Adam Bede as a novel of Rural life

Adam Bede as a novel of Rural life

GEORGE ELIOT began her career with a loving attachment to the region in which her youth waspassed. Her interest was in a particular locality – English Midland which had a powerful

pull onher imagination. Even in the simplest of provincial situation, life is revealed clearly, wholly and indepth. The Tragedy of Hetty Sorrel, a tragedy of Sophoclean intensity and

grandeur, takes placein this rural setting.
Major divisions
: The rural world in AB possesses two major divisions: the counties of Loamshireand Storyshire (With their villages, Hayslope and Snowfield). Loamshire – most of the actiontakes place

here and around the village of Hayslope. Regarded together, the Midland-shire andvillage constitute a kind of earthly paradise. Loamshire is a region of corn and grass – a fertileand

sheltered land. Prosperity is not common and poverty is rare. Exile from this snug land isregarded by its inhabitants as the worst evil so the Poysers don’t want to leave it. Stonyshire –

throughout the novel we are reminded of a different kind of county which is naked and barrenunder the sky ‘
where the trees are few, so that a child might count them, and there is very had living for the poor in the winter’
Poverty is common of these people. Loamshire is apparently softand fertile, but it has a core of hardness, so also Hetty beautiful and soft apparently, there ishardness within her which is

perceived by Mrs. Poyser. This is expressed in her ‘
stubbornsilence
’ after the child-murder. Dinah tells Mr. Irwine, the Rector of Hayslope, “
But I have noticed that in these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green pastures and the still waters, there is a strange deadness to the world
.” Loamshire people are spiritually dead, whilethose of Stonyshire are more responsive to religion, more spiritually awake though they live in ahard region.
Sight and scenes
: The background against which the drama of AB takes place is picturesqueand graphic and faithful descriptions of the region are abundant in the novel. Its scenes andsights, landmarks

and customs, professions are transitions have been faithfully rendered. Thegeographical features such as inns, churches, mansions and road life have been honestlyrecorded. These sights

and scenes play an important role in the novels of George Eliot. Theyappear and reappear in her novels and this imparts to them rare organic whole. The magic of theworld works upon

the reader in such a way that he finds himself passing through those instancesof scenery. GEORGE ELIOT’s novels are highly pictorial and graphic in nature. She is a productof rustic and

pastoral environment. She uses rich descriptions in this novel to provide a crediblesetting and to bring out the individual character of the setting and places where her characterslive and

to which they are bound by traditions, love, family, memory, work and affection. Finally,
GEORGE ELIOT uses landscapes to define, reinforce and foreshadow the events of the plot and moral situation. There are many scenes in the novel which we should not merely pass over

asbackground materials
. Henry Auster. Mrs. Poyser is the voice of rural tradition and community,her home, the Hall Farm, provides a background that illustrates her character vividly. The HallFarm is the center

of orderliness, comfort, love, energy, security and peace. As Walter Allan says,“
Mr. Poyser’s images with his similes from unripe grain, are those of he farmer: Mrs. Poyser’sthose of the housewife.
”
Language, Professions & nature
: According to Anne Morley, “
We do not know if our literatureanywhere possesses such a closely true picture of purely rural life as Adam Bede presents it
.”The noblest achievement of GEORGE ELIOT in the novel is the fact that she has succeeded inconveying to us the quality or flavor of the life at Hayslope. Its rude language, its typical

dialectand the people in the novel all truly represent the rustic life. The characters in the novel representa cross-section of Midland occupations and professions. The carpenter, the

preacher, the Rector,the clergy, the farmer, the dairy-maid and the dairy hands, the common laborers and the vainvillage girls are all present in the world painted by GEORGE ELIOT.
The symbolic word of Adam Bede
: George Eliot communicates the meaning of her novelpartially by employing symbolism in the description of the physical world in which her characterslive. These patterns point up

contrasts and support, by an appeal to the visual imagination, someof the book's central ideas.http://www.allonlinefree.com/It is obvious that the names of the two counties mentioned

in the novel and the names of the two towns where principal characters live are significant. Snowfield, Dinah's home town, is located inStonyshire; as the names indicate, this is a bleak,

forbidding region in which people eke out apoor living on the rocky hills or else work in a factory. Hayslope in Loamshire, on the other hand,is a pleasant spot where the farmers are

prosperous and the workers comfortable; there are nofactories, but only small neighborhood businesses like Jonathan Burge's workshop.The "world" of the novel thus divides into light

and dark, or hopeful and gloomy areas. Taking thisworld to represent life, we can see that Eliot is dividing experience into the pleasant and theunpleasant--giving us symbols for the

"light" and "dark" sides of life. Dinah lives in Stonyshire;she is familiar with the darker side of life, accepts human suffering as necessary and inevitable,and knows how to deal with it.

Adam, Arthur and Hetty, on the other hand, take a much moreoptimistic view of things and must learn what Dinah already knows. The crisis of the novel takesplace in Stonyshire (in a

town called Stoniton, as a matter of fact) and it is here that the threeLoamshire people discover the meaning of "irremediable evil."This division is supported by another one--that

between controlled and uncontrolled humanactions. We noted in the commentaries that the seduction, the fight between Adam and Arthur,and Hetty's abandonment of her child all take

place in the woods. These actions, prompted by"natural" urges rather than by a "civilized" use of intellect and will, form one of the two primarycauses of suffering in the novel.The other

cause is that part of reality which is beyond man's control. This area of humanexperience is symbolized by the tapping at the door in Chapter 4 which, though a superstition,turns out to

be a valid portent of death, by the force of blind circumstances, and by God. Religionin George Eliot's novels seems to mean a respectful attitude towards the great unknown. Dinah,the

completely religious woman, realistically recognizes the existence of evil and is patient andhumble. Adam, who is religious in a naturalistic way, and Arthur and Hetty, who are not

religiousat all, have pride in them and must learn humility through experience.Thus the world of the novel is set up to show that man must recognize that life has its lesspleasant side and

that suffering derives from the nature of things and from a lack of self-control.Like Dinah and Mr. Irwine, he must act upon this knowledge, avoiding evil whenever possible,accepting

and dealing with it when it cannot he avoided.

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