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 in Stonyshire; as the names indicate, this is a bleak, forbidding region in which people eke out […]
Read more Critical Essays The Symbolic World of Adam BedeCritical Essays Local Color and Comic Relief in Adam Bede
Comic relief is a familiar term which needs little discussion. An author will seek to relieve the intensity of a serious plot line by inserting comic characters or situations; these entertaining diversions help keep the reader’s interest lively and balance out the fictional picture of our half-tragic, half-comic world. Probably […]
Read more Critical Essays Local Color and Comic Relief in Adam BedeCritical Essays Characterization in Adam Bede
A flat character is a one-sided figure, a character who exhibits only one or two human traits, usually in exaggerated form. Such a character’s speeches and actions are never very surprising because they always spring from the same motivations and preoccupations, and he normally does not change at all in […]
Read more Critical Essays Characterization in Adam BedeCritical Essays The Dear Reader Technique in Adam Bede
The first paragraph of Adam Bede in itself is enough to mark the novel as a pre-modern-century product. With few exceptions, modern authors accept Henry James’ notion that a novel should create a world unto itself; a novelist should not take the pose of someone “telling a story” to a […]
Read more Critical Essays The Dear Reader Technique in Adam BedeGeorge Eliot Biography
After her mother died and her sister married, Mary Ann ran her father’s household. But in 1841, her brother Isaac married and took possession of the house, and Mary Ann and her father moved to Coventry. In the city the young woman’s intellectual horizons widened and her early faith diminished; […]
Read more George Eliot BiographyCharacter Analysis Mr. Irwine
But Mr. Irwine is still presented as one of the standards of good conduct in the novel. He is the author’s vehicle for the explanation of her ethical theory; he understands that theory and conducts himself according to it. What Dinah knows by instinct and experience, he knows through reason. […]
Read more Character Analysis Mr. IrwineCharacter Analysis Dinah Morris
On the other hand, to the extent that the negative reaction is based on a perception of Dinah’s personality, it is quite valid. Most critics would agree that Dinah is not a realistic character. She is an ideal, a perfect woman who has no faults, the personification of the abstract […]
Read more Character Analysis Dinah MorrisCharacter Analysis Arthur Donnithorne
But he is very unrealistic. Because of his background, he does not feel that he has to work to get what he wants; he thinks that his dreams will come true without effort. He also does not know himself very well. Arthur is very self-confident, but without reason; he does […]
Read more Character Analysis Arthur DonnithorneCharacter Analysis Hetty Sorrel
Hetty is only seventeen and has apparently received little or no formal education. She is thus unformed and instinctual. She does not analyze situations because she has neither the intelligence nor the training to do so; she floats like a bubble on the surface of life, never thinking or feeling […]
Read more Character Analysis Hetty SorrelCharacter Analysis Adam Bede
Adam is an intelligent but not well-educated rural carpenter who feels that he understands “the natur o’ things.” For him, life is very simple; he believes that the world operates according to certain rather mechanistic principles which never change and that, likewise, one’s life should be lived according to certain […]
Read more Character Analysis Adam Bede