Silas Marner
Plot & Author
Silas Marner is a l
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Silas Marner is a linen-weaver who was falsely accused of stealing by his townspeople in religious community of Lantern Yard. As a result, he lost his faith in his religion and moved to the town of Raveloe. Now, instead of worshipping God, he worships his growing pile of gold. However, Dunstan Cass, the town squire's degenerate son, steals Silas's gold and disappears. Dunstan's elder brother, Godfrey, is secretly and unhappily married to a woman of a lower class. On New Year's Eve, this woman tries to carry her child to Raveloe to force Godfrey to acknowledge her, but she dies in the snow close to Silas's house. Eppie, the child, gets into Silas's cottage and he adopts her and finds the happiness he lost with his gold. Years later, the pond near Silas's door is drained and the town discovers Dunstan's body with the gold. Now, Godfrey acknowledges himself the father of Eppie and claims her, but she refuses to leave Silas. George Eliot (1819-1880) was the pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans. She was born at Arbury Farm in Warwickshire, England, attended country schools and grew up with a strong sense of religion. Throughout her literary career, Eliot focused on provincial life and the way people grew capable of goodness despite adversity. Adam Bede (1859) was the first novel written under her pseudonym, followed by The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), MiddleMarch (1872), and Daniel Deronda (1876), among others that established
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likeable at first because he is so weak. Eliot herself notes that his "big muscular frame" is deceiving because although it held "plenty of animal courage" he did not possess the ability to work through problems that could not be solved merely by brawn (47). He is an indecisive and waffling person who is afraid to make decisions that could jeopardize his easy life as the squire's son: "He would rather trust to casualties than to his own resolve--rather go on sitting at the feast and sipping the wine he loved, though with the sword hanging over him and terror in his heart, than rush away into the cold darkness where there was no pleasure left" (48). Thus, he lives his life by waiting for events to occur rather than forcing things into action. It is hard to like such a person because you know them to be unreliable and probably even absent when things get tough and you need them the most.
Eliot notes that such an inability to act will eventually change a man's nature because he will begin to hate himself for the situations in which he finds himself and about which he is incapable of acting. He may be tolerably likeable now, but if he does not accept responsibility for his actions, he will begin to regret lost opportunities.
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Approximate Word count = 3252
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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