Adam Bede's 'Yes' by George Eliot: Christian Ethics Without God – is...casting its shadows over Europe. For the few, at least, whose eyes... are strong and sensitive enough for this spectacle... What must collapse now that this belief has been shaken... [is] our whole European morality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay – Nietzsche, from The Gay Science: Book V (1887) Dr. Richard Niebuhr writes, in his introduction to Eliot's translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, that Eliot "sought to preserve the ethos of Christianity without its faith, its humanism without its theism.” In his first full-length novel, Adam Bede, Eliot achieves this. By replacing God's all-seeing eye with a plethora of human eyes, Eliot depicts characters in Hayslope's close-knit community who do not need God to be good Christians, who can maintain their principles without their faith. Eliot begins with the simplistic Christian notion that God can see everything. Adam, our title hero, sings a tune in the first chapter that refers to “the all-seeing eye of God” (Eliot 24). Meanwhile, Bessy, a country girl from Hayslope, believes that "Jesus [is] right next to her, looking at her, even though she cannot see him" (Eliot 40). According to this model, a person must act morally or God will know by sight and punish them. But Eliot abandons these kinds of references to an all-seeing God in chapter four in favor of a structure that does not require God's eye. At the most basic level, Eliot continually describes her characters' physical eyes and reminds us of their presence, even as she foregoes talking about the eye of God. Adam's eyes, for example, are "lively and dark", we are constantly told. Likewise, Hetty's eyes are "dark," Lisbeth's are "dark," Mrs. Poyser's are "arctic blue-gray," Arthur Donnithorne's are remarkably adjective-free, Seth's are " confident and pale” and Dinah’s are always “gray”. ," and generally "light-hearted." Hetty stands in stark contrast to Dinah through the look of their eyes (Eliot 222), just as Adam does to his brother Seth (Eliot 18). Hardly a page passes throughout the novel where the eye is not mentioned we are constantly reminded of the perpetual vigilance of the characters. Furthermore, Eliot undermines the need for God's authority by directly replacing it with "the eye of." Mrs. Poyser” (Eliot 172, 496) is one such physical executor of the Christian ethic Mrs. Poyser notes that her servants “want someone to watch over them at all times if they are to remain faithful to their work” ( Eliot 450).The human eye is what keeps them focused on the work their so-called God wants them to do. Bartle Massey is another authority as a teacher “whose eyes stared at [his students] with one. menacing look through his glasses for a few minutes” (Eliot 229). Society as a whole still represents a third of these earthly authorities who judge firmly and maintain control in “all eyes.” The company shows its ability to do this at every public event, including Arthur's birthday celebration, church, trial, execution, and wedding. Eliot's characters are situated, so to speak, within the limits of Foucault's “panopticon”. Everyone has a responsibility to police everyone else in order to keep society morally (or at least ethically) intact. Dinah,the novel's central heroine, a Methodist preacher, has a presence that is entirely human, even as she and others associate it. her with “God”. Trying to convince Dinah not to leave Hayslope, her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, tells her that Bessy, a girl Dinah has turned against vanity, "will no more pursue her new ways without you than a dog will stand on its behind ". legs when no one is looking" (Eliot 449). Although Dinah's stated goal is to help her fellow human beings accept the omnipresent gaze of God, all she succeeds in doing is getting them to cowering before his authority or community approval. Even when Dinah convinces Hetty to confess her crime of baby murder to "Jesus", Hetty actually responds to Dinah alone. “Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah's face” and “Dinah felt deep joy at the first sign that her love was welcomed by the lost wretch” (Eliot 424, emphasis added). The eye of God is not present, but Dinah's human eyes are, and they alone are the catalysts for human repentance and change. Intense eyes also follow the transgressive love story between Arthur and Hetty. Hetty feels as if “Arthur’s eyes…seemed to touch her” (Eliot 106). Trying to avoid falling in love with Hetty, Arthur tells himself that “he must not see her alone again” (Eliot 135), and then, recanting, says that he “must see her again” (Eliot 136). Here, the eyes are revealed as active participants and not just passive spectators. They have the ability within themselves to transgress physical boundaries and set love in motion. Likewise, they can control behavior and dictate ethical propriety. Eliot also benefits from his audience's attentive gaze in relation to his fictional world. She draws her reader into the active role of observer by prefacing her work with Wordsworth's line: "That you may have / Clear images before your joyful eyes" (Eliot 7). On the same note, she begins the