Realism in George Eliot’s Adam Bede

In George Eliot’s writings, critics recognize, correspondingly, two indispensable artistic coordinates: feminism as well as psychological investigation. From the stand point of feminism, one can say that Eliot shoves afar Charlotte Bronte’s simulation and insurgence commonly associated with being against patriarchal arrangement, adding, however, a more compound typology to her colonnade of characters-that of “conception”. From the stand point of psychological investigation, Eliot’s involvement to the growth of English novel is immense.

She is the maker of what fictional historians as well as theorist will describe, afterward, the psychological realism. While Adam Bede focuses about the title characters movement from an insensitive sense of moral dominance to a state of compassion and appreciation of others, there are also other important themes. Adam Bede is extensively documented as a rustic novel dealing with moral issues in the society. This explains why the pastoral setting accentuates the shift of English culture from modest ingenuousness to experience, leaving her audiences longing for simpler times.

Whereas she stays away from spiritual sermonizing, failure to incorporate spiritual intercession on behalf of her devotees exhibits her greater apprehension with the position of religion in nineteenth-century England and insinuates at her own religious opposition (Eliot 82).

However, her use of realism in the narrative is also important. The realistic depiction of both her characters and circumstances is toughened by her pointed portrayal of Dutch painting in Chapter 17 of the book. Dutch painting was regarded as an inferior art form by Eliot’s colleagues, not because the method was mediocre, but because the theme failed to kowtow to the artistic principle of beauty so privileged by opponents and patrons alike. By approving this kind of painting, where hoi polloi engaged in ordinary odd jobs were presented in enormous detail, Eliot endeavored to validate her own illustration of “ordinary, crude people.” It is not astonishing, given George Eliot’s involvedness with morals and realist truth in day by day tribulations, that Adam Bede gives an absolute manifestation on the causes and costs of undesired social volatility, hence, the scope of realism is prominent in this novel.