Romance with a girl of his "station" might become "serious" but his
affair with Hetty can only be seen as entertainment, a "little thing" and "too
foolish." His phrase "out of a ballad" makes an ironic contrast to Lyrical
Ballads. By "ballad" Arthur means the opposite of Wordsworth - a fantastic
tale (like the plot of Zeluco) in an exotic setting (this aspect of "The Ancient
M ariner" seems to appeal to him).24 Since he takes his role in the social
hierarchy for granted, any romantic breaching of class-barriers could occur only
in a fantasy of no account in the real world. For Arthur literature is an
amusement, yet he often behaves as though he were in a ballad instead of out of
one, maintaining a separation between the two states of mind as distinct as his
separation of art from life. It is a peculiar element in Arthur's tragedy that he
52

foresees in lucid moments the disaster he seems powerless to avoid - "he should
hate himself if he made a scandal of that sort" (140).
Arthur's unconscious often works through his imagination, which for him is
the realm of unreal " fa n c y ":

The desire to see Hetty rushed back like an ill-stemmed current; he was amazed at
the force with which this trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather
tremulous as he brushed his hair - pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It
was because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of it as if it
were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing Hetty today ... (130)

A surprising force drives him towards an impossible breach of his social mores,
but once relegated to the imagination, or "trivial fancy," this impulse becomes
only a leisure amusement, an "idle matter" of "no consequence" which can
safely be indulged. Arthur could imagine "serious consequences" with a "girl
of his own station," but a pastoral milkmaid can only be the object of artistic
appreciation and pleasing sentiment.
When they embrace Arthur is not "sensible just then that Hetty wanted ...
signs of high breeding" (113). The "just then" indicates that he is in a special
state of mind cut off from normal consciousness; he will later think of this
deficiency as the most important aspect of their relationship. The thought of a
second meeting that evening can be indulged in the imagination precisely
because it is not possible, but then becomes possible after being reduced to
sentimental fancy: "H e made up his mind not to meet Hetty again; and now he
might give himself up to thinking how immensely agreeable it would be if
circumstances were different ... How beautiful her eyes were with the tear on
their lashes! He would like to satisfy his soul for a day with looking at them, and
he must see her again" (135). He resolves to "set things right with her by a
kindness which would have the air of friendly civility" (137), but he shall satisfy
more than his soul.
Through Arthur, Eliot distinguishes between sentimentalism and genuine
feeling. While hardly an intellectual Arthur does see himself as a cultivated
"m an of feeling"; with his upper-class education and leisure he has developed
something of a literary imagination, along with some excess emotion to be in­
dulged in it when hunting is out of season. His sharp distinction between art and
"fan cy" on the one hand, and everyday life on the other, cuts off communica­
tion with his emotional nature, which can find expression only in trivial
second-hand disguises.
His separation of art from life results in a split consciousness in which he can
alternate between fantasies disconnected from the real world and a reality where
such fantasies are, of course, impossible. Yet his exalted fantasy permits the
satisfaction of a sexual need his sentimental ego refuses to admit. Arthur's
imagination does not express feeling but rather provides a disguise under which
 53

