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Adam Bede
A story which evokes a bygone rural life, and is charged with a personal passion that intensifies the novel's outer dramas of seduction and betrayal and inner dramas of moral growth and redemption.
608 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1859
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About the author
George Eliot
3,133 books4,931 followersMary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
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July 14, 2020Reader, I ask you, what can be better than a long book full of good sentences?
That was a rhetorical question, of course—I think there is nothing better than good sentences following one on another, and this book is full of them.
But Adam Bede also offers that extra ingredient readers generally can't resist: intrigue.
The intrigue is centered on the curious nature of the rules of attraction, which is no surprise as variations on the classic love triangle often feature in George Eliot's books. However in Adam Bede, the rules of attraction seem to stretch well beyond the usual three-sided figure. Instead we have a far more complicated situation:
SB loves DM who loves AB who loves HS who loves AD.
Five isolated points. There seems to be no way to bring them together, no way to build them into a useful shape, such as a house, for example. And yet Adam Bede, who is at the centre of the problematic, is a carpenter who is very good at calculating distances and angles and the correct weight of roof timbers. Come on, Adam, we say encouragingly, build that house! Make it happen.
Meanwhile, our mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business of the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of the large obvious ones...the human soul is a very complex thing.
A little mental business, a little adjustment of wheels and cogs, and not forgetting some small heart-related 'agents' their owners hardly know exist, has to be carried out by several of the characters before Adam's house can be built. It is a very interesting process to watch.
The human heart is a very complex thing indeed.
That was a rhetorical question, of course—I think there is nothing better than good sentences following one on another, and this book is full of them.
But Adam Bede also offers that extra ingredient readers generally can't resist: intrigue.
The intrigue is centered on the curious nature of the rules of attraction, which is no surprise as variations on the classic love triangle often feature in George Eliot's books. However in Adam Bede, the rules of attraction seem to stretch well beyond the usual three-sided figure. Instead we have a far more complicated situation:
SB loves DM who loves AB who loves HS who loves AD.
*……*……*……*……*
Five isolated points. There seems to be no way to bring them together, no way to build them into a useful shape, such as a house, for example. And yet Adam Bede, who is at the centre of the problematic, is a carpenter who is very good at calculating distances and angles and the correct weight of roof timbers. Come on, Adam, we say encouragingly, build that house! Make it happen.
Meanwhile, our mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business of the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of the large obvious ones...the human soul is a very complex thing.
A little mental business, a little adjustment of wheels and cogs, and not forgetting some small heart-related 'agents' their owners hardly know exist, has to be carried out by several of the characters before Adam's house can be built. It is a very interesting process to watch.
The human heart is a very complex thing indeed.
February 25, 2024
I am planning to read/reread most of George eliot's novels this year. The first tome is Adam Bede which I read during my university years, and then it left me indifferent. After decades, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the style and the picture of provincial life. Two pairs of male and female protagonists, so beautifully juxopposed, with minor characters, each unique, supplementing the story.
August 16, 2018
The fact that George Eliot called this novel Adam Bede and not Hetty Sorrel proves that there is no justice in this world.
The novel itself, Eliot’s first, is a fairly quaint pastoral romance. Everyone’s in love with the wrong person. You get the picture. The plot doesn’t really wear the novel’s weight well. It just about breaches 600 pages and there is absolutely no need - no need.
It’s a pity that Adam Bede is such a meh tale, considering that for the novel Eliot invented a character as complex and as loveable and as utterly tragic as Hetty Sorrel. I adored Hetty, and judging by most of the other reviews on here, everyone else did as well. Her story is just so completely harrowing, which is impressive, as most characters from Victorian literature really just go through it.
I have to admit that at points I really became fed up with this novel, only for everything to pick up again when Hetty comes along. But I’m also not going to recommend a 600 page long minor Victorian novel just because one character is good. So I guess that’s that.
The novel itself, Eliot’s first, is a fairly quaint pastoral romance. Everyone’s in love with the wrong person. You get the picture. The plot doesn’t really wear the novel’s weight well. It just about breaches 600 pages and there is absolutely no need - no need.
It’s a pity that Adam Bede is such a meh tale, considering that for the novel Eliot invented a character as complex and as loveable and as utterly tragic as Hetty Sorrel. I adored Hetty, and judging by most of the other reviews on here, everyone else did as well. Her story is just so completely harrowing, which is impressive, as most characters from Victorian literature really just go through it.
I have to admit that at points I really became fed up with this novel, only for everything to pick up again when Hetty comes along. But I’m also not going to recommend a 600 page long minor Victorian novel just because one character is good. So I guess that’s that.
June 27, 2020
That feeling when you close a very, very good novel after taking a lot of time to read it slowly, over shifting seasons, moods and circumstances.
The feeling of having lived among the characters, suffered with them, fought against the inevitable developments, trying to force the words on the pages to change to avoid the fates that can't be avoided.
That feeling of accomplishment when the epilogue gives deep satisfaction, a better love than the rushed first impression of the early pages.
George Eliot knows her trade and loves it, and for the reader, there is little left to be said, except a deeply felt "Thank You, Madam, for this masterpiece!"
Adam and Dinah and Seth and the Poysers and Arthur and Mr Irwine are all well tucked into their happy lives, so my last thoughts go to Hettie, who was punished according to the moral compass of a deeply flawed society for being a young and uneducated sexual being... Because of you, Hettie, I am reconciled with my own flawed times. You would have fared better with your first love if you had been a young girl now, and crime and pain and premature death would not have been your fate in my society. We have a long way to go still, but your fate shows me we have reached some justice too!
To the Hetties of the world: you have a right to life and pleasure and support, and no society building its "virtue" on shaming and blaming and suppressing women's autonomy and sexuality can ever be called "the good old times".
The feeling of having lived among the characters, suffered with them, fought against the inevitable developments, trying to force the words on the pages to change to avoid the fates that can't be avoided.
That feeling of accomplishment when the epilogue gives deep satisfaction, a better love than the rushed first impression of the early pages.
George Eliot knows her trade and loves it, and for the reader, there is little left to be said, except a deeply felt "Thank You, Madam, for this masterpiece!"
Adam and Dinah and Seth and the Poysers and Arthur and Mr Irwine are all well tucked into their happy lives, so my last thoughts go to Hettie, who was punished according to the moral compass of a deeply flawed society for being a young and uneducated sexual being... Because of you, Hettie, I am reconciled with my own flawed times. You would have fared better with your first love if you had been a young girl now, and crime and pain and premature death would not have been your fate in my society. We have a long way to go still, but your fate shows me we have reached some justice too!
To the Hetties of the world: you have a right to life and pleasure and support, and no society building its "virtue" on shaming and blaming and suppressing women's autonomy and sexuality can ever be called "the good old times".
November 2, 2022
Q: why did I read this again?
A: because I love it
A: because I love it
August 16, 2018
Adam Bede (1859) was George Eliot’s first novel, preceded only by her short fiction collection, Scenes of Clerical Life. The novel was recognized as a masterpiece from the start. The Times review stated that “the author takes rank among the masters of the craft” and describes “him” as possessing “genius of the highest order.” Elizabeth Gaskell, with North and South already behind her, mournfully noted in a letter that “I have a feeling that it is not worth while trying to write when there are such books as Adam Bede.”
When I read Adam Bede for the first time, I was just coming out of a life trauma (though nothing quite as bad as the horrible event around which the plot turns, fortunately). The novel blew me away with the accuracy of its insights into shock and suffering and their psychological effects. It was an immensely therapeutic read.
It was interesting to revisit this novel at a calmer and more objective moment, with more of a literary-critical eye. I loved it just as much as I did the first time round, though for rather different reasons. I read it almost back-to-back with Eliot’s later Felix Holt: The Radical, and it was fun to line the two up against one another. There are several similarities. The male protagonist of both is an intelligent, partly self-educated, working-class man—although Felix Holt has chosen the career of a craftsman, rather than having it visited on him by birth—and both are the dutiful sons to two of the more annoying mothers in fiction. (To be fair, Lisbeth Bede has more by way of redeeming tragic dignity than Mrs Holt, but it would still be something of a toss-up as to which you would least want to be trapped in a lift with.)
More seriously, Adam Bede is as brilliant and socially nuanced and vivid a portrayal of a rural Midland village in 1799 as Felix Holt is of an election-fevered rural Midland small town in 1832. Eliot knew of what she spoke; she had grown up in precisely the kind of rural society she wrote of here; and her fascinating short memoir of the origins of Adam Bede (included as an appendix to the World’s Classics edition I used) identifies her father, Robert Evans, an upwardly mobile former carpenter turned estate manager, as one of the inspirations for her title character.
