Before Christmas, through being really busy, I'd really struggled to get through the first 80 pages or so of George Eliot's classic short novel, 'Silas Marner'. However, for a few days over Christmas, I managed to give the remaining 120 pages of the book the time it deserved, and felt uplifted through doing this.
Then on New Year's Day, I watched the 1985 BBC screenplay of 'Silas Marner' with Ben Kingsley playing the leading role as Marner, so that I could strengthen my understanding of this short, compressed but profound short novel:
The early stages of this short novel focus on the modest, innocent, but sadly gullible Silas Marner in his northern English hometown of Lantern Yard, where he is in love with Sarah, but cheated out of being able to marry her through his 'best friend', William Dane, framing him for the theft of some local church money. The local church concerned seems both puritanical and superstitious, and poor Marner is cast out of the church community through the drawing of lots determining his 'guilt'.
In response, Marner moves away to Raveloe, a small, agricultural place in the West Midlands (probably somewhere in Warwickshire or Worcestershire). Here, through working as a solitary weaver in a small cottage; having strange 'fits' or trances; and becoming obsessed with saving money over 15 years, Marner becomes known for being a miser and a kind of mysterious 'bogeyman':
However, two major events gradually change Marner's fate for the better. First, Marner is robbed by the local nobleman drunkard and buffoon, Dunsey Cass, and his whole world seems to cave in. However, some time after, a mysterious young female child wonders into his house late at night, which leads to Marner finding her dead mother (Godfrey Cass' secret wife) in the snow outside.
Marner insists on keeping the child, and for 15 years, with financial assistance from Godfrey Cass and motherly advice from Dolly Winthrop, Marner successfully brings the child (Eppie) up as his own daughter, with her affectionately calling him "Father":
With Eppie (played by Patsy Kensit in the 1985 BBC screenplay) now being a young adult, Godfrey Cass finds his brother Dunsey's skeleton and Marner's stolen money in the pit he has drained near Marner's cottage; returns the money to Marner; but starts more deeply reflecting on the pain of his childless marriage to Nancy Lammeter (played by Jenny Agutter in the BBC screenplay). From here, Godfrey reveals to Nancy that Eppie is his secret daughter, and they plan to take Eppie off Marner, albeit in as painless a way as possible (impossible under the circumstances, of course):
As expected, Marner feels like he's having the heart ripped out of his body when Godfrey and Nancy make their proposition. However, Eppie comes to Silas' aid, rejecting Godfrey's offer of being made a noblewoman, as she hasn't been "brought up to be a lady" and likes "working folks" such as her "Father", Silas Marner.
For me, the most impressive character in 'Silas Marner' might well be Dolly Winthrop who, with her periodic, well-intentioned advice, helps Marner to come to terms with the injustice of what has happened to him in the past, and to start valuing the local church in Raveloe which, with its own well-intentioned custom and tradition, seeks to serve and offer solace to the local community rather than controlling it through fear and superstition:
In this, I sense that Dolly is expressing the author's own views on life:
Indeed, through the short novel's resolution, the reader can see that Eliot is presenting a moral-ordered universe where fate involves a higher power rewarding and punishing each character according to his/her actions. While Eppie chooses to stay with Marner as he is her "Father", and gets his permission to marry Aaron Winthrop (Dolly's son), and Marner himself wins the full respect of the Raveloe community; Godfrey is half-rewarded with his marriage to Nancy, but is also half-punished through Eppie's rejection; and Dunsey is a long time drowned as a punishment for his misdemeanors, of course.
With most of the action taking place in Raveloe, 'Silas Marner' is set in early 19th century Britain when such rural landscapes were increasingly coming under threat from the industrialisation process which Marner and Eppie encounter when he returns to Lantern Yard only to see that the old chapel which he was banished from has been replaced by a massive factory.
Overall, I think that Eliot's greatest achievement in 'Silas Marner' is her moving celebration of pure, natural human relationships e.g. in the father-daughter bond between Silas Marner and Eppie; the friendly empathy and advice offered by Dolly Winthrop to Marner; and Eppie and Aaron's perfectly natural courtship.
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