SILAS MARNER FIRST HALF

First Half Chapter One  (Chapters Characters Second First)

The novel opens with a discussion of the superstitious attitude of provincial English peasants toward the "wandering" tradesmen at the fringes of their society. Such outsiders include weavers. Eliot suggests that villagers in nineteenth-century England prefer simple, direct experience to the mysterious histories and abilities of weavers. Because such men are generally distrusted by rustic society, they have tended to become "aliens": eccentric, disagreeable, lonesome and mysterious. One such weaver-indeed, the pinnacle of such weavers-is Silas Marner.

Marner is a solitary, nearsighted, crooked man with massive brown eyes and a simple pale face who works "in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit." The villagers of Raveloe say he has supernatural powers. Jem Rodney has seen him in a cataleptic fit, solid as stone. Marner also knows herbal arts, which he learned from his mother, and which the villagers associate with the occult. But because his trade is necessary, the villagers tolerate him. Marner has lived outside Raveloe for fifteen years when the novel begins, and in all that time his reputation there has not changed one iota.

Before Marner came to Raveloe, he had been an exceptionally bright and fervent young disciple of an esoteric sect of Puritanism practiced by the parishioners of Lantern Yard. This religious community initially held him in high regard due to his cataleptic fits, which they took to be a sign of his righteousness. At Lantern Yard he was wholly devoted to his best friend, William Dane, and was also betrothed to a young woman, Sarah. William, jealous of Marner, hatched a plot to frame Marner and disgrace him in the community. One night, while Marner was sitting watch at the deathbed of a deacon of Lantern Yard, he was struck with one of his fits. William then stole a pouch of the deacon's money and placed Marner's knife near where the pouch had been.

When Marner awoke from his trance he found the deacon dead. He rushed out into the town to inform the church elders, only to be accused of theft because of the knife. After Marner denied the crime, the members of Lantern Yard drew lots to be certain of Marner's guilt. They drew the lots and, inevitably, Marner was declared guilty. This two-fold condemnation-not only by the treachery of his best friend but also by the community of God-destroyed the young Marner's faith completely. He left the community of Lantern Yard, declaring that "there is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against the innocent."

In the following weeks, unable to reconcile his proclaimed guilt with his self-assurance of innocence, Marner removed himself from society. Word arrived that his fiance, Sarah, had renounced her betrothal to him--and within a month she married William. Marner departed from Lantern Yard in despair.

Chapter Two

After fleeing from Lantern Yard, Marner settled in the village of Raveloe, a place fully unlike Lantern Yard. Whereas Lantern Yard had been austere, white-walled, and filled with serious and devout Puritans, Raveloe is a place of lazy plenty, pints at the local tavern, and carefree religion on Sundays. Chapter One declared it to be a place where bad farmers are rewarded for bad farming.

In response to the treachery of William Dane, Silas Marner instinctively sought out his loom. That habit continued and calcified with his settlement at Raveloe. His first commission upon arriving at Raveloe was to create table-linen for Mrs. Osgood. He worked at his job far into the night, insensibly hoping to finish the linen sooner than she expected.

Mrs. Osgood's paid him with five gold guineas, a sum much higher than any he had earned at the loom in Lantern Yard. Thus a new, powerful force entered Marner's life. Golden money became the evidence of Marner's "fulfilled effort," and in a life without any other society, the faces on his gold and silver coins became his only friends.

Still, in his early days at Raveloe there were opportunities for Marner to become integrated into the community. One day, as he was taking a pair of shoes to be mended, he saw the cobbler's wife, Sally Oates, in a fit of dropsy. Because his mother had died of the same symptoms Sally Oates was displaying, Marner was able to heal her using his knowledge of herbs. The villagers concluded that Marner must be an occult healer of sorts, and they requested that he heal them too. But Marner refused their requests, and they concluded that he did not want to help them.

Still, in the midst of this social and spiritual withering, Marner retained a tiny remnant of affection. One day as he was returning from the well, he stumbled on a stile and dropped his pot, breaking it into three bits. Though he could never use the pot again, he gathered up the pieces and fashioned them together, placing the restored pot in its old place as a memorial. Aside from this one flash of sentiment, Marner's whole existence at Raveloe--until his fifteenth year there--was a cycle of weaving and hoarding his coins.

Analysis

The first chapter of Silas Marner puts into play many of the thematic elements that Eliot develops throughout the novel. First among these is the bearing that Marner's profession as a weaver has on his life, both in the narrative and as allegory. The nature of a weaver's work is solitary and, to an extent, anti-social. Unlike, say, a shop-owner, whose trade is tied up with social life, a weaver spends the overwhelming majority of his working life in front of the loom, disconnected from village life. Eliot emphasizes that the peasantry views weavers' solitude, as well as their mastery of the complex and arcane loom, as a threatening force. Male weavers tend to be viewed as belonging to a quasi-magical "disinherited race" (think of Rumpelstilzchen in the fairy tale, another of the classic weavers in literature).

On another level, Marner's weaving is immediately associated with the creative process. He invites comparison with the "weaver" of the "tale" in question, George Eliot herself. This is an ancient comparison: Arachne the weaver in Greek mythology was said to have expressed her magical gift of storytelling through her magnificent tapestries. The Three Fates are also depicted as weavers, spinning the thread of human lives out of their loom and cutting it to signify death. And like the weaver of Raveloe, a writer is often removed from society, peddling her wares from village to village, possessed of a unique, uncommon, often threatening insight into the workings of the heart and the lives of insiders.

