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This is the fold to post all comments associated with George Eliot's Adam Bede Book Fifth. Enjoy!

Any thought I had that Bartle was an amiable curmudgeon vanished with his comments on Hetty as she lay in prison. There was nothing even remotely amiable about them; they were rank cruelty. His loyalty and friendship to Adam not withstanding, I cast Bartle out of my heart forever, I consign him to eternal darkness.

Whatever happened to him in his past, and we may never know what it was, there is absolutely no way it could have justified him in those comments. None.

Hetty's pregnancy is just strange. No one around her notices for 8-9 months? She doesn't seem at all encumbered by a late term pregnancy as she roams the lanes and fields on her way too and from Windsor. An odd departure from GE's earlier realism. Is this just Victorian prudery about bodily functions?

Everyman wrote: "Any thought I had that Bartle was an amiable curmudgeon vanished with his comments on Hetty as she lay in prison. There was nothing even remotely amiable about them; they were rank cruelty. His ..."

So he was a misogynist?

Strangely, he cared for his female dog, Vixen, and her puppies, even though he regretted taking her in and 'could have strangled the mother and brats with one cord':-

'Bartle hurried away from the rectory, evading Carroll's conversational advances, and saying in an exasperated tone to Vixen, whose short legs pattered beside him on the gravel, "Now, I shall be obliged to take you with me, you good-for-nothing woman. You'd go fretting yourself to death if I left you--you know you would, and perhaps get snapped up by some tramp. And you'll be running into bad company, I expect, putting your nose in every hole and corner where you've no business! But if you do anything disgraceful, I'll disown you--mind that, madam, mind that!"' (Chap 21.)

Kate wrote: "Hetty's pregnancy is just strange. No one around her notices for 8-9 months? She doesn't seem at all encumbered by a late term pregnancy as she roams the lanes and fields on her way too and from ..."

I think some first pregnancies in healthy women can be like this Kate - I just looked as if I had put on a little weight all round with my first pregnancy and canoed off a flooded caravan site on the day I went into labour!

We lead different lives nowadays but peasant/farming women traditionally carried on working in the fields, often giving birth there.

Kate wrote: "Hetty's pregnancy is just strange. No one around her notices for 8-9 months? She doesn't seem at all encumbered by a late term pregnancy as she roams the lanes and fields on her way too and from ..."

This isn't really surprising, to me at least, for that age. Working class women in labor weren't expected to take time off or coddle themselves; there are numerous records of woman who were working in the field, stopped to deliver a baby, then within a few hours were back working in the field again.

My wife worked as a first grade teacher up to the afternoon of the night she gave birth to twins. It was the last day of school, she finished out the school year, checked out of her room, and about 2:00 in the morning we headed for the clinic. As anyone who has taught first grade can tell you, it's not a sit-down or restful job!

As to not showing, first they wore a lot of clothing in those days, and second, some women, perhaps especially younger women, don't. When I was teaching in a boarding school back East, a student gave birth in her dorm bathroom. Nobody had suspected that she was pregnant, and she had persuaded herself that she had had a miscarriage. So it was a total surprise to her and everybody else when the baby appeared. Another student stumbled in on her while she was delivering and had to help, not able to go for assistance until after the baby was born, when she went to get the school nurse. The baby did fine, by the way, and she was back in school two weeks later with the baby being cared for by her mother.

So for me, the story of Hetty's pregnancy and her ability to keep walking up to the last day aren't unbelievable.

Madge/Eman,

I thought about all of those kind of things. I've even known women who carried very well and were energetic throughout their pregnancy. I still don't buy it. The eagle eye of Mrs. Poyser would have caught it.

Was thinking during the reading of Book 5 about the societal reaction to Hetty's pregnancy and how it is so different today. Interesting how little social mores changed over the thousand plus years prior to 1830 (when the book is placed) and how much they have changed since. Today, nobody blinks an eye at an unmarried woman's pregnancy, indeed some high school students deliberately set out to have babies, and having a baby out of wedlock doesn't mean at all that the woman won't find a good husband, if she wants one. And the only stigma the man who fathers an unwanted child will suffer is to be hauled into court for eighteen years of child support payments.

