The difference between the two men
is still more clearly shown when they are brought face to face with the
result of their wrong-doing. With each there is sorrow, but in Wybrow,
and still more vividly as we shall see in Tito Melema, it is the sorrow
of self-worship only. No thought of the wronged one otherwise than as an
obstacle and embarrassment, no thought of the wrong simply as a wrong,
can touch him. This sorrow is merely remorse, "the sorrow of the world
which worketh death." Arthur, too, is suddenly called to confront the
misery and ruin he has wrought; but in him, self then loses its
ascendancy. There is no attempt to plead that he was the tempted as much
as the tempter; and no care now as to what others shall think or say
about him. All thought is for the wretched Hetty; and all energy is
concentrated on the one present object, of arresting so far as it can be
arrested the irremediable loss to her. The wrong stands up before him in
its own nakedness as a wrong. This is repentance; and with repentance
restoration becomes possible and begins.
Adam Bede contrasts at nearly every point with Arthur Donnithorne.
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