Adam Bede, by George Eliot

Her plots have always been artificial-clumsily artificial-the conduct of her story slow, and her style diffuse. Her conclusions have been signally weak, as the reader will admit who recalls Hetty's reprieve in Adam Bede.

--Henry James, 1886

Henry James's wrote extensive criticism of George Eliot's novels. The criticism vacillated between high praise to scathing damnation. If we use Eliot's Adam Bede as an embracing text of Eliot's developing form, we can dissect the tenets of James's criticism as it pertains to Eliot's entire canon as either fair or unfair. As James suggests, the title of Adam Bede implies that Adam was the hero; however, close reading suggests otherwise. We will examine who, if any of the characters, are the real heroes of the novel, construct James's criticism of Eliot's beginnings and endings as long-winded and purposeless and examine whether this was a problem endemic in Eliot's work or a tactic developed by her form, and explore why Eliot's plot of Adam Bede was meandering and the characters little developed. The purpose is to develop the conclusion whether Eliot reached her goals as outlined in Book II, Chapter 17 'In Which the Story Pauses a Little Bit' of developing her form that tried "to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind." (174)

To begin any discussion on Eliot criticism, we must first explore her definition of form. In the opening paragraph of Book II, a reader admonishes Eliot:

"This rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan! How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Author some truly spiritual advice! You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things-quite as good as reading a sermon." (174)

Eliot's simple reply is "[c]ertainly I could, if I held it in the highest vocation of the novelist to represent things as they never have been and never will be." Eliot wants to be the mirror for her readers and reflect the world she sees. Eliot, however, has deeper ideas than the conventional novel form to reach this aspiration. Eliot believes that multi-layered and complex interdependency of relationships is the highest form of realism. With complex matrixes of multi-character involvement, the marriage of individuals to their environment, and the deliberate development and growth of characters, Eliot defines an art form that is both well developed, yet, is defeating within its purpose. (James)

Darrel Mansell relating from Eliot's "Notes on From in Art (1868)" describes Eliot's vision of realism as visualizing the object as a whole in the relationship to its environment. When an observer first sees an object, the object is taken in by the viewer as a visual whole. In Eliot's "Notes," she uses the example of a tree. The viewer first sees the tree and considers the object in its entirety and only considers it as itself. Upon closer inspection, however, the viewer realizes the component parts of the tree are comprised of other pieces. The tree in its wholeness is constructed by smaller pieces such as leaves, roots, and limbs to make the whole. As the viewer interprets these parts into its whole, a tree, Eliot now ascertains that the realism of the tree rests in its relationship to its surrounding environment. Eliot's "[f]orm," Mansell asserts, "is not outward appearance but 'inward' relations." (653) This relationship as Eliot believes develops the symbols that define the characters of her fiction. For many readers, however, "[t]he ways in which George Eliot goes about defining the[se] symbolic relationship[s] are occasionally clumsy, particularly for modern literary sensibilities with their strict demand that an author never intrude into his work." (Creager, 219)

Eliot's deliberate attempt to weave interdependent relationships within her novel form creates awkward plot structure and weak character development while "the style is... the lingering, slow moving, expanding instrument which we already know" that is indicative of Eliot's works. (James, 907) Yet, even with these three elements of Eliot's works suffering from her form, the realism form that Eliot envisions takes a disastrous toll on her beginnings and endings. Darrel Mansell quotes from Eliot's letters that she maintains that "conclusions are the weak point of most authors, but some of the fault lies in the very nature of a conclusion, which is at best a negation." (661) The abrupt conclusions of Author's arrival to save Hetty from the gallows and Dinah's subsequent marriage to Adam are problematic for critics, readers, and ultimately, Eliot's vision of form. James asserts that in Eliot's works "[t]he termination is hasty, inconsiderate, and unsatisfactory-is, in fact, almost an anti climax." (907) The problems are not only an antithesis to Eliot's form but very disjointing to the reader. As critic W.H. Harvey complains, it is the "psychological discontinuity" that readers feel that is the most disturbing to readers. The marriage proposal and Dinah's acceptance leaves the reader grasping for particulars to understand the reasoning behind Dinah's abrupt change of heart. "It is not the suddenness of [the decision] but its arbitrariness which causes discomfort," Harvey claims. (Martin, 752-753) Henry James concludes that Eliot's endings are ultimately fairy tale, happy endings. Eliot's method of closing Adam Bede with the marriage of Adam and Dinah is a compromise with the conventions of Romanticism rather than the flavor of realism she is trying design. This compromise with older standards of the novel is the antithesis of the experiment Eliot is attempting with Adam Bede. James sums up Eliot's issues with the development of her form in regards to her endings as such:

