TWO PEAS FROM THE SAME POD:
A Comparison of Two Eliot Mothers:
Lisbeth Bede and Mrs. Holt
Carolyn Hendry
Dr. Rogers
George Eliot Seminar
17 April 1995
I have taught university level composition classes for the last ten years. At the beginning of each semester, I emphasize the fact that writers must use solid, objective details in their writing so that the reader will be able to see what the writer is trying to communicate. I ask each student to think of his/her mother and then I ask one student to tell me some details about the parent. Sometimes the first mother described has short, blond curls, sometimes grey, straight hair. Some mothers like tennis, others watch soap operas. Some mothers work at secretarial jobs or as dental hygienists, others have doctors or lawyers for a mother. Once in a while the mother is described as a person that the student likes to talk with and to be around, most of the time she is painted as a woman who nags and bosses and gets in the student's way of a good time. Though the first list compiled always differs almost completely from the list of the second student who describes her/his mother, there is one element that remains the same. My students are always amazed to realize that a word as familiar as mother means such specifically different things. Just saying "my mother" brings a detailed, visual picture to each students' mind, but if those students wish to tell me what their mother is like, they must each use much more than that title "mother" to do so.
George Eliot seems to have instinctively known this fact. In two of her novels, she presents the reader with two mothers who have very much in common: Mrs. Holt, from Felix Holt, and Mrs. Bede, from Adam Bede. Eliot, though, uses her description to offer the reader insights into how these two working class, domineering women affect their sons, who form the main focus of each novel. In allowing the reader to make unconscious connections between these two women, Eliot permits us to see both women in the same light without having to invest enormous amounts of descriptive space. Just as my students learn how to paint a specific picture though the use of objective details, Eliot uses her details to create and echo two women who otherwise might come across to the reader as flat, boorish and stiff.
Though Eliot does not carry specific characters from novel to novel, she does repeat character types in the bodies of Mrs. Holt and Mrs. Bede. They are scantily detailed in their adventures, and so looking to the attributes of one can shed significant light on the other and offer some insight into some of Eliot's apparent, personal beliefs: Truth does not always come from the learned. Someone to serve is as valuable as s/he who has resources to serve with. Though neither mother is overtly sympathetic--both have their faults as mortals--Eliot's repetition of this same "mother-figure" in both Adam Bede and Felix Holt allows the reader to glimpse two, more fully-developed mothers, which gives both novels a richer background for the actions of the main characters.
We first meet Lisbeth Bede as she waits for her son. Eliot paints a picture of a tall, spare, old women. She has grey hair; broad, black eyebrows; "as firmly-upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head"[1]; and "work-hardened hands" (83) that knit unconsciously even as she stands at her doorway, watching for Adam to draw nearer. He arrives, finds his father gone and the coffin promised for Tholer not yet made, becomes angry and then must endure his mother. For
if she had been wise she would have gone away quietly, and said nothing for the next hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns, is never to talk to an angry or a drunken man (Eliot, 85).
From this we learn that Lisbeth, for all of her motherly love and devotion to Adam, is not a source of comfort or support to her son, but rather, an annoyance to be endured. Even the sound of her wailing is "the most irritating of all sounds" (85) to Adam who faces a long, sleepless night of carpentry. In fact, Eliot points out Adam's tenderness to his dog, Gyp, during this time and marvels "we are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?" (86).
In this first meeting we also learn that Lisbeth is one of a type referred to by Solomon:
a good creature, who had no joy but in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them, and spending nothing on herself. . . . at once patient and complaining, self- renouncing and exacting . . . and crying very readily both at the good and the evil (87).
She is almost instinctual in her actions--a fact that Eliot underscores when Adam's automatic change to accomodate her as his speech falls "into his strongest native accent and dialect" (87) when he speaks with special kindness to his mother. She is untutored in the ways of the socially elite and the scholar. Her instincts are maternal, unbridled by artificial fetters. Only a deep reverence for her son quiets her (87) and even then, only after a long opportunity to express her frustration and remind Adam of his debit to her as his mother.[2] For the last twenty six years she has managed to handle two boys and a husband who drinks excessively. She takes care of her appearance, always having a clean cap ready, and maintains a housekeeping routine that keeps Adam and Seth fed and decent. She is skeptical of Seth's prayers[3] and proud of Adam's deep work ethic. She seems to trust what she can see and be proud of what she can do.
Her world is small. Before the novel began there was a point when Adam left, overwhelmed by the burdens imposed upon him by his dysfunctional father. We discover that he returns the next day but "the misery and terror his mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since" (93). Few things happen to Lisbeth--but the affect of those incidents is magnified by their singularity. Adam has to contemplate his acceptance of responsibility to his mother, "I'll never slip my neck out o' the yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak 'uns" (93) but Lisbeth has only her duty to her sons and accepts that obligation as automatically as she accepts the rising of the sun each morning--and the protecting shield her sons provide her as easily as opening her eyes.
