Adam Bede Themes

According to the narrator of Adam Bede, love is an "a great and beautiful thing." But before you begin rolling your eyes and muttering "Thank you, Captain Obvious," ask yourself, is love always suc...

So, we've been thinking of putting together a television pilot—Law and Order: Hayslope—but how would we stretch an Adam Bede-themed crime drama beyond an episode or two? Only one crime—Hetty'...

The people in Adam Bede live in a stratified society with a clear upper, middle, and lower classes.But the classes in Hayslope celebrate together and, with a few exceptions, work well together. Ada...

Be forewarned: even though this section is entitled "Dreams, Hopes, and Plans," we'll be discussing plenty of things that are small-scale, low-key, and (truth be told) pretty dang boring. No one wa...

If you're reading this, chances are you've (at one time or another) wondered why your family won't just get off your back. About homework, or chores, or curfews, or any of the irritating details of...

We know what you're thinking. Compassion, in a book as merciless as Adam Bede? Really? It only takes a few chapters for Eliot to kill off poor Thias Bede. And almost everyone else has to endure ali...

In Adam Bede, education isn't simply a matter of what our great grand-uncle Shmooptimius used to call "book learnin'." Time and time again, Eliot contrasts the world of classroom education with the...

Okay, where Adam Bede is concerned, what do we mean by transformation? You won't be seeing Seth Bede ripping off his shirt and morphing into a giant green rage monster. Here, "transformation" is mo...

Adam Bede gives us every religious viewpoint in the book: from the super-spiritual (Dinah) to the down-to-earth (Adam) to "Church is boring and I want to go home!" (Hetty). Eliot works very hard to...