Summer reading is supposed to be fun and light, to enhance
the enjoyment of sun and leisure. On the other hand, what better time to dive
into something heavy than when there’s extra reading time? It was summer the
year I read Atlas Shrugged (tiny
print, 1100 pages). I’ve tackled The Lord
of the Rings trilogy in summer (and other times). This summer I just
finished a re-read, after several decades, of Adam Bede by George Eliot.
I read it on my Kindle, where it was free, so it didn’t have
pagination, but the library lists it as 509 pages. It was first published in England
1859, near the same period as Jane Austen. George Eliot was also a female
author, Mary Anne Evans, using a male name in order to be taken seriously
(although women were published during that time). Technically she wrote in the
Victorian period, while Jane Austen wrote in the Regency period, although Adam Bede takes place during the earlier period. Another
difference is that Austen mainly wrote about the noble class. Adam Bede includes some characters from
that class, but the main focus is on craftsmen and farmers and common workers. Adam Bede and his
brother are journeyman carpenters.
This was a book club choice, which was my reason for picking
it up again. I didn’t love it the first time through, although it was
memorable. But this time there were things I appreciated more. The main part I
remembered, which I found annoyingly unbelievable, was that a young woman,
Hetty, who makes butter at her uncle’s dairy farm, gets pregnant and gives
birth—and no one knows. The pregnancy follows a brief affair with the local
heir to the estate, Arthur. This was taboo on every level, since he could not
marry a young woman so far beneath his class. For her own comfort, she then
turns to an engagement to Adam Bede, who has loved her all along. But then she
discovers the pregnancy. Months go by, and just weeks before the wedding (I’m
reckoning at least seven months into the pregnancy, maybe eight), she sets out
to find Arthur and ask for help, so that she doesn’t end up a destitute beggar.
But his regiment has moved on, and she is out of resources to keep seeking him.
She sleeps in haystacks and occasional inns on her way to a young preacher woman,
who had been kind to her.
Mistaking a home for an inn, she is allowed by a kind couple
to stay, and that night she gives birth. Within a day she has gone back out on
the road. She had previously considered killing herself by throwing herself in
a pond, but couldn’t do it. Now, with a baby, she considered throwing the baby
in the pond, but she can’t do actual killing. She ends up partially burying the
baby under some sticks and bark, and half hopes someone will find the baby alive
and rescue it. A farmer does find the baby, but it doesn’t survive. Hetty is
tracked down and arrested for killing her baby.
None of the family she lived with, nor her fiancé, had any
clue that she was pregnant—far enough along that the baby is born alive without
help of hospital or special resuscitation. (As far as I can tell, she never
feeds it.) I know dresses in that day were high waisted and hid a lot of figure
flaws. But I went through multiple pregnancies as a tall person who showed later
and less than shorter women (and this woman was described always as small, rounded,
and pretty in a kitten-like way), and there was simply no disguising the
situation that final trimester. No one noticed anything?
Nevertheless, the way the hypothetical but common situation
was handled in this book is an interesting comparison to today.
The young woman and the “gentleman” both knowingly engaged
in self-indulgent uncivilized behavior—that they shrank from having anyone
learn about. Adam had discovered them kissing, on the day before Arthur was to
leave for his regiment, which resulted in a fistfight over honor along with a
requirement for Arthur to write to Hetty making it clear to her the
relationship could never go further. Adam had no reason to believe the affair
had gone further, and didn’t even consider the possibility, because he couldn’t
believe evil of the woman he loved. It was inconceivable that two otherwise honorable
people could do the heinous act of sex outside of marriage.
So there is tremendous pressure on a young woman who has
submitted to passions and finds herself pregnant. She will be rejected by family
and polite society. Her baby will also be an outcast. She will be unemployable.
It was not unheard of for gentry to have a “natural child” whose care and
keeping they paid for, usually anonymously. But clearly the woman who gets pregnant
out of wedlock suffers much more than the man involved.
In this story, Arthur does indeed suffer. He finds out about
Hetty’s trial just at its end and is unable to help. She is hanged as the law
requires. But his shame and guilt are such that he turns over the running of
the estate to a trusted friend and leaves for war. He suffers deprivations and
illness, forgoes any idea of future love relationships, willingly suffers his self-imposed
banishment for many years.
The minds of the characters, even the most flawed ones, are
not evil. At worst they are selfish, weak, and overly concerned about opinions
of others and personal comfort. That such characters could get into this situation
is both unsurprising and pitiable.
One thing the book handled well was the repentance process.
There’s a scene where the young woman preacher, Dinah, goes to the prison to be
with Hetty. Her loving way of presenting the possibility of repentance and
accepting God’s forgiveness is quite beautiful. Loving without condemning is
key. And among a mainly civilized people is surprisingly rare. The telling of
Adam’s movement from craving vengeance to forgiveness is beautifully and
believably done. I’m glad I re-read the book just for that.
Is there a better way to discourage the family-decaying
behavior so widely accepted today without the life-condemning consequences of
Adam Bede’s world? For the sake of civilization, I hope so.
There’s a hierarchy of outcomes (outlined in more detail at
the Spherical Model). Marriage is the first option (and in a civilized world,
class level isn’t a preventive to marriage between the two parents). If that is
neither possible nor desirable, the best way to provide a two-parent home for
the precious child is adoption. And in a civilized society, where families and
children are highly valued, families willing to adopt exceed available adoptive
children. (That is mostly true today, despite arguments about unwanted children;
the ordeal to adopt is a significant sacrifice.) Being raised by the
repentant mother, with help from extended family and community (especially
church community—not government subsidy) is a third option. It guarantees less
for the child, but the mother is likely to be lovingly attached to the child,
and, depending on how she lives her life, she may encounter a possible marriage
partner who will adopt the child as his own.
Other outcomes tend to be less and less civilized. And the
drain on social and economic capital becomes increasingly greater.
What is needed is valuing and strengthening marriage,
condemning behaviors that decay the family (sex outside marriage always fits in
that category), but not condemning people. Persuade people, with love, toward
better behavior—toward love of civilization, toward love of God, who loves them
and recommends the path, not to control our lives and prevent enjoyment, but to
offer us lives with the greatest abundance of happiness.
How to have an abundance of happiness in our world is a story we need to get better at telling.