As ever with Eliot, in addition to the personal plot of the novel—here, unlike in Felix Holt, stark and simple as a Greek tragedy—a larger social and quietly political narrative is at work. One reason why the village setting works so well is that it can serve as a microcosm of English society generally, in its class and religious distinctions. We are never quite allowed to forget, moreover, that the novel takes place a decade after the most convulsive political event of the century, the French Revolution. This is an intensely class-conscious novel, as much so as Felix Holt, in its way.
The cast list of Adam Bede is vast and supremely well marshalled. In addition to Adam and his family, the principal characters in the novel include the dashing, vain young squire, Arthur Donnithorpe; the worldly, and worldly-wise, vicar, Mr Irvine and his queenly, spirited old mother; a comfortably-off farm couple, the Poysers; and their two orphaned nieces, the vain and pretty Hetty Sorrel and the charismatic and godly Dinah Morris. Beyond these, we also get a wider chorus, made up the Poysers’ assorted servants and farm-hands; the grander servants of the “big house;” assorted village ne’er-do-wells; the crotchety schoolmaster Bartle Massey; Adam’s colleagues in the carpenter shop. Eliot assembles the entire village masterfully in the great set-piece of Arthur’s twenty-first birthday party, which takes place immediately before the novel’s crisis, with doom hanging heavily in the air.
This element of Fate and foreshadowing is again reminiscent of Greek tragedy; and I don’t think this is coincidental. Eliot read Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex shortly before beginning work on Adam Bede; and she makes Mr Irvine, in the novel, a reader of Sophocles and Aeschylus. One great triumph of Adam Bede is its combination of the emotional power and universality of tragedy with the intricate, historically precise, socially embedded realism of the mature Victorian novel.
I could continue ad infinitum. I can’t begin to do justice to the excellencies of this novel. I haven’t even mentioned the fascination of Eliot’s portrayal of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist lay preacher, caught at a moment early in the Methodist movement when women did preach in some numbers (an epilogue takes us down beyond 1803, when a ruling limited them to preaching solely to their own sex.) The characterization is superb in general: aside from Dinah, I loved, in different ways, Adam; Arthur; Hetty; Mr Irvine; Martin Poyser; and Seth Bede, Adam’s brother. And you get a lot of Eliot’s trademark humanistic moral wisdom and sympathy. Her treatment of Arthur is exemplary in that regard; she doesn’t back-pedal on his vanity and the appalling damage that he wreaks on all around him, yet she doesn’t allow us—or even, ultimately, Adam—the easy option of condemning him without taking a good look at ourselves.
There are even some laughs in Adam Bede, in defiance of Eliot’s reputation for high moral seriousness. She took a while to creep up on me, but, by the end, I was relishing the outrageous barbs of the sharp-tongued super-housewife Mrs Poyser, especially when she turned them against the tyrannical Squire Donnithorne (à bas les aristos!) and the misogynist Bartle Massey. I particularly admired the way Eliot encapsulated her character in her physical tic of walking round knitting constantly “with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab’s antennae.”
When I read Adam Bede for the first time, I was just coming out of a life trauma (though nothing quite as bad as the horrible event around which the plot turns, fortunately). The novel blew me away with the accuracy of its insights into shock and suffering and their psychological effects. It was an immensely therapeutic read.
It was interesting to revisit this novel at a calmer and more objective moment, with more of a literary-critical eye. I loved it just as much as I did the first time round, though for rather different reasons. I read it almost back-to-back with Eliot’s later Felix Holt: The Radical, and it was fun to line the two up against one another. There are several similarities. The male protagonist of both is an intelligent, partly self-educated, working-class man—although Felix Holt has chosen the career of a craftsman, rather than having it visited on him by birth—and both are the dutiful sons to two of the more annoying mothers in fiction. (To be fair, Lisbeth Bede has more by way of redeeming tragic dignity than Mrs Holt, but it would still be something of a toss-up as to which you would least want to be trapped in a lift with.)
More seriously, Adam Bede is as brilliant and socially nuanced and vivid a portrayal of a rural Midland village in 1799 as Felix Holt is of an election-fevered rural Midland small town in 1832. Eliot knew of what she spoke; she had grown up in precisely the kind of rural society she wrote of here; and her fascinating short memoir of the origins of Adam Bede (included as an appendix to the World’s Classics edition I used) identifies her father, Robert Evans, an upwardly mobile former carpenter turned estate manager, as one of the inspirations for her title character.
As ever with Eliot, in addition to the personal plot of the novel—here, unlike in Felix Holt, stark and simple as a Greek tragedy—a larger social and quietly political narrative is at work. One reason why the village setting works so well is that it can serve as a microcosm of English society generally, in its class and religious distinctions. We are never quite allowed to forget, moreover, that the novel takes place a decade after the most convulsive political event of the century, the French Revolution. This is an intensely class-conscious novel, as much so as Felix Holt, in its way.
The cast list of Adam Bede is vast and supremely well marshalled. In addition to Adam and his family, the principal characters in the novel include the dashing, vain young squire, Arthur Donnithorpe; the worldly, and worldly-wise, vicar, Mr Irvine and his queenly, spirited old mother; a comfortably-off farm couple, the Poysers; and their two orphaned nieces, the vain and pretty Hetty Sorrel and the charismatic and godly Dinah Morris. Beyond these, we also get a wider chorus, made up the Poysers’ assorted servants and farm-hands; the grander servants of the “big house;” assorted village ne’er-do-wells; the crotchety schoolmaster Bartle Massey; Adam’s colleagues in the carpenter shop. Eliot assembles the entire village masterfully in the great set-piece of Arthur’s twenty-first birthday party, which takes place immediately before the novel’s crisis, with doom hanging heavily in the air.
This element of Fate and foreshadowing is again reminiscent of Greek tragedy; and I don’t think this is coincidental. Eliot read Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex shortly before beginning work on Adam Bede; and she makes Mr Irvine, in the novel, a reader of Sophocles and Aeschylus. One great triumph of Adam Bede is its combination of the emotional power and universality of tragedy with the intricate, historically precise, socially embedded realism of the mature Victorian novel.
I could continue ad infinitum. I can’t begin to do justice to the excellencies of this novel. I haven’t even mentioned the fascination of Eliot’s portrayal of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist lay preacher, caught at a moment early in the Methodist movement when women did preach in some numbers (an epilogue takes us down beyond 1803, when a ruling limited them to preaching solely to their own sex.) The characterization is superb in general: aside from Dinah, I loved, in different ways, Adam; Arthur; Hetty; Mr Irvine; Martin Poyser; and Seth Bede, Adam’s brother. And you get a lot of Eliot’s trademark humanistic moral wisdom and sympathy. Her treatment of Arthur is exemplary in that regard; she doesn’t back-pedal on his vanity and the appalling damage that he wreaks on all around him, yet she doesn’t allow us—or even, ultimately, Adam—the easy option of condemning him without taking a good look at ourselves.
There are even some laughs in Adam Bede, in defiance of Eliot’s reputation for high moral seriousness. She took a while to creep up on me, but, by the end, I was relishing the outrageous barbs of the sharp-tongued super-housewife Mrs Poyser, especially when she turned them against the tyrannical Squire Donnithorne (à bas les aristos!) and the misogynist Bartle Massey. I particularly admired the way Eliot encapsulated her character in her physical tic of walking round knitting constantly “with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab’s antennae.”
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November 21, 2018So. This is an old story and terribly familiar, I'm not sure if it is wise to say anything about the plot, perhaps the plot is incidental, it certainly can't be separated from its setting.
This was the first time I have read this novel, it was almost a year ago that I readThe Mill on the Floss and it was so long ago that I read Middlemarch that perhaps it is almost as though I had never read it. However in common with those books Eliot also sets this one in the recent past and one wonders what it was about the recent past that made it an essential component of the story she wanted to tell, or to put it another way why might she have felt that the same story might not have worked if set the fifty or so years later when it was written. Communication is a part of it, I imagine as the reader has to believe in the naivete of a seventeen year old girl, presumable Eliot suspected her readers would find it impossible to imagine a seventeen year old girl being ignorant of the consequences of dalliance with an older man and how nature leads to unnatural crimes.
This leads to the other feature of the book that I noticed. This is a very religious unreligious book. It is not even a crisis of faith book. Rather it seems to me that by the end Eliot is asserting herself as High Priestess, or Lady Pope, or the true Prophet of No God. If for her there is no God there is still value in some religious practises, in the place of void created by the removal of church and doctrines she puts an intense serious regard for people's spiritual lives, for our emotions, for compassion, for the depths of understanding required to live with each other when the well springs of our feelings may be obscure yea even unto ourselves. Repent, she cries, for the day of the Lord is not on hand.
A stand out moment I thought the secular communion - "Take a bit, and another sup, Adam, for the love of me. See, I must stop and eat a morsel. Now you take some."
Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of bread, and drank some wine(p431) so speaks our Night school teacher to Adam, teacher and Adam both taking on a new significance as does that the regular Anglican clergyman Mr Irwine serves also as a Magistrate Judge not, that ye be not judged and all that after all. This is a book written after Strauss's The Life Of Jesus Critically Examined which was first translated into English by none other than George Eliot. The sense here is that Christ stopped at Eboli (at any rate somewhere far short of England) despite the moral seriousness of the Methodists the inner life of the country is governed by convention and not by Christian conviction, if the hearts of people are never in Church there is still some chance of true communion between individuals, but this is hard to achieve. Eliot shows us people continually not just mis-read each other, but also themselves, her interest in sociology sides seamlessly into her psychology.
She does in places tell rather than show but given her air of benign wisdom and occasional humour, particularly in the utterances of Mrs Poyser, I find that completely forgiveable.
This edition I don't particularly recommend, it has one of those introductions designed for students on literature courses who prefer to complain about how boring their set texts are than to actually read them, the text is pretty well skewered and dissected and examined without suggesting to an idle passing soul that they might actual want or like to read it. Also I note with thankfulness that I was not born or brought up in the East Midlands, it must be exhausting to have to think in that dialect all the time.
Her in story comment on one of her own characters serves to sum up her own style:"It's quite easy t'read - she writes wonderful for a woman" (p.327)
This was the first time I have read this novel, it was almost a year ago that I readThe Mill on the Floss and it was so long ago that I read Middlemarch that perhaps it is almost as though I had never read it. However in common with those books Eliot also sets this one in the recent past and one wonders what it was about the recent past that made it an essential component of the story she wanted to tell, or to put it another way why might she have felt that the same story might not have worked if set the fifty or so years later when it was written. Communication is a part of it, I imagine as the reader has to believe in the naivete of a seventeen year old girl, presumable Eliot suspected her readers would find it impossible to imagine a seventeen year old girl being ignorant of the consequences of dalliance with an older man and how nature leads to unnatural crimes.
This leads to the other feature of the book that I noticed. This is a very religious unreligious book. It is not even a crisis of faith book. Rather it seems to me that by the end Eliot is asserting herself as High Priestess, or Lady Pope, or the true Prophet of No God. If for her there is no God there is still value in some religious practises, in the place of void created by the removal of church and doctrines she puts an intense serious regard for people's spiritual lives, for our emotions, for compassion, for the depths of understanding required to live with each other when the well springs of our feelings may be obscure yea even unto ourselves. Repent, she cries, for the day of the Lord is not on hand.
A stand out moment I thought the secular communion - "Take a bit, and another sup, Adam, for the love of me. See, I must stop and eat a morsel. Now you take some."
Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of bread, and drank some wine(p431) so speaks our Night school teacher to Adam, teacher and Adam both taking on a new significance as does that the regular Anglican clergyman Mr Irwine serves also as a Magistrate Judge not, that ye be not judged and all that after all. This is a book written after Strauss's The Life Of Jesus Critically Examined which was first translated into English by none other than George Eliot. The sense here is that Christ stopped at Eboli (at any rate somewhere far short of England) despite the moral seriousness of the Methodists the inner life of the country is governed by convention and not by Christian conviction, if the hearts of people are never in Church there is still some chance of true communion between individuals, but this is hard to achieve. Eliot shows us people continually not just mis-read each other, but also themselves, her interest in sociology sides seamlessly into her psychology.
She does in places tell rather than show but given her air of benign wisdom and occasional humour, particularly in the utterances of Mrs Poyser, I find that completely forgiveable.
This edition I don't particularly recommend, it has one of those introductions designed for students on literature courses who prefer to complain about how boring their set texts are than to actually read them, the text is pretty well skewered and dissected and examined without suggesting to an idle passing soul that they might actual want or like to read it. Also I note with thankfulness that I was not born or brought up in the East Midlands, it must be exhausting to have to think in that dialect all the time.
Her in story comment on one of her own characters serves to sum up her own style:"It's quite easy t'read - she writes wonderful for a woman" (p.327)
November 6, 2021
*3.5 stars*
November 8, 2010
I believe this may be the most beautiful book I have ever read. I felt both uplifted and emotionally drained when I finished. The tragedy and the great beauty of George Eliot's writing! I didn't read this edition, mine was much older, but the introduction of my edition quoted Charles Dickens as saying that reading Adam Bede was an epoch in his life, and Alexandre Dumas called it the masterpiece of the century. I'm happy to agree with them. Most people say that Middlemarch is George Eliot's masterpiece. That was tragic and beautiful as well, but I was so much more drawn into the characters of Adam Bede. I loved them all (even Hetty) because even though they may have made bad choices, we were allowed to see things from their perspective and gain an understanding of why they did what they did. I love that about George Eliot. Dickens' characters sometimes seem almost like caricatures because they are either so good or so evil. I appreciate the humanity of Eliot. In fact, I understood Arthur Donnithorne all too well. He so wants to be a good person and have people think well of him, and yet he is weak when it really matters. This is a silly analogy, but I decided to make chocolate chip cookies one day while reading Adam Bede. I knew I really shouldn't because I would eat too many and not be able to stop, but when it came to the point I made them anyway and ate too many. I realized how like Arthur that was! He knew he shouldn't be doing what he was doing, and he talked himself out of it many times, but when it came to the point he still did it.
It's interesting that although George Eliot personally seemed to have issues with the religion of her day, she can talk about religion so beautifully in her books. (I realize I have used the word "beautiful" way too many times, but oh if you read it, you will understand.) The year the story takes place is 1799, but the year it was published was (I believe) 1856. There was a lot of religious fervor going on at that time. People were searching and wanting to do what was right, and were dissatisfied with the nation's religion, even though there were many good and wonderful members of the clergy. Who could not love Mr. Irwine? And yet Dinah believed in so much more. I had ancestors in England around that time period who I believe felt the same way, and that's why they were so open to hear of the restoration of the gospel from the Mormon missionaries who were sent there.
Mrs. Poyser was an absolute gem! I loved that she was able to tell off the Squire and hold her own with the woman-hating Mr. Massey (I wanted to tell him off, too - I wish we could have heard why he hated women so much.). I was grateful that George Eliot put in an epilogue so we could see what happened to the characters who were missing at the end of the book. This is an amazing book - everyone should read it.
It's interesting that although George Eliot personally seemed to have issues with the religion of her day, she can talk about religion so beautifully in her books. (I realize I have used the word "beautiful" way too many times, but oh if you read it, you will understand.) The year the story takes place is 1799, but the year it was published was (I believe) 1856. There was a lot of religious fervor going on at that time. People were searching and wanting to do what was right, and were dissatisfied with the nation's religion, even though there were many good and wonderful members of the clergy. Who could not love Mr. Irwine? And yet Dinah believed in so much more. I had ancestors in England around that time period who I believe felt the same way, and that's why they were so open to hear of the restoration of the gospel from the Mormon missionaries who were sent there.
Mrs. Poyser was an absolute gem! I loved that she was able to tell off the Squire and hold her own with the woman-hating Mr. Massey (I wanted to tell him off, too - I wish we could have heard why he hated women so much.). I was grateful that George Eliot put in an epilogue so we could see what happened to the characters who were missing at the end of the book. This is an amazing book - everyone should read it.
October 11, 2022
I’d not previously read any of George Eliot's novels, and (unusually for me), I’ve started with the first of them. Although published in 1859, the events of this book take place 60 years earlier. The geographical setting is a rural village called “Hayslope” in the fictional county of “Loamshire”. It’s adjacent to a county called “Stonyshire” which has a village called “Snowfield”. These names are rather obvious signals to tell the reader about the respective communities, one being located in rich agricultural land, the other in a barren upland.
The storyline is based around multiple cases of unrequited attraction. Three of the main characters fall in love with individuals who do not reciprocate their feelings. Various casual deceits and misunderstandings cause a chain of consequences. Partly this is a morality tale - no doubt about that - but it’s also about the iron grip exercised by social custom.
I had mixed feelings. The novel has many good points but I found the first half to be slow-paced. The first part builds to a central crisis, which takes place about half-way through, and thereafter the book held my attention more.
It’s one of those books where the narrator frequently breaks into the text. Eliot has a kind of sly humour, which I quite appreciated.
“…he was but twenty-one, you remember, and we don’t inquire too closely into character in the case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will have property enough to support numerous peccadilloes – who, if he should unfortunately break a man’s legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him handsomely; or, if he should happen to spoil a woman’s existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed by his own hand.”
The description above is of Arthur Donnithorne, whom I thought was one of the most sharply drawn characters. On the other hand, I wasn’t totally convinced by the character of Dinah Morris.
There were times when I had to doff my hat to the skill of the author in manipulating my emotions.
The geography of the novel suggested to me that “Loamshire” was really either Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire, and the book’s blurb suggests the former. Much of the spoken dialogue is written in a local “peasant” dialect, and once or twice I had to concentrate on what exactly was being said. A reader might find this a problem if English isn’t their first language.