novel itself, saying that she will “show” her readers “visions” (Eliot 17). Immediately, she forces her reader to put himself in the omniscient position of God, the one who will know the whole text up to the happy ending. Apparently as a reminder of this important goal, the reader is told that as Hetty looks narcissistically into her mirror, she has the feeling of being observed by an “invisible spectator” (Eliot 151). More superficially, this invisible figure is Hetty's ill-suited suitor, Arthur. However, on a more concrete level, she is actually being observed by the reader, who is in the room with her on some level. More powerfully, Eliot addresses her reader directly with the responsibilities that fall to her in a kind of manifesto on literature, which she sets out in chapter 17, “In Which History Stops a Little.” “You,” she writes, addressing her reader directly, “will probably look harder and colder... on men and women who actually breathe, who can be chilled by your indifference... who may be acclaimed and aided by your…courageous justice” (Eliot 175-6) Her characters, she asserts, depend on the reader, just as a Christian depends on the mercy and fairness of Jesus. the religious is replaced by the secular. Eliot brings her audience into the game of viewing and, thus, she affects us morally. If these characters always look at each other, and we always look at them, then we feel that there is - to be someone who is always watching us and that we should behave properly She imbues her reader with a paranoia that, if the moral of the story holds, will remain The scenes in which what is not supposed to be seen. is seen reinforce this feeling that wewe cannot hide from acting morally (as opposed to being moral) despite the possible consequences. absence of the divine. The most direct example is when Adam inadvertently sees Arthur kissing Hetty in the woods. Adam watches Arthur approach him from the kiss “with eyes in which astonishment was quickly turning to ferocity” (Eliot 286). Although Arthur manages to avoid God, he cannot hide from humanity. Adam's eyes absorb and judge the event, then punish him by beating him. Little Totty participates in such activity alongside Adam earlier in the text when she "opened her eyes...and with her right [arm] caught by the necklace of brown beads around Hetty's neck" (Eliot 276). Opening her eyes, Hetty begins the process of revealing Hetty's dishonorable state to Adam. Totty's eyes essentially penetrate Hetty's dress despite Hetty's attempt to hide her locket there. Eliot represents human eyes seeing into the human breast; a place that only the privileged God should be able to access. The reader, too, becomes a spy at Hall Farm, seeing what the players don't know she can see. “Fixing our eyes on the rusty bars of the gate,” Eliot secretly tells his reader, “we can see the house pretty well, and everything except the very corners of the grassy enclosure” (Eliot 78). The gaze invades the space where it has not been invited, without itself being seen. They “encroach,” as Eliot says. This reinforces in us the feeling that everything is observed by human eyes which pass judgment, whether we know it or not. We “fit” ourselves into the story we read, John Goode says in his essay on Adam Bede, “through the provision of a moral absolute” (Goode 35). That is, we provide for each other and ourselves the foundation upon which socially acceptable behavior, otherwise known as “moral” behavior, rests. Eliot goes so far as to establish very precise links between the look of the eyes and doing good. Arthur's eyes are not described with adjectives because he is foolish and does not particularly impose a moral code on himself when necessary. In fact, Eliot describes him “resolutely turning his eyes from all evil consequences” (Eliot 301). Likewise, in the context of the church, Eliot refers to us as “black-eyed youths” (Eliot 185). They have “black eyes” because they have not yet absorbed Christian morality into their vision and therefore are not yet perpetuating the moral system in which they live. Eliot's two main heroes, Adam and Dinah, the ones who receive the novel's awkwardly happy ending, finally reunite on the top of a hill. Adam "chose this place...because it was far from all eyes" (Eliot 500), and yet the other reason, which he does not give, must be that his eyes and his are the only ones to be able to see from there, and they can probably see a lot of the space below. Eliot places them at a higher vantage point, thus representing their higher moral positions. These righteous humans sit “above” in God’s place. But it's not a babbling tower, it's true, for humans must adopt an all-knowing eye in order to support Eliot's idea that, as Niebuhr puts it, it can maintain "the ethos of Christianity without his faith. Hetty internalizes the moral significance of the eyes by experiencing the curse of seeing "Just the place in the wood where I buried the baby...", she cries to Dinah, "I see it NOW !" (Eliot 431). The entire community then turns their damning eyes on Hetty, both in the courthouse as she stands "like a statue of dull despair" (Eliot 413), and as she is led away to be hanged, they “look” (Eliot 437). It's his own,, (1970).

