a heroine. The same remark
applies to "Adam Bede," as the work stands. The central figure of the
book, by virtue of her great misfortune, is Hetty Sorrel. In the
presence of that misfortune no one else, assuredly, has a right to claim
dramatic pre-eminence. The one person for whom an approach to equality
may be claimed is, not Adam Bede, but Arthur Donnithorne. If the story
had ended, as I should have infinitely preferred to see it end, with
Hetty's execution, or even with her reprieve, and if Adam had been left
to his grief, and Dinah Morris to the enjoyment of that distinguished
celibacy for which she was so well suited, then I think Adam might have
shared the honors of pre-eminence with his hapless sweetheart. But as it
is, the continuance of the book in his interest is fatal to him. His
sorrow at Hetty's misfortune is not a _sufficient_ sorrow for the
situation. That his marriage at some future time was quite possible, and
even natural, I readily admit; but that was matter for a new story. This
point illustrates, I think, the great advantage of the much-censured
method, introduced by Balzac, of continuing his heroes' adventures from
tale to tale. Or, admitting that the author was indisposed to undertake,
or even to conceive, in its completeness, a new tale, in which Adam,
healed of his wound by time, should address himself to another woman, I
yet hold that it would be possible tacitly to foreshadow some such event
at the close of the tale which we are supposing to end with Hetty's
death,--to make it the logical consequence of Adam's final state of
mind. Of course circumstances would have much to do with bringing it to
pass, and these circumstances could not be foreshadowed; but apart from
the action of circumstances would stand the fact that, to begin with,
the event was _possible_. The assurance of this possibility is what I
should have desired the author to place the sympathetic reader at a
stand-point to deduce for himself. In every novel the work is divided
between the writer and the reader; but the writer makes the reader very
much as he makes his characters. When he makes him ill, that is, makes
him indifferent, he does no work; the writer does all. When he makes him
well, that is, makes him interested, then the reader does quite half the
labor. In making such a deduction as I have just indicated, the reader
would be doing but his share of the task; the grand point is to get him
to make it. I hold that there is