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A review by msrichardsreads89
Adam Bede by George Eliot
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
2024 Reread: This story centers around characters in the margins of British society in a rural community and the Methodists who reside there.
This year I have been buddy reading George Eliot's novels with friends, and this is my first George Eliot reread. The first time I read Adam Bede I was so caught up in the plot that I missed some of the smaller parts of the story. Each time I read one of her books, I am struck by how carefully and lovingly she portrays religion despite being non-religious herself. The characters are nuanced and when she does criticize an aspect of religion, it is usually those who are corrupt/in power and not the faith itself. I loved Dinah Morris a lot the first time I read this, but I appreciated her so much more this time. She is a Methodist preacher, but she shows that she is a good person of faith by her actions and kind words. There is a scene that has really stayed with me where she is visiting someone who is in the depths of grief, and instead of trying to use words or scripture to comfort them, Dinah sat with them and helped them through their grief with her presence and actions.
This book is emotionally draining but also uplifting. After finishing this book, I feel like I have experienced life with the characters, laughed and suffered alongside them. I appreciated Hetty more on reread. She is a very flawed character, but she was also a young, naïve girl who probably would not have gone through what she did if she had lived now.
The writing is simply beautiful, and I highlighted entire passages. This is a novel that is a joy to live in, and I look forward to returning to it again and again.
This year I have been buddy reading George Eliot's novels with friends, and this is my first George Eliot reread. The first time I read Adam Bede I was so caught up in the plot that I missed some of the smaller parts of the story. Each time I read one of her books, I am struck by how carefully and lovingly she portrays religion despite being non-religious herself. The characters are nuanced and when she does criticize an aspect of religion, it is usually those who are corrupt/in power and not the faith itself. I loved Dinah Morris a lot the first time I read this, but I appreciated her so much more this time. She is a Methodist preacher, but she shows that she is a good person of faith by her actions and kind words. There is a scene that has really stayed with me where she is visiting someone who is in the depths of grief, and instead of trying to use words or scripture to comfort them, Dinah sat with them and helped them through their grief with her presence and actions.
This book is emotionally draining but also uplifting. After finishing this book, I feel like I have experienced life with the characters, laughed and suffered alongside them. I appreciated Hetty more on reread. She is a very flawed character, but she was also a young, naïve girl who probably would not have gone through what she did if she had lived now.
The writing is simply beautiful, and I highlighted entire passages. This is a novel that is a joy to live in, and I look forward to returning to it again and again.
"What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"
“Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they
know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.”
“Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it... There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy.”
“The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.”
2022: This is one of those books that comes into your life at just the right time and makes you fall in love with it. I was so engrossed in this book that I finished it in less than two days. I loved the slow build of the plot as we got to know the characters. George Eliot's character work in Adam Bede is exceptional. They are nuanced, relatable, and human. I am not a religious person, and neither was Eliot, so I really love how she talked about religion so beautifully throughout this novel and in such a hopeful, uplifting way. I LOVE that Dinah is a female minister, which is something that I have never seen in a Victorian novel. I grew to love her, and I love that she practices what she preaches. The characters became my friends over the course of the novel, and I am sad to be leaving them.
Eliot's prose is gorgeous and vividly descriptive without feeling overly saccharine. I found myself rereading passages because they were so lovely. She has a talent for getting you to reflect on society and themes of patriarchy, pain, family/community, redemption, and morality with the plot and the gripping plot twists.
There are so many parts of this novel that will stay with me, and I look forward to rereading this in the future.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death