Essay / Adam Bede's 'Yes' by George Eliot: Christian Ethics Without God – is...casting its shadows over Europe. For the few, at least, whose eyes... are strong and sensitive enough for this spectacle... What must collapse now that this belief has been shaken... [is] our whole European morality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay – Nietzsche, from The Gay Science: Book V (1887) Dr. Richard Niebuhr writes, in his introduction to Eliot's translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, that Eliot "sought to preserve the ethos of Christianity without its faith, its humanism without its theism.” In his first full-length novel, Adam Bede, Eliot achieves this. By replacing God's all-seeing eye with a plethora of human eyes, Eliot depicts characters in Hayslope's close-knit community who do not need God to be good Christians, who can maintain their principles without their faith. Eliot begins with the simplistic Christian notion that God can see everything. Adam, our title hero, sings a tune in the first chapter that refers to “the all-seeing eye of God” (Eliot 24). Meanwhile, Bessy, a country girl from Hayslope, believes that "Jesus [is] right next to her, looking at her, even though she cannot see him" (Eliot 40). According to this model, a person must act morally or God will know by sight and punish them. But Eliot abandons these kinds of references to an all-seeing God in chapter four in favor of a structure that does not require God's eye. At the most basic level, Eliot continually describes her characters' physical eyes and reminds us of their presence, even as she foregoes talking about the eye of God. Adam's eyes, for example, are "lively and dark", we are constantly told. Likewise, Hetty's eyes are "dark," Lisbeth's are "dark," Mrs. Poyser's are "arctic blue-gray," Arthur Donnithorne's are remarkably adjective-free, Seth's are " confident and pale” and Dinah’s are always “gray”. ," and generally "light-hearted." Hetty stands in stark contrast to Dinah through the look of their eyes (Eliot 222), just as Adam does to his brother Seth (Eliot 18). Hardly a page passes throughout the novel where the eye is not mentioned we are constantly reminded of the perpetual vigilance of the characters. Furthermore, Eliot undermines the need for God's authority by directly replacing it with "the eye of." Mrs. Poyser” (Eliot 172, 496) is one such physical executor of the Christian ethic Mrs. Poyser notes that her servants “want someone to watch over them at all times if they are to remain faithful to their work” ( Eliot 450).The human eye is what keeps them focused on the work their so-called God wants them to do. Bartle Massey is another authority as a teacher “whose eyes stared at [his students] with one. menacing look through his glasses for a few minutes” (Eliot 229). Society as a whole still represents a third of these earthly authorities who judge firmly and maintain control in “all eyes.” The company shows its ability to do this at every public event, including Arthur's birthday celebration, church, trial, execution, and wedding. Eliot's characters are situated, so to speak, within the limits of Foucault's “panopticon”. Everyone has a responsibility to police everyone else in order to keep society morally (or at least ethically) intact. Dinah,the novel's central heroine, a Methodist preacher, has a presence that is entirely human, even as she and others associate it. her with “God”. Trying to convince Dinah not to leave Hayslope, her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, tells her that Bessy, a girl Dinah has turned against vanity, "will no more pursue her new ways without you than a dog will stand on its behind ". legs when no one is looking" (Eliot 449). Although Dinah's stated goal is to help her fellow human beings accept the omnipresent gaze of God, all she succeeds in doing is getting them to cowering before his authority or community approval. Even when Dinah convinces Hetty to confess her crime of baby murder to "Jesus", Hetty actually responds to Dinah alone. “Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah's face” and “Dinah felt deep joy at the first sign that her love was welcomed by the lost wretch” (Eliot 424, emphasis added). The eye of God is not present, but Dinah's human eyes are, and they alone are the catalysts for human repentance and change. Intense eyes also follow the transgressive love story between Arthur and Hetty. Hetty feels as if “Arthur’s eyes…seemed to touch her” (Eliot 106). Trying to avoid falling in love with Hetty, Arthur tells himself that “he must not see her alone again” (Eliot 135), and then, recanting, says that he “must see her again” (Eliot 136). Here, the eyes are revealed as active participants and not just passive spectators. They have the ability within themselves to transgress physical boundaries and set love in motion. Likewise, they can control behavior and dictate ethical propriety. Eliot also benefits from his audience's attentive gaze in relation to his fictional world. She draws her reader into the active role of observer by prefacing her work with Wordsworth's line: "That you may have / Clear images before your joyful eyes" (Eliot 7). On the same note, she begins the novel itself, saying