Hetty Sorrel is a major character in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede (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, Adam Bede as well as Captain Arthur Donnithorne. Aside from her great physical beauty, George Eliot takes care to make it clear that she does not have many attractive personal qualities. She is spoiled, cold, insensitive, indifferent to other people's problems, and almost comically vain and selfish. Even in love Hetty is relentless in her capacity to use others for her own gain. At first she is devoted to Arthur then after she realizes he will not make her a "great lady" she turns her affections to Adam. Hetty is a cousin by marriage of Dinah Morris, a fervent Methodist lay preacher. In contrast to Hetty, Dinah is depicted as completely pure, generous, unselfish, modest, and unfailingly compassionate. Both female characters are two-dimensional. Their stories are interesting yet one is completely good and the other is completely despicable. Dinah has no negative qualities and Hetty has no good qualities, making the characters superficial. At the end of the novel Hetty becomes more human-like and Eliot treats her with more compassion through her suffering. Source: Wikipedia (en)