The greatest recent event -- that "God is dead," that belief in the Christian God has ceased to be credible -- is... casts its shadows on Europe. For the few, at least, whose eyes.... are strong and sensitive enough for this spectacle... What must collapse now that this belief has been undermined... [is] our whole European morality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay: Nietzsche, from The Gay Science: Book V (1887) Dr. Richard Niebuhr writes, in his introduction to Eliot's translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, that Eliot "tried to preserve the ethics of Christianity without his faith, his humanism without his theism." In his first complete novel, Adam Bede, Eliot manages to do this. Replacing God's all-seeing eye with a plethora of human eyes, Eliot paints characters from Hayslope's close-knit community who do not need God to be good Christians, who can maintain their own standards without faith. Eliot begins simplistically with The Christian Notion that God Can See All. Adam, our titular hero, sings a tune in the first chapter that refers to “the all-seeing eye of God” (Eliot 24). Meanwhile, Bessy, a local farm girl from Hayslope, feels that "Jesus [is] near by looking at her, though she cannot see him" (Eliot 40). According to this model, a person must act morally otherwise God will recognize him by sight and punish him. But Eliot abandons these kinds of references to an all-seeing God in chapter four in favor of a structure that does not require God's eye. At the most basic level, Eliot continually describes his characters' physical eyes and reminds us of their presence. , although he gives up talking about God's eye. Adam's eyes, for example, are "sharp and dark," we are told over and over again. Similarly, Hetty's eyes are "dark", Lisbeth's eyes are "dimmed", Mrs. Poyser's are an "arctic blue-grey", Arthur Donnithorne's are noticeably devoid of adjectives, Seth's are " confident and pale" and Dinah's are always "grey". ,” and usually “mildly.” Hetty is clearly at odds with Dinah through the look of their eyes (Eliot 222) just as Adam is with his brother Seth (Eliot 18). There is not a page in the entire novel where an eye is not mentioned. The characters' perpetual vigilance is also constantly reminded. Eliot undermines the need for God's authority by directly replacing it with earthly authority these physical advocates of Christian ethics. Mrs. Poyser notes that her servants “want someone to keep an eye on them constantly if they are to be kept at their work” (Eliot 450). 'work that their supposed God wants them to do. Bartle Massey is another authority as a teacher "whose eyes stared menacingly at [his students] through his spectacles for some minutes" (Eliot 229). the same influence Poyser has on his subordinates. Society as a whole is still a third of these earthly authorities who firmly judge and maintain control with their “all eyes.” Society displays its ability to do this at every public event, including Arthur's birthday celebration, church, trial, execution, and wedding. Eliot's characters are, so to speak, within the confines of Foucault's "panopticon". Everyone has a responsibility to watch over everyone else to keep society morally (or at least ethically) intact. Dinah, the novel's central heroine, a Methodist preacher, has a presence that isexactly human, although she and others associate her with "God". Trying to convince Dinah not to leave Hayslope, her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, tells her that Bessy, a girl whom Dinah has turned against vanity, "will no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog will go on his hind legs". legs when no one is looking" (Eliot 449). Although Dinah's stated goal is to help her fellow humans accept God's ever-present gaze, all she manages to do is convince them to cower before her authority or community approval. Even when Dinah convinces Hetty to confess to "Jesus" her crime of murdering a child, Hetty is really only responding to Dinah "Hetty kept her eyes on Dinah's face" and "Dinah felt deep joy in the first sign that his love had been welcomed by the lost wretch" (Eliot 424, emphasis added). God's eye is not present, but Dinah's human eyes are, and they alone are the catalysts of repentance and human change. Intense eyes also follow the transgressive romance between Arthur and Hetty. Hetty feels that Arthur's "eyes...seemed to touch her" (Eliot 106) When he tries to avoid falling in love with Hetty, Arthur reasons to himself that he “must not see her again alone” (Eliot 135), and then, recanting, says that he “must see her again” (Eliot 136). Here the eyes reveal themselves to be active participants, not just passive spectators. They have the ability in and of themselves to transgress physical boundaries and set love in motion. Likewise, they can control behavior and dictate ethical correctness. Eliot also makes use of the watchful eyes of his audience in relation to his imaginary world. He engages the reader in the active role of observer by prefacing his work with Wordsworth's line, "That ye may have / Clear images before your glad eyes" (Eliot 7). Along the same lines, he begins the novel itself, saying that he will “show” his readers “visions” (Eliot 17). It immediately forces the reader into the omniscient position of God, the one who will