Silas Marner

Summary

Silas Marner is George Eliot's short novel of a lonely linen-weaver restored to human fellowship by a child. In his youth Silas belonged to a strict dissenting congregation at Lantern Yard in a northern manufacturing town, where he was respected for his piety and for the cataleptic fits the brethren took for spiritual visitations. His close friend William Dane, during one of these trances, steals the church's money from the bedside of a dying deacon and contrives that Silas's knife and the empty bag point to him. The church draws lots, the lots declare Silas guilty, and his betrothed Sarah marries William. Silas cries out that there is no just God and leaves for the Midland village of Raveloe. There, for fifteen years, he weaves at his loom, shuns his neighbors and hoards gold, which he counts each night as his only companion. The villagers suspect him of strange knowledge, especially after his foxglove remedy eases a neighbor's heart disease. Squire Cass's eldest son Godfrey has secretly married Molly Farren, a woman enslaved to opium, and is blackmailed by his wastrel brother Dunstan. Dunstan kills Godfrey's horse while hunting, walks home in the dark past Silas's cottage, steals the gold and vanishes. Silas's loss draws the village to him; Dolly Winthrop brings lard-cakes and gentle counsel. On New Year's Eve, while the Squire holds his dance, Molly carries her little daughter through the snow to expose Godfrey, takes laudanum and dies in the drifts. The child toddles through Silas's open door to his hearth, where the short-sighted weaver, just recovering from a fit, takes her golden hair for his returned gold. Godfrey keeps his secret and marries Nancy Lammeter. Silas keeps the child, names her Hephzibah, Eppie, after his mother and sister, and with Dolly's help brings her up and is drawn back to church and neighbors. Sixteen years later the stone-pit near Silas's cottage is drained and Dunstan's skeleton is found with the gold. Shaken, Godfrey confesses to Nancy that Eppie is his daughter, and the childless couple offer to adopt her as a lady. Eppie refuses: she will cleave to the father who loved her from the first. Silas takes her to see Lantern Yard and finds it swept away for a factory, its truth still dark to him. Eppie marries Dolly's son Aaron, and the novel closes with her happy words about their pretty home.

Plot or Argument

• Lantern Yard and the lots (Chapter I)

  Silas is betrayed by William Dane, condemned by the drawing of lots and loses his faith in God and man before settling in Raveloe.

• The miser and the robbery (Chapters II-X)

  Silas hoards gold in isolation; Godfrey's secret marriage and Dunstan's blackmail lead to the death of Wildfire and the theft of the gold, and Raveloe begins to visit the bereft weaver.

• New Year's Eve (Chapters XI-XV)

  At the Red House dance Godfrey courts Nancy while Molly dies in the snow; her child comes to Silas's hearth, and he claims and names her.

• Sixteen years later (Chapters XVI-XX)

  Eppie has grown up with Silas; the stone-pit gives up Dunstan and the gold, Godfrey confesses, and Eppie chooses to stay with Silas.

• Lantern Yard revisited and the wedding (Chapter XXI and Conclusion)

  Silas finds his old chapel replaced by a factory; Eppie marries Aaron Winthrop and they settle in the enlarged cottage.

Characters

• Silas Marner, The weaver of Raveloe

  A gentle, short-sighted man embittered by false accusation, who becomes a miser and is restored by the love of a foundling child.

• Eppie (Hephzibah), Silas's adopted daughter

  Molly's golden-haired child, raised by Silas, who chooses him over her wealthy natural father.

• Godfrey Cass, The Squire's eldest son

  A good-natured but irresolute young man who hides his marriage and his child and pays for his silence later.

• Dunstan Cass, Godfrey's brother

  A spiteful, idle youth who blackmails Godfrey and steals Silas's gold.

• Nancy Lammeter, Godfrey's wife

  A neat, principled young woman of firm rules and sincere goodness.

• Dolly Winthrop, Wheelwright's wife

  A patient, kindly neighbor of simple faith who teaches Silas to trust and to bring up Eppie.

• Aaron Winthrop, Dolly's son

  A cheerful young gardener who marries Eppie.

