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";
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. 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
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". 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.