Adam protects her from the full blow of the truth when he tells her that "Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again . . . Get a blanket, and make it hot at the fire" (97). He gives her something to do and she does not argue.
That comes in the days following the funeral. The disorientation she feels after her husband's death is reflected in the "dirt and confusion" (149) that she sees in her usually spotless kitchen. When something happens in her narrow world, it is an all-consuming thing. Again Eliot presents Lisbeth as a universal type--for at the death of her husband "she had forgotten his faults as we forget the sorrows of our departed childhood" (150). The memory that he leaves behind is some twenty five years old--building shelves, caring for the sick, carrying a year-old Adam for five miles without complaining. In Lisbeth's mourning complaints, we hear the virtues of the man she married. His recent faults are ignored. Lisbeth reflects the instinctual desire in humankind to remember that which is pleasant and favorable. She is as generous to the dead as she is critical of the living.
Though we do not get a full description of Mrs. Holt when we first meet her, there are details that call to mind the extensive elaboration that Eliot provides for Lisbeth Bede. As Esther calls at Felix' house under the pretext of having her watch repaired, Felix' mother seems to be of much the same mind as Lisbeth. She prattles on about the state of her house--"but what is there for her to come in to? a floor worse than any public".[4] Unlike Lisbeth, she is much put out by the way that her son provides for her: "forced to take my bit of carpet up, and have benches, I don't see why I need mind nothing no more" (189) but she is every bit as vocal about her feelings. Indeed, Esther is so put off by Mrs. Holt's chatter that she feels awkward, desiring to leave but "not wishing to go immediately, lest she should seem to be running away from Mrs. Holt" (191). As she interacts with Felix' mother, "she felt keenly how much endurance there must be for Felix!" (191).
The reader also senses some of the motherly devotion that marks Mrs. Bede. Felix praises his mother's care of the orphan, Job Tudge. He notes how she has "made him a little bed . . . and . . . gives him sweetened porridge" (191). At this point, we are given a glimpse of Mrs. Holt: Esther "saw that her eyes had lost their bleak north-easterly expression, and were shining with some mildness on little Job" (191). Besides this motherly instinct, there is also in Mrs. Holt a little of Mrs. Bede's innate reasoning skills. It is only natural to her that she should have those few things that she desires: "grandchildren to look up to me, and be drove out in the gig sometimes" (192). After all, she declares, didn't she give birth to three children and nurture that only one that lived? This "masterfullest and the brownest of 'em all" (192) survived and thrived and, because of her determination, received more education than she did so that he could have a great career as a doctor and marry a "woman with money to furnish . . . spoons and everything" (192). For all that she gave Felix, for the little that she asks of him, he does indeed seem to her to be an ungrateful son. His decision not to marry and to remain a common man is an affront to her observation that he loves children. He loves children--she wants grandchildren. There! It flows naturally that he should do as she recommends and marry a rich girl and provide her with the normal things that every mother deserves.
Like Mrs. Bede's world, Mrs. Holt's domain is small and close around her. She cannot comprehend that the tonics that her husband sold to provide for their living could be of any harm to anyone. Hadn't people taken them and declared themselves much better than before? Felix' revelation that some of the elixirs are useless and others "are a drastic compound which may be as bad as poison to half the people who swallow them" (53) makes no difference to his mother who believed in the man who made them and so believes in them. She wants Felix to conform--to dress nicely and take "some higher situation as clerk or assistant" (55}. Her preconceptions of what is proper and fitting for Felix outweigh his determination to "stick to the class [he] belong[s] to--people who don't follow the fashions" (55). She has a narrowly defined world and is distressed by Felix' decision to violate that microcosm with his own desires and beliefs.
When Mrs. Holt hears the commotion in the town center from the election conflict, she again retreats into her own heaven-sent environment. Felix'
mother came from her turnip-paring in the kitchen, where little Job was her companion, to observe that they must be killing everybody in the High Street, and that the election, which had never been before at Treby, must have come for a judgment; . . . and that she thanked God in His wisdom for making her live up a back street (254).
Mrs. Holt reflects the same self-centeredness that Lisbeth Bede does when she comes home from the funeral of her husband.
Like all complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed, and when Adam said nothing, she only was prompted to complain more bitterly. . . . Lisbeth no sooner entered the kitchen and sat down than she threw her apron over her head, and began to cry and moan, and rock herself as before (153).
Both women react to grief in the same self-adsorbed manner. Though Adam had lost his father in the same moment that Mrs. Bede had lost her husband, she does not possess the maturity to reach out to him and to comfort him. Rather, she wears Adam out with her "querulous grief" (153). Mrs. Holt, exhibiting this same, child-like unawareness of others around her, likewise thinks only of her own safety in the midst of the tumult. Neither woman is censored for this innocent preoccupation with self. In fact the selflessness of both Adam (trying to calm his mother) and Felix (going to Esther to assure that she is safe) is made more poignant by the contrast with their mother's behavior.
