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June, 12-10-01 Linda, it was so good to see you! You look lovely, and your life sounds wonderful. You're "connected." In an attempt to return to Adam Bede, in fact, let me say that you're as lovely as Hetty and as good as Dinah. But you know why all these Victorian novels end up with the loose ends tied up.Dickens, Gaskell, and Eliot taught Hollywood to do it. They do seem, in a sense, to make it absolutely clear that the guilty will be punished and the good will be rewarded. And they do this even though (perhaps especially BECAUSE) in the main part of the novel, things are much less clear and simple. I just finished teaching the novels I've sometimes taught at the NS, as examples of the Victorian novel: Dickens's Hard Times, Gaskell's Mary Barton, Eliot's Adam Bede, and Kipling's Kim. Only the good gals remain at the end of Dickens's work! (And one is punished for even thinking about sexual infidelity, by not being allowed to marry or have children of her own.) Gaskell sends her heroine and her "gem" of a husband to Canada, land of opportunity (which is a critique of England at the time); the young woman who became a kind of "action heroine" in the middle of the book, conveniently went into a stupor and then was reborn as a conventional wife and mother. The good live on in Adam Bede, and though in a sense it's an improvement that the "workaholics" Adam and Dinah open their hearts to each other, in another sense the possibly proto-feminist preacher Dinah becomes conventional (and even shows an example of submission in willingly giving up her vocation). And so on. At the end of Dickens's Bleak House, though 800 or so pages have shown what a hideous mess England is, at the end he creates "Little Bleak House," where lovely (and submissive) Esther and her good doctor-husband can raise a family just as if the rest of England weren't totally corrupt. This kind of structure might be said to frame a possible radical critique with a conservative return to "normalcy." Shakespeare's history plays seem to do this; and his romances also return, in a sense. You may be interested to know (or you may think I've lost my mind when I tell you that) some critics have said that this kind of structure applies to "I Love Lucy." In the beginning, the "I" is not Lucy, but Ricky, and it's his needs and desires that are foremost. In the middle, Lucy acts out a kind of dream in which she enacts her own desires. At the end, she's sorry (once he spanks her), and she returns to being an ostensibly "normal" wife and mother...only to act out again next time. But it's time for me to act like a full-time teacher and return to my work. (I do look forward to reading "Brother Jacob" sometime this week.) Linda, again, it was great to see you. We've all missed you, but are very happy that you're happy in your new life. And we're also glad to know you're only an hour and a half away (closer than Marielle!). Linda, 12-10-01 Reading Terri's and June's comments reminds me how wonderful June's classes are and how much I miss them. I enjoyed reading the comments each of you posted. Sorry I did not sign in for awhile. For me Adam Bede expressed the interconnectedness of our lives : "Our deeds carry their terrible consequences...[and they] are hardly ever confined to ourselves." Arthur and Hetty's relationship affects all the lives in the novel. I am surprised that Henry James thought Hetty the heroine of the novel; however, I sympathize with his wish that the novel end sooner. I was disturbed by Adam and Dinah marrying, kind of a Hollywood ending. Can someone explain why it was necessary to the story? Terri, 11-20-01 But June, what about.......just kidding! How about choosing a short course of suffering, something in the little-known GE short story category? Brother Jacob is an odd piece and would be perfect for a post-Thanksgiving discussion. As GE would say, and did say in Felix Holt, Chapter 17: "I have known persons who have been suspected of undervaluing gratitude, and excluding it from the list of virtues; but on closer observation it has been seen that, if they have never felt grateful, it has been for want of an opportunity; and that, far from despising gratitude, they regard it as the virtue most of all incumbent - on others towards them." Which, I think, roughly translated, means: enjoy your turkey. June, 11-20-01 I agree with Terri that it would be great to hear from others. Meanwhile, Terri and I may just have to agree to disagree on this aspect of Eliot studies. I think it's really a matter of emphasis. Now that I think of discussing ANOTHER Eliot novel, however, I understand what may be holding back the others in the group from participating. How can anyone have time to reread an Eliot novel?! So, as GE would wish, I've learned sympathy from even imagining my own suffering. Terri, 11-20-01 I agree that Hetty, or at least GE's characterization of her, did not "aspire to transgress," but her actions, simple-minded as they might have been, amount to what were major transgressions in Victorian society. Infanticide, whether a crime of passion or post-partum delirium, is universally considered a major trangression. As for marrying up: for Hetty, marrying Adam would