Raveloe – Reviews Rants and Rambles

Posted on April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 by Vincent Hanley

Silas Marner by George Eliot is a radically disturbing social document…

The Postcard Beautiful English village of Bilberry, Gloucestershire, England. (Photo by Saffron Blaze)

One of the major themes raised by George Eliot in Silas Marner is the English class system. However, it has to be noted that she doesn’t deal with anything like the whole range of English class distinctions that were in existence in the early years of the nineteenth century. For example, she omits the aristocracy in all its graduations, and, since her chief location is a quintessential English village, she cannot include the great industrial factory owners who were beginning to emerge as a potent force. And although the community at Lantern Yard is an urban one, we are given only the briefest sketch of the lives of the people who live there.

Those caveats aside, in Silas Marner, the highest social class is represented by the Cass family. In English social history, the local squire represented the class of medium landowners, who were less important than the landed aristocrats with their great estates. The squire was really a landowning gentleman; the village squire, such as Squire Cass, would be the chief landowner in the neighbourhood or ‘manor’. His house was often called the ‘manor house’, and many of the people of the surrounding area would have been tenants on his land. Squire Cass of Raveloe cannot be called a major representative of his class. He is, with pleasant irony, called ‘the greatest man in Raveloe’, but really only in the sense that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king! He is not a great landowner, although he does occupy the most impressive house in Raveloe. Indeed, he has, it transpires, only ‘a tenant or two’, who complain to him about the activities of poachers ‘as if he had been a lord’, which he is indeed far from being.

He and his family have, however, a considerable estimation of their own importance. Those next in rank to them, the Osgoods, who merely own the farm they occupy and have no tenants, and the Lammeters, must be content with a somewhat inferior place in Raveloe society. The social superiority of the Squire is nicely emphasised in the remark about asking Nancy’s father to agree to her marriage with Godfrey:

‘Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that’s all if you haven’t the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn’t likely to be loath for his daughter to marry into my family, I should think’.

Decidedly below the landowning class, represented by the Squire, the Osgoods and the Lammeters are a variety of occupations and include some of the most interesting figures in the novel. We have the Squire’s brother-in-law, Kimble, who is an apothecary (our modern-day pharmacist); Mr Crackenthorpe, Rector of Raveloe; Mr Macey, tailor and parish clerk; Mr Tookey, deputy parish clerk, Ben Winthrop, the wheelwright, husband of Dolly; Mr Snell, the landlord of the Rainbow Inn; Solomon Macey, the fiddler; Jem Rodney, the mole catcher; and last but not least Silas Marner, the weaver. These humble characters are the life and soul of the novel; their social superiors are a great deal less vital, less human, less sympathetic.

In Silas Marner, George Eliot casts a cold eye on the English social system, particularly on its more privileged sectors. Her comment on the class to which the Cass family belongs is less than flattering:

‘It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar favour of providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and yeomen down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels’.

Details of the extravagant habits and carefree attitudes towards social and personal responsibility soon follow. The Squire keeps all his sons at home in idleness. Dunstan, in particular, is a noted rake, spiteful, jeering, drunken, a gambler and a waster; his brother Godfrey seems to be following the same path. George Eliot, significantly, gives Godfrey a miserable fate; he ends up humiliated and unhappy. Meanwhile, the chief representative of the lower orders, on the other hand, has luck on his side: despite his early reverses, Silas survives to enjoy a relatively happy old age. The moral of this contrast in fortunes is clear: Godfrey’s fate is bound up with the habits and attitudes of his class; he is conditioned by these to be the man he is.