My rating reflects my feeling that the first half was slow-paced, and I wasn’t totally bowled over by the conclusion. I am up for reading more of Eliot’s novels though.
The storyline is based around multiple cases of unrequited attraction. Three of the main characters fall in love with individuals who do not reciprocate their feelings. Various casual deceits and misunderstandings cause a chain of consequences. Partly this is a morality tale - no doubt about that - but it’s also about the iron grip exercised by social custom.
I had mixed feelings. The novel has many good points but I found the first half to be slow-paced. The first part builds to a central crisis, which takes place about half-way through, and thereafter the book held my attention more.
It’s one of those books where the narrator frequently breaks into the text. Eliot has a kind of sly humour, which I quite appreciated.
“…he was but twenty-one, you remember, and we don’t inquire too closely into character in the case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will have property enough to support numerous peccadilloes – who, if he should unfortunately break a man’s legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him handsomely; or, if he should happen to spoil a woman’s existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed by his own hand.”
The description above is of Arthur Donnithorne, whom I thought was one of the most sharply drawn characters. On the other hand, I wasn’t totally convinced by the character of Dinah Morris.
There were times when I had to doff my hat to the skill of the author in manipulating my emotions.
The geography of the novel suggested to me that “Loamshire” was really either Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire, and the book’s blurb suggests the former. Much of the spoken dialogue is written in a local “peasant” dialect, and once or twice I had to concentrate on what exactly was being said. A reader might find this a problem if English isn’t their first language.
My rating reflects my feeling that the first half was slow-paced, and I wasn’t totally bowled over by the conclusion. I am up for reading more of Eliot’s novels though.
January 13, 2022
این اولین کتابی از جورج الیوت خوندم ودریک کلام شاهکار است.
ماجرای داستان حول محور ادام بید، ادام مردی ساده وعاقل وبسیار باهوش که دلبسته ی دختری به نام هتی سارل ولی هتی سارل هیچ اهمیتی به ادام بید نمیدهد و فقط بفکر تجملات واینکه با مردی ثروتمند ازدواج کند.
اوایل کتاب زیاد مجذوب داستان نمیشید ولی زمانیکه ادام به رابطه ی پنهانی دوست جوانش آرثر و هتی پی میبرد.
شکل دیگری به داستان میدهد که باعث میشود دوست داشته باشید هرچه زودتر بخونید.
سطر به سطر این کتاب پر از جملات قشنگ است
و جورج الیوت بصورت زیبایی شخصیتها و فضاسازی در قرن نوزدهم رابه تصویر کشیده است
اگر دنبال یک کتاب کلاسیک در این روزهای زمستون بخونید قطعا ادام بید گزینه ی خوبیه💕📚
ماجرای داستان حول محور ادام بید، ادام مردی ساده وعاقل وبسیار باهوش که دلبسته ی دختری به نام هتی سارل ولی هتی سارل هیچ اهمیتی به ادام بید نمیدهد و فقط بفکر تجملات واینکه با مردی ثروتمند ازدواج کند.
اوایل کتاب زیاد مجذوب داستان نمیشید ولی زمانیکه ادام به رابطه ی پنهانی دوست جوانش آرثر و هتی پی میبرد.
شکل دیگری به داستان میدهد که باعث میشود دوست داشته باشید هرچه زودتر بخونید.
سطر به سطر این کتاب پر از جملات قشنگ است
و جورج الیوت بصورت زیبایی شخصیتها و فضاسازی در قرن نوزدهم رابه تصویر کشیده است
اگر دنبال یک کتاب کلاسیک در این روزهای زمستون بخونید قطعا ادام بید گزینه ی خوبیه💕📚
June 30, 2018
Because I was rereading David Copperfield during some of the time I was reading this, I couldn’t help but compare the characters (and situations) of one book to the other: for example, the extremes between the adorable Dora/Hetty and the angelic Agnes/Dinah. And though I know Eliot had reservations about Dickens’ works, I see how she extends -- into realism -- a character like David Copperfield’s Emily.
Also interesting to me is that an arguably sensational theme of Adam Bede is an important theme of the Norwegian Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, another book I was reading concurrently.
If I'd read this as a young teenager, my sympathies would've been with a minor character, the younger brother Seth. As it is, I still have some of those residual feelings toward him, helped by my agreeing with his comment on the last page, which is opposed to the more traditional view of his brother, the eponymous hero. The latter has left me with a vaguely irritated feeling, though nothing he said beforehand bothered me. With this statement of his, though, Eliot is following history; and her biggest strength in this, her first full-length novel, is that of social historian.
Also interesting to me is that an arguably sensational theme of Adam Bede is an important theme of the Norwegian Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, another book I was reading concurrently.
If I'd read this as a young teenager, my sympathies would've been with a minor character, the younger brother Seth. As it is, I still have some of those residual feelings toward him, helped by my agreeing with his comment on the last page, which is opposed to the more traditional view of his brother, the eponymous hero. The latter has left me with a vaguely irritated feeling, though nothing he said beforehand bothered me. With this statement of his, though, Eliot is following history; and her biggest strength in this, her first full-length novel, is that of social historian.
March 7, 2023
Reading this reminded me of the long running radio soap, The Archers. That started around 70 years ago I think, whereas this novel is set at the end of the 18th century/ beginning of the 19th.
The title character is a handsome hunk of a man who ticks all the right boxes for George Eliot and the rest of us – womankind and mankind. As well as being a looker he’s intelligent, honourable and interesting. But, like the best of us, he demonstrates the old adage that love is blind.
This is a book to lose oneself in. The story-line is strong and the characters live and breath across the page. Many speak with an accent which George/Maryann obviously heard as she wrote. In the course of every day speech their wit and sagacity hits the reader with colloquial phrases, expressions, aphorisms and the like, which I feel I want to list and commit to memory.
As well as a good story-line this is compelling social history. Of particular interest to me is the rise of Methodism alongside its older Anglican sister at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The author is ecumenical in her approach to both and the roast beef common sense of her characters are English to a fault. The angelic Dinah did rather overdo it a little for me and had me thinking impure thoughts at times such as speculating on a chance meeting with the Marquis de Sade!
The title character is a handsome hunk of a man who ticks all the right boxes for George Eliot and the rest of us – womankind and mankind. As well as being a looker he’s intelligent, honourable and interesting. But, like the best of us, he demonstrates the old adage that love is blind.
This is a book to lose oneself in. The story-line is strong and the characters live and breath across the page. Many speak with an accent which George/Maryann obviously heard as she wrote. In the course of every day speech their wit and sagacity hits the reader with colloquial phrases, expressions, aphorisms and the like, which I feel I want to list and commit to memory.
As well as a good story-line this is compelling social history. Of particular interest to me is the rise of Methodism alongside its older Anglican sister at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The author is ecumenical in her approach to both and the roast beef common sense of her characters are English to a fault. The angelic Dinah did rather overdo it a little for me and had me thinking impure thoughts at times such as speculating on a chance meeting with the Marquis de Sade!
April 14, 2023
“A country story full of the breath of cows and scent of hay” - and so much more. The story of a simple man just looking for happiness; of a young 'gentleman' who does not understand the power of infatuation; of a young woman who finds herself in a situation she feels she can't escape from; of a young woman who just wants to preach the gospel - of a woman who used a mans name so that her books would be more fairly judged. Highest recommendation.
March 22, 2015
George Eliot’s masterpiece is Middlemarch, but Adam Bede has always been my favorite Eliot novel. I’m not sure why this is. It might be because Bede was the first Eliot book I read. I doubt this, however, because the first Austen book I read was Pride and Prejudice, but my favorite Austen book is Persuasion. I understand why Middlemarch is a masterpiece, yet I find myself agreeing with Dumas pere in considering Bede to be the “masterpiece of the century”.
I first read Bede after watching the first part of a Masterpiece Theatre (remember when Cooke hosted it?) showing of the story. I only saw the first part and it ended with the fight between Adam and Arthur, where Adam knocks Arthur done and thinks he has killed the squire to be. I had to know what happened next so I went out and brought the book.
Since then I have read Bede far more than I have read Middlemarch, though I have never tracked down and brought the Masterpiece version of the story. There is a beauty and simplicity about Bede and yet it is a complex and deep story. It almost seems like a paradox, but it is not.
I find myself wondering how this book was received in general when it was first published. Like Scott’s Heart of the Midlothian, this work concerns a woman, a young girl, who embarks on an ill advised affair and finds herself pregnant. And yet, Eliot’s use of this plot is far superior to Scott, even to someone like me who considers Heart to be one of Scott’s best works, if not his best work. It is the use of this plot in Bede that make the book a masterpiece. It must be due to the fact that Eliot is a woman and knows far more about how much farmer’s niece would in fact know about her cycle. She makes very good use of the word dread.
