"Love yourself as your neighbor": The limits of altruism and the ethics of personal benefit in Adam Bede

In the work of George Eliot, a "past evil that has blighted or crushed another" is often "made a source of unforeseen good to ourselves" (Adam Bede 573; ch. 54). Eliot's early novel Adam Bede might be read as a three-volume exploration of the moral difficulties inherent in a narrative pattern premised on such inequality of lots. The seduction of Adam Bede's first love, Hetty Sorrel, her pregnancy, subsequent act of infanticide, transportation, and early death darkly prepare the path to the hero's joyous union with Dinah Morris, who guides him through the story's most painful, educative hours. Adam's union with Dinah, the narrator tells us, is deeper, more powerful, and more pleasurable than any with Hetty might have been because of the knowledge through suffering that Adam attains; "what better harvest from that painful seed-time" can there be than this second love? (578; ch. 55). Yet Hetty embodies all the loss and destruction that enable Adam and Dinah's redemptive future while enjoying no such redemption herself.