"In the second department of her literary character,--or perhaps I should say in a certain middle field where morals and aesthetics move in concert,--it is very difficult to give an example. A tolerably good one is furnished in her inclination to compromise with the old tradition-and I use the word "old" without respect-which exacts that a serious story of manners shall close with the factitious happiness of a fairy-tale. I know few things more irritating in a literary way than each of her final chapters." (933)

To further our discussion and to determine if James's criticismsare fair or unfair, we have to examine why these endings with such "psychological discontinuity" cause such discomfort in readers. The answer is in Eliot's implied structure of form. If we examine the tenets of Eliot's vision of her art, we have to look at the nature of the interdependency that develops her characters. If we look at the world as a continuous conversation that individuals can enter and leave at anytime, we are stating there is no beginning and no end to the human condition. Eliot, we can assert, writes not about an individual life but the relationship of lives in comparison to their cultural, personal, interpersonal, and environmental surroundings. Therefore, we can further claim with Eliot's dependency on the relationships of an individual to their surroundings there is no beginning to their story unless we follow a newborn through their complete development from runny noses and diapers to the grave. Eliot's beginnings, she implies, must have a qualifying event to render the story relatable. Eliot, moreover, with her form falls into the trap of where to end too. As she stated, "a conclusion is at best a negation." This negation she speaks of is the never ending conversation of a life and the relationships that depend upon that life. For example, Hetty's death could have removed her from the story and paved the way for Adam's marriage to Dinah; however, the abrupt ending and the travesty that would have happened to the mental well-being of Adam would have resounding effects on the aim of Eliot's meandering plot which is the future betrothal of Adam and Dinah. We will examine this paradigm later but it is suffice to say Eliot's inherent problems with endings rests in the fact that although a singular life ends, the effects that life has on the interwoven lives of her other characters will remain a lasting impression on attitudes and judgments of the other characters' well-being.

