SOURCE: “Arthur's Misuse of the Imagination: Sentimental Benevolence and Wordsworthian Realism in Adam Bede,” in English Studies in Canada, Vol. IV, No. 1, Spring, 1978, pp. 41-59.

In the following essay, Harris examines Arthur's class consciousness and the psychology of his seduction of Hetty as they are revealed through Eliot's use of Wordsworthian realism.

Because Adam Bede is “a country story—full of the breath of cows and the scent of hay,”¹ it seems to invite oversimplified interpretations. Critics assume that George Eliot's first novel lacks the complexity of her later work, or at least that any complexity it possesses must be in conflict with its pastoral elements. Part of the problem in getting a clear perspective on this novel arises from a tendency to concentrate critical attention on the rather idealized Adam and Dinah as representatives of the author's values, while passing over Arthur, who does not belong to...