Adam Bede

by George Eliot

if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist to represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then, of course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box, narrating my experience on oath.

So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one’s best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin—the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but

that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these fa...

imagination leaping forward in this way—making arrangements for an uncertain future—than he checked himself. “A pretty building I’m making, without either bricks or timber. I’m up i’ the garret a’ready, and haven’t so much as dug the foundation.” Whenever Adam was strongly convinced of any proposition, it took the form of a principle in his mind: it was knowledge to be acted on, as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust. Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of: he had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And

What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loamshire—the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows—I have come on something by the

roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire: an image of a great agony—the agony of the Cross. It has stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man’s life upon it, this image of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish—perhaps a young blooming girl, not

knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life’s bitterness. Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your...

She got up to look about for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down beside her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to hurry—there

During Adam’s narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him. It was a bitter remembrance to him now—that morning when Arthur breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And if their words had taken another turn . . . if he himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man’s secrets . . . it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and misery. He saw the whole

was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and sharply, “For what?” “For a great

The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor Adam’s maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of appealing anguish, “I can’t bear it . . . O God,

Adam stood motionless, with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that short space he was living through all his love again.

Sorrow

“She can’t ha’ done it,” he said, still without moving his eyes, as if he were only talking to himself: “it was fear made her

“Remember,” Mr. Irwine went on, “there are others to think

Duty overcomes sorrow in our own blindness

severe than her husband. We are often startled by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of traditional impressions.

“Adam, he will know—he will suffer, long and bitterly. He has a heart and a conscience: I can’t

entirely deceived in his character. I am convinced—I am sure he didn’t fall under temptation without a struggle. He may be weak, but he is not callous, not coldly selfish. I am persuaded that this will be a shock of which he will feel the effects all his life. Why do you crave vengeance in this way? No amount of torture that you could

“That perhaps can never be known with certainty, Adam,” Mr. Irwine answered gently. “In these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what seems to us strong evidence, and yet, for want of knowing some small fact, our judgment is wrong.

We can’t know

We find it impossible to avoid mistakes even in determining who has committed a single criminal act, and the problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen consequences of his own deed is one that might well make us tremble to look into it. The evil consequences that may lie folded in a single act of selfish indulgence is a thought so awful that it ought surely to awaken some feeling less presumptuous than a rash desire to punish. You have a mind that can understand this fully, Adam, when you are calm. Don’t suppose I can’t enter into the anguish that drives you into this state of revengeful

“There again you partly deceive yourself, Adam. There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can’t isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men’s lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the terrible extent of

this sin of Arthur’s has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it. An act of vengeance on your part against Arthur would simply be another evil added to those we are suffering under: you could not bear the punishment alone; you would entail the worst sorrows on every

Chapter 44: Arthur’s Return When Arthur Donnithorne landed at Liverpool

Irony so crushing. His blindness to the facts is a reflection of the novel. Ironic because it could almost have been true.

timidly from her knees and raised her eyes. The two pale faces were looking at each other: one with a wild hard despair in it, the other full of sad yearning love. Dinah unconsciously opened her arms and stretched them out.

Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah’s face—at first like an animal

“No, Hetty, I can’t save you from that death. But isn’t the suffering less hard when you have somebody with you, that feels for you—that you can speak to, and say what’s in your heart? . . . Yes,

“But I can’t know anything about it,” Hetty said, with sullen sadness. “Because,

Hetty was silent, but she shuddered again, as if there was still something behind; and Dinah waited, for her heart was so full that tears must come before words. At last Hetty burst out, with a sob, “Dinah, do you think God will take away that crying and the place

in the wood, now I’ve told everything?” “Let us pray, poor sinner. Let us fall on our knees again, and pray to the God of all mercy.”

“That doesn’t alter th’ evil: her ruin can’t be undone. I hate that talk o’ people, as if there was a way o’ making amends for everything. They’d more need be brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man’s spoiled his fellow-creatur’s life, he’s no right to comfort himself with thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else’s good doesn’t alter her shame and misery.” “Well, lad, well,” said Bartle,

Limit of forgiveness

Adam thought he perceived in them that notion of compensation for irretrievable wrong, that self-soothing attempt to make evil bear the same fruits as good, which most of all roused his indignation.

Adam was forcing Arthur to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing. He was presenting the sort of resistance

Adam could not help being moved: it was impossible for him not to feel that this was the voice of the honest warm-hearted Arthur whom he had loved and been proud of in old days; but nearer memories would not be thrust away.

Arthur went on, “Perhaps you’ve never done anything you’ve had bitterly to repent of in your life, Adam; if you had, you would be more generous. You would know then that it’s worse for me than for you.”

There was silence for several minutes, for the struggle in Adam’s mind was not easily decided. Facile natures, whose emotions have little permanence, can hardly understand how much inward resistance he overcame before he rose from his seat and turned towards Arthur. Arthur heard the movement, and turning round, met the sad but softened look with which Adam said, “It’s true what you say, sir. I’m hard—it’s in my nature. I was

too hard with my father, for doing wrong. I’ve been a bit hard t’ everybody but her. I felt as if nobody pitied her enough—her suffering cut into me so; and when I thought the folks at the farm were too hard with her, I said I’d never be hard to anybody myself again. But feeling overmuch about her has perhaps made me unfair to you. I’ve known what it is in my life to repent and feel it’s too late. I felt I’d been too harsh to my father when he was gone from me—I feel it now, when I think of him. I’ve no right to be hard towards them as have done wrong and repent.” Adam spoke these words with the firm distinctness of a man who is resolved to leave nothing unsaid

wouldn’t shake hands with you once, sir, when you asked me—but if you’re willing to do it now, for all I refused then . . . ” Arthur’s white hand was in Adam’s large grasp in an instant, and with that action there was a strong rush, on both sides, of the old, boyish affection.

and Adam left the Hermitage, feeling that sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone. As soon as the door was closed

For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not outlived his sorrow—had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves,

same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy—the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.