Wednesday, March 20, 2019

George Eliots Adam Bede: Christian Ethics Without God Essay example --

George Eliots crack Bede Christian Ethics Without God The greatest new event -- that God is dead, that the belief in the Christian God has ceased to be believable -- is... casting its shadows over Europe. For the few, at lease, whose eyes....are strong and sensitive enough for this spectacle... What moldiness collapse now that this belief has been undermined... is our whole European morality.--Nietzsche, from The Gay knowledge Book V (1887) Dr. Richard Niebuhr writes, in his introduction to Eliots translation of Feuerbachs The Essence of Christianity, that Eliot jut outk to retain the ethos of Christianity without its faith, its humanism without its theism. In her first full novel, Adam Bede, Eliot succeeds at doing this. By replacing Gods all-seeing eye with a plethora of human eyes, Eliot depicts characters in the close-knit community of Hayslope who dont need God to be good Christians, who commode hold their standards without their faith. Eliot begins with the simplistic ally Christian notion that God can see everything. Adam, our deed hero, sings a tune in chapter one that refers to Gods all-seeing eye, (Eliot 24). Meanwhile, Bessy, a local Hayslope rustic girl, feels that Jesus is close by looking at her, though she cannot see him (Eliot 40). According to this model, a person must act morally other than God ordain know through sight and he will punish her. But, Eliot abandons these sorts of references to an all-seeing God by chapter four in favor of a structure that does not require Gods eye. On the most basic level, Eliot is continually describing the physical eyes of her characters, and reminding us of their presence, although she gives up talking about Gods eye. Adams eyes, for instance,... ...f course, this abridgment leaves me with a glaring question. Why does Eliot hold onto the morality defined by Christianity after surrendering its God? Why doesnt she re-evaluate that structure as well, rather than belongings onto it by transferring authority? Why bother dismissing God if the visible cloth remains static? Perhaps shes being pragmatic -- perhaps she fears revolt in the wake of a passing God. Bibliography Dickens, Charles. Letter to George Eliot on 10 July 1859, in Ed. David Carroll, The Critical Heritage. London Routledge and Kegan Paul, (1971). Eliot, George. Adam Bede. England Cox and Wyman, 1994. Ferris, Ina, Realism and the strife of Ending The Example of Thackeray, Nineteenth Century Fiction, 38/3 (1983), 289-303. Goode, John. Adam Bede A Critical Essay, in Ed. Barbara Hardy, Critical Essays on George Eliot, (1970).

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