VIJ (Victorians Institute Journal) will be publishing my article on Adam Bede in their forthcoming issue (#43)! This article grew out of a chapter in my dissertation, “The Quest for a Novelistic Jesus,” which looks at the changing characterization of Jesus in the nineteenth-century realist novel and the implications of his characterization for our understanding of how realism functions.
My article, “Not an Average Man,” argues that, through the character of Adam Bede, Eliot creates a demythologized, modern Jesus-consciousness, whose active, justice-seeking sympathy leads to a commonplace heroic suitable for the realist novel. By thinking of Jesus as a historical man in a stable community, Eliot’s characterization of Jesus through Adam focuses on the prickly and peppery side of Jesus—that is, the Jesus who the Gospels depict as frequently indignant, angry and saddened by what he sees (I speak more about this issue in the video, “How can Adam Bede be Jesus? He’s such a prig… “). Eliot’s characterization of Adam as a Jesus-consciousness thus reframes pious notions of Jesus “meek and mild,” replacing them with the more robust and problematic Jesus of the biblical text. And, since Adam embodies this human Jesus, he is capable of sympathizing with other characters and he is someone with whom readers can sympathize. Through this sympathetic union, readers learn to value a commonplace heroics of ordinary faithfulness over miraculous deeds.
Jessica Ann Hughes
