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Silas Marner by George Eliot (07_silas_marner_by_george_eliot.doc)

George Eliot

Silas Marner

The Weaver of Raveloe

The Epigraph

“A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
William Wordsworth

Title:                                                                                                                Silas Marner by George Eliot

Published:                                                                                                        London: Penguin Classics, 1985

About the author:                                                                                                Mary Anne Evans ( * November 22, 1819 † December 22, 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She used a male pen name to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Evans was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.        Mary Anne Evans was a humane freethinker, whose insightful psychological novels paved way to modern character portrayals - contemporary of Dostoevsky, who at the same time in Russia developed similar narrative techniques. Eliot's liaison with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes arise among the rigid Victorians much indignation, which calmed down with the progress of her literary fame.                                                                                Eliot's first collection of tales Scenes Of Clerical Life, appeared in 1858 under the pseudonym George Eliot. It was followed by her first novel, Adam Bede (1859), a tragic love story in which the model for the title character was Eliot's father. The book was a brilliant success. Her other major works include The Mill On The Floss (1860), a story of destructive family relations, and Silas Marner (1861). Middlemarch (1871-72), her greatest novel, was probably inspired by her life at Coventry. The story follows the sexual and intellectual frustrations of Dorothea Brooke.         Adam Bede, Silas Marner, and The Mill on the Floss focus especially on Marian's childhood memories of the rural countryside in Warwickshire: the landscape and its inhabitants. She also recalled her religious views and integrated them into the stories.                                                 In 1860-61 Eliot spent some time in Italy collecting material for her historical romance Romola. It was published serially first in the Cornhill Magazine and in book form in 1863. In 1876, she published Daniel Deronda. She also translated The Life of Jesus Critically Examined by David Strauss (1846) and Feuerbach´s The Essence of Christianity (1854)

About the book:

        Silas Marner was Eliot’s third novel and is among the best known of her works. Many of the novel’s themes and concerns stem from Eliot’s own life experiences. Silas’s loss of religious faith recalls Eliot’s own struggle with her faith and the novel’s setting in the vanishing English countryside reflects Eliot’s concern that England was fast becoming industrialized and impersonal. The novel’s concern with class and family can likewise be linked back to Eliot’s own life. The voice of the novel’s narrator can be seen as Eliot’s own voice. Though Silas Marner is in a sense a very personal novel for Eliot, its treatment of the themes of faith, family, and class has nonetheless given it universal appeal, especially at the time of publication, when English society and institutions were undergoing rapid change.

In Silas Marner George Eliot combines humor and rich symbolism with a historically precise setting. This novel explores the issues of redemptive love, the notion of community, the role of religion, and the status of the gentry and family. While religion and religious devotion play a strong part in this text, Eliot concerns herself with matters of ethics. The book has also a strong moral tract; the bad characters like Dunstan Cass get their just deserts, while the good, pitiable characters like Silas Marner are richly rewarded. Although it seems like a simple moral story with a happy ending, George Eliot's text includes several pointed criticisms on organised religion, the role of the gentry, and the impact of industrialization.

        George Eliot evidently felt a kinship with William Wordsworth, widely considered the most important English writer of his time, and his strong identification with the English landscape. Like Wordsworth, Eliot draws many of her metaphors from the natural world. The Wordsworth epigraph she chose for Silas Marner also highlights the philosophical aspect of her affinity with Wordsworth. Like Eliot, Wordsworth had tried his hand at philosophy before turning to more literary pursuits, and in his poetry he works out his conception of human consciousness. One of Wordsworth’s major ideas, radical at the time, was that children and the memories of childhood they evoke in adults can still bring us close to that early, idyllic state like before our birth. It is not hard to imagine that Eliot had this model in mind when she wrote her story of a child bringing a man out of isolation and spiritual desolation.

Main Topic:

        Ultimately, Silas Marner is a tale of familial love and loyalty, reward and punishment, and humble friendships. Silas Marner is about a tortured and lonely mans redemption through another man's failure. Silas Marner by George Eliot is a comment on the life of an English weaver and the social interactions of English county folk .The first thing that Eliot shows is how one man Godfrey Cass's failure as a human saves Silas Marner form    a life alone with no one but his money to comfort him. Elliot also shows how Godfrey fails as a father. And finally Eliot shows the opinions and practices of English villagers.

