Silas Marner

Silas Marner was a weaver. Weavers were significant in England because the advent of the power loom at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is representative of the transformation the rise of...

Silas Marner begins with a quotation from Wordsworth as the epigraph: A child, more than all other giftsThat earth can offer to declining man,Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts....

Gold means everything to Silas Marner. He loves acquiring it, touching it, and hoarding it. It has become a substitute for the meaningful human relationships his life so patently lacks. So we can...

Silas was an active member of the town of Lantern Yard. His life, as part 1 of the novel states, had “movement, mental activity, and close fellowship”. This is important to point out because...

While there may be various types of irony in Elliot's Silas Marner, Elliot emphasizes situational irony. Situational irony is defined as situations in which events occur that seem oddly appropriate...

According to one description, Victorian literature is typified by “idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck” prevail over hardship and struggle. The...

The Cass family is one of the most prominent, wealthy families in Raveloe and are revered throughout their society. Squire Cass is the head of the household and is considered Raveloe's greatest...

One lesson in Silas Marner is that people are often accused unfairly simply because they are different. For example, Silas Marner has a "cataleptic fit" during church, and his friend William says,...

Gold and money are the substitutes for love and companionship in the life of Silas Marner. Silas was once a relatively happy man. He was well-known in his town of Lantern Yard, had a strong...

Silas Marner moves to Raveloe in shame after being falsely accused of stealing from his church. When Silas moves to Raveloe, he leaves behind a full life in Lantern Yard and a community who once...

Lantern Yard is Silas Marner's hometown. There, he was considered a fine, upstanding member of the local community. A devout, regular churchgoer, Silas is believed by the local people to be filled...

When Eppie comes into his life, Silas Marner is saved from total despair and given purpose to his life. Before the pretty little Eppie crawled into his dismal cottage, Silas Marner was a man who...

Raveloe is described directly and indirectly in chapter 1. It is first depicted as a place "where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices" This is an indication that the town has...

This section of the novel is actually deeply symbolically revealing about Silas's character and likewise the child that he finds. He discovers the child on his doorstep in Chapter 12. We are told...

From the first moment when Silas discovered Eppie on his hearth, and he confused her with his gold, it is clear that Eppie becomes as important (if not more) to Silas as his gold had been. Note how...

The cultural aspects in this novel have to do with early 19th century England. In villages like the fictional Raveloe, people lived rural lives that were pretty much self-suffcient. As the...

Silas's life in Lantern Yard before he came to the outskirts of Raveloe is described as being full of "movement" and "mental activity." Silas Marner was a faithful man, and he had many friends and...

Upon finding out that his gold was missing, Silas had a series of reactions that became a chain of events which led to Silas's ultimate breakdown. Interestingly, this horrible moment was also the...

The action in George Eliot’s realistic novel Silas Marner takes place early in the nineteenth century. Protagonist Silas is a linen weaver by trade. He is a simple and religious person. The...

The two thefts in Silas Marner hold a lot of significance to the novel. Each of the thefts helped propel Silas's life, transform it, and then re-mold it for good. It is as if each theft is actually...

Chance plays a significant role in Silas Marner. Crucially, it is chance that changes Silas's life. In order to determine who was guilty of stealing the bag of church money, the church's...

The two sons of Squire Cass, Godfrey and Dunstan (Dunsey) are known by way of their father, who is a respectable and relatively wealthy man in comparison with the rest of the people of Raveloe. As...

In George Eliot's novel Silas Marner, Eppie is the child of Godfrey Cass and Molly Farren. Already, just by looking at her parents, we see how Eppie fits a specific role. Remember, Molly is poor,...

Since the question does not indicate which chapter is referenced, I will discuss the events surrounding Silas's discovery of Godfrey's child, Eppie. After discovering that Eppie's mother is dead,...

George Eliot's narrative describes a time before the spinning jenny of the Industrial Revolution replaced individual weavers. In fact, the weaver was an important citizen of communities as it was...