it operates as an "agent not acknowledged," prompting actions which he does

not have to face up to because they are relegated to an imaginary world. What
he does with Hetty in the realm of Eros and Psyche remains separate from time
and consequence.
In a moment of clarity Arthur decides to make further flirtation impossible by
confessing to his friend Parson Irwine: "There was but one resource. He would
go and tell Irwine - tell him everything" (140). For Eliot, the Sacrament of
Confession had great psychological value because one's feelings revealed their
true nature when given objective existence in the consciousness of another
person.25 However, as Arthur forms this resolve he makes the fatal assumption
that "the mere act of telling it would make it seem trivial" (140).
When face to face with Irwine, Arthur decides not to mention his problem
because "the conversation had taken a more serious tone than he had intended -
it would quite mislead Irwine - he would imagine there was a deep passion for
Hetty, while there was no such thing" (176). Arthur justifies his pursuit of
Hetty by convincing himself that their relationship is "trivia l," yet knows that
objectively considered it will seem "serious." By refusing to communicate his
feelings he reveals the insincerity of his excuse, while keeping it intact so he can
see Hetty again.
Arthur depends on the approbation of others rather than an inner sense of
self, and it is only through Adam's rudeness, his refusal to be talked round after
seeing Arthur and Hetty together, that Arthur experiences himself as seen
disapprovingly through the eyes of another: "The discovery that Adam loved
Hetty was a shock that made him for the moment see himself in the light of
Adam's indignation ... All screening self-excuse ... forsook him for an instant
. . . " (315). While Irwine is restrained by good manners from enquiring too far
into Arthur's conscience, Adam assumes a moral equality which enables him to
disregard class-barriers.26
However, Arthur's "instant" of vision is only "fo r the moment." Later he
fends off this humiliating encounter with a fantasy that smacks of droit du
seigneur. When after his grandfather's death he returns, still unaware of
Hetty's disaster, to become master of the estate, he contemplates his intended
generosity to the husband of his cast-off mistress: "they were soon to be
married: perhaps they were already married. And now it was in his power to do
a great deal for them" (450).
In a final encounter in the Grove after Hetty's reprieve, Adam forces Arthur
to acknowledge the reality of his victims' feelings. Arthur performs his first
genuine service to his former ideal when he pleads with Adam to help him
sacrifice himself to keep the community intact: "one of my reasons for going
away is, that no one else may leave Hayslope - may leave their home on my
account" (477). Adam grimly insists that he has seen through Arthur's benevo­
lence - "W hen people's feelings have got a deadly wound, they can't be cured
with favours" - and will give in only when Arthur explicitly renounces it: "if
54

you would talk to the Poysers ... I know, of course, they would not accept any
favour fro^n me: I mean nothing of that kind" (479). Here Arthur belatedly
receives that enlightenment through exposure to the vision of an equal which he
rejected in his first confrontation with Adam.
For Eliot, the highest purpose of the imagination is to put oneself in another's
shoes and foresee the effect of one's actions on his consciousness. An interesting
link between Wordsworth and Eliot's kind of agnostic humanism appears in one
of G.H. Lewes's last and best books, The Study of Psychology , which she edited
after his death. Lewes discusses the evolution of morality, both in the race and
the individual, from shame and fear of divine punishment to that highest
achievement of civilized man, the sympathetic imagination: "In a mind where
the educated tracing of hurtful consequences to others is associated with a
sympathetic imagination of their suffering, Remorse has no relation to an
external source of punishment for the wrong committed: it is the agonized
sense, the contrite contemplation, of the wound inflicted on another."27 In
revising Lewes's manuscript, Eliot adds "Wordsworth has depicted a remorse of
this kind," and quotes the following lines from The Excursion :28

Feebly they must have felt

Who in old times, attired with snakes and whips
The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards
Were turned on me - the face of her I loved;
The wife and mother, pitifully fixing
Tender reproaches, insupportable! (Book 111, lines 850-55)

Arthur, preoccupied with the approbation of others, has a moral sense based
mainly on shame, and does not get the point when Irwine warns him that for a
sensitive man "inward suffering ... is the worst form of nemesis" (175). Arthur
fails to foresee Hetty's doom and thus shall be "educated" by agony and
contrition after the fact.
As we have seen, Zeluco and Wordsworth's "The Thorn" both comment
ironically on the seduction of Hetty. Arthur's education through remorse
seems foreshadowed in "The Rime of the Ancient M ariner," the only poem in
Lyrical Ballads that arouses his interest. The association Eliot establishes
between hunting and Arthur's pursuit of Hetty suggests that he downs her in
the same sportive spirit in which the Mariner shot the albatross. Arthur is
attracted to the Gothic trappings of Coleridge's poem - "it's a strange, striking
thing" - but complains that he "can hardly make head nor tail of it as a s to ry ";
he cannot grasp the theme of sin, guilt, and repentance which binds together its
apparently illogical events.
The Mariner returns to his "own countree" physically much the worse but
spiritually enlightened. After Hetty's trial and reprieve, Arthur joins the army
in India instead of assuming his long-anticipated role as Squire. In the
 55

