Study Questions & Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. Why does Eliot
title her novel
Adam Bede? What is the book really
about?
2. Eliot claimed
that the scene of Hetty’s conversion of the jail was the point toward
which the whole novel was driving. Do you agree?
3. Why is Adam
so blind to Hetty’s true nature?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. How is the role of women in
society portrayed in the novel? What significance, if any, do you
think it has on the novel that George Eliot is a woman who took
on a male pseudonym?
2. Why is it important that Dinah
Morris and Seth Bede are Methodists? Is Adam Bede a
religious novel?
3. Is Captain Donnithorne responsible
for Hetty’s plight? Is he a bad man?
4. Why is Dinah the only person
able to get through to Hetty while she is in jail?
5. Why is Adam so devastated
by Hetty’s crime and incarceration? What does the reaction of the
different characters to the news about Hetty say about them?
