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jennyyates 's review for:
Adam Bede
by George Eliot
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!
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!