have been marrying up. Setting your sites on the squire when you are the milkmaid, was looking way, way, way up. I also think that her lack of intentionality is another way of representing how women were "swept away" by the conventions of the male-dominated society, much like Maggie Tulliver's later journey down the river. I think, too, for GE suffering for your transgressions made the experience all the more powerful, and was seen by GE as a necessary absolution. She was super-sensitive to the criticism's of the "world's wife," but in Bodenheimer (I don't have the book with me, either) we also see that she anticipated (and suffered for) many criticisms that existed mostly in her own mind (Bodenheimer called it "constructing the reader," I think). She was definitely ambivalent about transgression, but seemed drawn to it in her personal life and fascinated by it in her fiction. One of the most powerful scenes in Mill on the Floss is when Maggie cuts her hair: "One delicious grinding snip, and then another and another, and then the hinderlocks fell heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven manner with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open plain." The exultation of Maggie's transgression was short-lived, of course: Tom laughs at her and she is left to that "bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul." And there was hell to pay with the aunts and uncles. But on balance, since she was always in trouble anyway, a small price to pay for what I read as a transcendent "sense of clearness and freedom." One more thing--I don't know if I believe in the "modern, unconflicted person." Being hyper-sensitive to criticism and depressed a good deal of the time, despite huge success, seems to describe many writers I know of in 2001, and may say more about a certain kind of genius than an age or culture. Other Fun Club Members--please feel jump in at any time with your comments! June, 11-19-01 Fascinating points! A couple of comments: I'm not sure Hetty can be accurately described as "aspiring to transgress." She's a simple-minded girl who aspiresnot to rebel but to move on up in the most conventional way--but marrying up.One of the problems with her is she really doesn't seem to have much agency or intentionality, much less interest in actively rebelling. Also, Dinah is indeed rewarded for "speaking out," but after her marriage she gives "an example of submission" to the new rules against preaching women, which complicates her status as an angel OUT of the house. She goes in. I love to think of Eliot as knowing "first hand just how powerful transgression can be," but I do think that makes her into a much more modern, unconflicted person. All the biographies show how much she suffered every time she did something scandalous; and though she did become more powerful, she continued to be hyper-sensitive to criticism and depressed a good deal of the time, despite her huge success. I keep remembering Rosemarie Bodenheimer's discussion, in The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans, of the two patterns that can be found in Eliot, even at age 13. I wish I could quote exactly, but I don't have the book with me. (Oh God, I sound like the narrator of Mary Barton!): after every rebellious, assertive, or sarcastic remark, she seems to feel remorseful and repentant; and she is, as early as age 13, extraordinarily conscious of the judgment of others to her words and actions. Yet while Eliot's own character and her culture (which are of course related) make it difficult for her to depict strong female characters who succeed, she does manage to soften her male characters, to make them more sympathetic and loving. And that's a good thing! Terri, 11-19-01 If Hetty's suffering (as opposed to Dinah's goodness) is the thing that makes Adam change, and let's say for the sake of argument (OK, my argument) that Adam represents the patriarchal society that GE feels so ambivalent about, is she saying that society can only change if women who aspire to break out of class and gender roles are punished, or is she saying that society can only change if women aspire to transgress these roles? Dinah, after all, was something of a trailblazer herself, but one with spiritual "womanly" aspirations--a sort of an Angel on the Pulpit, rather than in the House. Dinah is rewarded for "speaking out"--with her marriage to Adam--which is interesting considering that many other of GE's heroines are punished for what they do with their voices. But as June points out, it is actually Hetty who has the powerful impact on Adam. This could be chalked up to GE's ambivalence to these issues or as Mr. Pritchett suggests, an attempt to punish herself, but I think it also could be that she knew first hand just how powerful transgression could be--starting from the time she refused to go to church, throwing her entire family into turmoil and recasting herself as the least powerful person in the family into seemingly the most powerful. And each time GE did something "scandalous," she ended up in a more powerful position in society. June, 11-18-01 I greatly enjoyed reading Linda's wonderful paper, and recommend it to all GE Fun Club members. Her analysis of the limited and limiting plots (both