In Adam Bede, Eliot's struggle with the beginning of her novels manifests itself in our introduction to the assumed hero of the novel Adam. We open with a general physical description of Adam but the physical accoutrements that define Adam do not relate the inner-relationship Adam has with his surrounding environment and workmates. To introduce us to Adam's personality which is dominated by inner-strength and self-possessed pride, Eliot has to kill Thias Bede--Adam's father. Eliot, to remain true to her formulaic approach to her brand of realism, must create an either/or complex to highlight the good and bad qualities of the opposing characters characteristics. The death of Adam's father marks Eliot's first foray into the complex web of a character's relationship dependency upon another characters. Although Eliot overtly names her aims in Book II that she will "give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind," Eliot begins the didactic either/or that characterizes Adam Bede's character relationships. To develop the inner character of Adam, Eliot had to juxtapose the salient, strong, and pious qualities of Adam to those of one not so salient, strong, or pious in Thias. Eliot creates this tension through contrasting Thias and Adam. She foreshadows the dichotic relationship by describing "the father to whom we owe our best heritage-the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modeling hand-galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors." The family, making money moonlighting as coffin makers, has a coffin due in Broxton the next day. It is Thias's responsibility to finish the coffin yet he is late in returning home. Thias's propensity for draft-houses, music, and good times has Adam remember "the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish, shouting a song out fitfully amongst his drunken companions at the Wagon Overthrown." (57) The boisterous nature of Thias and his love for music and song is further contrasted to Adam while he, Adam, fumes over his father's failure to return home to finish the Broxton coffin. Eliot, once again foreshadowing, but drawing the quiet inner-strength of Adam's character and his inner personal peace brought about by a lack of life struggle finds that the "[b]odily haste and exertion usually leave your thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam." The extreme consternation Adam feels towards his father's irresponsibility is more clearly juxtaposed to Adams stalwart work-ethic and peace of mind when Adam is described toiling away at his workbench on the coffin. "While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift succession." (57) To illustrate and build the character of Adam, Eliot uses the antipodal character of Thias to create an image of worthiness for the reader to embrace Adam. Thias, as we read, is an amalgam of frivolity, irresponsibility, and drunkenness. These are all traits, as Adam is unveiled to us through the story, that are shunned by Adam. This beginning, as such, is still problematic to Eliot's form. She reveals some of the pride Adam's father instilled in Adam as a youngster when Adam was proud to be "Thias Bede's son." The form, however, still left wanting to define the complexity of emotion Adam feels over the late return and subsequent death of his father, is not done justice in Eliot's vision of realism. The beginning, if we are to hold true to Eliot's vision of realism built upon a complex, matrixed layer of relationships, fails dramatically. The relationship is much like a joke told at a cocktail party. The reader hears a complex joke with a witty, hard-hitting punch line yet misses the nuances of the jest since he/she does not know the characters of the story. This is much as it is with the relationship between Thias and Adam. The reader intuitively feels there is a deeper level of complexity yet misses it due to the fact he/she has walked in during the middle of the conversation.

The more endemic issue with Eliot's form is the lack of realistic characters in Adam Bede. Her attempt to draw characters we would meet on a journey from Loamshire to Snowfield is lost in her paradigmatic attempt to foist relationships amidst ill-developed characters. Where Eliot fails in Adam Bede to draw a realistic interwoven complex of character relationships, she succeeds in marrying her characters to the environment and developing the psyches of the characters dependent of whether they hail from Loamshire or Snowfield. To focus on the affinity of a character's personality traits to their respective village, I will examine Adam and Dinah. First, however, we must explore the description of Loamshire. Loamshire and the surrounding village of Hayslope are described as a pastoral, peaceful village where the valley is a sheltered and lies in a "region of corn and grass." (28) The farms of Hayslope provide prodigious food supplies and the luxuries of life abound. George Creager interprets Loamshire as a place where:

"[p]rosperity, if not omnipresent, is nevertheless common; poverty is rare. Exile from this snug world is regarded by its inhabitants as the worst evil that can befall them." (218)

By aligning Adam with Loamshire, Eliot implies to the reader Adam is stable and a part of this happy, fruitful landscape. His virtues, strengths, and lack of struggles arise from the solid upbringing of good character and fortuitous nature that defines the Eden-esque shelter of Loamshire. Snowfield, in contrast, is a "dreary bleak place" wrought with poverty and hard living. The landscape is barren, stony, and treeless. For Dinah to come from Snowfield, Eliot is adhering the stony and cold nature of the landscape to the deportment of Dinah. The region of Dinah's domesticity also alludes to her alienation from the Hayslope population. Her Methodist religion is something feared and exotic to the Hayslope residents and this makes Dinah something outside of the Hayslope norm and distances her spiritually from the hard working, pious citizenship of Hayslope. The relationship of characters to their environments is one failure of praise in James's criticism. In her adaptation of the novel form, Eliot's relationships with characters to a defining landscape are a success. Yet, as she moves away from the character defining relationship of the characters' homelands and she tries to develop layered character to character relationships, Eliot fails and this is a criticism that James and fellow critics are justified.