As a last element of observation, it is interesting to look at the influence that these two mothers had on their sons as they choose and marry the women that they do. Though more overt in the case of Mrs. Bede, Mrs. Holt's influence on Felix' desire to marry Esther is also discernable.
It is Lisbeth, with her insistent chattering that finally makes Adam realize that Dinah Morris loves him and that he must do something about it. She recognizes this truth when the men around her are still blind to it. Seth argues with her about Dinah's feelings for Adam.
'What! has she said anything o' that sort to thee, mother?' he said, in a lower tone.
'Said? nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till folks say things afore they find 'em out.'
'Well, but what makes thee think so, mother? . . .
'It's no matter what's put it into my head: my head's none so hollow as it must get in, an' nought to put it there. I know she's fond on him, as I know th' wind's comin' in at th' door, an' that's anoof' (539).
The reader is inherently drawn to Lisbeth's innate sense of what is real. She needs no physical proof--the same force that prompts her to care for her sons also reveals to her the feelings of Dinah for Adam. With the same child-like, self-absorption that allows her to ignore social opinion and change, she recognizes and trusts this inner source of truth.
She has enough faith in her inner voice that she confronts Adam with her knowledge and persists in asserting that Adam ought to marry Dinah. When he objects, saying that she's "not for marrying; she's fixed her heart on a different sort o' life" (544), Mrs. Bede maintains that she is right: "very like she's none for marr'ing, when them as she'd be willin' t' marry wonna ax her" (544). Her observations of Dinah's trembling when Adam is near and the way that Dinah looks at Adam finally convince Adam that Dinah could love him--and act as the catalyst for his decision to go and speak to Dinah. Though unlearned in the ways of the world, Lisbeth Bede knows the things of the heart.
In a much less obvious way, Mrs. Holt follows Mrs. Bede's example and unknowingly encourages the relationship between Felix and Esther. After Esther's first trip to the Holt house to have her watch fixed, Felix' feelings for Esther are focused by his mother's words as she leaves: "She's a very straight figure . . . How she carries herself? . . . He'd need to have a big fortune that marries her" (193). In response to this comment, Felix snatches up "little Job, . . . finding a vent for some unspeakable feeling in the pretence of worrying him" (193). Mrs. Holt also plays a part in Esther's developing feelings for Felix. As she leaves the Holt home, she decides
there is something greater and better in him than I had imagined. His behavior to-day--to his mother and me too--I should call it the highest gentlemanliness . . . if I had a mind equal to his, and if he loved me very dearly, I should choose the same life [as he has chosen] (193).
In a backwards way, Mrs. Holt's self-centered, lengthy chatter serves to highlight Felix' tolerance and compassion, offering Esther a much clearer view of the man that she comes to love.
During Mrs. Holt's undignified appeal for help to Harold Transome when Felix is in jail, she highlights Esther's feelings for Felix.
Everybody used to say you held yourself high. But I'm sure you never did to Felix, for you let him set by you at the Free School before all the town, and him with never a bit of stock round his neck. And it shows you saw that in him worth taking notice of (438).
Esther reacts gently to the woman "who had dressed herself in a gown previously cast off, a front all out of curl, and a cap with no starch in it" (295). Though Mrs. Holt does not present a face that would impress most of the world, she serves Eliot well as one who "had the maternal cord vibrating strongly within her" (348). This strength strengthens her as she reaches beyond the boundaries of her accustomed world, finding political and legal aid for her son and reminding Esther of the man she loves.
Both these women are individuals in their separate stories, but Eliot makes them enough alike that knowing one allows the reader to learn more of the other. Both share an ability to irritate others with their complaining prattle, yet have the instinctive ability to know the truth about their sons' character and heart. Both have known a life of work and privation, yet also know joy in interacting with their sons. These are women who, historically, had no political influence or social power; yet, as they did their best to nurture and care for their sons, influenced the lives of those most important to them.
Eliot may not have purposely created these two women to be so much alike, but they seem to share many important attributes. They are a source of Truth--though not well-educated in the scholarly sense. They offer their sons a chance to serve--and in so doing allow Dinah Morris and Esther Lyons to better see the goodness in their sons. As we approach these two novels, the likeness of these two women draws us closer to them--offering the reader a better chance to know them because we have met them, in different stories, before.
[2]It is interesting to note that Lisbeth instinctively draws on the only authority she could have over Adam in recalling to mind "five an' twenty 'ear go, when thee wast a babby at the breast" (85) though her maternity has nothing to do with the subject being argued at the moment.
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