that she will “show” her readers “visions” (Eliot 17). Immediately, she forces her reader to put himself in the omniscient position of God, the one who will know the whole text up to the happy ending. Apparently as a reminder of this important goal, the reader is told that as Hetty looks narcissistically into her mirror, she has the feeling of being observed by an “invisible spectator” (Eliot 151). More superficially, this invisible figure is Hetty's ill-suited suitor, Arthur. However, on a more concrete level, she is actually being observed by the reader, who is in the room with her on some level. More powerfully, Eliot addresses her reader directly with the responsibilities that fall to her in a kind of manifesto on literature, which she sets out in chapter 17, “In Which History Stops a Little.” “You,” she writes, addressing her reader directly, “will probably look harder and colder... on men and women who actually breathe, who can be chilled by your indifference... who may be acclaimed and aided by your…courageous justice” (Eliot 175-6) Her characters, she asserts, depend on the reader, just as a Christian depends on the mercy and fairness of Jesus. the religious is replaced by the secular. Eliot brings her audience into the game of viewing and, thus, she affects us morally. If these characters always look at each other, and we always look at them, then we feel that there is - to be someone who is always watching us and that we should behave properly She imbues her reader with a paranoia that, if the moral of the story holds, will remain The scenes in which what is not supposed to be seen. is seen reinforce this feeling that wewe cannot hide from acting morally (as opposed to being moral) despite the possible consequences. absence of the divine. The most direct example is when Adam inadvertently sees Arthur kissing Hetty in the woods. Adam watches Arthur approach him from the kiss “with eyes in which astonishment was quickly turning to ferocity” (Eliot 286). Although Arthur manages to avoid God, he cannot hide from humanity. Adam's eyes absorb and judge the event, then punish him by beating him. Little Totty participates in such activity alongside Adam earlier in the text when she "opened her eyes...and with her right [arm] caught by the necklace of brown beads around Hetty's neck" (Eliot 276). Opening her eyes, Hetty begins the process of revealing Hetty's dishonorable state to Adam. Totty's eyes essentially penetrate Hetty's dress despite Hetty's attempt to hide her locket there. Eliot represents human eyes seeing into the human breast; a place that only the privileged God should be able to access. The reader, too, becomes a spy at Hall Farm, seeing what the players don't know she can see. “Fixing our eyes on the rusty bars of the gate,” Eliot secretly tells his reader, “we can see the house pretty well, and everything except the very corners of the grassy enclosure” (Eliot 78). The gaze invades the space where it has not been invited, without itself being seen. They “encroach,” as Eliot says. This reinforces in us the feeling that everything is observed by human eyes which pass judgment, whether we know it or not. We “fit” ourselves into the story we read, John Goode says in his essay on Adam Bede, “through the provision of a moral absolute” (Goode 35). That is, we provide for each other and ourselves the foundation upon which socially acceptable behavior, otherwise known as “moral” behavior, rests. Eliot goes so far as to establish very precise links between the look of the eyes and doing good. Arthur's eyes are not described with adjectives because he is foolish and does not particularly impose a moral code on himself when necessary. In fact, Eliot describes him “resolutely turning his eyes from all evil consequences” (Eliot 301). Likewise, in the context of the church, Eliot refers to us as “black-eyed youths” (Eliot 185). They have “black eyes” because they have not yet absorbed Christian morality into their vision and therefore are not yet perpetuating the moral system in which they live. Eliot's two main heroes, Adam and Dinah, the ones who receive the novel's awkwardly happy ending, finally reunite on the top of a hill. Adam "chose this place...because it was far from all eyes" (Eliot 500), and yet the other reason, which he does not give, must be that his eyes and his are the only ones to be able to see from there, and they can probably see a lot of the space below. Eliot places them at a higher vantage point, thus representing their higher moral positions. These righteous humans sit “above” in God’s place. But it's not a babbling tower, it's true, for humans must adopt an all-knowing eye in order to support Eliot's idea that, as Niebuhr puts it, it can maintain "the ethos of Christianity without his faith. Hetty internalizes the moral significance of the eyes by experiencing the curse of seeing "Just the place in the wood where I buried the baby...", she cries to Dinah, "I see it NOW !" (Eliot 431). The entire community then turns their damning eyes on Hetty, both in the courthouse as she stands "like a statue of dull despair" (Eliot 413), and as she is led away to be hanged, they “look” (Eliot 437). It's his own,, (1970).

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