It’s true that the title character is the central character. He is not a saint, he is not perfection; he is good people, perhaps a finer version of Othello. One feels for him, and he does have faults. His blind love of Hetty, and his quickness of temper. Dinah, too, as a few faults, and this stops her from being a total unlikable Mary Sue. The reader knows what is best for these two characters long before they do.
In many ways, however, the kennel of the story concerns Hetty and Arthur, and far more of Hetty. It is interesting for the narrator always points out Hetty’s faults to the reader. Hetty doesn’t seem like a particular nice or attractive person, especially when compared to Dinah. The narrator is right in pointing out that Hetty’s looks cause people to forgive and over look her other faults. Despite Hetty’s petty ways and her inability to tender feeling, both the narrator and the reader feel sympathy for her. I hesitate to say like. I don’t know even now if I like Hetty, but I feel sorry for her. Hetty does something stupid, but she plays a high price. Even before the modern era, with our debates or discussions about single mothers and how (or whether) to make fathers responsible, Eliot touches on it. Constrained by the time she lived in, Eliot cannot give it the graphic blow by blow that would be used today. This restraint, however, makes the story are the more tragic and touching. Even in the darkness of the tale, Eliot arranges to show the reader a degree of pity. Hetty might feel alone due to the shame, her family might cast her off, but she is not truly alone. At least not wholly. There are helpful strangers and Dinah. Of course, the reader still knows that Hetty is not in a good place, that society has by and large cast her off and has made no true provision for her.
Eliot does not fall into the trap that other authors, such as Hardy, have. We know that the relationship between Arthur and Hetty is consensual. Further, Arthur is treated far more gently than Alec in Tess. Perhaps this simplifies matters or cheapens the story as some critics have pointed out, but I don’t think it does. Arthur is close in age to Hetty, 21 to her 17. Older, more educated, but still young enough to make mistakes. It should also be noted that both lovers are in essence orphans. Because Arthur repents, because he suffers somewhat, he becomes likable. He can’t fully save Hetty, but he does not fully abandon her when he realizes what has happened. If anything, the book can be seen as a non flattering comment on society’s rigid rules, despite the fact that Eliot does not make Hetty and Arthur spotless lambs. Hetty is less likable, but far more real than say Hardy’s Tess.
The story of Arthur and Hetty shows how much and how little society has changed.
The lovers are not the only winning feature of this novel. There are wonderful descriptions and beautiful comments about people. The seeds of Middlemarch are here. There is a wonderful chapter about what makes a good clergyman and how things should be portrayed in literature. Beautiful and thought provoking lines, like “We are kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?” The reader is given a picture of time and place that passes before the eyes, much like a movie.
I first read Bede after watching the first part of a Masterpiece Theatre (remember when Cooke hosted it?) showing of the story. I only saw the first part and it ended with the fight between Adam and Arthur, where Adam knocks Arthur done and thinks he has killed the squire to be. I had to know what happened next so I went out and brought the book.
Since then I have read Bede far more than I have read Middlemarch, though I have never tracked down and brought the Masterpiece version of the story. There is a beauty and simplicity about Bede and yet it is a complex and deep story. It almost seems like a paradox, but it is not.
I find myself wondering how this book was received in general when it was first published. Like Scott’s Heart of the Midlothian, this work concerns a woman, a young girl, who embarks on an ill advised affair and finds herself pregnant. And yet, Eliot’s use of this plot is far superior to Scott, even to someone like me who considers Heart to be one of Scott’s best works, if not his best work. It is the use of this plot in Bede that make the book a masterpiece. It must be due to the fact that Eliot is a woman and knows far more about how much farmer’s niece would in fact know about her cycle. She makes very good use of the word dread.
It’s true that the title character is the central character. He is not a saint, he is not perfection; he is good people, perhaps a finer version of Othello. One feels for him, and he does have faults. His blind love of Hetty, and his quickness of temper. Dinah, too, as a few faults, and this stops her from being a total unlikable Mary Sue. The reader knows what is best for these two characters long before they do.
In many ways, however, the kennel of the story concerns Hetty and Arthur, and far more of Hetty. It is interesting for the narrator always points out Hetty’s faults to the reader. Hetty doesn’t seem like a particular nice or attractive person, especially when compared to Dinah. The narrator is right in pointing out that Hetty’s looks cause people to forgive and over look her other faults. Despite Hetty’s petty ways and her inability to tender feeling, both the narrator and the reader feel sympathy for her. I hesitate to say like. I don’t know even now if I like Hetty, but I feel sorry for her. Hetty does something stupid, but she plays a high price. Even before the modern era, with our debates or discussions about single mothers and how (or whether) to make fathers responsible, Eliot touches on it. Constrained by the time she lived in, Eliot cannot give it the graphic blow by blow that would be used today. This restraint, however, makes the story are the more tragic and touching. Even in the darkness of the tale, Eliot arranges to show the reader a degree of pity. Hetty might feel alone due to the shame, her family might cast her off, but she is not truly alone. At least not wholly. There are helpful strangers and Dinah. Of course, the reader still knows that Hetty is not in a good place, that society has by and large cast her off and has made no true provision for her.
Eliot does not fall into the trap that other authors, such as Hardy, have. We know that the relationship between Arthur and Hetty is consensual. Further, Arthur is treated far more gently than Alec in Tess. Perhaps this simplifies matters or cheapens the story as some critics have pointed out, but I don’t think it does. Arthur is close in age to Hetty, 21 to her 17. Older, more educated, but still young enough to make mistakes. It should also be noted that both lovers are in essence orphans. Because Arthur repents, because he suffers somewhat, he becomes likable. He can’t fully save Hetty, but he does not fully abandon her when he realizes what has happened. If anything, the book can be seen as a non flattering comment on society’s rigid rules, despite the fact that Eliot does not make Hetty and Arthur spotless lambs. Hetty is less likable, but far more real than say Hardy’s Tess.
The story of Arthur and Hetty shows how much and how little society has changed.
The lovers are not the only winning feature of this novel. There are wonderful descriptions and beautiful comments about people. The seeds of Middlemarch are here. There is a wonderful chapter about what makes a good clergyman and how things should be portrayed in literature. Beautiful and thought provoking lines, like “We are kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?” The reader is given a picture of time and place that passes before the eyes, much like a movie.
January 5, 2008
Adam Bede is a story about love, self-deception, religious feeling, innocence, and experience. It would not be an unfit introduction to Eliot, though Middlemarch is by far her superior novel. I am awed by Eliot's psychological insight into human personality. Her characters are some of the most vivid in all of literary history, and her ability to penetrate to the very heart of human motivation is unrivaled. She presents her story with wit and subtle sarcasm. (Take, for instance, this tongue-in-cheek comment: "Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance, see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every respect. . . . But even to this rule an exception will occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was one.")
Eliot's command of English is deeply impressive, and this book is worth reading just for the beauty of the language. But the story is quite interesting as well, and you will come to care about and sympathize with the characters. It is not a fast paced book, and it will require an investment of time and intellect. But it is well worth reading.
Eliot's command of English is deeply impressive, and this book is worth reading just for the beauty of the language. But the story is quite interesting as well, and you will come to care about and sympathize with the characters. It is not a fast paced book, and it will require an investment of time and intellect. But it is well worth reading.
November 27, 2020
“...той излъчваше онова грубовато достойнство, характерно за интелигентните, почтени снажни занаятчии, които никога не се чудят каква е ролята им на този свят.”
Всяка година в студените зимни месеци ме обхваща силно желание да прочета някой уютен викториански роман. Миналата година това беше великолепният “Далече от безумната тълпа” на Томас Харди. За тази си избрах първия роман на британската писателка Мери Ан Евънс с мъжкия псевдоним Джорд Елиът – “Адам Бийд”.
В тази книга има толкова много от нещата, които обичам в книгите от викторианската епоха – пасторални описания на прелестната английска провинция (може би най-красивата провинция за мен), силни и високонравствени характери, селски колорит, много второстепенни герои – предимно местни чешити и по-малко аристократи и богаташи.
Има и война (Наполеон е в стихията си), но през 19 век тя е нещо, което физически е все още далеч от цивилния живот.
“Адам Бийд” е слънчева и жизнена книга, възхвала на радостта от физическия труд и майсторството на селския занаятчия, книга бавна, не само като повествователно темпо, но и като описание на един още недокоснат и наивен живот. Но да не се заблуждаваме – това е живот на постоянен труд, мъка и несигурност, облекчени единствено от религиозно упование и роднинска сплотеност.
Кадърно направеният бюфет от орехово дърво, домашното бито масло от чистите ръце на стопанката, вечерната раздумка на по пиво (или две) в местната кръчма са моментите на чиста радост за героите, които населяват романа.