Silas Marner deals with rich and poor people, a common enough theme of novelists of all ages. What is interesting here, however, is not so much the theme, but the way in which it is treated. Traditionally, romances involving rich and poor characters, if they were to end in marriage between persons of different classes, would employ a stock device: the poor character would not really belong to the lower class at all but would turn out to have noble or wealthy ancestors or rich parents who had died. George Eliot is having none of this! Instead, she turns the conventional social approach on its head by implying that the life of the poor is superior to that of the rich and expects our approval when she has Eppie reject the comfort and status of the Red House for a marriage to a working-man. Furthermore, she suggests to her readers that Silas is a better man than Godfrey, in that, while both men have to cope with the events surrounding Eppie, Godfrey proves himself inadequate, and Silas does all the right things. She lets us see that Godfrey is a prisoner of his class. While his ‘inferiors’ give their thoughts to helping others, Godfrey is concerned with the effects on himself of ‘the increasing poor-rate and the ruinous times’. At no level, except on the purely economic one, do the privileged people in Silas Marner enjoy any superiority. Nancy Lammeter is a self-regarding woman whose ‘principles’ will not permit her to adopt a child; while, on the other hand, Dolly Winthrop enjoys helping Silas to care for Eppie, and has a deeper understanding of the mysteries at the heart of things than her socially and better educated ‘superior’ has.

There is a nice irony here. The events of the novel show up the moral inferiority of the ‘better’ class. Despite this, their chief representative, Godfrey Cass, is convinced of his own superiority and of that of his way of life. His tone with Silas during their vital interview about Eppie’s destiny is very much that of a superior talking down to a man of lower degree: unfeeling, patronising, narrow-minded, insulting. It is his unwitting admission of his contempt for the working-class that deprives him of any chance he might otherwise have had of winning the confidence of Silas and Eppie:

‘I should have thought, Marner, he said severely – ‘I should have thought your affection for Eppie would have made you rejoice in what was for your good, even if it did call upon you to give up something. You ought to remember your own life’s uncertain, and she’s at an age now when her lot may soon be fixed in a way very different from what it would be in her father’s home: she may marry some low working-man, and then, whatever I might do for her, I couldn’t make her well off’.

I suppose there are some who would argue that George Eliot is not being overly radical here in her depiction of the class distinctions that prevailed in the early 1800s in England. Some would argue that she is simply following the status quo and that she takes for granted the fact that class divisions are part of the natural order of things. In her defence, we must acknowledge, however, that this novel would have been read by the Nancy Lammeters of the time rather than the Dolly Winthrops: surely it took great courage and conviction to write a novel which could potentially alienate most of your readers? When we read closely, there are numerous examples given of stark divisions of class and it is obvious that George Eliot is disapproving rather than approving of these episodes. For example, she describes the scene following Sunday morning service in Raveloe church:

‘It was the rural fashion of that time for the more important members of the congregation to depart first, while their humbler neighbours waited and looked on, stroking their bent heads or dropping their curtsies to any large ratepayer who turned to notice them.’

Eliot presents this to us in such a way that it is difficult not to feel distaste at the social system that encourages this kind of debasement of human beings in the presence of others. Again what is one to make of the Squire’s wish to prolong the war with France solely because to do so would serve the interests of his own class?:

‘And that fool Kimble says that the newspaper’s talking about peace. Why, the country wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Prices ‘ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my arrears, not if I sold all the fellows up’.

Here, ‘the country’ means the Cass family and the landed interest generally. Of course, nowhere in the novel does George Eliot advocate the destruction of the class system, but her presentation is such that no sensitive reader can fail to question the validity of an order of things that causes Silas Marner, Dolly Winthrop and Mr Macey to think of members of the Cass family as their betters. The Squire imposes his social authority mainly by being loud of voice and by speaking to people ‘in a ponderous and coughing fashion’. The tone and manner of their presentation here, and in many similar instances, tend to undermine whatever respect the reader might feel for the Squire and his family. This is the same Squire who favours prolonged war as a means of enriching himself and who is seen to give his deerhounds ‘enough bits of beef to make a poor man’s holiday dinner’. Therefore, I think you’ll agree there are enough such disturbing scenes and incidents to make Silas Marner a radically disturbing social document.

Typical nineteenth-century English village (Photo by Dirk Seifert).

Further Reading:

Fairy-Tale Elements in Silas Marner

The main fairy-tale element in Silas Marner is found in the story of Silas and Eppie. Remember the paragraph which launches the main plot:

‘In the early years of this century, such a linen weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit’.

This opening has some of the essential features we expect in a fairy-tale: its compactness, its air of authority, its establishment of essential detail. The location of Marner’s cottage and the suggestion of timelessness are other appropriate details. The ending, too, is a typical fairy-tale one, reminiscent of hundreds of endings in children’s stories, where the good characters live happily ever after:

‘O father’, said Eppie, ‘what a pretty home ours is! I think nobody could be happier than we are’.