While I think today is a whale of a lot better than 1830, still there are also times when I think a return of a bit of the old morality, both as to Hetty and as to Arthur, might well be an improvement.

Kate wrote: "The eagle eye of Mrs. Poyser would have caught it. "

But she was sick for much of that time, so less able to be observant. Maybe that's why GE gave her such a serious illness, because otherwise you might well be right that she would have noticed.

Everyman wrote: "Was thinking during the reading of Book 5 about the societal reaction to Hetty's pregnancy and how it is so different today. Interesting how little social mores changed over the thousand plus year..."

A lot of the stigma of illegitimacy is really modern and came out of the more stringent morality of the European bourgeoisie. Other than issues of aristocratic inheritance, I can't see where illegitimacy was a bar to status for most of the middle ages. And since marriage was mostly an institution for managing/transfering wealth it makes sense that only those classes which had appreciable wealth to protect would be concerned about the legitimacy of any heirs. That doesn't translate to a broad society-wide concern with or distaste for pregnancy outside of marriage. I think marriage as an institution has changed more than anything else.

Kate wrote: "A lot of the stigma of illegitimacy is really modern....."

Illegitimacy has been stigmatised in the UK for many centuries because it was frowned upon by the church and seen as sinful and because both mothers and babies were entitled to Poor Relief, which was a burden on the Parish. The Bastardy Laws of 1834 also placed all the blame on the 'vicious mothers'. Men were absolved of their responsibility and not made to pay maintenance. This article (which I may have posted before) gives an account of the laws and attitudes of the time:-



It is these draconian laws which many of the authors of the time were criticising when they introduced unmarried mothers into their novels. The stigma and these laws also led to a high rate of infanticide, often due to puerperal depression, which is what GE is drawing attention to in AB (Hetty's loss of memory etc). Coroners' Reports show that 12,000 infanticides were reported in Middlesex (London) in the 1850s. In 1862 The Times reported 150 dead infants found on the streets of London.

MadgeUK wrote: "Kate wrote: "A lot of the stigma of illegitimacy is really modern....."

Illegitimacy has been stigmatised in the UK for many centuries because it was frowned upon by the church and seen as sinful ..."

Those are interesting links, Madge. And your point brings up yet another economic motive for social condemnation of illegitimacy. When I said "modern" I was thinking in the historical sense, i.e. 17th century onwards.

Yes, I realise you meant that Kate:) And I agree with you that the wealthy sought to protect their fortunes and land by stigmatising illegitimacy. However, as they were also the law makers and judges, they passed this prejudice on to the working classes. It was the nouveau riche who arose on the back of the industrial revolution who were responsible for creating these laws - Elizabethans and the later aristocracy were much more lenient and many aristocrats incorporated a 'bar sinister' into their coat of arms to show that a bastard son had inherited.

Another factor was the increased mobility of the population during the Victorian era because the Industrial Revolution drew impoverished agricultural labourers, both men and women, to the towns in search of work. The living and working conditions in the towns threw men and women together as never before and illegitimacy rates soared. Drunkenness was also a factor, as Hogarth's paintings, Gin Street and Beer Street illustrate.

POSSIBLE SPOILER: Also, in journeying to Stonyshire to have her baby, Hetty was throwing herself on the mercy of Poor Relief in the Parish where she had the baby and GE might be intending to show that the court case was unfair because they resented 'picking up the tab' for a mother and baby not from that Parish.

MadgeUK wrote: "GE might be intending to show that the court case was unfair because they resented 'picking up the tab' for a mother and baby not from that Parish.
"

I loved the point at which Hetty realized that she was only a day or so away being a poor woman thrown on the Parish, a position which she had always felt was beneath contempt. It was such an eye opening moment and definitely a bit of social commentary by GE about the plight of women.