"Epilogue" Adam describes him when he returns seven years later: "he's
altered and yet not altered ... his colour's changed, and he looks sadly. How­
ever, the doctors say he'll soon be set right in his own country air. He's all sound
in th'inside; it's only the fever shattered him so. But he speaks just the same,
and smiles at me just as he did when he was a lad" (550). Wordsworthian
Nemesis has wrought a change on an "inside" of which Arthur was not aware
before his fall. The return of his childhood smile suggests innocence regained,
in this case bought dear by becoming sadder and wiser through experience of sin
- and its consequences. In "The Ancient M ariner" Coleridge uses the super­
natural not merely as a Gothic device, but to create a symbolic vision of the
inter-relatedness of an organic universe, a vision in itself emblematic of the
Romantic imagination.29 Both the Mariner and Arthur sin carelessly against
the complex relationships of their world and both learn the real nature of these
relationships through remorse. Unlike the Mariner, Arthur already knows a
good deal about the community he violates, but unfortunately his imagination
only provides escape from the social structure he otherwise takes for granted.30
Through a subtle web of imagery and allusion, Eliot links Arthur to the main
themes of the novel and to her concept of the moral purpose of fiction. She
introduces Lyrical Ballads as a precedent for the realism discussed in Chapter
Seventeen, and as a standard by which to judge Arthur's false vision; in turn,
Arthur illuminates her realism by way of contrast. The complexity of his
motives shows the uselessness of melodramatic villains and refutes the reader of
"enlightened opinions and refined taste" who in Chapter Seventeen demands of
the novelist: "Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong side, and
your virtuous ones on the right" (179). Arthur's escapist fantasy reflects on
Eliot's belief that the imagination should be used to explore the real world,
while the egoism concealed in his "love of patronage" underlines her insistence
on a perception which can transcend social barriers.
Eliot's conservative respect for tradition has caused some critics to overlook
her effort to free the sympathetic imagination from the limits of class. In terms
very like Neil Roberts's interpretation of Adam Bede, Arnold Hauser states that
"George Eliot regards as an essentially psychological and moral problem what is
in reality a sociological problem, and looks in psychology for the answer to
questions which can only be answered sociologically."31 Two Marxist-oriented
critics, Ian Milner and John Goode, are attracted by the appearance of class-
conflict in Arthur's crime, but become frustrated by Eliot's failure to develop
this theme consistently.32 We must remember that as heir to Wordsworth
Eliot could combine a tendency to conservative (and sometimes rather confused)
politics with an insistence on democratic vision in art.33 The social contradic­
tions Eliot shies away from on the political level often receive a subtle develop­
ment in the psychology of her characters.
It is characteristic of Eliot's technique that she concentrates on the details of
Arthur's state of mind during his first meetings with Hetty, and yet never lets
56

us forget that he is a prospective landlord committing an offense against a

tenant-farmer. Thus as we explore the psychology of sentimental benevolence
we also become aware of its limitations as an attitude of the upper class towards
the lower. Arthur dreams of replacing his grandfather's avarice with an ideal
generosity to his tenants, but we know that this can only consist of giving back a
small portion of the wealth derived from their labor.34 A good part of the
income from his estate must go to keep the "mansion in first-rate order, all
elegance and high taste - jolly housekeeping, finest stud in Loamshire" (125).
This giving which is also a taking appears at its worst in a benevolence towards
Hetty which disguises a typical aristocratic use of farm-girls. Through Arthur,
Eliot demonstrates to the reader of "enlightened opinions and refined taste"
that naive complacency in one's social status is incompatible with genuine
sympathy for those who must sweat on fields which others own.
We can conclude that Arthur's story is not a "static moral drama," and that it
seems quite different from the usual treatment of seduction in Victorian novels.
His error arises not from sexual desire in itself, but from misrepresenting it as
sympathetic concern and esthetic appreciation. Eliot cannot be accused of
punishing the lovers for their sexual vitality: Hetty is a self-obsessed social-
climber and Arthur pursues her in a pseudo-pastoral dream fabricated out of
second-hand imagery.35 His escapist notion of literature and his class-bound
belief in "high taste" excuse him from any attempt to understand the subjective
consciousness of his victim or the economic reality of her class.
On the other hand, the narrator shows us everything Arthur cannot see and
speaks out against the fashionable taste in literature he represents, along with
the refined reader of Chapter Seventeen. In her first novel Eliot develops her
own version of the difference between fancy and imagination. Convinced that the
"ill-stemmed current" of his "desire to see Hetty" is only a "trivial fancy"
(130), Arthur sublimates his emotional needs into his vision of himself as ideal
Squire, while the narrator combines psychological analysis with social concern
by revealing the tragic interaction between Arthur's divided self and the class-
divisions of the world he is about to inherit.