        The story of Silas Marner's life has a mythic dimension to it. Silas undergoes a spiritual journey that is a variation on the great religious myth of Western culture. In the Christian myth, man is expelled from a garden, saved by the birth of the Christ-child, and promised a life in bliss in the heavenly city of Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelations. Silas travels a similar path from expulsion to redemption, but the symbolism is reversed. In the course of this journey, which occupies over thirty years of Silas's life, he is expelled from a city, saved by a child, and ends up in a garden, as seen in the final chapter when Eppie and Aaron grow a garden just outside his cottage. “Eppie had a larger garden than she ever expected there now…” (pg. 243)

Plot summary:

        The novel is set in the earlier years of the 19th century. Silas Marner is a weaver in an industrial town. He is also a highly thought of member of a little dissenting church. Silas is engaged to a female member of the church and thinks that his future happiness is assured. However, due to the betrayal of a fellow parishioner, who blames him for a theft that he did not commit, Silas is expelled from the congregation. He finds out later that his former fiancee married the man who had betrayed him. Later on, he goes to settle in the village of Raveloe. “It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe…”

        Silas Marner is distrusted and disliked by the people of Raveloe. He is a solitary man who is regarded as strange by the other villagers because he does not socialize with them. Silas Marner has been living in Raveloe for the past fifteen years, and he still is considered an outsider to Raveloe. His home region and his way of living are uncharacteristic to Raveloe standards, for the town where he lived is different from the countryside village where he now resides. He has never invited anyone to his home; he never socializes with anyone. All the young ladies of Raveloe are convinced that he is not in the least interested in marrying one of them, and he never attends church. „It came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers - emigrants from the town into the country - were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness." (pg. 52)

Silas lives as a recluse who exists only for work and his precious hoard of money until that money is stolen by a son of Squire Cass, the town's leading landowner, causing him to become heartbroken. Soon an orphaned child comes to Raveloe. She was not known by the people there, but she is really the child of Godfrey Cass, the eldest son of the local squire. Her mother, Molly, is secretly married to Godfrey, but is also of low birth and addicted to opium and alcohol. Molly attempts to make her way into town with the child to prove that she is Godfrey's wife and ruin him. On the way she overdoses on opium and freezes to death in the snow. The small child wanders from her mother's body into Silas' house. Silas names the child Eppie. “My mother´s name was Hepzibah, said Silas, and my little sister was named after her.” (pg. 183) Her presence changes his life completely. Symbolically, Silas loses his material gold to theft only to have it replaced by the golden-haired Eppie. “Yes – the door was open. The money’s gone I don´t know where, and this is come from I don´t know where.” (pg. 179)

        Later in the book, the gold is found and restored. Eppie grows up to be the pride of the town and to have a very strong bond with Silas, who through her has found inclusion in the town. Later, the childless Godfrey and Nancy Lammeter arrive at Silas' door, revealing the truth about Eppie's family and asking that Silas give Eppie up to their care. However, the decision falls to Eppie, who has no desire to be raised as a gentlemen's daughter if it means forsaking Silas. “For I should have no delight i´ life any more if I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he was sitting at home, a-thining of me and feeling lone.” (pg. 233)

        At the end, Eppie marries a local boy, Aaron, son of Dolly Winthrop, and both of them move into Silas' newly enlarged house, courtesy of Godfrey.

Characters:                                                                                                                      Silas Marner -  A simple, honest, and kindhearted weaver. After losing faith in both God and his fellow man, Silas lives for fifteen years as a solitary miser. After his money is stolen, his faith and trust are restored by his adopted daughter, Eppie, whom he lovingly raises.                     

Godfrey Cass -  The eldest son of Squire Cass. Godfrey is good-natured but selfish and weak-willed. He knows what is right but is unwilling to pay the price for obeying his conscience.                                                                        

Eppie -  A girl whom Silas Marner eventually adopts. Eppie is the biological child of Godfrey Cass and Molly Farren, Godfrey’s secret wife. Eppie is pretty and spirited, and loves Silas unquestioningly.                                        

Nancy Lammeter -  The object of Godfrey’s affection and his eventual wife. Nancy is pretty, caring, and stubborn, and she lives her life by a code of rules that sometimes seems arbitrary and uncompromising.