• William Dane, Silas's friend at Lantern Yard

  A self-righteous church member who frames Silas for theft.

• Molly Farren, Godfrey's secret wife

  A woman ruined by opium who dies in the snow on her way to the Red House.

• Squire Cass, Greatest landowner of Raveloe

  Godfrey's blustering, careless father.

Lessons

• From gold to a child

  Silas's hoard narrows his life to his loom and his coins; Eppie draws him outward to his neighbors, the fields and the church. Eliot shows that love for a person can restore what love of money had shrunk.

  • How does Silas's life change after the gold is stolen and before Eppie arrives?
  • Why does the narrator say the gold had turned into the child?

• Trusting in the dark

  Dolly Winthrop cannot explain why Silas was falsely condemned, but she teaches him to do the right thing as far as he knows and to trust. Her simple faith helps him live with a wrong that is never set right in this life.

  • What does Dolly mean by trusten?
  • Why does Silas say there are dealings with us?

• The cost of concealment

  Godfrey's refusal to own his marriage and child brings him a comfortable life but leaves him childless and without his daughter's love. When he finally confesses, he learns that a duty refused cannot always be taken up again later.

  • What does Godfrey hope will save him from the consequences of his secret?
  • What does he mean by saying he wanted to pass for childless once?

• Who is a father?

  Eppie chooses the weaver who fed, taught and loved her over the gentleman whose blood she shares. The novel honors fatherhood as faithful care given day after day.

  • What reasons does Eppie give for refusing the Casses?
  • Was Godfrey right to claim a father's rights after sixteen years?

Context

The novel is set around 1800 to the 1820s, during the wars with Napoleon and the early Industrial Revolution, when hand-loom weavers wandered from the towns to sell their skill in country villages. Raveloe is a remote Midland parish of old customs, folk beliefs and Church of England habits, contrasted with the evangelical dissent and growing factories of the northern town Silas leaves. Eliot drew on her Warwickshire childhood for its farmers, inn-talk and dialect.

Composition

Eliot wrote Silas Marner in 1860-61, interrupting her work on Romola, after an idea that she said came to her quite suddenly as a sort of legendary tale, suggested by her recollection of a linen-weaver with a bag on his back seen in early childhood. Blackwood published it in one volume in April 1861. The title-page carries an epigraph from Wordsworth's Michael on the hope a child brings,.

Reception

The book sold well at once and was praised for its humor, its village scenes and its moral clarity. Its brevity and its clear contrast of gold and love made it a standard school text in Britain and the United States for much of the twentieth century, and it has been widely read as a modern parable.

Comparisons

• great-expectations

  Dickens's novel of the same year also turns on hidden parentage and secret money, and on the gap between a natural and a loving father.

• a-christmas-carol

  Both stories redeem a solitary miser at the turn of the year, Scrooge through spirits and Silas through a child.

• the-pilgrims-progress

  Eliot's image of angels leading men from the city of destruction recalls Bunyan's pilgrim, though the guide here is a little child.

• the-scarlet-letter

  Both novels concern a concealed parent whose silence wounds himself and his child, with Godfrey as a milder figure than Dimmesdale.

• middlemarch

  George Eliot's larger novel of provincial life (1871-72) widens Silas Marner's village into a whole town, following Dorothea Brooke and the doctor Lydgate through vocation, marriage and duty.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How Silas's trust in God and man is broken in Chapter I, and what he says when the lots condemn him.
• Every mention of the hearth, the loom and the gold, and how their meaning changes after Eppie comes.
• Godfrey's habit of hoping that chance will rescue him, and what the narrator says about it in Chapter IX.
• Dolly Winthrop's visits and her counsel in Chapters X and XVI.
• Eppie's answer to the Casses in Chapter XIX and Godfrey's reflection in Chapter XX.

Key terms and names

Dissenter

A Protestant outside the Church of England; Lantern Yard is a small, strict dissenting congregation.

Drawing of lots

Deciding a question by chance in the belief that God directs the outcome, as in Acts 1:26; the Lantern Yard church uses it to judge Silas.

Catalepsy

A trance or seizure in which the body becomes rigid and the person unaware; Silas's fits shape his fate.

