For some people, thinking of Adam Bede as Jesus presents problems because Adam isn’t always nice. In this video I look at George Eliot’s Adam Bede, discussing the advantages of thinking about Adam as a version of Jesus. While Adam is often thought of as strict and even self-righteous, I argue that these very traits help Eliot to flesh-out a solidly human vision of Jesus that is actually more in line with the Gospel accounts than many pious and sentimental versions of Jesus’ character.
Stay-tuned for a few more video’s expounding the individual chapters of my dissertation, The Quest for a Novelistic Jesus: Literary Relationships with Jesus in Victorian Realism.
Jessica Ann Hughes