literary and in life) for men and women, and the frustration of imprisonment in those plots, can also be applied to Adam Bede's characters. Linda writes of Gwendolen's kissing her own image; and we read in Adam Bede of Hetty's prancing before the mirror (while Dinah looks out the window, at nature, and thinks of people she can help), and later Hetty kisses her own arms, yet cannot care for her infant (whose sex, interestingly, is never specified). Hetty cannot speak until Dinah's sermon enables her to do so; and yet, when Hetty confesses, her words--and her world--remains tragically self-centered. Linda wisely reminds us that Eliot writes about "what oppression has done to both men and women." And that has much to do with Adam Bede. After my class read the first third of the book, many of them asked why it was called Adam Bede, when there was so much in the book about others in the community; he didn't seem the most important one. As I mentioned, Henry James believed the ending failed to reflect Hetty's having become the heroine by virtue of her suffering. But what does Eliot do, instead of making Hetty the heroine by virtue of her suffering? Eliot makes Adam change, and it's his changing that makes him the protagonist of this novel. He begins to change after his father's death and his realization that he's been overly harsh toward him. At his father's funeral, he's just learning, as the narrator puts it, "the alphabet of suffering." It is Adam who learns through Hetty's suffering; he learns to become sympathetic, rather than judgmental; to love others rather than standing above them as superior. And, as Linda suggests, this is important! If Eliot can't--for many reasons, both cultural and personal--make her heroines live as fully as she did (though, God knows, not without suffering and guilt and a period of social disgrace), if she can't give her heroines more of the freedom and self-determination allowed to men...she does make her heroes softer, more "feminine," more the gentle, loving "brother" than the stern Victorian patriarch. Hetty suffers so that Adam can be a better person. June, 11-16-01 Many readers of Eliot--including me--hope Terri's analysis is indeed the case: that Eliot's treatment of Hetty was a subversive critique of the Victorian treatment of the "fallen woman." An excellent book by Deirdre David, Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy, treats Barrett Browning, Martineau, and Eliot, and maintains that all these women had to write in ways that would get themselves published, yet often did offer a subversively feminist message. And yet...(This IS one of the great things about Eliot's works--that we do keep saying, "And yet..." It's never simple.) it would have been easy for Eliot to have made Hetty less animalistic and more human, from the beginning. Instead, she continues the stereotype of the virgin and the whore via Dinah and Hetty. As much as I'd personally love to think Eliot was being subversive, I tend to think she was actually ambivalent, as Frederick Karl puts it, "deeply divided." Some critics--including V.S. Pritchett--have even suggested that Eliot was punishing HERSELF for her "scandalous" sexuality through punishing Hetty, and then in a sense rescuing herself through the acceptable side of herself--the asexual preacher with the beautiful voice. But what do you think of applying Terri's argument to the class aspects of the book? Many of my students read this as a valorization of the golden past, and a critique of the industrial (and increasingly, frighteningly democratic) present. I proposed that in the second half of the book, Squire Donnithorne's treatment of the Poysers and Arthur's treatment of Hetty are analogous, and can be read as a critique of the feudal past and therefore a reconsideration of the present. And yet. . . (There I go again!) Eliot DOES value the past, and tradition, and land, and nature, and community, and is profoundly conservative in this way. Terri, 11-16-01 Maybe GE's harsh treatment of Hetty can be read as a subversive comment by GE on Victorian culture's attitude toward the role of women in society. Hetty is, in a sense, everything Victorian women were expected not to be, and her punishment and suffering might stand in for some of what women who strayed from these expectations in this time found themselves up against. The women in AB who do "have their say" or, in other words, are listened to by society, are the ones who largely meet these expectations. In this case, Henry James is exactly right, and GE's moralism is not about sending a cautionary warning to women who would act in the same way, but rather, her serious satiric answer to the Woman Question (after all, Arthur is as self-absorbed and callous as Hetty, but he ends up with his estate and the power to save her with his reprieve). June, 11-15-01 I taught the last third of Adam Bede on Tuesday, and my students were completely flabbergasted by what happens. They seemed to have no clues. There are many, of course, beginning with Hetty's working in the dairy.Linda's comments about the change in the reader re Hetty during her journeys in hope and despair make a great deal of sense. Eliot's narrator shows Hetty for the first time in a truly pitiable