The details, the style and the tone of these passages convey the impression that we are in the world of fairy story where the good characters, having been tested, emerge to live happily ever after. Between the beginning and end of the novel, numerous passages take us far away from anything we might expect to find in a realistic novel, and into the magical world of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson:

‘Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart and sent forth only a red uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair and was stooping to push his logs together when, to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth. Gold! – his own gold – brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!’

Fairy-tale elements are scattered freely throughout the novel and gold is a dominant influence on the action, as it is in so many fairy-tales: other features worth mentioning are the themes of loss and discovery, of death and rebirth, restoration, regeneration and transformation. The mystery of Eppie’s identity is also relevant here, as are the many secrets long hidden but at last revealed. The extremes of good and evil represented by some of the characters should also be noted, as should the motif of stolen, buried and recovered treasure. Finally, it is significant that Eppie appears on New Year’s Eve. This accords with the ancient superstition that luck commonly turned with the New Year. For Silas, Eppie’s arrival fulfils the old prediction of ‘third time lucky’. Two previous entrants to his home brought ill-luck with them; now Eppie is to transform his life for the better.

However, we have to agree that if Silas Marner were simply a fairy-tale, it would scarcely have achieved its classic status. It is, of course, much more than that. While the fairy-tale elements are numerous, it is the solid grounding of the story in the actual and familiar sights, sounds and events of everyday life that makes the story so credible. Raveloe and its immediate environs are compellingly presented in realistic detail:

‘…… orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty; the large church in the wide churchyard; which men gazed at lovingly at their own doors in service time; the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes or turning in at the Rainbow; homesteads, where men supped heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth and where women seemed to be laying up a stock of linen for the life to come’.

The atmosphere of Raveloe is presented to us in concrete detail. Its inhabitants impress themselves unforgettably on our consciousness with their diverse personalities and rich, distinctive speech. The most striking instances of this are found in the Rainbow Inn scenes (Chapter 6). Here the leading personalities of the district drink, argue and gossip:

‘The pipes began to be pulled in a silence which had an air of severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked; while the beer drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their mouths as if their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attended with embarrassing sadness’.

Realistic scenes like this one are common throughout the novel where very real characters speak very realistically against a realistic background. George Eliot pays great attention to the thought processes of her characters and constantly renders these with great fidelity. One very good example of this is the way in which she traces the pattern of reflection forming in Dunstan’s mind as he enters Marner’s cottage and finds nobody there:

‘If the weaver was dead, who had a right to his money? Who would know where the money was hidden? Who would know that anyone had come to take it away?’

Her realistic treatment of the way in which people’s thoughts can be influenced is also very well illustrated in the affair of the pedlar’s earrings:

‘On the spread of enquiry among the villagers, it was stated with gathering emphasis that the parson had wanted to know whether the pedlar wore earrings in his ears, and an impression was created that a great deal depended on the eliciting of this fact. Of course, everyone who heard the question, not having any distinct image of the pedlar as without earrings, immediately had an image of him as with earrings, larger or smaller, as the case might be, and the image was presently taken for a vivid recollection, so that the glazier’s wife, a well-intentioned woman, not given to lying, and whose home was the cleanest in the village, was ready to declare, as sure as she ever meant to take the sacrament, that she had seen big earrings, in the shape of the young moon, in the pedlar’s two ears’.

George Eliot once argued that ‘a man or woman who publishes writings, inevitably assumes the office of teacher or influencer of the public mind’. In Silas Marner she has a stark lesson for her audience: there is a strong implication in the novel that the lives of the poor have a lot more to recommend them than those of the rich and also that the attitude of the poor towards the important issues of living are often more valid than those of their social superiors. There are also many contrasts made in the novel between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ characters. Silas and Godfrey Cass are both deeply involved in Eppie’s fate, but, while Silas makes all the right decisions, Godfrey, who should know better, makes all the wrong ones.

