Adam Bede
From Adam Bede [1859]
George Eliot
Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin - the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvelous facility which we mistook for genius, is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings - much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.
It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn without shrinking from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her, - or I turn to that village wedding, kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably with quart pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable contentment and good-will. 'Foh!' says my idealistic friend, 'what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns ? What a low phase of life ! - what clumsy, ugly people !'
But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope ? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those 'lords of their kind,' the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures - flattering, but still not lovely - are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes ! thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty - it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.
Questions for Discussion
1. In the first paragraph, the author is primarily concerned with the
A) superiority of truth to fiction
B) difficulty of expressing the truth
C) vagaries of mythological illustration
D) definitions of truth and fiction
E) impossibility of ever reaching the truth
2. The griffin, as it is used in the first paragraph, is parallel to which of the following in the second paragraph?
A) “Dutch paintings” (lines 16–17)
B) “lofty-minded people” (line 17)
C) “cloud-borne angels,...prophets, sibyls” (lines 25–26)
D) “the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug” (lines 32–33)
E) “old women and clowns” (line 49)
3. In the second paragraph, the author refers to “lofty-minded people” in order to
A) claim kinship with them
B) demonstrate her own humility
C) give the reader an ally to identify with
D) call their ideas into question
E) give an equal amount of consideration to views that differ from her own
4. In line 43, the reference to “quart-pots” in the hands of the wedding guests
A) suggests that women’s work continued even at a wedding party
B) shows how overcrowded the wedding table had become
C) alludes to gifts of plants brought to the wedding
D) reveals that guests are chiefly concerned with eating
E) indicates that the guests are drinking ale or beer
5. Which of the following terms are used in the second paragraph to refer to those whose ideas the speaker does NOT share?
I. “lofty-minded people” (line 17)
II. “my fellow-mortals” (line 22)
III. “my idealistic friend” (line 46)
A) I only
B) I and II only
C) I and III only
D) II and III only
E) I, II, and III
6. Which of the following describes the relationship of the third paragraph to the second?
I. The third paragraph gives additional examples of a “monotonous homely existence.”
II. The third paragraph replies to the objections raised at the end of the second paragraph.
III. The third paragraph reaches a philosophical conclusion about the subject of the second paragraph.
A) I only
B) I and II only
C) I and III only
D) II and III only
E) I, II, and III
7. In the third paragraph, second sentence, “even among those ‘lords of their kind,’ the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions” (lines 55–58), is an example of
A) understatement
B) personification
C) paradox
D) simile
E) syllogism
8. In the phrase “young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards,” (lines 74–75), which of the following words is used ironically?
A) “young”
B) “heroes”
C) “middle”
D) “stature”
E) “feeble”
9. In the third paragraph, the “friend or two” (line 60), the “excellent matron” (lines 67–68), and the “wife” (line 79) have in common that they are
A) no longer beautiful
B) secretly in love
C) loved regardless of their looks
D) people the author has observed in real life
E. the objects of corrosive satire
10. In line 82, the pronoun “it” (“it flows”) refers to
A) God
B) human feeling
C) rivers
D) earth
E) beauty
11. The passage argues that ugliness is
I. more common than handsomeness
II. lovable
III. made beautiful by feeling
A) III only
B) I and II only
C) I and III only
D) II and III only
E) I, II, and III
12. If the author of this passage were a novelist, her novels would probably be described as
A) experimental
B) romantic
C) stream-of-consciousness
D) realistic
E) symbolic
13. With which of the following statements would the author of this passage be most likely to agree?
A) The most important quality of a painting is its accuracy in rendering life.
B) The novel must teach the love of virtue and the hatred of vice.
C) The poor are closer to reality than the rich.
D) The greatest of painters are the Dutch.
E) Human sympathy will create beauty.