Elliot is quite discreet about it: similar to David and Bathsheba’s sin in the Bible, there are no sordid scenes, just the tragic results.Īrthur, in fact, is kind of a study in a lighthearted, likeable man who drifts into temptation by excuse: It’s more like an unwise falling into temptation. There is not a seduction per se in the novel. But I liked Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch so much, I decided to take a chance. Some descriptions also mention the word “seduction,” which made me a little wary of the book.

My jaw literally dropped at what happened. Dinah tries to befriend Hettie, but without success at first.īrief descriptions of the book hint at a tragedy that occurs as a result of the love triangle, but it’s not the tragedy I was expecting. One night in their adjoining rooms, Hettie is trying on earrings and a shawl, parading up and down her room, admiring herself in a mirror, while Dinah is looking out the window, admiring the landscape and then praying.

Dinah and Hettie are set up as opposites. Dinah doesn’t plan to marry, though, because she feels her calling is to preach God’s Word. Seth, meanwhile, is in love with Dinah, a niece of Mrs. When Arthur visits the dairy and flirts a little with her, she begins to think that perhaps he will fall in love with her and make her a fine lady one day. She’s pretty, but she is also shallow, selfish, and vain. Sadly, Hettie is not the girl Adam thinks she is. Adam is so well regarded at the carpenter shop that the owner not only wants Adam to take over when the owner retires he also wants Adam to marry his daughter, Mary.Īdam, however, is in love with Hettie, the Poysers niece who has been living with them since she was orphaned. His closest friends are the Poysers, who run the nearby dairy farm, and Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire just coming of age who will inherit the estate when his grandfather dies. Adam is a carpenter and lives with his mother and brother, Seth. He lives in a pastoral community known as Hayslope in 1799 England. Adam Bede is a solid, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth kind of man in the novel that bears his name by George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans, sometimes seen as Marian Evans).

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