Finally, in dealing with Eppie’s choice of a humble marriage rather than the life of a lady in the Cass household, George Eliot combines realism with one other classic fairy-tale motif. This time, however, the usual fairy-tale ending does not quite materialise. If Eppie is Cinderella, she does not achieve the same result as her fairy-tale counterpart, and the reason for this lies in her own conscious choice. Her rejection of ease and privilege in favour of life with Silas and her working-class husband makes explicit her refusal to play the role of Cinderella:

‘I shouldn’t know what to think on or to wish for with fine things about me, as I haven’t been used to. And it ‘ud be poor work for me to put on things, and ride in a gig, and sit in a place at church, as ‘ud make them as I’m fond of think me unfitting company for ‘em. What could I care for then? …. I like to working folk and their victuals and their ways’.

The ideal fairy-tale ending generally implies that happiness and material wealth are synonymous. However, here we have a young heroine, Eppie, who can declare with great feeling:

‘I’m promised to marry a working-man, as’ll live with father, and help me to take care of him’.

Her arrival in the story may have carried strong associations from the world of fairy-tales, but the life she has eventually chosen for herself is clearly to be based in the real, everyday world.

Further Reading

Themes in ‘Silas Marner’

Theme of Religion

Religion, in various forms, plays a major part in Silas Marner. It dominates the early part of the novel and influences the course of events in a decisive way. It has a significant part to play in the lives and attitudes of the people of Raveloe. George Eliot presents us with a variety of attitudes to religion in the course of the novel and there is always the implied contrast between the differing versions of religious faith and practice presented throughout the novel.

Our first glimpse of organised religion is given to us in the account of the church at Lantern Yard. It is not a flattering account. The doctrines shared by the congregation there are Calvinist in origin. The church is described as ‘a narrow religious sect’. It is inward-looking and very restrictive. Indeed, the whole account of lantern yard is an unsparing look by George Eliot at a variety of Protestant religion of which she was intimately familiar. Some would say that Lantern Yard had little to do with real Christianity and amounted to a serious perversion of religion. This is best illustrated in the drawing of lots, ‘they resolved on praying and drawing lots’. This method yields up a lie and an innocent man must suffer.

The other form of religious practice seen in the novel is that practised by the villagers in Raveloe. Whereas Lantern Yard people took their religious practices with deadly seriousness, those in Raveloe, on the other hand, are much less concerned with the externals of religious practice at any rate. Indeed, such is their anxiety not to appear too righteous some avoid going to church every Sunday! Their attitude to religion is treated with mild humour by George Eliot: the people are not ‘severely regular’ and even the ‘good livers’ go to church with ‘moderate frequency’.

The essential point to make About the form of religion practised in Raveloe is that in spite of its thinness on the side of doctrine and theology, even its closeness to mere superstition, its effects on the lives of the people is generally beneficial. Dolly Winthrop, if questioned on the subject, would probably find it difficult to articulate her religious beliefs, but fundamentally Christian practices come easily to her: ‘We must be going home now. And so I wish you goodbye, Master Marner; and if ever you feel anyways bad in your inside, as you can’t fend for yourself, I’ll come and clean up for you, and get a bit of victual, and willing’.

In contrast, Nancy Lammeter’s outlook on religion is totally different from Dolly’s. Unlike Dolly, Nancy is able to read the Bible; she is presented as usually sitting, on Sundays, with her Bible before her and in many ways, her attitude is nearly as narrow as that of the congregation in Lantern Yard.

His Lantern Yard experience has shaken Silas to the core, and shaken is genuinely held religious beliefs. Towards the end, he decides to revisit Lantern Yard with Eppie to find out if his name has been cleared and to see whether Mr Paston might enlighten him about the practice of the drawing of lots. He finds that Lantern Yard has been swept away, and he, therefore, will never get the answers to his troubling questions: ‘It’s dark to me; I doubt it’ll be dark to the last’. He will never now be fully satisfied with the wrong done to him, but his last years will be lived in a spirit of trust, thanks to the charity of real friends.

Theme of Redemption

This theme may be divided into two parts, (a) the salvation of Silas Marner from the mental and spiritual disintegration which is taking place within him because of his disillusionment with and rejection of God, and because of his miserliness and withdrawal from society, and (b) the salvation of Godfrey Cass from spiritual destruction because of his secret marriage to Molly Farren and, later, his decision to disown his own child.

