In Which the Story Pauses a Little
- Stop what you're doing: George Eliot has something important to say! Or rather, one of her imaginary readers does. (Don't ask. Just go with it.)
- Eliot opens Chapter 17 by imagining a reader who is turned off by Mr. Irwine—who finds the jolly fellow "little better than a pagan" and wishes he had "the most beautiful things" to say instead" (17.1).
- And what does Eliot's narrator have to say to Mr. Totally Nonexistent Reader? Try this on for size: "My strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind" (17.2). In short: accept Mr. Irwine, defects and all, because real people have defects.
- In fact, Eliot's narrator is hooked on the whole reality thing. In real life, we have to "tolerate, pity, and love" a whole bunch of "more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people" (17.4). Characters aren't much different. Love 'em, hate 'em, but don't dismiss them out of hand because they aren't "perfect."
- Okay, Mr. Imaginary Reader has pretty much been booed offstage by now. So Eliot's narrator has room to explain why "falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult" in fiction (17.5). Falsehood—melodrama, perfect people, acts of heroism in Eliot's book—is entertaining, and can speak to our love of beautiful things.
- But we are often challenged to find the beauty in "true" things, like the "common coarse people" of the world (17.8). Remember the ugly duckling? We're all ugly ducklings in this narrator's book.
- So Eliot's narrator returns to the guy who got us all going like this in the first place, Mr. Irwine. We've all drummed it into your head that "Mr. Irwine wasn't perfect." But for many of his parishioners, he was better than his successor, Mr. Ryde, who was "severe in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh" (17.9).
- In theory, Mr. Ryde was an excellent clergyman. In practice, um, not so much. Even Adam Bede had some harsh words for Mr. Ryde, who presided over Hayslope in Adam's later years: "He preached a deal about doctrines. But I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides doctrines and notions" (17.13).
- Adam's religion, to put it bluntly, is a matter of getting your hands a bit dirty. Mr. Irwine wasn't a "doctrine guy," but he gave practical advice and always had an ear for his parishioners' troubles. The Ryde guy: doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. And not much compassion or common sense.
- All this is offered as a roundabout way of criticizing "that lofty order of minds who pant after the ideal" (17.14). Instead, Eliot's narrator believes you can learn a lot from observing even the most "commonplace and vulgar" people (17.14). People are flawed everywhere. Why not accept that, and make the best of it?
- By now Mr. Imaginary Reader is long, long gone. Eliot won't have him to kick around any more.