Kate wrote: "I loved the point at which Hetty realized that she was only a day or so away being a poor woman thrown on the Parish, a position which she had always felt was beneath contempt..."

A view which the Poysers held in spades. It was a disgrace merely to have a relative who had been thrown on the Parish. As of the end of Book 5, they are still planning to leave the parish where they've lived all their lives because they can't stand the condemnation, whether expressed or inferred, of their neighbors for having Hetty as a relative.

Everyman wrote: "Kate wrote: "I loved the point at which Hetty realized that she was only a day or so away being a poor woman thrown on the Parish, a position which she had always felt was beneath contempt..."

A v..."

Well by the end it was the embarrassment of having a relative transported, but it's interesting that the ignominy of having a young relative who was an unwed mother is equivalent to that of having a relative who had been condemned as a murderess.

I felt that the last minute rescue of Hetty from hanging was a bit of a deux ex machina, and not very realistic for a novel of realism. I wonder whether Eliot will bring her back before the end of the novel, or whether this is the last we have heard of her (it's been so long since I read the novel that I have no recollection of events beyond this point).

It's also says a great deal that neither Adam nor Arthur apparently even considers going with her, though if I understand transportation correctly she would not be incarcerated in prison, but would be working her sentence off but able to mix with and perhaps even live with a non prisoner. But although they both profess to have loved, and even perhaps still to love, her, neither one apparently even considers that, but both move on with their lives without her.

Not perhaps astonishing, but perhaps worth noting as another indication of how seriously her offense was looked down on by "decent" folks (whether Arthur is indeed a decent folk is a question I'm not raising here. In the eyes of the law and, I think, society, he was, though not perhaps in his own eyes.)

Kate wrote: "MadgeUK wrote: "GE might be intending to show that the court case was unfair because they resented 'picking up the tab' for a mother and baby not from that Parish.
"

I loved the point at which Het..."

Apparently the conditions of prisons in London, indeed the conditions of the poor in general, were so bad that prisoners often pleaded guilty so that they could be transported to where they thought they would have a better life and more freedom. There are some horrific details here:-

Critics like Henry James, among others, resented the narrator's interventions. Do readers here agree? In particular, Chapters 15 and 55 fared poorly among scholars because of the author's/narrator's moralizing and meddling in an attempt to sway readers' opinions of Hetty and Dinah. Other critics have objected to the resolution of the story and have argued, like Everyman that this deus ex machina ending negates the moral lessons learned by the main characters. Without the eleventh hour reprieve, the suffering of Adam, Arthur, and Hetty could have been more realistically concluded. In addition, some scholars feel that Adam's marriage to Dinah is another instance of the author's/narrator's intrusiveness. These instances have been found to directly conflict with the otherwise realistic images and events of the novel. What do readers here think of these points?

I thought the narrator's interjection was very much a distraction both times. But I'm also not convinced that Book 6 added anything of value to the story (except that wonderful dialogue between Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser). We aren't there yet, though, so I'll wait to discuss it.

I quite like GE's omniscience but can see that it could be thought to be intrusive.

I am terribly sorry for not being available the last couple of weeks but work has been hectic. I am going to jump right in here and say that up to Book 5 this Novel has been flawless. Even the flaws mentioned (i.e. the author's intrusions) seem to me to add to the realism of the Novel. As storytellers to we not add our own world view to the stories we tell?

Adam's pain is felt like no other pain that I have ever felt while reading a Novel. It is so realistic which such simple words that I could see Russell Crowe in an Oscar winning performance cast as Adam Bede (any producers out there?).

Nice to see you back Kester! Yes, Adam is a real hero and I saw him as a tall, strong tree throughout the novel, perhaps a beech. The first description of him in the first chapter is one which stayed with me:-

'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 Saxon, and justified his name; but the jet-black hair, made the 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 than such as belongs to an expression of good-humoured honest intelligence.'

This is the actor who played him in the 1991 BBC production:-