light. And Hetty herself feels empathy for the first time: because of her own suffering, she understands the suffering of a poor dog. And yet, though the narrator comments "my heart bleeds for her,"Hetty's inner life is still depicted as extremely limited." A hard and even fierce look" comes into her eyes, "the same rounded, pouting childish prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it." At another point, Hetty is described as still having "the luxurious nature of a round, soft-coated pet animal," and "a hard, unloving despairing soul...narrow heart and narrow thoughts, no room in these for any sorrows but her own." Having found shelter and warmth, she kisses her own arms, but she cannot care for her own child.She doesn't even seem to notice whether the baby's a boy or a girl. And while in reality most young women who committed infanticide testified on their own behalf, pleading something like temporary insanity, and avoided capital punishment, Eliot punishes Hetty far more harshly. She won't let her speak, in contrast to Dinah's preaching and Mrs. Poyser's "having her say," until Dinah gives her the hellfire and damnation sermon, ending with "Savior! It is yet time to snatch this poor soul from everlasting darkness." Hetty's "confession" is affecting in its simplicity, and it does show Hetty as half-crazy from this horrendous experience, and profoundly ambivalent; she abandons the baby, and returns to it out of guilt. But what about that ending? Do you agree with Henry James?He said Hetty was the central figure, "by virtue of her great misfortune," and wanted the story to end "with Hetty's execution, or even with her reprieve. . . Adam should have been left to his grief, and Dinah to the enjoyment of that distinguished celibacy for which she was so well suited." Linda, 11-12-01 June wrote about the self-centered nature of Hetty. I'm now up to the part of the book where Hetty goes to find Arthur and returns in despair. Up until that time, the word I most frequently thought of with respect to Hetty is shallow. In her journeys of hope and despair, she becomes more sympathetic I think, perhaps I mean pitiful. Once she is really out in the world, it is more apparent to me just how small her world was before and how ill equipped she is to cope with the world. I then look at her "faults" in a new light. Are they faults because of something in her or something in a society that is more selfish than she and more cunning. I am just to the part where she is in prison. Reading dialect really slows me down. Linda, 11-05-01 I have not read The Idylls of the King so cannot comment and am not far enough into Adam Bede to discuss Hetty, but I am enjoying Eliot's writing and humor.I loved the desciption of the Miss Irwines as "inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect" and the description of one of the sisters as one "usually spoken of without any advective."This recalls the theme Eliot explores again in Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch of leading a life of significance. There is certainly an abundance of biblical names -- Adam, Seth, and Dinah foremost among them.This Dinah, at least so far, is certainly an opposite to the Dinah of the Bible.The latter is the quintessential object. She is seduced/raped and then dropped entirely from the continuing saga.Eliot's Dinah has not only a job but a calling, and the calling is to a position that surely was usually a man's. June, 11-03-01 Okay, now I'm in the right--and write--place. . . I think. Thanks, Terri! I actually started by reading Marielle's brilliant, and beautifully lucid essay on Gwendolen and homelessness, which I encourage everyone to read. (I look forward to reading all the contributions, and only wish it could all happen today.) If I understand it correctly, I believe Marielle sees Eliot's depiction of Gwendolen's homelessness as the very basis of her heartlessness. Marielle also rightly refers to this last heroine of Eliot's as in some ways her most "modern." But in Eliot's first novel, Adam Bede, Hetty Sorrel is also profoundly homeless, and this too is connected with her heartlessness. After Hetty has failed (and Dinah succeeded) in comforting Totty, she goes to her room to admire herself in the mirror. Like the self-centered Gwen, "of every picture she is the central figure." She has no memory, no loving thoughts, of any person, place, pet, or thing. "There are some plants that have hardly any roots," and Hetty is one of them. Now Tommy and Totty are "the very nuisance of her life," like the "nasty little lambs." And while Gwendolen kills her canary, Hetty of course will abandon her own baby. But this is only one way to enter the world of Adam Bede. What other ways most interest other GE fans? Through the narrative voice? The character of Adam Bede? The richly detailed depiction of nature? The idea of community? The religious aspect? Do you think Eliot's having found a home with GH Lewes-- in which Lewes could be a combination of father, mother, and brother to her (and also provide the children she helped support financially but couldn't deal with in person) was necessary for her to write about the past and her home, which she'd lost? |
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