The relationship layers of Adam Bede fail to elucidate or further Eliot's vision of her form. By trying to marry the characters as interdependent individuals existing together to form a whole of community like the leaves and roots to a tree, Eliot inadvertently creates a didactically moralistic dichotomy of characters that finds one character's existence inherently dependent upon another. This dependency is most pronounced in the character pairings of Hetty and Dinah and in Adam and Author. Taking the pairings together, we see them as didactic opposites that could not exist one without the other rather than as complex, multi-faceted characters complete with human neurosis and desires. Each pairing represents a moral opposite and rather than reflecting the characters as they are, Eliot presents them as they should be in her moralistic vision. Eliot's intentions in developing her morally diametric characters adhere to an aesthetic and moral code that is decidedly conservative. Although the meandering plot of Adam Bede takes a dark and desperate turn with Author's self-banishment to the regiments and Hetty's heartrending journey to Windsor in search of Author, Eliot cannot end the story unhappily. James suggests "as an artist and a thinker, in other words, our author is an optimist; and although a conservative is not necessarily an optimist, I think an optimist is pretty likely to be a conservative." (933) Eliot's conservative optimism and religious upbringing are the culprits behind Eliot's didactic nature. Her optimism betrays itself in her wishes that a character has a moral turpitude to live up to and this belief in a solid, self-affirming morality forces Eliot to create morally superior characters like Adam and Dinah. The microcosm of this argument is looking at each pairing as a separate study.

Adam and Author represent the antipodal morality of a man as Eliot envisions them. Adam is developed as a proud, self-absorbed individual more concerned with eking out a living, taking over Mr. Burge's workshop, and becoming the superintendent of the Chase's woods than caring about others outside of his immediate family and Hetty. Eliot, however, paints Adam in this light so his development through the novel is more pronounced. "The main plot," argues Bruce Martin "is one of character-development, in which Adam moves from proud, unsympathetic censoriousness to sympathy with those weaker than he." (746) Where Adam is proud and stalwart not seeing his faults and recognizing weaknesses in others, Author Donnithorne begins the novel as a naïve, insecure boy that is concerned with the perceptions of him by the tenants that will soon be his charges when he becomes patriarch of the Donnithorne Estate. Author's insecurity is his weakness and ultimate downfall. Instead of seeing weaknesses in others, Author's greatest weakness is his insecure pride. Author's brand of Narcissism is the opposite of Adam. The "enemy within himself" that Author has to overcome is the growth sub-plot Eliot uses to help expose the character-development, or growth, that Adam will endure later in the book. Author, however, realizes his self-induced enemies when he "painfully realizes [his] weaknesses and the irrevocability of [his] misdeeds before his limitations become apparent to him." (Martin, 746-747) Eliot, her didactic morality intact in both men, both suffer the sin of pride; however, Adam's sin by Eliot's estimation is a higher form since his is a pride of strength and moral superiority and Author's comes from his insecurity and weakness. In the end, although Author is originally self-banished from Hayslope to avoid the discovery of Hetty's and his forbidden affair, Author's sense of pride and duty rectify any level of moral inferiority Eliot believes he has as he, in the best Romantic convention, rides into town at the last moment to save Hetty from the gallows. Author's character combines two basic flaws, Martin Bruce asserts, "a vanity about his relationship to his tenants and other inferiors, and an excessive faith in his moral strength." (758) This is Author's brand of growth as Eliot sees it to justify the cathartic intent of Author's final development of character as a knight in shining armor rescuing the damsel in distress and coming to terms with his responsibilities of patriarch to the Donnithorne Estate and its tenants. Adam's growth will be explored later in detail. Eliot, however, by naming him the lead character, although there is a good argument that Hetty is the actual heroine of the story, makes his growth central to the plot of Adam Bede. We must, however, examine Hetty and Dinah before we discuss the tenets of Adam's character development.