Hand-loom weaver

A craftsman weaving cloth on a hand-worked loom, a trade being displaced by factories in Silas's lifetime.

Squire

The chief landowner of a country parish; Squire Cass is the greatest man in Raveloe.

Dialect

Regional speech; Eliot renders Raveloe's in spellings such as trusten and o'.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How is Silas falsely convicted at Lantern Yard, and who is really guilty?
2. Comprehension What happens to Silas's gold, and when is the truth discovered?
3. Comprehension How does Eppie come to Silas's cottage on New Year's Eve?
4. Interpretation Why does the loss of the gold begin Silas's recovery rather than complete his ruin?
5. Interpretation How are Godfrey and Silas contrasted as fathers?
6. Interpretation Why does Eliot let the truth about Lantern Yard remain unknown to Silas?
7. Big Question Does Silas Marner suggest that providence works through ordinary people? Use Dolly and Eppie as evidence.

Faith Connections

• Matthew 6:19-21 (Scripture)

  Lay not up treasures upon earth; Silas's buried gold is the treasure that holds his heart until a child gives him a better one.

• Ruth 1:16 (Scripture)

  Whither thou goest, I will go; Eppie's vow to cleave to Silas echoes Ruth's choice of loyalty over kinship.

• Proverbs 3:5 (Scripture)

  Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding, the counsel Dolly gives when she tells Silas to trusten.

• Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Great Conversation)

  The narrator's angels who lead men away from the city of destruction take Bunyan's opening image and apply it to a child's hand.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Silas, falsely condemned, loses faith and fills the emptiness with gold. When the gold is taken, a child takes its place and draws him back into fellowship with neighbors, church and nature. Godfrey, who hid his child, loses her love. Therefore love given faithfully restores a life, while concealment and reliance on chance leave it poorer.

Rhetorical device: parallel scenes. The gold vanishes from the hearth on one dark night and a golden-haired child appears on the same hearth on another, so that the second scene answers the first.

Debate: Resolved: that Eppie was right to refuse Godfrey and Nancy Cass.

Memory Work

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.

And all as we’ve got to do is to trusten, Master Marner—to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace the hearth from the night of the robbery to the last chapter and argue what Eliot makes it stand for.

Comparison with A Christmas Carol: Both Scrooge and Silas are misers changed in winter. Compare what causes each change and argue which conversion is more convincing.

Medical Lens

Silas's cataleptic fits are central to the plot: at Lantern Yard they are taken for spiritual visitations and give William Dane his chance to frame him, in Raveloe they make him seem uncanny, and on New Year's Eve a fit at his open door lets Eppie toddle in unseen. The novel shows two older ways of interpreting such seizures, religious and folk, beside the village doctor's practice. Silas's foxglove preparation, learned from his mother, eases Sally Oates's heart disease and dropsy, which wins him an unwanted reputation as a cunning man. Molly Farren's enslavement to opium and her death in the snow after a dose of laudanum set the second half of the story in motion.

• Chapter I

  Silas's cataleptic trance at the dying deacon's bedside and the brethren's reading of his fits as visitations.

  Epilepsy Seizures Altered States
• Chapter II

  Silas prepares foxglove for Sally Oates's heart disease and dropsy and is then besieged by neighbors seeking charms and cures.

  Quackery Charlatans Physicians Doctors
• Chapter XII

  Molly's opium habit and her collapse and death in the snow.

  Addiction Opium Laudanum Death Dying
• Chapter XIII

  Doctor Kimble is called from the dance to the dead woman at Silas's cottage.

  Physicians Doctors Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Read aloud the Rainbow inn conversation in Chapter VI in parts, then discuss what the villagers' talk about ghosts and law shows about Raveloe.

• Essay

  Compare the scene of the theft in Chapter IV with the scene of Eppie's arrival in Chapter XII and argue how Eliot uses the hearth and the gold to connect them.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Nancy and Godfrey on the evening after Eppie's wedding.

Further Reading

• Adam Bede, George Eliot

• Michael, William Wordsworth

• George Eliot: A Biography, Gordon S. Haight