Hetty Sorrel is a major character in George Eliot

George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

's novel Adam Bede

Adam Bede

Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot , was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time...

(1859).

Beautiful but thoughtless Hetty lives in the fictional community of Hayslope — a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. Her home is on Mr. Martin Poyser's dairy farm as she is his niece. Because she is an extremely pretty girl, she is admired by Mr. Craig and Adam Bede

Adam Bede (character)

Adam Bede is the eponymous main character of George Eliot's novel Adam Bede .Adam is an upright and moral carpenter who lives in the fictional community of Hayslope — a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. He is Seth Bede's older brother and is the son of Thias and Lisbeth Bede. He has...

 as well as Captain Arthur Donnithorne. She does not have many attractive personal qualities, however, and is very vain and selfish.

She is a cousin by marriage of Dinah Morris

Dinah Morris

Dinah Morris is a major character in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede ; a Methodist lay preacher, she was modelled on Eliot's aunt Elizabeth Evans.Dinah visits the fictional community of Hayslope — a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799...

, a fervent Methodist

Methodism

Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

 lay preacher.

The novel revolves around a love triangle between beautiful but thoughtless Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged lover, and Dinah Morris

Dinah Morris

Dinah Morris is a major character in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede ; a Methodist lay preacher, she was modelled on Eliot's aunt Elizabeth Evans.Dinah visits the fictional community of Hayslope — a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799...

.

Adam is in love with Hetty. She is attracted to Captain Donnithorne and falls in love with him. When Adam interrupts a tryst between them, Adam and Arthur fight. Arthur leaves Hayslop to return to his militia. Broken-hearted, she agrees to marry Adam but shortly before their marriage, discovers she is pregnant, and having second thoughts, leaves in search of Arthur. She cannot find Arthur, and unwilling to return to the village and shame her family, she delivers her baby anonymously. She kills the child by abandoning it in a field, where it dies of exposure.

Hetty is caught and tried for child murder. She is found guilty and sentenced to hang. When Arthur Donnithorne, on leave from the militia

Militia

The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...

 for his grandfather's funeral, hears of her impending execution, he races to the court and has the sentence commuted to transportation

Penal transportation

Transportation or penal transportation is the deporting of convicted criminals to a penal colony. Examples include transportation by France to Devil's Island and by the UK to its colonies in the Americas, from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s, and then to Australia between...

.

According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature

The Oxford Companion to English Literature

The Oxford Companion to English Literature first published in 1932, edited by the retired diplomat Sir Paul Harvey , was the earliest of the Oxford Companions to appear...

(1967),

"the plot [of Adam Bede] is founded on a story told to George Eliot by her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist

Methodism

Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris of the novel, of a confession of child-murder, made to her by a girl in prison."