George Eliot's Silas Marner has much in common with many of the British novels written from about the late 1830s to the end of the century. Of course, another name for this period is the Victorian age. That’s why the novels of this time went on to be called...
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"the Victorian novel." These novels share many common themes. Let's see howSilas Marner reflects some of those themes.
One main theme in Victorian novels is the varying role of women. We have the social climber Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, the tempestuous Cathy Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights, and in Silas Marner, we have Molly Crass. Molly was a lower-class girl who married into the upper-class Squire family; she turns into an opium addict and dies. Again, in Victorian novels, we see women depicted in a variety of ways (though some of them might not seem so flattering).
Molly's marriage to Godfrey brings us to another theme of Victorian novels: class. In Silas Marner, we see the Victorian novel's preoccupation with social class. Why does Godfrey hide his marriage with Molly? It’s because she's from a lower class. For more Victorian novels that center on class, check out Dombey and Son or Jane Eyre. In the latter, Jane doesn't marry Rochester until she discovers her inheritance and is more his equal when it comes to money.
Another concern of Victorian novels in industrialization. Charles Dickens tackles this theme in Hard Times. Silas Marner, too, ends on a note of industrialization. When Marner returns to the town he was banished from, what does he discover? He finds out that the church has been replaced by a factory.
You might also want to think about how Silas Marner links to themes of displacement, secrecy, and nostalgia. All of those elements are prevalent in most Victorian novels as well.
There are several ways in which we can say that George Eliot's Silas
Marner is a Victorian novel.
First, it was written in England during the reign of Queen Victoria and thus it
conforms to the technical definition of Victorian novel.
Next, it has many themes which are found in other Victorian novels. First, it
deals with loss of faith, a theme common in many Victorian religious
novels.
Second, it has a "fallen woman" theme, with the fallen woman treated
sympathetically.
Third, it has an urban vs. rural theme, addressing one of the major demographic
changes of the Victorian era.