NOTES

1 The George Eliot Letters, ed Gordon S. Haight (New Haven 19 5 4 -56 ), II, 387. The page
references which appear throughout are from Adam Bede, ed Gordon S. Haight (New York 1967).
2 Neil Roberts, George Eliot: Her Beliefs and Her Art (Pittsburgh 1975), PP 6 3-6 7.
3 Hayslope represents the past, while Dinah's milieu anticipates social problems of the nineteenth
century. She complains of a "deadness to the W ord" in the country and says that her religion
flourishes amid the industrial privation of "great towns like Leeds" (92). She works in a cotton mill
in Snowfield, which is also a mining town.
4 A. O. J. Cockshut notes Adam's mid-Victorian quality and describes him as "a convincing
portrait of the serious agnostic in the making" ( The Unbelievers [New York 1966], p 47).
5 Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, B ookx, xiii.
6 Ibid, Book iv, vi.
 57

7 John Goode also finds an affinity between Tom Jones and Arthur - "Adam Bede," Critical Essays
on George Eliot (New York 1970), pp 2 4 -2 5 . This essay has many insights but I strongly disagree
when Goode argues that Eliot was influenced by Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism.
8 Thomas A. Noble, George Eliot's 'Scenes of Clerical Life' (New Haven 1965), p 57.
9 Henry Fielding, '"An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of M e n ," The Complete Works of
Henry Fielding (New York 1967), xvi, 285.
10 Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind (New Haven 19 57), p 278.
11 There is a contradiction in the concept of improvement. Irwine says, "Gawaine has got the curses
of the whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure." Enclosure was an important aspect of
that consolidation of land for "im proved" farming which was rapidly eliminating the small tenant
farmer and thus the whole feudal community which forms the basis of A rthur's "pictures of the
future." Arthur has been influenced by Arthur Young, who strongly supported enclosure but
changed his mind dramatically in 1800 when he discovered that it was being applied exclusively in
the interests of the landowners.
12 For Eliot's general interest in Wordsworth, see Thomas Pinney, "G eorge Eliot's Reading of
Wordsworth: The Record," v n , 24 (1963), 2 0 -2 2 , and "T he Authority of the Past in George Eliot's
N ovels," n c f , 21 (1966), 1 3 1 - 4 7 . Jerome Thale, in The Novels of George Eliot (New York 1959)
and U.C. Knoepflmacher, in George Eliot's Early Novels (Berkeley 1968), both discuss the
peculiarly Wordsworthian quality of Adam Bede. Michael Squires provides a more general discus­
sion of Wordsworth's influence on English fiction in The Pastoral Novel: Studies in George Eliot,
Thomas Hardy, and D.H. Lawrence (Charlottesville 1974)- To m y knowledge, the best and fullest
discussion of Wordsworth's influence on Eliot's early fiction is Robert Dunham's unpublished
dissertation, "W ordsworthian Themes and Attitudes in George Eliot's N ovels" (Stanford 19 7 1). I
am indebted to Professor Dunham for revealing the importance of Wordsworth for the interpreta­
tion of Eliot's fiction.
13 Eliot's argument in Chapter Seventeen also seems to parallel Book Thirteen of The Prelude,
where Wordsworth rejects fashionable elitism and turns to the depiction of humble rustic charac­
ters.
14 See Hugh W itemeyer, "G eorge Eliot, Naumann, and the Nazarenes," v s, 18 (1974-75),
345-58, and "English and Italian Portraiture in Daniel D e r o n d a ncf, 30 (March 1976), 477-94.
15 In an essay entitled "W orldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young" Eliot attacks
Edward Young's grandiose, abstract verse, and presents William Cowper as an example of good
poetry (described in terms of clear light): "H ow Cowper's exquisite mind falls with the warmth of
morning sunlight on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every detail and investing every
detail with beauty" - Essays of George Eliot, ed Thomas Pinney (New York 1963), p 382. Here Eliot
uses Cowper as an eighteenth-century representative for Wordsworth. In his Principles of Success
in Literature (Boston 1894) G.H . Lewes quotes extensively from Eliot's criticism of Young but
compares him to Wordsworth rather than Cowper (pp 68-72).
The painting of the old woman closely resembles Interior with Old Woman Peeling Apples by
David Teniers the younger, a painter noted for his treatment of light and his detailed depictions of
peasant life. Eliot saw and admired the work of some Dutch painters, Teniers among them, when
she was writing this part of Adam Bede - see Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography (Oxford
1968), p 259.
16 In a hostile review of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, Southey said that "T h e Idiot B oy"
"resembles a Flemish picture in the worthlessness of its design and the excellence of its execution.
From Flemish artists we are satisfied with such pieces: who would not have lamented if Corregio or
Rafaelle had wasted their talents in painting Dutch boors or the humours of a Flemish w ake?" [The
Critical Review, vol 24, October, 1798). This review may have suggested Eliot's reference to Dutch
painting, and Southey is probably included among the "lofty-m inded people" who despise it. Eliot
considered Southey an example of the bad taste of the period (see note 30). In Chapter Seventeen
Eliot pays tribute to "divine beauty of form " but demands recognition for "that other beauty too,
5«

