Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- When you were reading, did you imagine Eliot's narrator speaking in a male or female voice? How does giving the narrator one gender or another change the experience of reading Adam Bede?
- Eliot's narrator aims to tell "a simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were" (17.5). Is this, in fact, what Eliot's narrator does?
- Eliot's narrator talks a lot, and in a very different voice from Eliot's uneducated, rustic characters. How did you react to this setup?
- In Eliot's novel, some apparently decent people find themselves in painful situations. So what is Adam Bede trying to tell us about human nature?
- There are prominent female characters in Adam Bede, but are they strong female characters? Do Dinah, Hetty, and Mrs. Poyser seem determined and independent, or are they mostly subservient to the men around them and the man's world they inhabit?
- Adam Bede opens "in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our lord 1799" (1.1). How important is the historical setting of Adam Bede?
- Adam Bede is admired by the other characters, but did you admire him? Do his values of practicality, loyalty, and honesty ring true today, or do 21st-century readers tend to prioritize different virtues?
- Eliot has a lot to say about her minor and almost-minor characters. Why is this? What does knowing about Mr. Craig, or Feyther Taft, or Mr. Casson add to the story?
- What is Adam Bede trying to tell us about social progress? Does Hayslope represent a wonderful past that can never be recovered? Or does Eliot want us to look at Adam Bede's quaint way of life and be happy that society has moved forward?