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Song, Eun Young. “Ideology of Angel and Infanticide in the 19th Century: A Study of Adam Bede.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 41.1 (2015): 125-146. This study discusses the motherhood and infanticide in the 19th century through George Eliot's Adam Bede. The noble is a true story about a single mother who killed her baby. In the 19th century, woman was considered as an angel in the house, and the responsibility of the nurturing children was assigned to women. For that reason, women dedicatedly endeavored to do her duty for children. The idea that maternity is women's natural instinct was a predominant idea in the 19th century, but the problem of infanticide and abandoned children still existed. In Adam Bede, Hetty Sorrel was a very beautiful unmarried woman and believed to be able to high class for her beauty. With that belief, she was seduced by Arthur Donnithorne but after all she was abandoned by him. After he left, Hetty learned she was pregnant. However an immoral woman was regarded as a woman who was disqualified as a mother at that time. That's why Hetty secretly gave birth her child and abandoned it in the forest. Although Eliot considers motherhood as a virtue of woman, in this novel she points out social contradiction which coexisted ideal mother and infanticide through a woman who killed her baby. (Sungshin Women University)