which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sym pathy." Arthur sees Hetty
entirely in terms of "beauty of form ."
17 Reva Stump, Movement and Vision in George Eliot's Novels (Seattle 1959), p 18. I am indebted
to Stump's excellent discussion of this scene.
18 George Eliot, Westminster Review, 65 (April 1856), 626.
19 See U .C. Knoepflmacher, "Fusing Fact and M yth: The New Reality of Middlemarch," This
Particular Web: Essays on 'Middlemarch', ed Ian Adam (Toronto 1975), pp 5 6 -57 .
20 See Hugh Honour, Neo-classicism (Harmondsworth 1968), p 1 7 1 .
21 H etty, who never distinguishes between fantasy and the real world, cannot see the Grove at all.
As she walks through the Grove, Eliot describes the light-effects she fails to see because of her
preoccupation with an imaginary future (13 6 -3 7 ).
22 Irving Buchen - "A rth u r Donnithorne and Zeluco: Characterization via Literary Allusion in
Adam Bede," v n , 23 (1963), 1 8 - 1 9 “ and Jerome Thale - "Adam Bede: Arthur Donnithorne and
Zeluco," m l n , 70 (1965), 26 3-6 5 - both assume that Eliot blames Arthur for not heeding Moore's
message about the awful fate of seducers. In fact, the novel's seductions are far more interesting
than its moral passages, and Eliot disapproves of Arthur for preferring this tale to Wordsworth.
Also most Victorian readers would have known that in the preface to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
Byron refers to his sin-wearied hero as " A poetical Zeluco." Byron, a poet whom Eliot intensely
disliked, stands for everything she opposes in Chapter Seventeen.
23 U .C. Knoepflmacher, George Eliot's Early Novels, p 95.
24 Arthur's reference to gentlemen making improbable marriages in ballads suggests a romantic
story like "K in g Cophetua and the Beggar M aid" in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry (an enlarged edition was published in 1794). Also Gothic tales in ballad form were very
popular in this period. M any translations of Gottfried Burgher's "L en ore" were published, the best
known being William Taylor's "E llen ore," in the Monthly Magazine, 1796.
25 See Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans George Eliot (New York 19 57), pp
7 8 -7 9 and 12 2 - 2 4 . The most impressive confession-scenes in Eliot's fiction are Janet's confession to
M r. Tryan in "Janet's Repentance," H etty's to Dinah in Adam Bede (xlv), and Lydgate's to
Dorothea in Middlemarch (lxvi).
26 It is interesting to note that in Chapter Fifteen Dinah, also a member of the working-class,
disregards social propriety in a forceful attempt to awaken H etty's conscience, while in the next
chapter Irwine fails through excessive politeness to elicit Arthur's confession.
27 G .H . Lewes, The Study of Psychology: Its Object, Scope, and Method (Boston 1879), p 150.
28 See Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography (Oxford 1968), p 527. In "George Eliot's
Reading of Wordsworth: The Record," Thomas Pinney states that Lewes and Eliot read The
Excursion aloud to each other during the composition of Adam Bede.
29 See Humphrey House's interpretation of "T h e Rime of the Ancient M ariner" in Coleridge: The
Clark Lectures 1 9 5 1- 5 2 (London 1953). Eliot was certainly capable of understanding the poem on
this level.
30 A taste for the exotic seems to be associated with snobbery in Eliot's fiction. In Felix Holt, Esther
Lyon reads Byron and dreams of genteel romance, while Mrs. Transóme in her youth laughed at
Lyrical Ballads, admired Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (an Arabian fantasy of incredible plot),
and married for rank and money. (I am indebted to Dunham's "W ordsworthian Themes and
Attitudes in George Eliot's N ovels" for the reference to Southey.) Rosamond Vincy, the social
climber of Middlemarch, copies passages out of Lalla Rookh, a series of Oriental romances by
Thomas Moore. Lydgate, unconscious snob and Rosamond's victim, has given up reading literature
for science, but takes a sentimental view of women and imagines that life with Rosy will bring "ideal
happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which ... everything is given to you and
nothing claimed) . . ." (xxxvi). In this case sentimentalism makes the man vulnerable to exploita­
tion.
31 Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (New York 19 57), iv, 136.
 59

