Adam Bede: the Story, Books Fifth and Sixth
Chapter Thirty
Syllabus topic 1.4, "Adam Bede - George Eliot"
Pages 150 to 153 of 406
In one line
Hetty runs away to find Arthur, fails, gives birth alone in a strange town, abandons the child in a wood, is arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to hang, confesses to Dinah in the condemned cell, and is reprieved at the foot of the gallows by Arthur riding through the crowd.
Book Fifth, chapters XXXVI to XLVIII
Chapters XXXVI and XXXVII, the two journeys. "The Journey of Hope" and "The Journey in Despair". Hetty leaves the Hall Farm saying she is going to visit Dinah, and travels instead towards Windsor to find Arthur. She learns his regiment has gone to Ireland. The second chapter is the road back, with no destination and almost no money, and it contains her attempt to drown herself in a pool, which she cannot carry out.
Chapter XXXVIII, "The Quest". Adam, when Hetty does not arrive at Dinah's, goes looking for her, and follows her track. Chapter XXXIX, "The Tidings", is the news reaching Hayslope: a young woman has been arrested at Stoniton for child murder.
Chapter XL, "The Bitter Waters Spread". The effect on the Poysers, whose whole standing is respectability, and on Adam, who at first refuses to believe it.
Chapters XLI to XLIII, the trial. "The Eve of the Trial", "The Morning of the Trial", "The Verdict". Adam sits by the dock. Hetty does not plead, and a plea of not guilty is entered for her. Two witnesses give the evidence: Sarah Stone, the widow who took her in and in whose house the child was born, and John Olding, the labourer who found a baby's hand under the timber choppings in the wood. The jury convict without a recommendation to mercy, the judge puts on the black cap, and at the words about hanging Hetty shrieks and faints.
Chapter XLIV, "Arthur's Return". Arthur, who has been abroad and knows nothing, comes home to his grandfather's funeral and learns everything at once.
Chapter XLV, "In the Prison". Dinah is admitted to the condemned cell. Hetty is silent and hard until Dinah prays with her, and then she confesses. Her own words are the most important evidence in the book, and they are not evidence in the trial because she never gave them.
I did do it, Dinah... I buried it in the wood... the little baby... and it cried... I heard it cry... ever such a way off... all night... and I went back because it cried.
She adds the sentence that a lawyer notices at once: "I didn't kill it. I didn't kill it myself. I put it down there and covered it up, and when I came back it was gone."
Chapter XLVI, "The Hours of Suspense", and XLVII, "The Last Moment". The cart carries Hetty and another woman towards the gallows through a crowd. Dinah tells her to close her eyes and prays with her. A shout goes up, and it is not a shout of cruelty: Arthur Donnithorne is riding through the crowd at full gallop with, in George Eliot's words, "a hard-won release from death".
Adam Bede: the Story, Books Fifth and Sixth
Chapter XLVIII, "Another Meeting in the Wood". Adam and Arthur meet again in the Chase, where the fight happened. Arthur tells him the sentence has been commuted to transportation, and that he is leaving Hayslope himself.
Book Sixth, chapters XLIX to LV
The recovery. Chapters XLIX to LI move the novel back to ordinary life: the Hall Farm, the Bede cottage, Sunday morning. Adam is changed, quieter and older.
Chapters LII to LV. "Adam and Dinah", "The Harvest Supper", "The Meeting on the Hill", "Marriage Bells". Adam realises that he loves Dinah. Dinah, who has resolved on a life of preaching and service, struggles with it and accepts him. They marry.
The epilogue. A short final section set in 1807. Hetty died on the voyage home after her sentence was remitted, so she never returns. Arthur, who has been away with his regiment, comes back ill and much altered. Adam and Dinah have children. Dinah no longer preaches, because the Methodist conference has forbidden women to preach, which is an accurate piece of history and which some readers find the saddest thing in the book.
The reprieve, and what it actually is
A student should be exact about this, because it is often misstated in answers.
