Bede, Lisbeth

Mother of Adam Bede, an affectionate and querulous woman. " She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman, clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure linen cap with a black band round it ; her broad chest is covered with a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bed-gown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-wolsey petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points t.oo there ie a strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim now-perhaps from t.oo much crying-but her broadly marked eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as ahe stands knitting rapidly and unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly-upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the spring." She is almost idolatrously devoted to her eldest son, Adam. Desiring him to make a sensible marriage, she is at first opposed to his marrying Hetty Sorrel. She had grown fond of Dinah Morris, when the latter came to comfort her at the time of her husband's death, and it is her desire to bring about a marriage between Adam and Dinah which eventually reveals to Adam his own affection for Dinah. It has been suggested that Mary Evans, mother of Robert Evans ("Adam Bede") was the original of Lisbeth, but there is little evidence on which to base such a statement.

<em>Adam Bede</em>

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