Сред тях изпъква един млад човек, целунат от Бога с дърводелска дарба и волско търпение. Чиста душа със силна способност за обич, Адам съвсем естествено я насочва към неправилния обект. Една нещастна и изкупителна любов е неизбежна по каноните на викторианския роман, в случая предадена с много познание за човешката душа и много съпричастие към нейните слабости. Защото какво, ако не съпричастие ни позволява да продължим да живеем, включително и сред себеподобните си сред съкрушителен житейски удар? И да, дори тези от нас, които през по-голямата част от времето постъпват правилно и могат ясно да разграничат добро от зло, имат нужда от урок по снизходителност към събратята си с по-слаб ангел. Останалото е просто работа на времето.
Стилът на Джордж Елиът е красив и богат, засукан, но не много; далеч от представите за “тромава класика”.
Приятната делничност, която се излъчва от романа, се запазва до самия му финал. Сякаш силата на установените навици и работната рутина надделява над редките дни на празник и триумф, но и над всички беди и превратности в човешкия живот. Животът, тоест ежедневието, наистина продължава въпреки всичко.
“Нали разбирате, че не можем да превъзпитаваме прадедите си.”
Всяка година в студените зимни месеци ме обхваща силно желание да прочета някой уютен викториански роман. Миналата година това беше великолепният “Далече от безумната тълпа” на Томас Харди. За тази си избрах първия роман на британската писателка Мери Ан Евънс с мъжкия псевдоним Джорд Елиът – “Адам Бийд”.
В тази книга има толкова много от нещата, които обичам в книгите от викторианската епоха – пасторални описания на прелестната английска провинция (може би най-красивата провинция за мен), силни и високонравствени характери, селски колорит, много второстепенни герои – предимно местни чешити и по-малко аристократи и богаташи.
Има и война (Наполеон е в стихията си), но през 19 век тя е нещо, което физически е все още далеч от цивилния живот.
“Адам Бийд” е слънчева и жизнена книга, възхвала на радостта от физическия труд и майсторството на селския занаятчия, книга бавна, не само като повествователно темпо, но и като описание на един още недокоснат и наивен живот. Но да не се заблуждаваме – това е живот на постоянен труд, мъка и несигурност, облекчени единствено от религиозно упование и роднинска сплотеност.
Кадърно направеният бюфет от орехово дърво, домашното бито масло от чистите ръце на стопанката, вечерната раздумка на по пиво (или две) в местната кръчма са моментите на чиста радост за героите, които населяват романа.
Сред тях изпъква един млад човек, целунат от Бога с дърводелска дарба и волско търпение. Чиста душа със силна способност за обич, Адам съвсем естествено я насочва към неправилния обект. Една нещастна и изкупителна любов е неизбежна по каноните на викторианския роман, в случая предадена с много познание за човешката душа и много съпричастие към нейните слабости. Защото какво, ако не съпричастие ни позволява да продължим да живеем, включително и сред себеподобните си сред съкрушителен житейски удар? И да, дори тези от нас, които през по-голямата част от времето постъпват правилно и могат ясно да разграничат добро от зло, имат нужда от урок по снизходителност към събратята си с по-слаб ангел. Останалото е просто работа на времето.
Стилът на Джордж Елиът е красив и богат, засукан, но не много; далеч от представите за “тромава класика”.
Приятната делничност, която се излъчва от романа, се запазва до самия му финал. Сякаш силата на установените навици и работната рутина надделява над редките дни на празник и триумф, но и над всички беди и превратности в човешкия живот. Животът, тоест ежедневието, наистина продължава въпреки всичко.
“Нали разбирате, че не можем да превъзпитаваме прадедите си.”
August 31, 2017
Possibly 3.5.
I found the premise and some aspects of the book fascinating, and the second half very gripping - but as I often find with George Eliot, I found it more interesting than enjoyable, and the pacing, especially at the ending, wasn't quite right for me. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to reading more George Eliot in future.
I found the premise and some aspects of the book fascinating, and the second half very gripping - but as I often find with George Eliot, I found it more interesting than enjoyable, and the pacing, especially at the ending, wasn't quite right for me. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to reading more George Eliot in future.
March 19, 2020
Adam Bede is a nineteenth century English novel with the typical abundance of words. Every scene is written to its fullest content resulting in paragraphs that span pages. There are no exceptions: settings, dialogue, and feelings are each covered extensively. They make for a relaxing novel because incrementally not much happens during each reading session, and to be fair, I enjoy a relaxing novel every now and again.
The novel’s uniqueness stems from its setting and characters. The story takes place in a rural village in the heart of England in 1799. I liked how the book remained focused on this setting for its entire length. It relied on the wholesome nature of the villagers to organically grow the human conflicts that drove the plot forward. Eliot had no need for dastardly villains or greedy landlords or even charming princes, and she has a way of bringing forth a reality that’s long since lost. As such this book belongs to the people and period that she depicts.
The most significant annoyance that I have concerns the culminating scenes that lead to the book’s ending. For this interlude, Elliot pulled a rabbit out of her hat. She then used the rabbit as the focus of the story so that some sort of drama could be raised in the plot. It was certainly a disappointment. The entire novel to that point was such a calm and deliberate build to an unimagined ending and then in the space of a single paragraph the book changes to an unrealistic play towards breath-catching emotion. Rabbits, afterall, do not suddenly appear out of hats. There are definite signs when a rabbit is forthcoming that Eliot seems to ignore.
While reading Adam Bede it was interesting to discover that Adam Bede’s village of Hayslope is the fictitious depiction of the village of Ellaston, where Eliot’s (Mary Ann Evans’) father was raised. In looking into the geography, Google Maps was used to walk along the actual roads and to see the actual places described by Eliot. And the magical thing about a virtual visit to Ellaston is that it feels just like it was described for most of the book: quite; welcoming to its inhabitants and hopefully as welcoming to its sincere visitors. A more detailed guide to Ellaston was found... here.
The novel’s uniqueness stems from its setting and characters. The story takes place in a rural village in the heart of England in 1799. I liked how the book remained focused on this setting for its entire length. It relied on the wholesome nature of the villagers to organically grow the human conflicts that drove the plot forward. Eliot had no need for dastardly villains or greedy landlords or even charming princes, and she has a way of bringing forth a reality that’s long since lost. As such this book belongs to the people and period that she depicts.
The most significant annoyance that I have concerns the culminating scenes that lead to the book’s ending. For this interlude, Elliot pulled a rabbit out of her hat. She then used the rabbit as the focus of the story so that some sort of drama could be raised in the plot. It was certainly a disappointment. The entire novel to that point was such a calm and deliberate build to an unimagined ending and then in the space of a single paragraph the book changes to an unrealistic play towards breath-catching emotion. Rabbits, afterall, do not suddenly appear out of hats. There are definite signs when a rabbit is forthcoming that Eliot seems to ignore.
While reading Adam Bede it was interesting to discover that Adam Bede’s village of Hayslope is the fictitious depiction of the village of Ellaston, where Eliot’s (Mary Ann Evans’) father was raised. In looking into the geography, Google Maps was used to walk along the actual roads and to see the actual places described by Eliot. And the magical thing about a virtual visit to Ellaston is that it feels just like it was described for most of the book: quite; welcoming to its inhabitants and hopefully as welcoming to its sincere visitors. A more detailed guide to Ellaston was found... here.
January 26, 2022
I studied the art history and the literature of the 19th century at university, but this is my first reading of Adam Bede, George Eliot’s debut novel (1859). It very much feels like the missing clue to decode a civilisation - the absolute nerve centre of Victorian Britain’s obsession with the status of women in society. Extraordinary to read it in the same year as ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘The Testaments’: truly, Eliot’s book is an authentic document from Gilead in England’s green and pleasant land.
So much later literature is indebted to this novel - Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd & Tess of the D’Urbevilles, and EM Forster’s Howard’s End for starters - John Foyles’ French Lieutenant’s Woman in more recent times too. Tess is virtually a rerun of Adam Bede (with Tess like Hetty in AB a milkmaid by profession, ‘ruined’ by an upper class landlord ) - but it’s interesting that Tess almost ended Hardy’s career despite it being written almost 40 years later. Hardy’s rerun takes the issues raised by Adam Bede and recasts them in the most confrontational form possible.
It’s jaw-dropping that Eliot published this at the height of Victorian prudishness and performative morality - a tale of illicit sex, pregnancy outside marriage, and infanticide - and not only survived to tell the tale but was immediately catapulted into the premier league of Victorian novelists, with the book being hailed as a masterpiece across the board.
How did she do it? On my reading of Middlemarch and Adam Bede, Eliot had a genius for creative ambiguity on these live-wire issues. She knew exactly how far she could push her culture, and when and exactly how to preemptively defend from attack her controversial points.
