Adam Bede (1859) - George Eliot

Written by George Eliot
Read by Georgina Sutton
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

· Length: 20 hrs and 40 mins
· Release date: 12-18-14
· Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks

Adam and Seth Bede work as carpenters in Hayslope.

Seth proposes to Dinah Morris, a gifted Methodist preacher. However, she prefers to devote herself to God’s work. Meanwhile, Adam Bede woos Dinah’s cousin Hetty Sorrel. But she is distracted by the attentions of Captain Arthur Donnithorne.

When Adam finds out about Arthur’s intentions toward Hetty, he fights Arthur and forces him to leave town. Soon after, Adam proposes to Hetty, who accepts, only to discover she is pregnant with Arthur’s child. She runs away to find Arthur but discovers that his regiment has been called away. Distraught, Hetty restrains herself from committing suicide and gives birth in a lodging-house. She then runs off with the infant and buries it in the brush, where it dies.

After she is convicted for child-murder, Arthur finally hears the news, and Hetty’s commuted sentence (transportation) saves her from the gallows. Some months later, after Dinah comforts Adam during his mother’s illness, Adam comes to realize that he loves Dinah. Although reluctant at first, Dinah eventually agrees to marry Adam.

Adam Bede addresses profound questions of morality, religion, and the role of women in society, while seeking to establish a new aesthetic for fiction.

“Through the lens of literary realism, George Eliot examines the female role through Hetty, a woman tempted by illusions of grandeur, and Dinah, a woman whose life is dedicated to a religious calling as a Methodist itinerant preacher. Both women impact the heart of the honest carpenter Adam Bede. Georgina Sutton offers an expressive narration of Eliot’s novel. It’s clear that she grasps the tone of the prose through her delivery of the narrative voice, a voice that Eliot fills with many speculative asides. Sutton also convincingly portrays the country dialect of several characters, especially Adam and his brother, Seth, who both come across as good-hearted and noble. Sutton’s pleasant tone is engaging throughout and draws one into the drama in the fictional community of Hayslope.”… AudioFile 2015

The book is in six parts with 55 chapters. Excellent reader but she pauses in odd places and hurries through chapter breaks. I left it in parts.