House of Notes

Q 9:  What is Methodism? Is “Adam Bede” a propagation of this religious phenomenon?   Answer:  Methodism may be defined as “a movement of reaction against the apathy of the Church of England that prevailed in the early part of 18 th  century. John Wesley, who was a student at Oxford and took holy orders in 1725, founded this movement. Methodist society was formed in 1729 when a few young men at Oxford came together under his leadership. Their object was the promotion of piety and morality. The greatest success of this movement was among the lower classes. When the Methodist movement strengthened, lady preachers were appointed to meet the need. First Wesley Conference was held in1744, in which women were allowed to preach but later they were restricted to preach. In the beginning, this movement worked under the established church, but as the society grew, it became more independent. However, separation was made after the death of Wesl...

Q 8:  Discuss George Eliot as a moralist. Or  “Adam Bede” is dramatization of ultimate best in man. What is your opinion?  Or   Adam Bede learns through pains. His knowledge of suffering makes him the man of high standing. Do you agree?    Answer:  In her youth, George Eliot came in contact with intellectual figures of her age. When her vision widened, she lost faith in Orthodox (Christianity, and after that she could not believe in the supernatural concepts and immortality of human soul throughout her life. For this reason she has been accused of being agonistic   and atheist. But she never appears as an atheist in her stories, only her approach to religion is intellectual. She could not believe in dogmatic parts of religion, but she had faith in its ethical preaching. She was concerned with only moral aspects of religion. Her standards of right and wrong were exactly those of the puritans. Her spiritua...

Q 7:  Discuss George Eliot’s realism. Or  What are the biographical elements in “Adam Bede”?  Or  Discuss the dear reader technique of George Eliot in “Adam Bede”. Or  Discuss Eliot’s psychological approach in “Adam Bede”.  Answer:  George Eliot  has been considered as the intellectual novelist. For every intellectual novelist realism is necessary, but for Eliot it is a creed and ambition. She declares her stories as “a criticism of life”; hence she draws her stories from actual life. She draws her own model and deals everything with devoted and sincere truthfulness. Whereas, such truthfulness is missing in Dickens and Faulkner, rather there is an air of artificiality in their work. Eliot says: “Falsehood is so easy, truth is so difficult.”  But for writer like Eliot’s intellect, it is very difficult to create falsehood. In Eliot’s time, the “dear reader” technique was widely used. The method derives fro...

Q 6:  Discuss George Eliot as a modern novelist.   Answer:  George Eliot has a distinction of being regarded as the first modern novelist in the real sense of the word. She introduced a conception of novel which is still a continuing effect on the current pattern of novel writing. The main reason of her fame is that she is first modern novelist in English. The first period of the English novel begins with Fielding and ends with Trollope. The second period is of  Henry James and Meredith. Third period started with George Eliot and is hardly over today. Though, she was not are evolutionary genius like Emily Bronte, yet her mode of writing and her personal temperament were cautious and scholarly. Her books do have a shadow of his predecessors as she learnt a lot from them. Although, her mode of writing was very much like Victorian yet there are some important differences as well. Though, she does not break the old tr...