She carefully soothes patriarchy’s sensitivities while simultaneously leaving the subversive questions she raises about patriarchy and class exploitation hanging in the air for the alert reader to consider.
2019 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Eliot.
So much later literature is indebted to this novel - Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd & Tess of the D’Urbevilles, and EM Forster’s Howard’s End for starters - John Foyles’ French Lieutenant’s Woman in more recent times too. Tess is virtually a rerun of Adam Bede (with Tess like Hetty in AB a milkmaid by profession, ‘ruined’ by an upper class landlord ) - but it’s interesting that Tess almost ended Hardy’s career despite it being written almost 40 years later. Hardy’s rerun takes the issues raised by Adam Bede and recasts them in the most confrontational form possible.
It’s jaw-dropping that Eliot published this at the height of Victorian prudishness and performative morality - a tale of illicit sex, pregnancy outside marriage, and infanticide - and not only survived to tell the tale but was immediately catapulted into the premier league of Victorian novelists, with the book being hailed as a masterpiece across the board.
How did she do it? On my reading of Middlemarch and Adam Bede, Eliot had a genius for creative ambiguity on these live-wire issues. She knew exactly how far she could push her culture, and when and exactly how to preemptively defend from attack her controversial points.
She carefully soothes patriarchy’s sensitivities while simultaneously leaving the subversive questions she raises about patriarchy and class exploitation hanging in the air for the alert reader to consider.
2019 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Eliot.
October 22, 2023
Bucolic. Heartbreaking. Poignant. Wonderful. In that order. Hope to write more soon.
Review in progress...Words are not coming to me at the moment.
This is my fifth George Eliot novel and the first novel Eliot wrote. With this novel and with Daniel Deronda, Eliot is so good at telling the stories of people on the margins of British society. In Daniel Deronda, it's the community of Jewish people living in England. In this novel, it's the labourers in a rural community and the Methodists who minister to them. The story is set in the first decade of the 1800s so Napoleon is at large in the world and there are Methodists who remember hearing John Wesley speak. (He died in 1791.) The Methodist movement is still fairly grassroots, so women are allowed to preach and provide pastoral care amongst the laboring class and the working poor. There are two characters anchors in the novel, Adam Bede, a laborer, and Dinah Morris, a millworker and Methodist preacher.
Adam Bede lives with his younger brother Seth and his mother Lizbeth in a cottage and is a highly skilled carpenter for a man named Jonathan Burge who owns the business. Adam is morally upright, dependable, educated for his class, and a devoted son and brother.
Review in progress...Words are not coming to me at the moment.
This is my fifth George Eliot novel and the first novel Eliot wrote. With this novel and with Daniel Deronda, Eliot is so good at telling the stories of people on the margins of British society. In Daniel Deronda, it's the community of Jewish people living in England. In this novel, it's the labourers in a rural community and the Methodists who minister to them. The story is set in the first decade of the 1800s so Napoleon is at large in the world and there are Methodists who remember hearing John Wesley speak. (He died in 1791.) The Methodist movement is still fairly grassroots, so women are allowed to preach and provide pastoral care amongst the laboring class and the working poor. There are two characters anchors in the novel, Adam Bede, a laborer, and Dinah Morris, a millworker and Methodist preacher.
Adam Bede lives with his younger brother Seth and his mother Lizbeth in a cottage and is a highly skilled carpenter for a man named Jonathan Burge who owns the business. Adam is morally upright, dependable, educated for his class, and a devoted son and brother.
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January 14, 2024"On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with fluttering wings."
I know this book was shocking for its time, but I can't help wishing George Elliot had really gone for it with this story. I wanted the shocking elements to stick and have lasting consequences. I wanted the arresting drama to happen where I could see it rather than offstage. Given the nature of the story, that's asking a lot from a book published in 1859, but even so . . .
I know this book was shocking for its time, but I can't help wishing George Elliot had really gone for it with this story. I wanted the shocking elements to stick and have lasting consequences. I wanted the arresting drama to happen where I could see it rather than offstage. Given the nature of the story, that's asking a lot from a book published in 1859, but even so . . .
March 14, 2022
“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character."
Published in 1859 and set in the fictional rural English village of Hayslope in 1799, this is the story of a town, focusing on two women and two men of different temperaments. Adam Bede is smitten by pretty Hetty Sorrel, a farmgirl, who dreams of becoming a lady of wealth and leisure. She is attracted to the squire’s son, Captain Arthur Donnithorne. Arthur does not mind a dalliance but is not about to marry a woman of lower social standing. Dinah Morris is a Methodist minister – a woman in this role would have been quite rare for the time. Dinah’s kind compassionate nature is contrasted with Hetty’s flightiness and frivolity. Adam’s serious principled disposition is contrasted with Arthur’s reckless selfishness.
To say this is a love triangle is to sell it short. It is a novel of many dimensions, including changing times on the cusp of a new century, restrictions due to social class, the role of women, religion, education, infatuation, shame, and manslaughter. Strengths of this book include the depth of the psychological development of the characters the depiction of their gradual transformations. It conveys an emotional depth that echoes through time. The story touched me deeply, especially in the climactic scenes. If I have one criticism, it is the denouement, which seems long and dragged out. Though definitely Victorian in its tone and style, it has the trappings of a timeless story of human nature. I enjoyed it very much.
Published in 1859 and set in the fictional rural English village of Hayslope in 1799, this is the story of a town, focusing on two women and two men of different temperaments. Adam Bede is smitten by pretty Hetty Sorrel, a farmgirl, who dreams of becoming a lady of wealth and leisure. She is attracted to the squire’s son, Captain Arthur Donnithorne. Arthur does not mind a dalliance but is not about to marry a woman of lower social standing. Dinah Morris is a Methodist minister – a woman in this role would have been quite rare for the time. Dinah’s kind compassionate nature is contrasted with Hetty’s flightiness and frivolity. Adam’s serious principled disposition is contrasted with Arthur’s reckless selfishness.
To say this is a love triangle is to sell it short. It is a novel of many dimensions, including changing times on the cusp of a new century, restrictions due to social class, the role of women, religion, education, infatuation, shame, and manslaughter. Strengths of this book include the depth of the psychological development of the characters the depiction of their gradual transformations. It conveys an emotional depth that echoes through time. The story touched me deeply, especially in the climactic scenes. If I have one criticism, it is the denouement, which seems long and dragged out. Though definitely Victorian in its tone and style, it has the trappings of a timeless story of human nature. I enjoyed it very much.
May 7, 2008
100% engaging. This is one of those books that you feel more human for having read.
What the plot may lack in scope, the writing makes up for tenfold with tender and true insights into pain, hope, vanity and prosaic life. It's a true, true, true book, that beats with an honest heart. You get to love the narrator in the very fact that the narrator is open about her love for the characters. this book is a treasure, in all its homely ruggedness and sometimes shocking, but inevitable events. It's not so much the story, but how it is told. full of hearty truths and simple thinking. Smart and substantive. Dang, I just liked it so much!!!!
What the plot may lack in scope, the writing makes up for tenfold with tender and true insights into pain, hope, vanity and prosaic life. It's a true, true, true book, that beats with an honest heart. You get to love the narrator in the very fact that the narrator is open about her love for the characters. this book is a treasure, in all its homely ruggedness and sometimes shocking, but inevitable events. It's not so much the story, but how it is told. full of hearty truths and simple thinking. Smart and substantive. Dang, I just liked it so much!!!!
January 17, 2015
Adam Bede is similar to Tess of the D'Uberville's in it's basic premise; an innocent and unspecting maiden falls prey to the desires of a wealthy aristocrat thwarting the love and good intentions of a proud and honorble hero. Of course Adam Bede was written 32 years prior to Tess. Adam Bede is one of my favorite's of the great classic novels.
November 8, 2025
I finished a book!
Finished a couple of days ago, and then worked my way through the Introduction. I knew the story before starting the novel, George Eliot's first, because I have seen the movie.
The introduction describes this as "Eliot's most leisurely paced book, the slow unfolding of the story is at the same time the accretory specification of where and how."
This is certainly a slow book, and took me months to get through — until it took off and I was gripped.
One reason I wanted to read this is because when the Canadian philosophy student Winthrop Bell was imprisoned in Germany during WWI (see Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Canada's Greatest Spy) this was a favourite book of his fellow prisoners, to be read and re-read.
Now, onto The Mill on the Floss — once I've caught my breath, and maybe read something contemporary to reset my palate.
Finished a couple of days ago, and then worked my way through the Introduction. I knew the story before starting the novel, George Eliot's first, because I have seen the movie.
The introduction describes this as "Eliot's most leisurely paced book, the slow unfolding of the story is at the same time the accretory specification of where and how."
This is certainly a slow book, and took me months to get through — until it took off and I was gripped.
One reason I wanted to read this is because when the Canadian philosophy student Winthrop Bell was imprisoned in Germany during WWI (see Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Canada's Greatest Spy) this was a favourite book of his fellow prisoners, to be read and re-read.