There is the notion of the purging of a tragic hero through suffering in the case of both of these characters, but one of them – Godfrey – is, in the end, denied what he demands most. Yet both of them come to acquire self-knowledge. Silas says, ‘I’ve had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she’ll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die.’ Godfrey, too, has consolation, ‘And I got you Nancy, in spite of all, and yet I’ve been grumbling and uneasy because I hadn’t something else – as if I deserved it.’

Eliot may be trying to point out that, without contact with other human beings, the heart dries up. Silas rejects the notion of a loving God and of belief in his fellow-man as a result of his experiences in Lantern Yard. God turned from him in the drawing of the lots; William Dane and Sarah betrayed him at the human level.

In Raveloe ‘there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst, and the future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him.’ Even his simple impulse to help Sally Oates rebounds on him, and he becomes more isolated. Money now becomes his new God. What affection he has left is bestowed on inanimate things – a small brown pot and his gold. He becomes a miser.

The theft of his gold is the beginning of his salvation. It brings the sympathy of the villagers – especially Dolly Winthrop. He feels conscious of ‘dependence on their goodwill.’ The coming of Eppie (perhaps an Act of God) brings him consolation for his suffering. He begins again to trust a human. He accepts Dolly’s advice that Eppie should be christened, although he does not know what this means. With Eppie he lives again. When he brings her to the village he is met with ‘smiling faces and cheerful questioning.’ She has replaced his gold. He has been out of touch with Nature as he was in Lantern Yard. It is Eppie who brings him back to it. There is no more betrayal. When Godfrey asks Eppie to come with him, she stands with Silas.

Godfrey’s faults are the result of his weakness of character. He has a ‘natural irresolution’, ‘moral cowardice’, and is ‘indecisive’. His marriage to Molly is a result of weakness but also of pity for her. His motives for concealing the marriage are selfish – fear of discovery, his father’s anger, the loss of his inheritance and of Nancy.

His silent reaction to the news that Molly is dead is a sinful fear that she may not be dead. His rejection of Eppie is a spoken one. He disowns his moral and paternal obligations and lacks the moral courage to give up Nancy. He is now living a lie and tries to justify it by assuring himself that he is thinking only of Nancy’s happiness. He is punished by a childless marriage. He has, however, a conscience about Eppie and almost accepts his childlessness as a punishment. Further punishment and suffering come with the shame of Dunstan’s theft, but he accepts God’s will for the first time and admits his secret to Nancy. He bitterly realises that Nancy would have gladly accepted Eppie had she known the situation. He is further punished by Eppie’s rejection of him. His redemption comes in his realisation of the truth that ‘there’s debt we can’t pay like money debts.’ He has suffered, but recognises the injustice of it. He, too, has some consolation in Nancy.

Theme of Social Isolation and Communication

The degrees of isolation and communication through which the central character – Silas – passes are extreme. One might divide his life into four distinct parts – distinct because he is subject to a change of disposition each time.

There is his period in Lantern Yard.
Then his first fifteen years in Raveloe during which he becomes dedicated to his gold and so more isolated.
Next comes the short period after the theft of his gold when he is deprived of any comfort and has only limited communication with the people of Raveloe.
Finally, Eppie arrives and Silas is no longer isolated.

In Lantern Yard he is immersed in the life of the sect. He shares the rigid, Calvinistic society of his fellow-believers, the companionship of William Dane and the company of Sarah. His self-doubting is offset by William’s certainty – although in the end of this period God seems to desert him. William falsely accuses him of theft and Sarah deserts him, he has been relatively contented.

When he arrives in Raveloe he is a stranger and, so an object of suspicion. He hates ‘the thought of the past’; there is ‘nothing that calls out his love and fellowship towards the strangers in the village.’ He contributes to his own isolation in his failure to invite anyone to visit him and his failure to mix with others except on business. The riches of Nature are in contrast with the narrow, frugal life (physical and spiritual) of Lantern Yard. There is no ‘Unseen Love’ that cares for him. The children fear him and the villagers wonder at his solitary isolation. The results of his impulsive desire to help Sally Oates are disastrous. He refuses to exploit the villagers and they drive him back to isolation. His attempt to establish a relationship has, through no fault of his own, driven a wedge between the villagers and him. Money now becomes his god. He still retains a spark of affection but it is for inanimate things like his broken pot. When his gold is stolen, the disaster seems worse than that of Lantern Yard. His soul is ‘like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert.’ Yet his impulse is to go for help. He goes to the Rainbow Inn. It is here that he communicates with others.

