I have never read this, and enjoyed it, perhaps, more than I expected. Eliot is a heavy themed writer, swinging between good quality narrative and themes, in this case working class Methodism vs established Anglicism.
Adam is an idealised working man, not unlike Garth (?) in Middlemarch. His love is Hetty Sorrel, a pretty but ignorant farm worker, who is seduced by local aristocrat Arthur Donniscombe, bears his child and allows it to die while fleeing home.
Adam ends up marrying her friend Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher whom his brother has loved throughout the book (this had to be carefully engineered by GE, which it was).
Tess of the D’Urbervilles was probably influenced by the central theme of working class girl seduced by local aristo, although Arthur is contrite in a way that Hardy’s villain is not.
Much of the writing, about working class agricultural life in the early 19th century, is very good, if hard work at times.
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