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

George Eliots whirl Bede Christian Ethics Without immortal The superlative recent 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 abounding for this spectacle... What must collapse now that this belief has been undermined... is our whole European morality.--Nietzsche, from The audacious Science Book V (1887) Dr. Richard Niebuhr writes, in his introduction to Eliots translation of Feuerbachs The nerve centre of Christianity, that Eliot sought to retain the ethos of Christianity without its faith, its humankindism without its theism. In her first full novel, Adam Bede, Eliot succeeds at doing this. By replacing Gods all- give earing eye with a plethora of human eyes, Eliot depicts characters in the close-knit community of Hayslope who dont need God to be devout Christians, who can hold their standards without their faith. Eliot begins with the simplistically Christian notion that God can see everything. Adam, our title hero, sings a tune in chapter one that refers to Gods all-seeing eye, (Eliot 24). Meanwhile, Bessy, a topical anesthetic Hayslope country 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 virtuously otherwise God will know through sight and he will punish her. But, Eliot abandons these sorts of references to an all-seeing God by chapter four in choose of a structure that does not require Gods eye. On the most base level, Eliot is continually describing the physical eyes of her characters, and reminding us of their presence, although she gives up talking slightly Gods eye. Adams eyes, for instance,... ...f course, this analysis leaves me with a glaring question. Why does Eliot hold onto the morality specify by Christianity after surrendering its God? Why doesnt she re-evaluate that structure as well, quit e a than holding onto it by transferring authority? Why bother dismissing God if the in sight fabric remains static? Perhaps shes being pragmatic -- peradventure she fears anarchy 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 Discord 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).