SUMMARY
This article argues that Hetty Sorrel’s punishment at the end of George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede (1859) illustrates the pervasiveness of colonial discourse in the nineteenth century and strengthens the association between dangerous sex and imperialism. In this novel, the penal colony established by the British in Australia serves as the dumping ground for Hetty, the beautiful young woman convicted of killing her child. Hetty’s violent act causes her expulsion from her community and, finally, her expulsion from the text. The article claims, then, that we must acknowledge the role of the Empire in Hetty’s ultimate demise in order to fully understand the ending of Eliot’s first and most popular novel.