It will become obvious later in the novel that the characters presented here fall into distinct groups. While Adam and Seth will be characterized at some length, their fellow workmen, like many others presented in the course of the book, will remain mere sketches. These background characters form part of the novel's atmosphere, its milieu, and help provide a realistic context for the adventures of the principal figures. They are mere props in a sense; they appear in the novel, but their words and actions have no real bearing on the plot.
All the characters in the book, with the exception of the wealthy and well-educated, speak in dialect. This device serves two obvious functions. First, it is realistic and thus contributes to the illusion the author strives to create. Second, to Eliot's English audience, dialect was a source of humor, just as strong dialect has been a source of humor in much American writing — Mark Twain's, say. Statements of Wiry Ben's like "y' are a downright good-hearted chap, panels or no panels; an' ye donna set up your bristles at every bit o' fun, like some o' your kin, as is mayhap cliverer" were as effective with a nineteenth-century British audience as Pap Finn's fulminations were for an American one.
Note that the strength of the dialect, its divergence from standard English usage, varies from character to character. In this chapter, for example, Adam and Seth speak a less extreme form of dialect than does Wiry Ben; neither of the Bede brothers uses such pronunciations as "aloon" or "agoo" or "lave." Eliot distinguishes her characters according to education with a precision which many writers of dialogue do not observe.
The religious attitudes which Seth and Adam display are of interest because they relate to the moral discussion which plays so great a part in the novel. Adam, an Anglican, is practical and matter-of-fact in religious matters; he holds that if a man "builds a oven for's wife to save her from going to the bakehouse," he is doing something as essentially religious as going to church. His basic attitude is "this-worldly"; he is concerned with serving God in his everyday actions. Seth's attitude, on the other hand, is "other-worldly"; he feels that specifically religious actions — praying, hearing sermons — should form the center of one's life. Eliot sets up this distinction with a view to reconciling it later on in the service of her theme; in the character of Dinah Morris, the practical and purely spiritual aspects of religion merge.
