CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study Rural
community is the community that has the tighter and deeper relation compared to the relation in the other
communities. The social interaction usually lives in a group on a basic kinship system
(Soekanto, 2007: 136). Furthermore, Rahardjo
explains in Sosiologi Pedesaan: Studi Perubahan Sosial, when it is viewed from its livelihood, visible that rural
community has the characteristic of agriculture society. Therefore, most of the
work in rural community is agriculture; they
still depend on the nature (2006: 59).
Rural community is one of the
objects of sociology, it is included in social group‟s
discussion. Based on Ferdinand Tonnies, a sociologist from Germany, social groups are classified into two
sections, they are gemeinschaft and gesellschaft.
Tonnies stated, all intimate, private, and exclusive living together is understood as life in gemeinschaft (Sunarto,
1993: 129). While in Soekanto‟s Pengantar Sosiologi, gemeinschaft is the
living together where is the groups are tied
by natural and pure sentiment relation (1990: 402).
Tonnies groups gemeinschaft into
three kinds, they are: (1) gemeinschaft by
blood, refers to kinship tying, (2) gemeinschaft of place, basically it
represents the tying which have base on the closeness of residence and work
place leading people to correlate
intimately one with other, it refers to the living together in the rural community, (3) gemeinschaft of mind, it
refers to the friendship tying which is
caused of the similarity of skills or works and also the point of view leading people to interact regularly (Sunarto, 1993:
129). The second section of gemeinschaft,
“gemeinschaft of place” represents conspicuous characteristic in rural community life.
Adam Bede is the literary work in
the nineteenth century set in rural community.
A novel is written by George Eliot in which the portrayal of rural community is described obviously and vividly.
Adam Bede is immediately acclaimed for
its realism, for its picturesque portrayal of rural community and for its humour (Drabble, 1995: 6).
Adam Bede, a popular novel of
George Eliot is published in 1859. It is Immediately recognized as a significant
literary work, Adam Bede has enjoyed a largely
positive critical reputation since its publication. An anonymous review in The Athenaeum in 1859 praised it as a “novel
of the highest class,” and The Times called it “a first-rate novel”.
Contemporary reviewers are often influenced by nostalgia for the earlier period that is
represented in Adam Bede, enthusiastically praise Eliot‟s
characterizations and realistic representations of rural life. Charles Dickens wrote, “the whole country life that
the story is set in, is so real, and so droll
and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you “, (Hunter,
www.thebadplace.com/docs/spring97/adambede.pdf, 12/4/09).
Adam Bede is Eliot‟s first novel, with its great critical and commercial success, has established Eliot‟s early reputation. As being written in London Times, quoted by Spraque, “it is a first rate
novel and its author takes rank at once among the masters of the art” (Astan, 2001:
5). Adam Bede is Eliot‟s first experiment with the type of new fiction that
she pioneers. She tests a new view of the
function of prose fiction as more than entertainment and diversion from the problems of real life, she argues that novels
can express and teach serious ideas about
the quality of the human condition. Her work is revolutionary in its time, contributing substantively to the development
of the novel as an art form by using her
work to address social problems in a wide popular forum (www.gradesaver.com, 12/4/09).
Adam Bede is recognized as a
novel dealing with rural farm life and country
people. Attention to everyday details of butter-making, berry-picking, and cattle herding, far away from the political
and economic changes of an industrialized
society, it brings the story into a sense of innocence and peacefulness world. Adam Bede by George Eliot
describes rural lives in the fictional
community of Hayslope. The novel presents realistic images of daily life in a quiet rural community, a peaceful and
simple country world. The central character
in the novel is Adam Bede, a young talented carpenter in Jonathan Burge‟s
lumberyard, who supports his widow mother. His father died of alcohol.
Everyone in the village respects
to him as a good workman and an honest upright man, even Mr. Jonathan Burge wants him to
marry his daughter. But, Adam attracts
with a local dairy maid, the beautiful niece of Martin Joyser, who runs the hall farm. She is seduced by the charming of
the young squire of a landlord in the village,
Arthur Donnithorne. Until one day, Arthur leaves her and she agrees to marry Adam. But, before the marriage, she
discovers that she is pregnant. She flies
from home to seek Arthur, fails in finding him, is arrested, and convicted of infanticide, and save from the gallows. In
prison, her cousin, Dinah Morris, a Methodist
preacher, whose strong, serious, and calm nature tries to make Hetty feel comfort and calm down. In the last
chapter, Adam discovers that Dinah loves him, and finally Adam marries with her.
George Eliot has enormous
capability to portray her childhood recollection as her primary inspiration, elaborately in her
works. She has a vast store of personal
experience and surroundings to draw upon in her writing. She truly understands the rural communities he
represents in her works, natural personages, problems possible appear in rural community,
natural feeling of the community in rural.
It is because she has experiences rural life first hand as her child. In Adam Bede, Eliot reveals in the gorgeous natural
beauty of the countryside and provides snapshots
of the characteristics of rural life and its community.
George Eliot, the pseudonym of
Mary Ann or Marian Evans was born in Warwickshire,
London in 1819. She is famous as English Victorian novelist, known for her sensitive and honest depiction
of life and people. She often presents realistic
truth in everyday problems. She has rich humor and keen observation, she creates real human beings, and gives them a
setting that are described with great vividness
and animation. Her moral earnestness and her great learning are constantly apparent, but they are lightened by
warm sympathy and appreciation of the
entertaining variety of human nature (Allan Neilson and Horace Thorndike, 1924: 405). George Eliot has succeeded in
gaining a reputation as one of the English
great novelists of the Victorian period because her works; Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floos (1860), Silas
Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1872), and
Daniel Deronda (1876).
Beside those great criticals and
commercial successes especially in its depiction
of rural community in the novel in which is described obviously and vividly, another reason why the researcher
focuses on the portrayal of rural community
in Eliot‟s Adam Bede is the researcher‟s
expectation that by knowing the
reflection of rural community in nineteenth century England in which has strong bond of brotherhood in them and their
simple way of life can give worth lessons
to the modern society about living together in the society in order to get a harmonious life in which Tonnies argues that
the living together in peacefulness and
harmonious life is the ideal type of community that is yearned as can be met in simple community (Soekanto, 1990: 136).
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