Where Adam and Author represent the male moral pair and rather weakly highlight Eliot's moral didacticism, Hetty and Dinah represent the female pairing and a stronger moral dichotomy that is central to the development of plot in Adam Bede. Hetty is a flirtatious, flighty, self-centered amalgam of 19^th century female folly and vice contrasted to Dinah's pious, quiet, people-oriented religion and demeanor. The chapter 'The Two Bed-Chambers' is the best example of the diametric moral make-ups of the two women. While Hetty stares in the mirror admiring her earrings and beauty hoping to win the affections of Author Donnithorne, her social superior and her male moral equal, Dinah is quietly rocking away in her chair worrying about Hetty. Hetty's fascination and self-indulgent dreams of wedding Author and living the life of an aristocratic woman illustrate Hetty's weaknesses towards richness and prosperity. Dinah, however, suggests the prosperity of Loamshire frightens her. Where Hetty is looking for the easy, self-satisfying life, Dinah runs to despair and pain. The most illuminating scene to represent the two female characters empathy with others rests in the death of Thias Bede. When Hetty hears there has been a death in the Bede house, she frets fearing the death may have been Adam; however, once upon learning, in fact, the death is the senior Mr. Bede, she goes about her business as nothing happened. Dinah, fraught with the pride of duty, however, runs to Lisbeth Bede to assauage her miseries. The characters exist to juxtapose the self-centered versus the compassionate. The use of these antipodal moral characters, however, as we have discussed, is to set the scene for the growth of the characters through dramatic change at the climax of the story.

Hetty's pregnancy is the beginning of the climax of Adam Bede and the subsequent development of the story's plot. Without her pregnancy and the series of unfortunate events that follow, Adam, Author, Hetty, and Dinah could not grow and the story would have stagnated. Bruce Martin asserts:

"What has been described variously as Adam's pride, hardnes and inflexibility in the early part of the novel can perhaps most usefully be seen as a lack of sympathy with those who err on account of weaknesses he does not possess...Adam repeatedly censures those around him who, from their lack of vocation, their laziness, or some other failing, do not match his industry or success in their work. Possessed of rather severe moral scruples, he has no patience with others, who despite good intentions, violate the moral code of the community. He consistently manifests an unwillingness to forgive any deviation from the standards he himself is able to meet." (747)

Adam's inflexible nature needs the travesty of Hetty's situation to marry the two moral superiors of Dinah and Adam. When Adam learns of Hetty's pregnancy from Mr. Irwine he immediately blames Author for the situation. Author, now fully Adam's moral opposite, is considered irresponsible and immoral. (Martin) Adam's moral growth, however, is not completed until Hetty's date before the gallows. Hetty's suffering is the catalyst required to jolt Adam from his moral inflexibility and let him see others' weaknesses not as inferior to him but innate in their experience and in turn, teaches him to be sympathetic to others needs but also learn that all people are responsible for their behavior. In love and suffering from fear of Hetty's imminent death, Adam learns to suffer too. Unfortunately, as Adam grows and learns from his Hetty's mistake, Eliot falls into the "old" conventional traps of the romantic novel when she allows Author to race to Hetty's rescue.

Creager argues the rescue of Hetty is essential to develop the end of Adam Bede so Eliot can marry Adam and Dinah. James, however, considers the marriage of Adam and Dinah a huge structural failure of Adam Bede. Creager, though, thinks "without it one is left with two of the principle figures-Adam and Dinah-still incomplete human beings." (235) The argument, as Harvey said earlier though, is the "psychological discontinuity" the reader experiences in the abrupt change of mind Dinah when she accepts Adam's proposal. As Bruce Martin, Henry James, and George Creager conclude, Adam Bede should have ended with Hetty's death rather than meandering to the unpredictable marriage of Adam and Dinah. To remain true to her form, Eliot could not have ended the book here; Hetty's execution would have been too neat and tidy as a conclusion. It did create, however, the cathartic moment that purges the reader of the tension and suspense of the plot. Eliot, instead of ending, however, goes on and then abruptly ends the novel with the marriage and the reader is then taken on a giant leap in time to Dinah and Adam's children playing the Chase. These conventions lead to the greatest structural failures and deviations for the outlined form Eliot was trying to achieve giving the narrative and plot the meandering feel critics accuse it of.