Godfrey Cass in Silas Marner is the eldest son and heir of Squire Cass, the most important man in Raveloe. Unfortunately, while not an evil person, Godfrey is a selfish, weak-willed man who does...

When Dunstan takes Wildfire to sell it, wildfire is killed and Dunstan decides to rob Silas. Dunstan is a selfish brat. He takes the horse Wildfire to sell because the family needs money. He...

Coincidence, or chance, is a key driver of the plot in this novel. Some instances of chance are outlined below: It is chance that sends the good-hearted Silas into exile from his religious...

Having moved from the lovely countryside of England to London, where she encountered rejection by Victorian society because of her living openly with a married man, George Eliot, née Mary Anne...

The Rainbow Inn, a village inn and tavern, is the social center for both the more affluent residents of Raveloe as well as for others. After he discovers that his gold is missing, Silas Marner...

One could certainly argue that redemption and regeneration are important themes in George Eliot’s Silas Marner. This applies first to Silas’s journey in the text. A bitter, miserly old weaver,...

Dunstan Cass is depicted as a drunken, selfish man, who has spent a significant amount of money that belongs to his father. When Godfrey insists that Dunstan come up with money to avoid their...

When making text-to-self and text-to-world connections, it is almost inevitable to experience the life of the main character vicariously, and connect our lives to the myriad of life lessons that...

Overall, the character of Silas demonstrates, through his vicissitudes, a series of moral philosophies. First, life is never certain. No matter how well we do unto others, or how righteous our...

After Silas is wrongly accused of stealing money, betrayed by his closest friend, William Dane, he leaves his hometown of Lantern Yard and travels to the small, close-knit village of Raveloe. In...

The epigraph at the beginning of Silas Marner, written by Wordsworth, reads as follows: A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and...

Silas, Eppie, and Aaron are lucky in this novel. Molly Farren is unlucky. Molly is unlucky because she has secretly married Godfrey, who wants to marry Nancy. As Molly, an opium addict, is en route...

Before Silas Marner moved to the outskirts of Raveloe, he initially considered William Dane to be his closest friend and the two men were inseparable. Silas Marner and William Dane's friendship was...

George Eliot, the nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans, has, indeed, created an interesting novel in Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. For it touches the hearts of her readers and piques their...

Silas is regarded with a mixture of awe, suspicion, and curiosity by the people of Raveloe. He isn't the kind of person you see every day in this neck of the woods. Raveloe is the kind of place...

The New Year's party at the Red House is hosted by the Squire Cass. His son Godfrey Cass helps Nancy Lammeter down from her carriage (much to her dismay, as she is trying to avoid his advances)....

The most important internal conflict Silas Marner faces at the beginning of the novel stems from several external conflicts. First, consider the background story given in Chapter 1 about Silas'...

I assume you are referring to the changes in the Red House in Book II, once Godfrey Cass has married Nancy Lammeter and sixteen years have passed. Of course, Book II details some of the series of...

Silas is the owner of a brown earthen pot. It may not seem much, but to Silas it's a very precious possession indeed. He's had it for twelve years, and it's stood in the same spot all that time....

You might want to approach this question by thinking about what themes the novel tries to communicate. Certainly this story operates as a kind of fable about the redemptive power of love as we see...

This question can be answered with reference to the second paragraph of Chapter 1. Having introduced the setting and the time period within which the story was set, the narrator then introduces the...

The Osgoods are in-laws to the Lammeters. In Chapter 6, Mr. Macey tells the landlord of the Rainbow Inn that Mr. Lammeter courted and married Mr. Osgood's sister in Raveloe years ago. Since Mr....

In his youth, Silas Marner must leave what he thought was a close, protected life in his religious community. Suffering from betrayal and reversal of fortune, he feels compelled to run away from...

I don't know that I would necessarily call it a "handicap," but the problem that Silas has is that he is sort of "hunched over," if that makes sense. He was a weaver by profession and therefore...

The Red House is an obvious symbol of class difference in Silas Marner. Godfrey is the victim of class because he marries a woman of lower class and then cannot marry the woman he wants. There are...