Afterwards the neighbours try to ‘get through’ to him. He is not yet one of them, but is affected by their anxiety to help. He feels that people might help him. Their kindness may spring from their recognition of suffering – ‘pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment.’ Although he still feels desolate he is now aware that he depends on others. Yet he is not cheered by Dolly as ‘human love and divine faith have not yet been released in him.’

The coming of Eppie changes everything. It makes the villagers more actively sympathetic. She unlocks the door to his happiness within the community when he determines to meet the neighbours for her sake. He acquires knowledge of life from his new acquaintances. As he grows older, his eyes ‘seem to have gathered a longer vision as is the way with eyes that have been short-sighted in life.’ This may be symbolic of his spiritual outlook. Eliot says that a sense of presiding goodness and human trust come with all pure peace and joy. The human trust is important; he had lost it after Lantern Yard.

He has a bad moment when Eppie speaks of marriage. Is his gold again being stolen? But she reassures him. His final trial comes when Godfrey arrives to ask for Eppie. Silas’s decision not to stand in her way is heroic, but he has no need to fear; he will never again be isolated.

Godfrey Cass may be included as one whose failure to communicate contributes to his unhappiness. The Red House atmosphere is not conducive to communication, as love does not exist within it. His lack of true communication with Nancy prevents him getting to know her until it is almost too late. He is afraid to tell Squire Cass of his marriage to Molly, a social inferior, because he fears the Squire’s reaction and because he feels that he will lose Nancy. He again fails to communicate when he denies knowledge of Molly and then rejects his child. When he finally tells Nancy of the marriage, she tells him that she would have accepted Eppie. He now realises that his reticence has been for nothing.

Again, when he calls Silas to surrender Eppie, he shows his inability to understand Silas by speaking in terms of bodily warts and money and by painting Eppie’s future as a lady and contrasting it with the rough life before her if she remains with Silas. It is only when he faces the truth and accepts the justice of his punishment that he is saved. He now knows himself and is rewarded when Nancy’s eyes and his ‘meet in trust’.

Theme of Chance

In Chapter XI Eliot personally intervenes to comment on Chance – ‘In this point of trusting to some throw of fortune’s dice, Godfrey can hardly be called old-fashioned. Favourable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in.’ she personifies Chance as a deity, ‘the mighty creator of success and its worship is a religion of these people.’

Godfrey is always hopeful that something will turn up to save a dangerous situation. As a result he finds it hard to make a decision about anything. So he falls back on ‘casualties’ (accidental happenings). He fails to admit his marriage to Molly Farren because he feels that, the longer the interval before revelation, the more chances there are of deliverance from some of the unpleasant consequences to which he may have subjected himself. When Dunstan fails to return from the sale of Wildfire, Godfrey asks himself why he should cut off his hopes by his own admission of his misdeeds. If Dunstan fails to return soon everything may blow over. When the Squire tells him to propose to Nancy with the half-threat that the Squire may himself speak to Nancy’s father he flies to ‘his usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences – perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting its prudence’. Not until Eppie rejects him does he face the truth and accept the consequences.

Silas Marner, too, at one stage leans on Chance. He, like the Lantern Yard brethren, believes that Chance in the form of ‘trial by lot’, reflects God’s judgement. When his innocence is not borne out, he rejects God. Later, after Eppie’s coming, he agrees with Dolly that there is good in the world. He feels that the ‘lots’ were compensated for by Eppie. ‘There’s dealings with us – there’s dealings.’ Eppie, too, has arrived by Chance.

Theme of Love

Love runs through the novel as a recurring motif. It is associated with other themes. Its absence may be noted in Lantern Yard where the devotees have been taught that they are miserable sinners so that they are prepared to believe in the sinfulness of their brethren and to punish it without an impulse of charity or human pity. Each thinks only of his own salvation. Lantern Yard also suppresses Silas’s love of Nature.

