这本书的时间是19世纪初期，艾略特描述了几名主角和许多次要人物在一个类似她生活过的乡间小镇里的生活情景。

• In the novel Eliot goes back in time to the early part of the 19th century and follows the lives of several main characters and many lesser ones in a small provincial town-- one very similar to the town near which she grew up.