Dunstan Cass -  Godfrey’s younger brother. Dunsey, as he is usually called, is cruel, lazy, and unscrupulous, and he loves gambling and drinking.

Squire Cass -  The wealthiest man in Raveloe. The Squire is lazy, self-satisfied, and short-tempered.

Dolly Winthrop  -  The wheelwright’s wife who helps Silas with Eppie. Dolly later becomes Eppie’s godmother and mother-in-law. She is kind, patient, and devout.

Molly Farren -  Godfrey’s secret wife and Eppie’s mother. Once pretty, Molly has been destroyed by her addictions to opium and alcohol.

William Dane -  Silas’s proud and priggish best friend from his childhood in Lantern Yard. William Dane frames Silas for theft in order to bring disgrace upon him, then marries Silas’s fiancée, Sarah.

Mr. Macey -  Raveloe’s parish clerk. Mr. Macey is opinionated and smug but means well.

Aaron Winthrop -  Dolly’s son and Eppie’s eventual husband.

Priscilla Lammeter -  Nancy’s homely and plainspoken sister. Priscilla talks endlessly but is extremely competent at everything she does.

Sarah -  Silas’s fiancée in Lantern Yard. Sarah is put off by Silas’s strange fit and ends up marrying William Dane after Silas is disgraced.

Mr. Lammeter -  Nancy’s and Priscilla’s father. He is a proud and morally uncompromising man.

Jem Rodney -  A somewhat disreputable character and a poacher. Jem sees Silas in the midst of one of Silas’s fits. Silas later accuses Jem of stealing his gold.

Mr. Kimble -  Godfrey’s uncle and Raveloe’s doctor. Mr. Kimble is usually an animated conversationalist and joker, but becomes irritable when he plays cards. He has no medical degree and inherited the position of village physician from his father.

Mr. Dowlas -  The town farrier, who shoes horses and tends to general livestock diseases. Mr. Dowlas is a fiercely contrarian person, much taken with his own opinions.

Mr. Snell -  The landlord of the Rainbow, a local tavern. By nature a conciliatory person, Mr. Snell always tries to settle arguments.

The peddler -  An anonymous peddler who comes through Raveloe some time before the theft of Silas’s gold. The peddler is a suspect in the theft because of his gypsy like appearance—and for lack of a better candidate.

Bryce -  A friend of both Godfrey and Dunsey. Bryce arranges to buy Wildfire, Dunsey’s horse.

Miss Gunns -  Sisters from a larger nearby town who come to the Squire’s New Year’s dance. The Misses Gunn are disdainful of Raveloe’s rustic ways, but are nonetheless impressed by Nancy Lammeter’s beauty.

Sally Oates -  Silas’s neighbor and the wheelwright’s wife. Silas eases the pain of Sally’s heart disease and dropsy with a concoction he makes out of foxglove.

Narrator:

        The narrator speaks in the anonymous omniscient third person, describing what the characters are seeing, feeling, and thinking and what they are failing to see, feel, and think. The narrator uses the first person singular “I,” but at no point enters the story as a character.  „In the early years of this century, such a linene-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his voccation in a stone cottage that stod among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe...“ (pg.52)

Books, chapters:

        The whole book is divided into 21 that are divided into two parts, the first part from the chapter 1 to 15 and the second part from the chapter 16 to 21. At the end there is a short part called Conclusion that works like the last chapter.

Bibliography

[edit]Ashton, Rosemary: George Eliot: A Life. New York: Allen Lane, 1996.

Hughes, Kathryn. George Eliot: The Last Victorian.                                                               New York: Farrah, Strauss and Giroux, 1999.

Eliot, George: Silas marner. London: Penguin Books, 1967

Internet:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gelliot.htm

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/cousin/john/biog/e.html

http://www.online-literature.com/george_eliot/silas_marner/

http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/victorianweb/authors/eliot/criticism1.html

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-silas/essay1.html

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/silas/themes.html