The Workshop
- The first person you meet in Adam Bede isn't a real, live, flesh-and-blood person. It's Eliot's third-person narrator.
- In the first paragraph, this narrator compares himself (or maybe herself?) to an "Egyptian sorcerer" who reveals "far-reaching visions of the past" (1.1). Ooh, la la.
- The "vision" that begins the book is of "the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799" (1.1). But for now, pay no attention to Burge.
- Instead, all eyes should be on…Adam Bede.
- He's only one of Burge's workmen, but he stands out because of his baritone voice, powerful physique, and "expression of good-humored honest intelligence" (1.2).
- Turns out this whole carpenter thing runs in the Bede family. Working alongside Adam is his younger brother, Seth Bede. While Adam is intimidating, Seth is mild and good-natured. As the narrator puts it: "The tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth; they scarcely ever spoke to Adam" (1.4).
- And Seth is also (How can we put this nicely?) a bit of a dunce. He forgets to put the panels on a door he is constructing, and this finds him on the receiving end of a whole lot of laughter.
- But Adam's got Seth's back. He scolds the other workmen and even pushes around one of the more persistent jokers, a guy named Ben Cranage.
- Once things settle down, we discover a little more about Seth and Adam. Turns out that Seth's a Methodist. Turns out, also, that Seth's got a crush on a Methodist woman preacher. And this brings out the fourth-grader in our friend Wiry Ben. He asks Seth what he was thinking of, "the pretty parson's face or the sarmunt, when ye forgot the panels?" (1.23).
- Ah, but does the preacher "like" Seth? We'll see. In the meantime, Adam shuts Wiry Ben up (again) and delivers a lecture on the value of hard work. Seth reveals himself as a bit of a dreamer and questions his brother's pragmatic views: "If a man gets religion, he'll do his work none the worse for that" (1.38).
- At 6:00 p.m. sharp, all the men stop working. All but Adam, who "can't abide to see men throw their tools i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike" (1.44). Soon, though, Adam packs up and goes home. His tall, striding, singing figure arouses the admiration of an "elderly horseman" who happens to be passing by (1.60). Take that, Wiry Ben!