Hetty Sorrel

Because she is an extremely pretty girl, she is admired by Mr. Craig, Adam Bede as well as Captain Arthur Donnithorne.

Aside from her great physical beauty, George Eliot takes care to make it clear that she does not have many attractive personal qualities.

In contrast to Hetty, Dinah is depicted as completely pure, generous, unselfish, modest, and unfailingly compassionate.

The novel revolves around a love triangle between vain and pleasure-loving Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne the young squire who seduces her, and Adam Bede her unacknowledged suitor.

Although Eliot insists that Arthur is overall a good, conscionable man, his seduction of Hetty is selfish and degrading.

The two men fight and Adam insists Arthur write Hetty a letter before he returns to the militia informing her that their relationship is over.

Unwlling to return to the village and shame her family, Hetty considers suicide by drowning herself in an icy cold pond.

When Arthur takes a leave from the militia to attend his grandfather's funeral, he hears of Hetty's impending execution.

In the end Hetty is permitted to return from Australia after serving eight years of her sentence but dies before she reaches England.

According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1967), In November 1801 Voce was a married woman whose husband Thomas was in the militia.

On one occasion Voce left Mary alone, travelling a distance of over 160 miles to a town called Chatham to enlist for his pension.

Fearful that Thomas would leave her when he arrived home Voce killed Elizabeth with arsenic in water.

She professed her innocence until lay preachers including a woman named Elizabeth Tomlinson, convinced her to tell the truth.

Two years after Voce's hanging Elizabeth Tomlinson married a man named Samuel Evans.