Carpentry

They say you are what you eat… but what about "You are what you work?" We tend to be obsessed with literature (and puns). Our friends in the restaurant world are obsessed with food (and knives, creepy). And Adam Bede can think of a carpentry or architecture comparison for almost anything on the good green earth.

Don't believe us? When Adam feels troubled, he draws on images from his working life:

The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy. (11.3)

And here's Adam talking about theology:

"It's the same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics—a man may be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe, but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than his own ease." (17.9)

This is no-nonsense imagery—no flowers or birds or puppies for our Adam Bede. And that is as it should be. Adam is voicing a no-nonsense personal philosophy of "will" and "resolution" and hard, hard work. So hard, mechanical images are a perfect fit.

But is Adam committing sacrilege here, comparing "religion" to everyday "mathematics"? We'd say not. Just remember that old saying: what would Jesus do? Probably cook up comparisons like these himself, because Jesus was also (wait for it…) a carpenter.

And the Adam/Jesus similarities don't stop there. Like Jesus, Adam is an innocent man who suffers for the sins of others (Hetty and Arthur). Like Jesus, Adam is a respected man, but not an aristocrat.

So yeah, Eliot's giving us a Christ figure. But she's also using the carpentry setup as a point of entry into Adam's religious life. Adam's work—

[…] had always been part of his religion, and from very early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God's will—was that form of God's will that most immediately concerned him. (50.28)

Carpentry is bound up with the whole of his life, as a resident of Hayslope and as a good Christian. So no, Adam doesn't use carpentry images because it's a nervous tic of his. Carpentry is everything to him, metaphor or no metaphor.