Hetty is not acquitted. The verdict stands. She was convicted of child murder and sentenced to death.
What Arthur obtains is a commutation. The sentence of death is replaced by transportation. He obtains it by going to the authorities with everything he knows, which necessarily involves telling them what he did.
It arrives at the last possible moment. The cart has reached the place of execution. Eliot places it there deliberately: the reader is made to feel the machinery running to its end and stopping only because one man finally acted.
It does not save her life in the long run. The epilogue records that she died on the voyage home when the sentence was remitted, which is Eliot refusing the comfortable ending.
What beginners get wrong
They say Hetty is pardoned or found innocent. She is convicted, and the death sentence is commuted to transportation.
They say Arthur rescues her. He arrives with the reprieve, and he is also the reason she is in the cart. An answer should say both.
They forget that the confession is not evidence. Hetty tells Dinah what happened after she has been convicted, in a cell, to a preacher. Nothing she says there was before the jury.
Adam Bede: the Story, Books Fifth and Sixth
They end the novel at the reprieve. Book Sixth and the epilogue carry the novel's judgment on everybody, and Dinah's silencing is part of it.
A worked answer
Question. Reference to context: "It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop."
The two-sentence answer. These words are the narrator's, in chapter XLVII of George Eliot's Adam Bede, at the place of execution outside Stoniton, correcting the reader's assumption that the shout from the waiting crowd was a yell of cruelty as the cart carrying Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris reached the gallows. The horseman is Arthur Donnithorne, who is carrying what Eliot calls a hard-won release from death, that is, a commutation of Hetty's sentence to transportation, which he has obtained by telling the authorities what he himself had done.
The trap in this passage. It is not a pardon and not an acquittal. The conviction stands, and the epilogue records that Hetty died on the voyage home, so an answer that treats this as a happy ending has missed what Eliot does with it.
Quick revision
XXXVI to XXXVII: the journey of hope to Windsor and the journey in despair back, with the attempt at the pool.
XXXVIII to XL: Adam's search, the news of an arrest at Stoniton, the effect on the Poysers.
XLI to XLIII: the eve, the morning, and the verdict; Sarah Stone and John Olding are the witnesses; guilty, without recommendation to mercy; the black cap and Hetty's shriek.
XLIV to XLVII: Arthur returns; Dinah brings Hetty to confess in the cell; the cart to the gallows; Arthur arrives with a hard-won release from death.
XLVIII: Adam and Arthur meet again in the wood; the sentence is commuted to transportation.
Book Sixth: Adam and Dinah marry. The epilogue: Hetty dies on the voyage home, Arthur returns ill, and Dinah has given up preaching because the conference has forbidden it to women.
Test yourself
1. What exactly does Arthur bring to the gallows? A commutation of the death sentence, described by Eliot as a hard-won release from death. Hetty remains convicted, and the punishment becomes transportation.
2. Who are the two principal witnesses at the trial, and what does each say? Sarah Stone, a widow of Stoniton who took Hetty in and in whose house the child was born and was dressed in clothes she made herself; and John Olding, a labourer who heard a cry in Hetton Coppice, found a baby's hand among the timber choppings, and later found Hetty sitting against the same bush.
Adam Bede: the Story, Books Fifth and Sixth
3. What does Hetty confess to Dinah, and how does it differ from what the jury believed? That she buried the child in the wood and heard it cry, and went back because it cried, but that she did not kill it with her own hands and that when she returned it was gone. The jury convicted her of murder, without ever hearing her account.
4. Why is the epilogue important? Because it refuses a comfortable ending: Hetty dies on the voyage home, Arthur comes back ill and diminished, and Dinah stops preaching because women have been forbidden to. The novel does not restore what was broken.
5. What is the significance of Adam and Arthur meeting again in the wood? It is the same place as the fight in chapter XXVII, so the novel measures the distance travelled. Arthur brings the news of the commutation and announces that he is leaving Hayslope, which is the only reparation available to him.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.