Themes and Reference to Context: Adam Bede
Chapter Thirty-Four
Syllabus topic 1.4, "Adam Bede - George Eliot"
Pages 169 to 173 of 406
In one line
The novel's argument is that deeds carry their own consequences, that those consequences fall on people who did not choose them, and that the only thing which can be done afterwards is fellow feeling.
Theme one: consequences
The proposition. George Eliot's moral universe has no forgiveness that undoes anything. An act produces effects that run on, and the person who did it cannot call them back.
Where it is worked. Arthur's two meetings in the wood produce a child, a trial and a death. Adam's blow produces the letter, which produces Hetty's despair. Hetty's concealment produces the presumption that convicts her. Even the reprieve does not restore her: she dies on the voyage home.
The position the novel takes. Explicitly and repeatedly, that consequences cannot be separated from acts, and that a man who intends nothing is answerable for what follows all the same.
Theme two: realism, and the refusal to idealise
The proposition. Stated by the author herself in chapter XVII: she will paint people as they are, ordinary faces and ordinary lives, rather than invent noble characters who never existed.
Where it is worked. In Hetty, who is not a fallen angel; in Adam, who is proud and hard; in Mr Irwine, who is kind and insufficient; in Mrs Poyser, whose talk is exactly the talk of a farmer's wife. And in the trial, where the novel refuses to make its accused either innocent or monstrous.
Theme three: rank, and who pays
The proposition. The same act costs the two people involved in it entirely different amounts.
Where it is worked. Arthur is the heir and Hetty is a dairymaid. He is not charged with anything, because he has committed no offence known to the law. She is charged with a capital felony. He goes abroad with his regiment; she is sentenced to hang. The novel never states the comparison as a slogan and never lets you forget it.
Theme four: religion, in two kinds
The proposition. The novel sets an established church that is comfortable against a Methodism that is uncomfortable and asks which one does anything.
Where it is worked. Mr Irwine is cultivated, humane and popular, and does not press Arthur when Arthur nearly confesses. Dinah preaches in the open air, visits the sick, and goes into the condemned cell. Eliot is not unfair to Irwine: he is a good man. She simply shows what each kind of religion does when it is needed.
Theme five: work
The proposition. In this novel, what a person makes with their hands is a moral fact about them.
Where it is worked. The novel opens in a workshop and the first thing we see Adam do is finish a job properly after hours. Craft, the farm, the dairy, the harvest supper. Against them stand Hetty's dreams and Arthur's leisure, and the novel's judgment is in the arrangement.
Themes and Reference to Context: Adam Bede
Reference to context: the passages that are set
1. "But at the words 'and then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead,' a piercing shriek rang through the hall. It was Hetty's shriek." Chapter XLIII. The narrator, describing the moment sentence of death is passed on Hester Sorrel at the Stoniton assizes, after a verdict of guilty with no recommendation to mercy. It is the first sound Hetty makes in three chapters of trial, and she faints and is carried out of court.
2. "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." Chapter XLV. Spoken by Hetty to Dinah Morris in the condemned cell at Stoniton, after Dinah has prayed with her. It is her confession, and it comes after her conviction and so was never before the jury.
3. "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 XLV. Also spoken by Hetty to Dinah in the cell, immediately after the confession above. It is the distinction on which any legal discussion of the case turns, between abandoning a child and killing it.
4. "This testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her, a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times." Chapter XLIII. The narrator, on Mr Irwine's evidence of Hetty's good character. It records the rule that until 1836 counsel for a prisoner charged with felony could not address the jury on the facts.
5. "She didn't speak when they asked her if she'd plead 'guilty' or 'not guilty,' and they pleaded 'not guilty' for her." Chapter XLII. Spoken by Bartle Massey to Adam Bede, reporting what he has seen in court. It establishes that Hetty is silent from the arraignment onwards.
6. "And I saw it was a little baby's hand." Chapter XLIII. The last words of John Olding's evidence about what he found under a nut-bush among the timber choppings in Hetton Coppice. Eliot notes that a thrill ran through the court and that Hetty, for the first time, seemed to be listening.
7. "It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop." Chapter XLVII. The narrator, at the place of execution, correcting the reader's assumption that the crowd's shout was cruelty. The horseman is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying a hard-won release from death.
Themes and Reference to Context: Adam Bede
8. Chapter XVII, "In Which the Story Pauses a Little". Not a single quotable line but a whole chapter, in which the author stops the narrative to defend her refusal to idealise her characters. It is the source for any question on realism in this novel, and an answer should name the chapter by its title.
Four more the University has actually set
Note. Added by the past paper check. All four are from chapter XLIII, the day of the trial, and three of them are the words of the two witnesses.
A. "Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me ever since my last child was born." Spoken by Sarah Stone, the widow of Church Lane, Stoniton, identifying in court the baby clothes produced as evidence. She adds that she took a deal of trouble for both the child and the mother, and that she could not help taking to the little thing and being anxious about it. The line proves that the child was born alive and cared for in her house, which is the foundation of the case against Hetty.
