Editor's Choice
How is Silas viewed by the Raveloe residents?
Quick answer:
Silas is viewed with awe, suspicion, and curiosity by the residents of Raveloe. His arrival in the insular village, coupled with his reclusive nature and epilepsy, makes him an object of mystery and fear. His distinct appearance and ability to cure Sally Oates with concoctions add to his enigmatic reputation, leading villagers to attribute supernatural powers to him. As a loner, Silas stands out in a community that values knowing each other's business.
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 people leave, not move to. Or, as George Eliot puts it with beautiful understatement, it's a place "undrowned by new voices."
The locals don't exactly roll out the welcome mat for strangers, and so it proves with Silas. He's doubly suspicious to the locals: first of all because he keeps himself to himself and secondly because of his epilepsy. There's something frankly rather weird about Silas. The good folk of Raveloe, like most inhabitants of small villages, pride themselves on knowing everyone else's business in their intimate little community. So to have someone in their midst who deliberately cuts himself off from the rest of society is something they simply can't...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
accept. Silas wants to be left alone, but isolating himself only serves to make him stand out like a sore thumb in the village. As the villagers don't know anything about him, their superstitious minds get to work, and pretty soon Silas becomes the object of fear as much as anything else.
The people of Raveloe, which is hardly a cosmopolitan, varied, or visited place, made much of whatever was different and new. Silas Marner was one of few emigrants who arrived in the town after a bad misunderstanding involving a robbery prompted him to leave the former city where he was living before.
Being that he looked physically different than the people of Raveloe, he also had specific characteristics that made him look different, such as protuberant eyes, their brownish color, and his squinting. He also was prone to fits. However, this added to the mystery when they saw that Silas had a capacity to work with concoctions and that he used one to cure Sally Oates from her feelings of dropsy. This immediately made him a local mystery and legend, attributing him supernatural powers and capacities that he, himself, knew he did not have. Since he is also a loner and prefers to stay away from society, people continued creating myths about him. In all, he was regarded as an enigmatic and nearly surreal man.