Silas Marner in Reading Through the Ages

Oct 23, 2012 Jo rated it really liked it

This was a reread for me but as my initial reading was over twenty years ago, apart from a vague idea of the plot, this was practically a new read for me. Having read Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda over the past few years, Silas Marner is a far shorter, easier and more accessible book than either of these. George Eliot’s writing is still intelligent, there are still the long sentences and often satirical comments on religion and morality and her characters range across the spectrum from ‘good’ t This was a reread for me but as my initial reading was over twenty years ago, apart from a vague idea of the plot, this was practically a new read for me. Having read Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda over the past few years, Silas Marner is a far shorter, easier and more accessible book than either of these. George Eliot’s writing is still intelligent, there are still the long sentences and often satirical comments on religion and morality and her characters range across the spectrum from ‘good’ to ‘evil’ yet this one has an element of sentimentality that I’m not sure exists in her behemoth novels. The story of Silas starts with a lonely man isolated from his neighbors but then follows an upwards curve that warms the cockles of the coldest heart.

Religion, which George Eliot often writes about having gone through her own religious journey, here centers on Silas who is expelled from one type of religious group and returns to another and it seems as though Eliot’s cynicism is more concerned with the types of religious groups than belief as a whole. We have a truly immoral character in Dunstan, the Squire’s son, although we are not given space to see if he had redeeming features and the rich as a whole are not painted in the best light. I loved Priscilla, Nancy’s spinster sister, but in the end money and position are unable to bring happiness and complete fulfillment it seems. The book is far more about the ordinary inhabitants of a small community and how it does or does not embrace outsiders; when travelling far meant twenty miles, the insularity of communities back then is hard to imagine as well as the precariousness of life and its requisite hardships which Eliot shows so clearly.

A friend who read this recently, pointed out that on several occasions there are plot points where the holes are apparent to drive the narrative forward and in hindsight, I can see his point, yet as a far shorter book than most of her others, this seems necessary and it didn’t harm my reading. Eliot still has the ability to create a tale that is both thoughtful as well as heart-warming and in her descriptions of her characters and the humor that often infiltrates these, her writing captivates.

Some Favorite Lines

'..she took her husband’s jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that “men would be so,” and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkeycocks.’

‘Mrs Kimble, was the Squire’s sister, as well as the doctor’s wife-a double dignity, with which her diameter was in direct proportion.’

‘Everything belonging to Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and nattiness: not a crease was where it had no business to be, not a bit of her linen professed whiteness without fulfilling its profession; the very pins on her pincushion were stuck in after a pattern from which she was careful to allow no aberration; and as for her person, it gave the same idea of perfect, unvarying neatness as the body of a little bird.’

“As I say, Mr. Have-your-own-way is the best husband, and the only one I’d ever promise to obey.” (Priscilla)

The Rector ‘He was not in the least lofty or aristocratic, but simply a merry-eyed, small-featured, gray-haired man, with his chin propped by an ample, many-creased white neckcloth which seemed to predominate over every other point in his person, and somehow to impress its peculiar character on his remarks; so that to have considered his amenities apart from his cravat would have been a severe, and perhaps a dangerous, effort of abstraction.’
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Apr 13, 2019 Roz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, 2019

This was perfectly satisfying in every way.

Eliot once again captured both my imagination and heart is this short, but captivating tale. It didn't take long for me to move into Raveloe and join the 'public' in having all sorts of opinions. But you can read the synopsis above, I don't need to go into details about Marner and his rather miserly, isolated personality. Nor do I need to mention that all that changes with the arrival of something else in his life. What you need to hear are all the othe ...more

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