Water Imagery

For a land-locked book like Adam Bede, the wet stuff sure is mentioned a lot. Here's what Dinah says to Mr. Irwine about her intellectual life:

"Thoughts are so great—aren't they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood." (8.17)

And here's how Eliot's narrator describes Hetty's state of mind:

A soft, liquid veil, as if she were living not in this solid world of brick and stone, but in a beautified world, such as the sun lights up for us in the waters. (103.9)

We're not the first to notice this. J. Hillis Miller, who knows more about Eliot than some people know about their parents, discusses both those passages in his newest book.

But why? Well, water is at once everyday and magnificent: at once commonplace and glorious. What better image to use in a book like Adam Bede—a book that unearths the magnificence of everyday moments? In fact, Eliot uses water imagery to describe one of the most common, yet most powerful, emotions of all: love. Two lovers will "approach each other gradually, like two little quivering rain-streams, before they mingle into one" (50.47). Shucks. That ought to be on a Hallmark Valentine's Day card.

Now, there are plenty of actual descriptions of weather and streams and what have you in Adam Bede. Eliot wants us to see the beauty that is around us, including the beauty of human relationships. The beauty of a landscape can hit us immediately; the beauty of a relationship, well, that can take a little while to register.

So Eliot lends power and exquisiteness to her characters' relationships and perceptions by evoking "deep floods," "soft, liquid veils," and "little quivering rain streams." She gives us images to react to and be inspired by—not vague, pseudo-philosophical descriptions of "thoughts" or "love."

Water, water, everywhere… and plenty, and it turns out, to drink.