Adam Bede (1859)

I don’t usually like dialogue written in dialect, but in this 1859 novel by Mary Ann Evans (aka George Eliot), I first got used to it, and then started to enjoy it. After a while, the dialect seems indispensable. There are lots of colorful characters, especially middle-aged and old women, who express themselves with great eloquence.

This is a love story, but it’s also a story of early lost love and disillusionment, and of the abuse of class privilege. Adam Bede is a righteous, hard-working carpenter, whose main fault is a quickness to judge others, and he falls in love with a beautiful but self-centered milkmaid, Hetty. He doesn’t realize his main competition comes from Arthur, the well-meaning but self-important young squire, who has fallen for Hetty but can never marry her. All these characters are drawn in a careful and nuanced way. Then there’s Dinah, the saintly Methodist preacher, and she was a little too good to be true, at least for me. I would’ve liked her better if Eliot had made her a little less self-sacrificing!
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It's so amazing to read a book that was written almost 200 years ago, and have it be so accurate still, on human nature and on other things as well.

This book is filled with a sad, but beautiful story, and the descriptions of both people and places are extremely rich.

I look forward to working with this book my next semester, and will have a lot of things to say about it, both about the time where it was set, and about contemporary times as well.

I actually read this book twice - and I do have two different editions, one paperback and one kindle. ( )

I have read this book more than once, and I actually own both the kindle edition and the paperback edition, this is why I have rated it twice.

my full review is under the paperback edition. ( )

George Eliot published Adam Bede, her first novel, in 1859 to great acclaim. This richly detailed novel tells the story of Adam, a carpenter, and his love for Hetty Sorrel, a vain young woman who falls in love with the local gentleman, Captain Arthur Donnithorne. Using this love triangle as her foundation, Eliot painstakingly illustrates the intricacies of rural life at the turn of the eighteenth century.

The characters in George Eliot’s Adam Bede exist along a continuum of human weakness. From Hetty and Arthur, who give in too easily to their illicit passion, to Adam’s mother Lisbeth, whose temperament warps an otherwise honest character, all the way to Dinah, a pinnacle of correct behavior and Christian compassion.

Adam is situated toward the upper end of that continuum. He is a stoic and honest man, with good intentions and sincere passions. He is a hard worker and trustworthy, respected among his peers and even admired by the small town’s gentry. But Eliot does not give her reader an unflawed hero. Adam is proud and severe in his judgment of others. He is also blind to the failings of the woman he loves. This ultimate but innocent fault will nearly cost him his happiness when the truth of all that has occurred between Hetty and Arthur finally comes to light.

Despite its pastoral setting and overall bucolic tone, there is a serious scandal at the heart of the novel. Eliot’s frank, forthright treatment of Arthur and Hetty’s love affair, and its ensuing complications, turn this seemingly quiet novel into a careful investigation of morality and human limitations.

Eliot’s real skill lies in portraying the rural setting as well as each of her characters with as much detail as possible. This makes for a layered novel, filled with a number of multifaceted moral dilemmas: Will Dinah consent to marry Adam’s brother Seth, even though she feels called to continue her ministry? Will Adam eventually understand Hetty’s true character? How will Adam negotiate his long-standing friendship with Arthur after the scandal is revealed?

Adam Bede is read less often than Eliot’s purported masterpiece Middlemarch and for good reason. Although a highly accomplished first novel and a rewarding and entertaining read, Adam Bede does contain a certain number of conspicuous flaws. The structure for instance, lacks a certain shape and economy. Eliot takes some time to get her plot moving and there are even a few chapters which appear to be superfluous. These small failings, however, only indicate how accomplished Eliot already was at the time she published Adam Bede and provide a wonderful discussion base for her later novels.

George Eliot’s Adam Bede is a deeply psychological work which delves into the darker corners of human weakness using the complex realities of love, friendship, sorrow and forgiveness to paint its splendid portrait. ( )

So much I could say, but it's probably been said elsewhere by someone less sleepy. Totally compelling and thought-provoking themes of the relationship between intelligence and moral judgment, gender and power, and human nature. Also wonderfully rendered characters, extreme drama, and general awesomeness.

Stylistically, it kept surprising me with the beauty of its prose, particularly its descriptions of the characters' inner lives. I also really, really enjoyed the northern English dialect, which is something, because usually dialect makes readers run away in fear. Generally I thought it did a superb job of portraying a small farm community without falling into pastoral cliche. Certain books entitled Tess of the D'Urbervilles had made me assume that I did not like pastoral novels, but in fact in turns out that I simply do not like annoying pastoral novels.

Eliot's first full-length novel, and one of her best that I've read so far. If I was going to criticize it, I would say that the ending was too tidy, but everything did fit together with a pleasing logic. Also, all Dinah's religious speeches were a bit much, but considering that Eliot was agnostic, I don't think she was trying to be preachy.

Of all her books I think I will look most forward to rereading this one. ( )