2024/12/20 by Brunet-Jailly, Asa
#Adam Bede #George Eliot
paper · doi:10.35099/ffhx-gc95
In Dancing out of Line, Molly Engelhardt maintains that social dancing acted as an ambiguous social space during the Victorian era: ‘unlike other popular activities of the decade, [dance] transcended class, gender, and geographic lines of demarcation and provides us with a more inclusive template for studying the Victorian social body’ (Engelhardt, 9). Social dancing allowed otherwise transgressive actions to be played out; as Engelhardt mentions, dancing crossed class demarcations. Moreover, it allowed the ‘sweating bodies’ of men and women to be in ‘tight embraces’ within the decorum of the ballroom (Engelhardt, 5). Because dancing was transgressive, that is, it crossed the boundaries of what was considered proper in other settings, dancing became ‘a popular occupation, even preoccupation […] that provoked disquiet and, subsequently, discourse’ (Engelhardt, 4). In George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), the chapter entitled ‘The Dance’ plays an important role in the novel’s narrative: the scene exemplifies a certain nostalgia for rural life while exploring the transgressive desire that runs through the decorum-obsessed realm of social dancing. In this article, I explore how the scene of the country dance in Adam Bede mediates intersecting issues of eroticism, desire, and class. I suggest that two types of eroticism are contrasted in the scene: one of communal oneness that depends on the erotic yet unthreatening desirability of the landowning class, and one of individual, possibly transgressive desire that transcends the class system and decorum. This dichotomy parallels the shifting class dynamics that are central to the novel.