The structural problems of plot and character development are definitely evident in a first reading of Adam Bede. The negative criticisms of Eliot's works from James, Mansell, and Martin are justified and fair. In a sense, though, James scathing criticism not only points out the weaknesses of Eliot's writing but centers the locus of attention unwittingly on the successes and stronger qualities of Eliot's construction of her form. Yes, Eliot's Adam Bede's plot is meandering, slow, and ill-conceived; the characters are flat and two-dimensional rather than complex and multi-faceted. The beginning and end of Adam Bede are as awkward as Eliot believes they are in relation to the form she is developing. The ultimate finality of plot in Eliot's vision of form is self-defeating. The conversation the reader walks in on must continue without end as Eliot implies. As Eliot says, "a conclusion is at best a negation." Does Eliot, however, live up to her claim "to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind?" The answer is as two-sided as the moral pairings Eliot creates in the Hetty/Dinah and Adam/Author complexes. Yes, Eliot is faithful to representing her characters as they "mirrored themselves in [her] mind." No, however, she is not faithful in representing her characters as real, multi-layered, and believable characters. Her characters are not independent as characters in the human sense of individuals but dependent upon their social environment which is the overlying intent of her form. Eliot's attempt, however, to marry the interdependency of humans within their environment and social interactions in Adam Bede, however, fails. Eliot does create a social interdependency between her moral pairings but by doing so, she fails the form by making the characters too didactically paired to each other and not reflecting the individual nature of the human being. The Adam could not exist without his moral opposite such as an Author or a Hetty. Hetty's plight and shallowness could not exist in Eliot's Adam Bede without her flaws illuminated by the piousness of Dinah. If we look at Adam Bede as an introduction to Eliot's form, we must consider the formulaic conventions as Eliot's low form. The characters are too either/or. To achieve a high form, Eliot must intertwine more relationships and tie the characters more saliently to more layered personal relationships. Humans are complex and wear many faces in different social settings. This is where Eliot fails in the interdependency of her characters by failing to illustrate the multiple personalities, in the non-clinical sense, that are indicative of a human's complexity within themselves and their interactions with other multi-faceted humans. Where Eliot fails to represent human character development in a real and believable light, she does successfully change Adam and show the turmoil and suffering he must endure to reach the pinnacle of moral growth Eliot envisions in her mind as the morally perfect man. Yet, although the obvious hero in Eliot's mind, in the traditional definition of the word, is Adam; he is not the hero. Hetty is the heroine; Hetty is the character responsible for each characters' growth and the impetus for the climax of the plot. James contends:

"The central figure of the book, by virtue of her great misfortune, is Hetty Sorrel. In the presence of that great misfortune no one else, assuredly has the right to claim dramatic preeminence." (921)

The questions first posed are rather Eliot successfully remain true to her vision of form and were James's criticisms fair or unfair. No, Eliot did not remain true to her form; however, she did not completely fail. Eliot created a vehicle to explore deeper human intricacies later in her writing career. The criticisms of James were fair, at times they may have been boisterously harsh, but ultimately, they were fair.

Works Cited

Creager, George R. "An Interpretation of Adam Bede." ELH 23 (1956): 218-38.

Eliot, George. Adam Bede (Penguin Popular Classics). New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

James, Henry. "George Eliot." Literary Criticism. New York, N.Y: Literary Classics of the United States, Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking P, 1984. 907-1010.

Mansell, Darrel. "George Eliot's Conception of "Form"" Studies in English Literature 1600-1900 3 (1965): 631-62.

Martin, Bruce K. "Rescue and Marriage in Adam Bede." Studies in English Literature 12 (1972): 745-63.