Silas Marner Major Themes

Major Themes Class Silas Marner centers around twain house behaves, Marners cottage by the st iodin-pits and the Cass manor, the Red House. These two settings represent kind extremes, and the plurality of Raveloe know it. The cottage is the ramshackle abode of the lowliest member of Raveloe society the manor is a sprawling home filled with gentry and a post for dances. Rather than set an impermeable boundary between these two worlds, Eliot stages many anformer(a)(prenominal) intersections between the two households. Dunstan Cass, who is a member of the m whizyed class, enters Marners home facial expression for money. Silas Marner, lowly and miserable, raises aSquires granddaughter as his own child. Godfrey Cass, though he owns Marners cottage at the end of the new(a), is actually in the weavers debt. These ar just a a few(prenominal) instances of the permeability of class boundaries in the novel. In Raveloe, strict boundaries of class do non necessarily lead to greater hap piness among the higher classes. Indeed, those with money-or those who are supposed to construct money-tend to be the most harried and corrupt characters, such(prenominal) as Dunstan, Godfrey, and even Silas before Eppie. The person most oppressed by circumstances in Silas Marner is perhaps Godfrey Cass, who finds himself at the ercy of a trim back-class wife, who fails to confirm children of his own, and who ends up envying the bond of a lowly weaver and his daughter. Silas Marner and Eppie, on the early(a) hand, though they do non have status or wealth, have power over the Casses and have the appearance _or_ semblance to enjoy unmitigated happiness. The Rainbow tavern and the church in Raveloe also serve as places where class differences are evident. The Rainbow becomes quite a a different place when the gentles are having a dance during these measure (in Chapter Six, for instance), the lesser villagers, like Mr. Macey, reign over the Rainbow, telling stories all the pl ot of land to the highest degree the anded members of society. At the church, the important members of society posture in delegate seating room at the front of the church while the rest of the villagers sit behind them and watch. In both these places, although everyone recognizes the status difference between the public villagers and the gentry, this difference does not seem to be a problem in Raveloe. The lower classes have not been fed the broth of revolt they seem quite content. Meanwhile, the upper classes are not oppressive or brute(a) slave drivers like their grinder- owning counter take clipping offs. In fact, the gentry rely upon the villagers to sincerely notify their mportance and value in the town. It is Mr. Macey, not Mr. Lammeter, who celebrates the hi spirit level of the Warrens. And without the respectful, watching eyes of the villagers, the front-row seats in church would have less dignity. Thus, Silas Marner tends to represent class differences with historic al accuracy. Eliot seems drawn to this pre-industrial era, when there was an easygoing class hierarchy in artless towns. Compare the relatively class- indifferent respect that is shown in Raveloe to the horrible factory in the manufacturing town that Marner and Eppie visit in Chapter Twenty-One. The industrial world treats the lower classes as inhuman ogs in the factory wheels. In Raveloes trade-based society, meanwhile, each villager andt joint play an important role in the success of the society. That is, the weaver is value to some degree by the Squire if he weaves his linens well. Even so, one might reasonably argue that Eliots idyllic depiction of happy peasants romanticizes the difficulties of the class differences in nineteenth-century England. Myth and Folklore Many critics of the novel fault its unrealistic situations and conclusions. They head up out that Marners conversion from a miserable old misanthrope to a loving father happens too quickly, and they argue that th e end of the ovel has too frequently poetic justice, with every character getting a just reward. These critics hold the novel to a standard of realism that others see as unbefitting to Eliots goals in Silas Marner . Defenders of the novel argue that is is more than like a fable, run through the moral logic of a fairy tale in order to accomplish goals beyond merely representing reality. In fables, ballads, myths and fairy tales, choppy transformations, inexplicable coincidences and other such unrealistic plot devices are part of the magic. Novels need not read like documentaries. Silas Marner is a work of semblance as much as it represents a deeper eality. While the plot reflects the novels mythologic character, there is also explicit reference to myth and legend passim the novel. Weaving itself is a classic emblem of myths across cultures (see the Mythology and Weaving vane site). Certainly Eliot was well aware of this emblem when she chose her protagonist and the activity o f weaving. The story also has a strong Biblical undercurrent, recalling e particular(prenominal)ly the stories of Job, King David, the bump from Eden, and Cain and Abel. And the author of Silas Marner expects readers to understand its many references to ancient mythology including the Fates and Arachne (a weaver ransformed into a bird of passagenote the profusion of insect imagery describing Marner). The hearth, where Eppie is suddenly found, is an especially regnant image in Roman myth. Myth and superstition are bustling patterns in the village. Mr. Macey tells ghost stories about the Warrens and predicts the future. The villagers look with curiosity on wanderers such as Marner, perceiving that such persons be coherent to a separate, magical race with powers to bring to or harm. These patterns contribute to the folkloric character of the work. Even while Silas Marner satirizes the superstitions of the villagers and offers a sensibly realistic explanation or every miracle in i t, the novel engages the mysteries of fortune and love that characterize legendary literature. Memory George Eliot and William Wordsworth have a special relation. In Silas Marner , more perhaps than in any of her other works, this affinity provides the root of the novel. Eliot even facetiously wrote, in a letter to her publisher, that she should not have believed that any one would have been interested in the novel but myself (since William Wordsworth is dead). Eliot uses poetry from Wordsworth as her epigraph, she quotes and echoes his language throughout the work, and she centers the redemption of her rotagonist on one of Wordsworths favorite themes keeping. For Eliot and for Wordsworth, memory is not simply about recall in the everyday sense it is about the profound experience of owning ones own history, of embodying ones past. For example, in Silas Marners redemption after finding Eppie, the first thing he thinks about is his long-lost baby sister, someone he has not though t about for at least fifteen years. In fact, Eppies name was also his mothers name and his sisters name. Eppie does not merely allow Marner to move forward out of the meaningless stave of weaving and mourning in which he is trapped at the time of er arrival, but she also allows Marner to recover elements of his own past. Many other motives are connected with memory. Marners herb gathering, for instance, is something he learned from his mother, which he had bury until Eppie arrived. His healing process requires backward reaches into the positive, meaningful elements of his past. In the presence of Eppie, Marners memory propels him to a richer future. George Eliots own memory contributed to key elements of the novel. In a letter, Eliot writes that the novel diluteed from the merest millet-seed of thought. This little seed was her recollection f a stooped, old weaver walking along in the Midlands whom she happened to see one day long before she began the work. Eliots enrichment of this scrap of her memory is much like the process of remembering in the novel. From a remembered gesture-such as gathering herbs with ones mother- one can unfold an entire horizon of value pertinent to the present. Memory, for both Eliot and her characters, is active and creative, more than a passive storehouse of knowledge and experience. In remembering we convert our present life. One way to create the new is to refashion and rede what we have recovered from old times and old meanings.