There are many forms of beauty, and, as the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It comes as no surprise then that a person can be blinded by the radiance of outer beauty – the pure, unadulterated vanity that comes with being a beautiful person. Of course, not all outwardly beautiful people are vain and shallow – it depends mostly on their personality as well as other contributing factors such as age, education, and how a person is raised. There are times when a person can be splendiferous and kind and still be beautiful – they needn’t always be the “ugly duckling.” But, at times, a person who is a little plain outside can be made even more comely by their personality, and a person who is bewitching can be made more handsome by their personalities, and can, indeed, blind those around them with their glamour, making it so that the real beauty is ignored for a time.
It would come as no surprise then that George Eliot – who is really a woman by the name of Mary Ann Evans – would choose to shed light on this topic, since women were more concerned with marrying into social class rather than love. Eliot’s novel, Adam Bede, is the perfect example of the ways in which she chooses to show the aforementioned points. Eliot, in her mastery, is able to show how the concept of vanity and quiet beauty can be exploited by naivety, as well as the woes of never being satisfied in one’s social class, as women of the period were ought to do.
In the novel, Eliot weaves a yarn of quite a messy love triangle – that somehow blossoms into true love in an unexpected person. Before further examining such a concept, it would be wise to ask several questions.
Why would Eliot choose a male, Adam, to be the main character, through which readers are able to see the events of everyday life? If Eliot is so against outer beauty, why did she choose to make Adam a comely man?
…the tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of a wooden mantelpiece. It was to this workmen that the strong barytone belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing - … Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest belonged to a large-boned muscular man nearly six feet high, with a back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up to take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxton, and justified his name; but the jet-black hair, made more noticeable by its contrast with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes that shone from under strongly marked, prominent and mobile eyebrows, indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty that such as belongs to an expression of good-humoured honest intelligence (Eliot, 9-10).
Also, why would Eliot make a man who is so grounded, so honest and intelligent fall victim to the blindness of a shallow beauty? Why would Eliot even make a woman as shallowly beautiful, if not to try to change something about the social structure concerning marriage? And, in that regard, how does this fit into the theme of a novel of social reform?
Perhaps the easiest question to answer is the last one. Perhaps Eliot, due to her history, for she was in love with a man separated from his wife, never able to remarry, could have written in to warn others of the dangers of marrying only for advancement in social class and profit (taken from forward, Adam Bede). She is trying to persuade women to marry for love, more than anything, and not to be so vain, for earthly beauty will come to an end, and it can’t last forever. There are more things in life than just prettying oneself for a soldier.
Eliot is able to use not only people, but also the landscape as a way to show the dangers of beauty. She sets the most awful events in some of the prettiest landscapes. The lover’s tryst between the Captain and Hetty, a woman who Adam had his eye on, blinded to her pompous, insincere personality by her breathtaking beauty, is a perfect example,
…the sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level crimson rays among the great trunks of the old oaks, touching every bare patch of ground with a transient glory, that made it look like a jewel droplet upon the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Anyone who had been sitting in the house all day would have been glad to walk now…(Eliot 322,323).
Adam is walking home from a long day at work during a beautiful day, and he just happens to stumble upon his beloved Hetty passionately locked in an embrace with the Captain – all because Adam doesn’t have the means to give her the expensive life that she dreams of, for Hetty decides that “if Adam had been rich and could have given her these things, she loved him well enough to marry him (Eliot 109).” Eliot makes the day one where one would enjoy being outside, for she painted quite a lovely picture that would put anyone at ease. The day would make it seem that nothing bad could happen; that it would keep all the bad at bay with its beauty. That day could have very much been another way to portray Hetty: beautiful on the outside, but ugly on the inside.
It makes the reader frustrated that Eliot makes Adam so blind to the vanity of Hetty as well as the face that the woman just doesn’t love Adam the way he wants her to live him. It almost seems like Eliot is showing her audience just how blinded a man is able to be by a woman’s beauty, no matter how smart he is, for she mentions that Adam is intelligent (Eliot 10). Adam is blinded by Hetty for most of the novel, all the way until almost the very end, and completely ignorant to the quiet beauty of the woman right in front of him, a woman by the name of Dinah.
Dinah is a simple woman who cares more about others than herself, for she is a minister (Eliot, 14). Eliot describes Dinah in a scene which starts as:
…- and on a still pleasanter object than these; for some of the rays fell on Dinah’s finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn, as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her aunt (which is Hetty’s mother)… The family likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast between her keenness and Dinah’s seraphic gentleness of expression, might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and Mary (Eliot 81).
Dinah is a simple woman who is happier serving others than worrying about being served herself, for she often goes to places where there are sick and ministers to them (Eliot 356). Eliot doesn’t seem to pick on Dinah as much as she picks on Hetty – and perhaps on blinded Adam – when she criticizes Hetty later in the novel.
Indeed, concerning a novel of social reform, Eliot all but explicitly spells out the fact that beauty will only go so far in both the secular and sacred world. It is almost like she’s using a man’s voice to be taken more seriously, but Eliot is stating one of the major themes of her own novel. She says:
Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a sensible man to behave as he did – falling in love with a girl who really had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had fallen in love with another man, wanting for her kind looks as a patient trembling as a dog waits for his master’s eye to be turned upon him…. I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness(Eliot 384).
Eliot tells her readers very clearly that Hetty is just like a novice witch who has cast her spell quite mistakenly on Adam to fall madly in love with her, even though she is callow and found lacking on personality. The only thing that Hetty is concerned about is when the Captain will next turn his gaze to her. It can be clearly seen in the choice of words that Eliot chooses, words like imaginary virtues, and nothing more than her beauty. In a way, Eliot clears Adam of “guilt” by admitting he was so blinded by Hetty when she says, “How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her(Eliot 385)?” In a way, a paragraph on the next page gives the reader a kind of glimpse into what kind of beauty Dinah has, for she writes:
Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman’s soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them: it is more than a woman’s love that moves us in a woman’s eyes – it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness – by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace (Eliot 385).
This type of beauty that Eliot speaks of is not the worldly beauty that women are able to give themselves, rather it is the beauty that is bestowed to women by some force that is greater than anything they are able to give themselves – something that cannot be created in this world, rather it is created on another plane. It is no surprise that Eliot chose to give this quite beauty to Dinah.
Eventually, Adam is able to be shaken from Hetty’s spell, and is finally able to see this quite beauty that Dinah has. Perhaps this quiet beauty Dinah possesses is what true beauty is, and not the superficial beauty that Hetty puts on. Because Eliot is able to spin such a tale, it is a way of warning others of the dangers of falling in love with an idea and not a person. Perhaps this is her way to help change the way the social structure works.
Readers of the time were probably quite used to this story; however, it took Eliot’s novel to wake them up more to the need for change. She takes the tale of several people and messes with their love lives, plunging them into a dire triangle that spells disaster for one of the points. Her novel is a warning to men and women alike not to be so blinded by want and desire that they can’t see the truth that is right in front of them.
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