The first chapter establishes the locale and to a certain extent the atmosphere for the whole novel. As in most of George Eliot's works, the scene is laid in the English countryside. Hayslope is a quiet town, isolated from contact with or even knowledge of the great events of the day. It is inhabited mostly by merchants, illiterate farmers, and workers who spend their whole lives in the area of the town and who concern themselves with such pragmatic subjects as barns, harvests, the weather, and neighborhood gossip.
Hayslope is not idyllic; plenty of rough, crude people live here. Although Eliot tends to sentimentalize rural folk to some extent in her novels, she is careful to remain well within the bounds of probability. She is concerned with writing a realistic novel and builds up her setting as a believable representation of eighteenth-century country life in England.
This is evident when we examine the characters introduced in this chapter. None of them resemble very closely the humble and virtuous country lads who often appear as stock characters in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English fiction. Wiry Ben is no saint; neither, for that matter, is Adam Bede himself. They are typical workers in a typical workshop, quite capable of piety on the one hand and of rough joking on the other.
In the same way, there is nothing extraordinary about the town itself, except for its name. Both "Hayslope" and "Loamshire" are significant names which suggest good soil, sunny weather, rich harvests; they are contrasted in the novel against "Snowfield" and "Stonyshire," which suggest the opposite qualities. These fictitious place-names — there are no such towns and counties in England — indicate that the physical setting of Adam Bede has a symbolic, as well as a realistic, aspect.