Now, onto The Mill on the Floss — once I've caught my breath, and maybe read something contemporary to reset my palate.
November 18, 2019
“…our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy—the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.”
In this novel, George Eliot gives us Hayslope, a village peopled with contrary types: young and old, earnest and frivolous, the ill-fated and those that struggle to good fortune. Heroes and villains of male and female persuasions are in the mix, and their interactions bring us the novel’s tragic plot. As if a reminder of selflessness, dogs played a key role in the story. Every character seemed to have one or two canine devotees trotting along with them or staring up at them lovingly.
Eliot appears full to bursting. She has an abundance of opinions (about our movement from an idyllic past, about the clergy, and about the need for us to see real people and have compassion for them), and an abundance of characters (including minute detail about blacksmiths and shoemakers and people in the village square that never make it past the first section). I picture her pen taking over as she had trouble containing all she had to share.
She repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, and while this can be disruptive, her thoughts are so wise and illuminating it’s hard to see this as a fault. At one point she speaks to the reader about her love of Dutch paintings, how they depict “homely existence,” and how much more common that existence is than what we normally see in novels. I immediately thought of Pieter Bruegel (a favorite of mine), and particularly his “Peasant Wedding,” with all its real-life details. That truth and specificity seems to be what she was trying to demonstrate in this story.
This has the Eliot empathy I love, but I struggled with a few things. As with Scenes of Clerical Life (three scenes of which Adam Bede is apparently the fourth), the pace is glacial at times then picks up at the end. That was okay with the shorter stories in Scenes, but to drag on and off through the first 400 of 450 pages is harder to overlook. More importantly, I didn’t care for the major characters. She typically makes me feel for all of her characters, but here the good ones were a little too squeaky clean, and the bad ones too predictable.
Reading this author is always an edifying experience, and her words are worthy of whatever amount of time it takes to read them. But I have to admit this was my least favorite of hers so far.
In this novel, George Eliot gives us Hayslope, a village peopled with contrary types: young and old, earnest and frivolous, the ill-fated and those that struggle to good fortune. Heroes and villains of male and female persuasions are in the mix, and their interactions bring us the novel’s tragic plot. As if a reminder of selflessness, dogs played a key role in the story. Every character seemed to have one or two canine devotees trotting along with them or staring up at them lovingly.
Eliot appears full to bursting. She has an abundance of opinions (about our movement from an idyllic past, about the clergy, and about the need for us to see real people and have compassion for them), and an abundance of characters (including minute detail about blacksmiths and shoemakers and people in the village square that never make it past the first section). I picture her pen taking over as she had trouble containing all she had to share.
She repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, and while this can be disruptive, her thoughts are so wise and illuminating it’s hard to see this as a fault. At one point she speaks to the reader about her love of Dutch paintings, how they depict “homely existence,” and how much more common that existence is than what we normally see in novels. I immediately thought of Pieter Bruegel (a favorite of mine), and particularly his “Peasant Wedding,” with all its real-life details. That truth and specificity seems to be what she was trying to demonstrate in this story.
This has the Eliot empathy I love, but I struggled with a few things. As with Scenes of Clerical Life (three scenes of which Adam Bede is apparently the fourth), the pace is glacial at times then picks up at the end. That was okay with the shorter stories in Scenes, but to drag on and off through the first 400 of 450 pages is harder to overlook. More importantly, I didn’t care for the major characters. She typically makes me feel for all of her characters, but here the good ones were a little too squeaky clean, and the bad ones too predictable.
Reading this author is always an edifying experience, and her words are worthy of whatever amount of time it takes to read them. But I have to admit this was my least favorite of hers so far.
August 31, 2014
Adam Bede is a polished and delicately painted debut novel . George Eliot published Silas Marner and the Mill on the Floss in each of the next two years. How amazing! Adam Bede predates Hardy's Tess of D' Ubervilles by over 30 years and honestly, I found Eliot's novel more suspenseful and brutal.
The setting, 1798, bucolic England peopled with dozens of individuals from every walk of life. At first this town is like the Garden of Eden with meaningful employment for everyone. Adam, of course, is the best example of a man: smart, loyal,strong, generous, and of course interested in the prettiest, shallowest, and vainest girl in town. Orphans and single parents abound in this novel. Church is central to this town, though only a few are Methodists (today's Fundamentalists).
Adam's mother and Hetty's aunt, surrogate mother, get the prize for dialogue. Adam, his brother Seth and Hetty's uncle are the nicest men in literature without being cloying. Arthur, the young squire is a "good"snake in the grass. He doesn't mean to harm anyone, just to enjoy himself, and rationalize his play to be fair and harmless. Hetty (Hester Sorrel) is so pretty, so young, so self involved, that you know she will tempt Adam, but you don't know how it will end. Hetty's cousin, Dinah, is the one downer for me. She's the rebel. She flaunts society by becoming a Methodist preacher who practices what she preaches. She works endlessly, caring for everyone else. She appears to be flailing herself by doing good deeds. I'm sure that the wrong metaphor, but read this wonderful novel and express it better. I skipped her preachiness and marveled at the other rounder characters and the descriptions of rural life. I also was stung by the quick retributions and punishments to be doled out by simple Christians. It reminds me of the Tea Party today. I really liked this.
The setting, 1798, bucolic England peopled with dozens of individuals from every walk of life. At first this town is like the Garden of Eden with meaningful employment for everyone. Adam, of course, is the best example of a man: smart, loyal,strong, generous, and of course interested in the prettiest, shallowest, and vainest girl in town. Orphans and single parents abound in this novel. Church is central to this town, though only a few are Methodists (today's Fundamentalists).
Adam's mother and Hetty's aunt, surrogate mother, get the prize for dialogue. Adam, his brother Seth and Hetty's uncle are the nicest men in literature without being cloying. Arthur, the young squire is a "good"snake in the grass. He doesn't mean to harm anyone, just to enjoy himself, and rationalize his play to be fair and harmless. Hetty (Hester Sorrel) is so pretty, so young, so self involved, that you know she will tempt Adam, but you don't know how it will end. Hetty's cousin, Dinah, is the one downer for me. She's the rebel. She flaunts society by becoming a Methodist preacher who practices what she preaches. She works endlessly, caring for everyone else. She appears to be flailing herself by doing good deeds. I'm sure that the wrong metaphor, but read this wonderful novel and express it better. I skipped her preachiness and marveled at the other rounder characters and the descriptions of rural life. I also was stung by the quick retributions and punishments to be doled out by simple Christians. It reminds me of the Tea Party today. I really liked this.
December 19, 2021
ADAM BEDE (1859) is, first and foremost, a novel about a community, about individuals and family groups and their relationships to one another. Yes, we have Adam Bede, a young industrious carpenter, skilled, somewhat rustic, but a noble man who will have to learn tough lessons through suffering. There's also Dinah, a Methodist preacher, young and selfless, and Arthur Donnithorne, a landed gentleman, young, generous, rather reckless and self-deceiving. Also, Hetty Sorrell, young, beautiful, poor and egocentric, who is seduced by Arthur. You can probably imagine how that part of the story goes.
This brief description of the plot hardly tells us what this wonderful novel is about. This is a novel about a world, mostly about the world of humble people who inhabit the small village of Hayslope in the Midlands. It is a novel about love, sympathy and human feeling, about how self-deception can degrade us, and how suffering can redeem us, regenerate us. More than anything, ADAM BEDE is a moral novel, a novel about a moral error which transforms the life in Hayslope.
This is the second time I've read this book, and I enjoyed it as much as the first time.
This brief description of the plot hardly tells us what this wonderful novel is about. This is a novel about a world, mostly about the world of humble people who inhabit the small village of Hayslope in the Midlands. It is a novel about love, sympathy and human feeling, about how self-deception can degrade us, and how suffering can redeem us, regenerate us. More than anything, ADAM BEDE is a moral novel, a novel about a moral error which transforms the life in Hayslope.
This is the second time I've read this book, and I enjoyed it as much as the first time.
April 7, 2014
I'm a lifelong George Eliot fan, so it's strange that I just never got to Adam Bede before now. I suppose I was afraid it would fall short of Eliot's masterpieces, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, or even Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner. Adam Bede is in fact an "early" book; one senses Eliot working toward her greatest powers. The pacing can be a bit slow at times; Eliot juggles fewer narrative threads than she does later in her career; and there is a slight sensationalism in the focus on the story of a fallen women. Nevertheless, what a delight! There is all the usual beauty of Eliot's penetrating psychology, her compassion, her humor. Of all the novels of hers that I've read, this one conveys the strongest sense of English rural life, its rootedness in the weather and crops and the human fashioning of everything from coffins to butter. Adam and Hetty and the Rev. Irvine and Arthur are great and true characters.
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