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A review by grb8
Adam Bede by George Eliot
4.0
Mary Ann Evans seemed to understand the intricacies, inconsistencies, and contradictions of human thought better than anyone.
At it’s core, I think this novel is about the things we devote ourselves in hope that it justifies our existence and maybe even leaves a legacy. Evans also understands and reveals plainly here how, once we’ve decided what that thing is that we devote ourselves to — whether it’s religion, a virtue, a trade, or even a person — our minds and egos will do just about anything to justify that devotion and maintain that hope.
I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that Hetty’s crime should absolve her or sympathy here. She was still manipulated and neglected. Sure, she’s vain and naive, but she was merely being what she was taught to be. On devoting ourselves to something, Hetty was taught to — and obediently did — devote herself to her beauty and prospect as a marriage candidate. This book for me falls short of its ultimate potential because of the way Hetty becomes a ghost in the last quarter of the novel, mentioned in the epilogue only briefly. It’s just a piece of the recipe of the too-sweet cake that is the ending of this novel. From the end of the chapter titled "The Last Moment" on it feels like a different work, and one that’s a little too clean.
Still, Eliot is ascending my rankings of prose writers, and this novel is full of wonderful moments of prose that I’ve saved. And while this is only my second novel by her (Middlemarch being the first), it seems clear that from this, her first novel, to the end, her thesis as George Eliot was that the lives most worth celebrating and investigating are the ones we encounter and live every day.
At it’s core, I think this novel is about the things we devote ourselves in hope that it justifies our existence and maybe even leaves a legacy. Evans also understands and reveals plainly here how, once we’ve decided what that thing is that we devote ourselves to — whether it’s religion, a virtue, a trade, or even a person — our minds and egos will do just about anything to justify that devotion and maintain that hope.
I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that Hetty’s crime should absolve her or sympathy here. She was still manipulated and neglected. Sure, she’s vain and naive, but she was merely being what she was taught to be. On devoting ourselves to something, Hetty was taught to — and obediently did — devote herself to her beauty and prospect as a marriage candidate. This book for me falls short of its ultimate potential because of the way Hetty becomes a ghost in the last quarter of the novel, mentioned in the epilogue only briefly. It’s just a piece of the recipe of the too-sweet cake that is the ending of this novel. From the end of the chapter titled "The Last Moment" on it feels like a different work, and one that’s a little too clean.
Still, Eliot is ascending my rankings of prose writers, and this novel is full of wonderful moments of prose that I’ve saved. And while this is only my second novel by her (Middlemarch being the first), it seems clear that from this, her first novel, to the end, her thesis as George Eliot was that the lives most worth celebrating and investigating are the ones we encounter and live every day.