forced his thoughts onward, and carried them away from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit--carried them away to the new things that would come with the coming years, when Eppie would have learned to understand how her father Silas cared for her; and made him look for images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together the families of his neighbours. The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.

Thus we can see that whilst in Silas' mind he considers Eppie to be a replacement for the gold, the impact on his own life is incredibly different. Eppie opens him up, "reawakening" him once again to the joy of life and love, rather than being so fixated on greed and the gain of wealth, as he had been before. Therefore Eppie is a much healthier influence on him than his gold had been.

Silas wants to keep the baby because he relates to her being alone and she reminds him of his little sister.

When Molly dies, she has her baby girl with her.  Since the girl is only a toddler, she wanders into Silas’s house and falls asleep.  Marner is standing at the door to hear the New Year’s bells, for good luck.  His blurry vision hallucinates when he sees the girl.

[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! (ch 11, p. 61)

When Silas finds the baby, he decides to keep it.  Godfrey goes to tell him to take it to the parish, and he asks why.  Godfrey is surprised Silas wants to keep it because he is a bachelor and considered miserly.

“The mother's dead, and I reckon it's got no father; it's a lone thing and I'm a lone thing. My money's gone, I don't know where—and this is come from I don't know where. I know nothing—I'm partly mazed.” (ch 13, p. 65)

Symbolically, the child is gold.  She brings new life back to Silas.  He names her after his sister, and has a renewed interest in life that was taken from him since he lost his money.  He wants to raise the child because she is alone as he is alone, and he needs someone to love.

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, and Godfrey comes from an esteemed family. Their marriage is secret. We might see Eppie as the result of a mixing of the classes. Eppie's role could be to remind us of their disastrous union. Yet her role also lets us know that just because disaster befell her parents, it doesn't mean that it has to ruin her life.

Eppie goes on to play a huge role in the life of the outcast Silas. Before Eppie, Silas didn't really have much of a social life in the village. After Eppie, Silas begins to socialize and make more of a personal investment in the village. We might say Eppie helps restore Silas's faith in humans.

We might also say that part of Eppie’s role is to help Silas realize that there's more important things in life than money. After living with Eppie, what does Silas start to believe? He begins to conclude "that the child was come instead of the gold—that the gold had turned into the child."

On a more contrarian note, you might want to discuss how Eppie's role reinforces rather limited roles for women in general. What happens at the end of the novel? Does Eppie go on a big adventure? Does she become a powerful titan of industry? No. She gets married. Where do the newlyweds live? With Silas.

After the passage of sixteen years, Eppie is an eighteen-year-old beauty. She feels a little self-conscious about her seemingly unruly hair but is otherwise sanguine in temperament. The teenage Eppie is also described as a loving daughter to Silas in chapter 16. After Sunday services, she sets the table and serves Silas his dinner.

For his part, Silas is content to watch his daughter play with their pets as he eats. Having been reared with great love by Silas, Eppie is a confident, happy, and well-adjusted young woman. She is shown to have an easy, open relationship with her adopted father.

In chapter 16, Eppie mentions that she is entertaining the thought of marrying Aaron Winthrop, Dolly's son. During her conversation with Silas, Eppie reassures him that he will not be alone even if she marries Aaron. Her words demonstrate her deep affection and solicitude for the old man.

In chapter 19, Eppie demonstrates her loyalty to Silas by refusing Godfrey and Nancy's offer. Seeing her adopted father's distress at the idea of her going away, Eppie stands firm. She tells Godfrey that she can never be happy living with him, knowing that Silas will be alone. Eppie will never leave Silas, because they have been together since the day she wandered into his home. Godfrey is stunned by Eppie's decided stance, but she remains firm in her resolution. In this scene, Eppie's loyal nature is clearly demonstrated.

So, after sixteen years, Eppie is a happy, well-adjusted young woman. She is also loyal, kind, and loving.

We are given a sight of Eppie and how she has changed in the sixteen year interim that happens between the end of Book I and the beginning of Book II of this fascinating novel. We are first shown the church at the end of the service, with the people exiting, in order of their social position. Thus it is that we are introduced to Godfrey Cass and his wife, Nancy, after 16 years, and likewise Silas Marner, though with a much transformed companion. Note how Eppie is described in the text:

...but there is the freshest blossom of youth close by his side--a blonde dimpled girl of eighteen, who has vainly tried to chastise her curly auburn hair into smoothness under her brown bonnet: the hair ripples as obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze, and the little ringlets burst away from the restraining comb behind and show themselves below the bonnet-crown.

Eppie has therefore grown up during the interim into a very attractive young lady with distinctive hair, which could perhaps symbolise her zest for life.

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 had lost all motivation to live. For, it was his gold that Silas cherished above all else because he divorced himself from the human race after he was denounced by friends and loved ones in Lantern Yard.

The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web....But at night came his revelry: at night he closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew out his gold....He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver....

After Marner loses his money, there is a sympathy that grows for the weaver. Then, after he discovers the golden-haired babe in his cottage,“the gold had turned into the child,” and Silas vows to care for her as his own. Having done this, he finds that there is a "softening of feeling" towards him by the residents of Raveloe, especially among the women. Dolly Winthrop, a neighbor, visits Silas and tells him she has everything he needs for the child.

Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life.

Without doubt, Silas Marner is spiritually renewed through the reawakening of human love and fellowship with his neighbors and townspeople. He names the beautiful child Hephzibah for his mother and sister, but the baby only learns to say Eppie, so this nickname stays. After a time, Marner becomes a true member of the community and is rewarded for his love when Eppie refuses to go with her natural father, Godfrey Cass, who eventually comes for her. Instead, she remains with Silas, and even after she marries Aaron Winthrop, Eppie cares for the aging weaver, whose life is worth far more than any cache of gold because it is filled with love.

Being brought up by a single weaver living by himself on the outskirts of the village and with no experience of bringing up children must have been an interesting experience for Eppie, however when we are presented with the grown-up Eppie of Book II of this great novel, it is clear that Silas Marner, aided by Dolly Winthrop perhaps, has done a good job at bringing her up. Not only does Chapter 16 show that she is now a beautiful young woman, but that she is very selfless and attentive to the needs of her father, Silas, as shown by her quickness in clearing away the dinner things so that Silas can have his smoke. However, the text also gives us more information as to the kind of woman she now is:

The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable companionship with himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her from the lowering influences of the village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's hearth: so that it is not surprising if, in other things besides her delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling.

So, in addition to her great beauty, Eppie's curious care arrangements have made her grow up not as "rustic" as her peers would be, but being somewhat more "refined."