know the entire text from there until the happy ending. Seemingly to remind us of this important purpose, the reader is told that as Hetty looks narcissitically at herself in her mirror, she feels that she is being watched by an "invisible spectator" (Eliot 151). More superficially, this unseen figure is Hetty's unsuitable suitor, Arthur. However, on a more concrete level, she is actually observed by the reader, who is in the bedroom with her on some level. Most powerfully, Eliot addresses his reader directly by explaining the responsibilities he has in a kind of manifesto on literature, which he lays out in chapter 17, "In Which History Stops a Little." “You,” he writes, addressing his reader, “will probably cast a harder and colder glance…on the men and women who really breathe, who can be chilled by your indifference…who can be cheered and encouraged” aided by thy…courageous justice" (Eliot 175-6). His characters, he argues, rely on the reader just as a Christian relies on the mercy and fairness of Jesus. Once again, the religious is replaced by the secular .Eliot involves his audience in the game of observation and therefore influences us morally these characters are always observing each other, and we are always observing them, then we feel that perhaps there is someone who is always observing us and that we should behave correctly. It instills in the reader a paranoia that, if the moral of the story remains, will remain. The scenes in which what should not be seen is seen reinforce this sense that we cannot hide from acting morally (instead of being moral) despite the possible absence of the divine. The most explicit example of this is when Adam seesArthur inadvertently kisses Hetty in the woods. Adam watches Arthur approach him from the kiss “with eyes in which amazement was rapidly turning to ferocity” (Eliot 286). Although Arthur is successfully avoiding God, he cannot hide from humanity. Adam's eyes absorb and judge the event, and then punish him with a beating. Little Totty participates in such activity along with Adam earlier in the text when she "opened her eyes...and with her right [arm] grasped the string of brown beads around Hetty's neck" (Eliot 276). With the act of opening her eyes, Hetty begins the process of revealing to Adam Hetty's dishonorable status. Totty's eyes essentially penetrate Hetty's dress despite Hetty's attempt to hide her locket inside it. Eliot depicts human eyes that see inside the human breast; a place that it seems only the privileged God should be able to access. The player is also transformed into a spy at Hall Farm, seeing what the players don't know they can see. “Putting our eyes on the rusty bars of the gate,” Eliot secretly tells his reader, “we can see the house well enough and all but the corners of the grassy enclosure” (Eliot 78). The eyes invade the space where they were not invited, without being seen themselves. They "violate," as Eliot says. This fosters the feeling in us that everything is being observed by judging human eyes, whether we know it or not. We “integrate” ourselves into the story we are reading, says John Goode in his essay on Adam Bede, “through the provision of an absolute morality” (Goode 35). That is, we provide for each other and ourselves the foundation on which socially acceptable behavior, otherwise known as “moral” behavior, rests. Eliot goes so far as to make quite precise connections between the gaze of the eyes and doing well. Arthur's eyes are not described with adjectives because he is bland and does not impose any moral code on himself when necessary. Indeed, Eliot describes him as “resolutely averting his gaze from every negative consequence” (Eliot 301). Likewise, in the church setting, Eliot points us to the “black-eyed youths” (Eliot 185). They have "black eyes" because they have not yet absorbed Christian morality into their vision and therefore do not yet perpetuate the moral system within which they live. Eliot's two main heroes, Adam and Dinah, the ones who receive the novel's awkward happy ending, eventually meet on the top of a hill. Adam "chose this place... because it was far from all eyes" (Eliot 500), yet the other reason, which he does not give, must be that his eyes and hers are the only ones that can see from there, and they can probably see much of the space below. Eliot places them in a superior point of view, thus representing their superior moral positions. These righteous human beings are sitting "up high" in God's place. But it is not a Tower of Babble, it is righteous, because human beings must assume the omniscient eye to support Eliot's idea that, as Niebuhr says, it can maintain "the ethos of Christianity without its faith". moral value of the eyes experiencing the curse of seeing "Nothing but the place in the woods where I buried the child..." he shouts to Dinah, "I see it now!" (Eliot 431). The entire community then turns their harmful eyes on Hetty both in the courtroom as she stands “like a statue of dull despair” (Eliot 413), and as she is taken out to hang, they “watch” (Eliot 437). It is her vision, and that of her community, that condemns her. There is no need for God's classically omniscient eye to intervene. At one point Eliot tells us even more bluntly that she is a supporter of man-divine interchangeability. 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