Discuss the local colour and comic relief in Adam Bede.

Q5: 

Discuss the local colour and comic relief in Adam Bede.

 Answer: 

As a literary term, local colour refers to description of life and character in particular locality. The customs of the people, their speeches, their particular way of looking at things is presented to the reader often in a slightly sentimentalized or desirous way. Dickens and Bret Harte are probably the best known practitioners of this type. Comic relief is familiar term which needs careful examination. An author wants to relive the intensity of the serious plot-line by inserting comic characters or situations. These entertaining devices help keep the reader’s interest lively and balance out the fictional picture of the half tragic, half comic world. Probably, the most famous comic relief in English literature is the knocking at the gate in “Macbeth”, where sight of drunken porter relaxes the audiences after the murder of Duncan. Eliot uses both these devices in “Adam Bede”. In a strict sense most of the novel is full of local colour. The settings and the speeches of the characters belongs to a specific time and place. But certain characters function almost entirely as local colour figures. These people are actually the part of the novel’s background. They provide a concrete atmosphere in which central action of the story takes place. Mr. Poyser is a typical Warwickshire farmer and Mr. Ben exemplifies the typical attitude of the Warwickshire town labourer of his days. Eliot gives a lot of attention to the habits and customs of the local people. For example, most of chapter 6 and 18 describes what ordinary people did and said on ordinary days in the Warwickshire countryside in 1800. The pictures presented at different levels of the village life are relevant and realistic. They are a frank and representation of the functioning physical world of that time. Parts of book 3, especially chapter 25 on the games at the

 Arthur’s birthday party shows how people celebrate an important event. We find the local custom of the harvest supper. The sections of the novel which concentrate on developing local colour serve other purposes as well. For example, in book 3 we see calm prevails before the storm. Eliot builds up suspense by talking of minor matters, while delaying the explosion of the inevitable conflict. We see that suspense is created in chapter 53while

Dinah thinks over Adam’s proposal from different angles. These events also provide the much needed comic relief. It is no accident that the relatively lighthearted portion of the novel comes after the grim conflict between

 Adam and Arthur 

. This has been done deliberately to minimize the emerging tension. Thus local colour and comic relief work hand in hand in “Adam Bede”. Eliot is determined to write a realistic novel about common people, dig her memories of childhood and creates a specific concrete world. She projects it in a very sentimental way and takes delight in the charming presentation of rural folk. Eliot does not forget that one important function of the novelist is to entertain. So she provides us something to laugh at by describing the real life pattern of the village people. To conclude, it can be said that the entire novel is full of local environment and there is no dearth of comic relief. These two vital elements of the novel add beauty and comprehensiveness to the novel writing of 

George Eliot 

. Her quality does not make

 Adam Bede 

laborious, boring or unattractive rather local colour and comic relief should be taken as very strong plus point of the novelist.