Silas Marner Major Themes

Major Themes Class Silas Marner centers around two households, Marners cottage by the stone-pits and the Cass manor, the rubicund House. These two lottings represent gradation extremes, and the people of Raveloe know it. The cottage is the ramshackle abode of the lowliest member of Raveloe bon ton the manor is a sprawling home filled with gentry and a location for dances. Rather than set an impermeable boundary between these two worlds, Eliot stages many intersections between the two households. Dunstan Cass, who is a member of the pixilated class, enters Marners home looking for money. Silas Marner, lowly and miserable, raises aSquires granddaughter as his own child. Godfrey Cass, though he owns Marners cottage at the culmination of the novel, is actually in the weavers debt. These argon just a few instances of the permeability of class boundaries in the novel. In Raveloe, strict boundaries of class do non necessarily lead to greater happiness among the higher classes. Indeed , those with money-or those who be supposed to have money-tend to be the most harried and corrupt characters, much(prenominal) as Dunstan, Godfrey, and even Silas forrader Eppie. The person most oppressed by circumstances in Silas Marner is perhaps Godfrey Cass, who finds himself at the ercy of a underclass wife, who fails to have children of his own, and who ends up envying the bond of a lowly weaver and his daughter. Silas Marner and Eppie, on the different hand, though they do not have status or wealth, have power everyplace the Casses and seem to enjoy utter(prenominal) happiness. The Rainbow tavern and the church in Raveloe also serve as places where class differences are evident. The Rainbow becomes quite a different place when the gentles are having a dance during these times (in Chapter Six, for instance), the lesser villagers, kindred Mr. Macey, reign over the Rainbow, telling stories all the duration about the anded members of society. At the church, the important members of society sit in assign seats 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 common villagers and the gentry, this difference does not seem to be a trouble in Raveloe. The lower classes have not been fed the broth of revolt they seem quite content. Meanwhile, the amphetamine classes are not oppressive or cruel slave drivers like their milling machinery- owning counterparts. In fact, the gentry deposit upon the villagers to sincerely appreciate their mportance and value in the town. It is Mr. Macey, not Mr. Lammeter, who celebrates the history 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 historical accuracy. Eliot seems drawn to this pre-industrial era, when there was an easygoing class hierarchy in count ry 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 can play an important role in the success of the society. That is, the weaver is respected 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 shifting its unrealistic situations and conclusions. They point out that Marners conversion from a miserable old misanthrope to a gentle father happens too quickly, and they argue that the end of the ovel has too much poetic justice, with every character get a just reward. These critics hold the nove l to a standard of realism that others see as inappropriate to Eliots goals in Silas Marner . Defenders of the novel argue that is is more like a fable, operating through the moral logical system of a ottoman tale in order to accomplish goals beyond however representing reality. In fables, ballads, myths and fairy tales, sudden 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 fantasy as much as it represents a deeper eality. plot of ground the plot reflects the novels mythic character, there is also explicit reference to myth and legend throughout the novel. distort itself is a classic sign of myths across cultures (see the Mythology and Weaving web site). Certainly Eliot was well aware of this emblem when she chose her protagonist and the activity of weaving. The story also has a strong Biblical undercurrent, recalling especially the stories of Job, King David, the censure 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 spidernote the profusion of sucking louse imagery describing Marner). The hearth, where Eppie is suddenly found, is an especially powerful image in Roman myth. Myth and superstition are active 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 belong to a separate, magical race with powers to heal 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 fairly realistic explanation or every miracle in it, the novel engages the mysteries of fate and roll in the hay that characterize legendary literature. Memory George Eliot and William Wo rdsworth have a special affinity. 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 run-in throughout the work, and she centers the redemption of her rotagonist on one of Wordsworths favorite themes memory. For Eliot and for Wordsworth, memory is not simply about recollect 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 afterwards finding Eppie, the first thing he thinks about is his long-lost baby sister, someone he has not mind 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 cycle 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 forgotten until Eppie arrived. His healing process requires rearward 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 unfolded from the merest millet-seed of thought. This little seed was her recollection f a stooped, old weaver walking on 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 her bs with ones mother- one can unfold an stallion horizon of value pertinent to the present. Memory, for both Eliot and her characters, is active and creative, more than a passive storehouse of acquaintance and experience. In remembering we deepen our present life. One way to create the new is to refashion and reinterpret what we have recovered from old times and old meanings.