32 Ian Milner, "T h e Structure of Values in Adam Bede," Philologica Pragensia, 9 (1966), 2 8 1 - 9 1,
and John Goode, "Adam Bede," Critical Essays on George Eliot. What Eliot has to offer a
Marxist-oriented approach can best be appreciated if we first analyze her fiction in terms of her own
values and only then attempt to assess the limitations of her vision - the latter problem is beyond the
scope of the present essay.
33 For perceptive discussion of Eliot's ambivalence towards political reform, see Graham Martin,
" 'Daniel Deronda': George Eliot and Political C hange," Critical Essays on George Eliot, and Linda
Bamber, "Self-Defeating Politics in George Eliot's Felix H olt," v s, 18 (1975)/ 4 19 -3 5 .
34 Raymond Williams finds a similar problem in the celebration of aristocratic munificence in the
English pastoral tradition - The Country and the City (London 19 75), pp 38 -4 7. In "T he Natural
History of German L ife," Eliot attacks the sentimental treatment of "the working classes" by
contemporary authors and insists that the artist must obliterate the "vulgarity of exclusiveness"
through accurate depiction of lower class characters (Essays of George Eliot, pp 2 6 8 -7 1). This aspect
of Eliot's realism is emphasized by the contrast between Arthur's idyllic view of Hetty and the
narrator's account of her pathetic naivete and hopeless flight.
35 Ian G re g o r- "T he Two Worlds of 'Adam B ede,"' The Moral and the Story (London 1962) - and
Michael Squires - The Pastoral Hovel - both view Arthur's affair with Hetty as a genuine pastoral
idyll. M any readers have assumed that Eliot was passing a Puritan judgment on sexuality in having
the affair end in disaster - most recently Calvin Bedient in Architects of the Self (Berkeley 1972).