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Eliot's Adam Bede.(George Eliot)

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From: The Explicator
Date: 20040622
Author:Phillips, Emily

Although Hetty Sorrel actively dislikes children and the business of child-rearing, all of those around her assume that her best future would be as a mother, or at least a wife (in an era before widespread birth control, more often than not the same thing). Hetty's aunt approves of Adam Bede's proposal, and her uncle explicitly prescribes children as a cure for Hetty's selfishness. Even her aristocratic lover, Arthur Donnithorne, suggests an imminent marriage (just not to him) to mend her broken heart. Yet George Eliot deliberately presents childbearing and child rearing as a ...

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