B. "I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap." Spoken by Sarah Stone, describing the evening she went out to fetch an acquaintance because she feared the girl was taking a fever. She came back to find the candle burning and the girl and the baby gone, and it is this departure, with a child a day or two old, that turns the case from misfortune into a charge.
C. "My name is John Olding. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd's Hole, two miles out of Stoniton." The opening of the evidence of the second witness, a rough peasant, who describes seeing a young woman in a red cloak sitting under a haystack near Hetton Coppice about one o'clock in the afternoon. His evidence carries the case to its end, and Adam's hope collapses in the middle of it.
D. "There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among them." Spoken by John Olding, describing what he found in the wood. He says a hole was left in one place through which he could see the child's head, so that he made haste, cleared away the turf and the choppings and took the child out. It is the passage that produces the thrill through the court noted as passage 6 above.
Themes and Reference to Context: Adam Bede
How to place a passage from this novel
Names. Adam, Seth, Hetty, Dinah, Arthur, Irwine, Poyser, Bartle Massey and Lisbeth belong only to this text.
Places. Hayslope, the Hall Farm, the Chase, Snowfield, Stoniton.
Register. Eliot's narrator speaks in long, weighted sentences and addresses the reader directly about method, which distinguishes her from Dickens's comic narrator and from Twain's.
Dialect. The Poysers and the Bedes speak a Midlands dialect, but without the "v" and "w" exchange that marks the Wellers in Pickwick.
What beginners get wrong
They call it a novel about a seduction. It is a novel about what a seduction costs, and two thirds of the book is the cost.
They quote chapter XVII without naming it. Naming the chapter and its title is worth a mark.
They confuse the confession with evidence. It is given in the cell after conviction.
They summarise instead of arguing. Every theme above is a proposition, and an answer must take a position on it.
A worked answer
Question. "Deeds have consequences. Discuss with reference to Adam Bede."
Paragraph one, the thesis. George Eliot's moral universe contains no forgiveness that undoes anything. An act produces effects that run on past the person who did it, and fall on people who never chose them, and the novel is constructed to make the reader watch that happen.
Paragraph two, Arthur. Two meetings in a wood in Book First produce a child, a capital charge, a trial and a death, and Arthur is not present for any of it. The novel makes the distance between the act and its consequence the measure of his fault.
Paragraph three, Adam. His blow in chapter XXVII is justified and produces the letter, which produces Hetty's despair, which produces the flight. Even the right action has consequences its author did not intend.
Paragraph four, Hetty. Her concealment is the very thing that convicts her, because the law of 1800 presumed murder from concealment.
Paragraph five, the reprieve. And the consequence outlives even the rescue: Arthur arrives at the gallows with a commutation, and the epilogue records that she died on the voyage home. Eliot will not let the reader off.
Conclusion. The only thing the novel offers against consequence is fellow feeling, which is what Adam acquires through suffering and what Dinah brings into the condemned cell, and neither of them can undo a single fact.
Quick revision
Themes: consequences; realism and the refusal to idealise; rank and who pays; two kinds of religion; work as a moral fact.
Chapter XVII is the author's statement of method and the answer to any question on realism.
Themes and Reference to Context: Adam Bede
The set passages: the sentence of death and Hetty's shriek; the confession; "I didn't kill it myself"; the note on counsel not being allowed to address the jury; the plea entered for her; the baby's hand; and the horseman at the gallows.
The comparison that carries any essay: the same act sends one person abroad with a regiment and the other to the assizes on a capital charge.
Test yourself
1. State the theme of consequences and prove it twice. That an act produces effects which cannot be recalled and which fall on people who did not choose them. Arthur's two meetings in the wood end at a gallows, and the reprieve that saves Hetty from hanging does not save her life, since the epilogue records that she died on the voyage home.
2. Place: "And I saw it was a little baby's hand." The close of John Olding's evidence in chapter XLIII, describing what he found under a nut-bush among timber choppings in Hetton Coppice. It is the moment Adam's hope collapses and the first moment Hetty is seen to listen.
3. What does chapter XVII argue, and why is it relevant to the trial? That the novelist should paint ordinary people as they really are rather than idealise them. It is relevant because the trial requires the law to classify a person the novel has refused to simplify.
4. How does the novel handle the difference between Arthur's position and Hetty's? Without ever stating it as a slogan. He commits no offence known to the law and goes abroad with his regiment; she is tried for a capital felony and sentenced to death. The comparison is left for the reader to make.
5. Why does Eliot correct the reader about the shout at the execution? Because the reader, like the characters, expects cruelty from a crowd at a hanging. Making the shout be excitement at a rider bringing a reprieve is Eliot's way of refusing an easy view of the community, immediately after showing what that community's law was about to do.
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.