Yet, in Raveloe, Silas feels ‘a rush of pity’ for Sally Oates. He also shows grief for his broken pot, but his affection is for inanimate things. At first the villagers in Raveloe, because of their superstition, contribute to Silas’s loveless life by withholding whatever neighbourliness they might normally bestow on a fellow-human. His miserliness saps his love for other human beings; gold is his true love.

His love is rekindled, albeit slowly when his gold is stolen. He feels pity for Jem Rodney whom he accuses of the theft, realising the injustice of the accusation. (This is an echo of what befell himself in Lantern Yard). His apology is, in effect, a gesture of love. The kindness of the villagers to someone in trouble is an indication that love is there if he can meet it half-way. Dolly Winthrop is in the vanguard of human compassion; she is ‘mild and patient’ and helps those who need help. This is true love.

The coming of Eppie brings true love into Silas’s life; not alone the love she gives to him and the love which he bestows on her, but also the friendship and sympathy of the villagers. Her pranks and naughtiness make him realise that love makes claims on him, yet he cannot really find it within himself to punish her. After sixteen years with her, he has acquired the ‘mild, passive happiness of love-crowned age in his face.’ Eliot says that, because of his love and the seclusion of his cottage, she has been preserved from the coarseness of village talk and habits, so that she has a touch of refinement. In the end, his love for her is repaid by her declaration of love for him and her rejection of Godfrey. He now asserts his trust in God.

Godfrey and Dunstan have been deprived of love since their mother’s death. Their father is weak in character and self-indulgent. He rules his household by fear. He lacks courtesy and makes no attempt to understand his sons. Dunstan has no saving graces; he is entirely lacking in love. Godfrey shows his weakness in marrying Molly Farren, but he is conscious of the harm he has done to her. He loves Nancy Lammeter and sees her as his loving wife, but even in his love, he has no real knowledge of her and so postpones admitting to her his unfortunate marriage.

Eliot says ‘…..the yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature’, and that the affectionate-hearted Godfrey is becoming bitter and subject to cruel wishes (presumably for the early death of Molly). When he hears that she is dead, his fear is that she may not really be dead. He then rejects his own child – Eppie. This is the antithesis of love. There is happiness and love in his marriage to Nancy, although it may be asked if Nancy falls short of love in her refusal to adopt the child. When Godfrey finally admits to his marriage to Molly, their eyes meet ‘ with awe in them, as at a crisis which suspended affection.’ Is there a temporary cessation of love here on Nancy’s part? She speaks of a chance lost of having a child to love her. After their abortive attempt to persuade Eppie to live with them, they again look into one another’s eyes. It is now that, although Eppie has rejected him, he knows that Nancy truly loves him, ‘And I got you, Nancy, in spite of all.

Theme of Nature

Eliot believed that Nature is an influence in developing the human person. Silas rejects Nature in Lantern Yard, briefly returns to it to aid Sally Oates and then, under the influence of Eppie, finally returns. Eppie’s wish is for a garden. This may indicate her simplicity and that Nature is sufficient for her. It is also possible to discuss human nature under this theme. (See further notes on Nature Imagery here.)

The Theme of Knowledge

The theme of Knowledge has some importance in the novel. There is a suggestion that knowledge of oneself and others, or the lack of it, plays an important part in both characterisation and plot. Eliot, speaking of the Lantern Yard sect with its constant discussions on the possibility of salvation, says it resembles ‘young winged things fluttering forsaken in the twilight.’ This suggests a misdirected search for knowledge that is in contrast with Dolly Winthrop’s certain trust in ‘Them above’.

The superstition of the villagers in Raveloe that helps keep Silas in isolation is a result of their fear that Silas possesses knowledge that they do not have and their belief that knowledge and skill come from the devil. When his gold is stolen, the villagers see him as without knowledge and so, godly.

With the coming of Eppie, Silas acquires knowledge from his now sympathetic neighbours. His discussions with Dolly also help him towards religious contentment. He also gains self-knowledge when Godfrey cannot begin to understand why Silas might not wish to part with Eppie. Yet Eliot says that it is only the want of sufficient knowledge that allows him to be deliberately unkind.

Godfrey also undergoes a journey towards self-knowledge. You might try to map this journey yourself using the incidents in the novel.

Further Reading

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