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624 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1859
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It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness.Adam Bede, George Eliot's first novel and second published work, is just as brilliant a novel as the revered Middlemarch, even if it's a little less polished. This is really the story of Hetty Sorrel, even if she's neglected once her arc meets its cinematic conclusion. Frankly, Adam is the most boring character of the lot; Hetty, Dinah Morris, Seth Bede, the Poysers, Arthur Donnithorne–all are infinitely more nuanced and intriguing than the stick-in-the-mud Adam. Hetty is what we would call, in 2015, "vapid"—a simple country girl who dreams of fine things, leisure, and a rich man. However, if that's all you take from Hetty's story, you're sorely missing out. Eliot masterfully builds and builds and builds until all of the blocks come tumbling down, and the town of Hayslope is left to pick up the pieces. The first half is rather short on plot, but I would not have been half as invested in the fallout had I not the fruit of Eliot's laborious rendering of time and place.
It was a still afternoon—the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.But it's there, and it comes with a force just as full, claws out:
In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.This is a novel that really, really deserves a reader's care and patience. And maybe the ending is contrived and a bit awkward. But, as I stated before, the star of the show is Hetty Sorrel. I don't know if it's that Adam Bede sold more copies than Hetty Sorrel would have, or that readers demand a "likable" protagonist, or if it was just that Adam was the embodiment of an ideal. Whatever the reason may be, Hetty Sorrel is my Emma Woodhouse, and Adam Bede is my Emma—not in that it in any way resembles a romantic comedy, but in that it stars an unlikely heroine in a novel overshadowed by the author's more famous work.