Adam Bede Timeline and Summary

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• Adam Bede starts off as a respectable carpenter. After a good, hard day of work, Adam goes home to… more work. His father forgot to finish a carpentry job, so Adam does the job himself.
• But the next morning, Adam finds his father in nearby brook—dead, drowned, done for. Adam sets about making his father's coffin.
• When next we see Adam, he's at Sunday Mass. He's tapped into the service, sure, but he's also thinking about his crush, a pretty dairymaid named Hetty Sorrel.
• Time warp. Now Eliot jumps to Adam on a working day. Then he pays a visit to Hetty. Then he visits the local schoolteacher, Bartle Massey.
• Let's do the time warp again: Hayslope throws a birthday party for its beloved young nobleman—Arthur Donnithorne—but Adam is also toasted. He's movin' on up.
• One day Adam is walking along in the woods when he sees—what on earth?—Hetty and Arthur, kissing! Adam is stunned. Once Hetty leaves, Adam challenges Arthur to a fistfight. And knocks out everybody's favorite nobleman.
• Once Arthur comes around, Adam helps Arthur walk to a nearby cottage. See, Adam's apologetic. But he also makes Arthur write a letter to Hetty and break off the affair.
• One Sunday afternoon not long after, Adam gives Hetty the letter. Apparently it had an effect, because Adam later asks Hetty to marry him—and she accepts. Movin' back up.
• Later, Hetty goes on an unusually long trip and Adam decides to seek her out. He doesn't find a trace.
• Adam returns to Hayslope in a panic. He asks everyone about Hetty, but only Mr. Irwine has news of her. And it's not good.
• Hetty is now in a town called Stoniton, imprisoned for murdering her baby. The loyal Adam takes up residence in Stoniton, and eventually visits Hetty in jail.
• Suffering from painful memories, Adam has decided to leave Hayslope. He's making one last tour when he sees Arthur Donnithorne. Arthur urges him to stay, and Adam agrees.
• Yet Adam has convinced himself that love is not for him. Until Dinah Morris, Methodist, shows up in Hayslope. Dinah resists Adam's overtures, but Adam won't give up.
• He pursues Dinah beyond Hayslope. The two meet one evening on a hill, and finally accept their undying love. Cue the storybook wedding!
• Then cue the flash-forward. It's years later—1807, in fact—and Adam and Dinah have two kids. Seth is living with them. And Arthur and Adam have reached a new understanding.
• Time to jump forward in time again—but backward in Adam Bede. In Chapter 17, Eliot gives us a flash-forward. We see Adam Bede in his respected old age, looking back affectionately on the Hayslope of times past.