Marner's betrayal at the hand of his best friend recalls the Biblical story of David and Bathsheba. In II Samuel, King David is so enamored of Bathsheba that he causes her husband, Uriah, to fight on the front lines of battle in a hopeless cause. When Uriah is killed as expected, David takes Bathsheba as one of his wives. Similarly, William sets Marner up for his expulsion from the church in order to marry his friend's betrothed, Sarah. Eliot invites this comparison explicitly by comparing the friendship of Silas and William to that of "David and Jonathan." (In the first book of Samuel, Jonathan is an intensely, perhaps blindly devoted friend of David.)

The biblical story of Cain and Abel also parallels the betrayal in that the more righteous brother, Abel, is betrayed by Cain. Marner interprets William's first act of two-facedness toward him as merely an execution of William's "brotherly office." Brothers tend to fight for the patrimony. In the novel, however, Silas Marner (figured as Abel) survives and is the one who goes into exile, not the betrayer William. Marner is the one who becomes an outsider, one of the "remnants of a disinherited race." This upending of the traditional story suggests the injustice of Lantern Yard, where the innocent are banished and the guilty thrive.

Marner's odd affliction is described precisely. His fits are not epileptic, in which the sufferer falls to the floor in a seizure. Rather, Marner suffers from cataleptic fits, in which the body goes completely rigid. He is repeatedly described as remaining completely upright, even as though "made of iron," having temporarily lost his very soul. He is rendered completely insensible: to God (his first fits at Lantern Yard were not accompanied by religious visions, causing some concern among the congregation), to society (Jem Rodney cannot get a hello from him for quite a while when Marner is in a fit), and even to the sensory world in general. These fits serve as a fairly straightforward metaphor for Marner's social and spiritual isolation. His rigid, passive character during the fits underscores the torpor that Silas finds himself in as the novel opens. He is a man lost to despair, inactive except in his arcane craft, without hope of redemption through either God or society.

Chapter Two notes the introduction of gold into Marner's life. His first taste of it at Mrs. Osgood's hands is like an alcoholic's first taste of wine-it is delicious, somehow meaningful, vaguely fulfilling, though Marner would be utterly at a loss if asked why. Ultimately, it is ruinous, because Marner's coins-the weight of them, the fact of them, not the value of them-destroy his ability to value things with more than an empty meaning.

Marner awaits the coins he has yet to receive from his unfinished commissions "as if they had been unborn children." This is a tragic outcome, not merely in that the moldering pile of coins he loves as much as a child cannot possibly love him back, but also in that Marner's love is without purpose. Money doesn't mean anything to him in terms of what it can buy. Rather, he treats it as its own society-as a gathering of friends and family, of familiar faces.

Sadly, Marner's narrow life in Lantern Yard so limited his experience that after the betrayal, he was ill equipped to respond to his misfortune. He makes the symbol of productive work and commodities into something to value in its own right. Even so, all of his attention is not always on money. In his betrayal he returns to the one place where he still exerts control: his loom. As he comes to terms with the likelihood that he will never properly belong to society again, he clings to the proof of his usefulness to society: the loom and the money people pay him for his control of the loom.

By comparing Marner throughout Chapter Two to an insect, Eliot captures the instinctual, unreflective way that Marner finds comfort in the loom and his money. She also thus strengthens the mythic undercurrent of the work. Arachne, the mythological weaver, was turned into a spider (practically an insect) after offending Athena, the patron goddess of weavers, by suggesting that she could weave better than even the gods. The images of Marner as an insect also emphasize his alienation from his own race, his unreflecting and innocent nature, and the seemingly purposeless repetition of his life. Like a spider, Marner weaves to weave and to earn, and he earns simply to earn. Endless contemplation of money, a symbol of good things, is a very low form of life in comparison with contemplating good things themselves.

Chapter Three

Squire Cass is the richest man in Raveloe and the only noble in the village. Godfrey, his older son, is a big, muscular youth and a moral coward. He spends much of his time dwelling on mistakes he has made in the past, hesitating about what to do next, or drinking to momentarily forget his troubles. His brother Dunstan is the polar opposite of his brother in conviction, self-confidence, and swagger. He, too, is the drinking, partying sort, but unlike Godfrey he has absolutely no compunction about his lifestyle. Consequently, Dunstan gets Godfrey to do just about anything he wants, through whatever convenient combination of blackmail and temptation.

Some weeks ago, Dunstan convinced Godfrey to embezzle rent from Mr. Fowler, one of Squire Cass's tenants. Of course, Dunstan soon spent all the money and has no intention of replacing it. Now Squire Cass is threatening to evict Mr. Fowler if the money is not paid by the end of the week. Dunstan's idea for raising the money is to sell Godfrey's horse, Wildfire, which Godfrey resists at first.

But Dunstan has the upper hand, as usual. This is because he knows about Godfrey's secret marriage to a young drunkard named Molly Farren, who lives in Batherly. This marriage, Eliot hints, is a story of "low passion, delusion, and waking from delusion, which needs not be dragged from the privacy of Godfrey's bitter memory." By this we can infer that Godfrey got Molly pregnant, and due to his soft, pensive nature (and maybe because, deep down, Godfrey is actually a decent guy) he was convinced to take Molly for his wife to avoid a scandal on her part-only to risk one in his own town.

Meanwhile, Godfrey is in love with a respectable, beautiful young woman in Raveloe, Miss Nancy Lammeter. Nancy represents all that Godfrey lacks: an orderly household, a pure lifestyle, "industry, sobriety and peace." Godfrey dreads, more than anything else, losing the opportunity for peace that Nancy represents.

Thus, using the leverage of his knowledge, Dunstan convinces Godfrey to sell Wildfire at a hunt the following morning. So that Godfrey can attend a dance with Nancy the next evening, Dunstan will sell the horse, which is an opportunity to show off that he relishes.

Chapter Four

The next morning Dunstan sets off for the hunt. As he passes Marner's house, he hears the loom rattling away and recalls the village gossip that Marner has a great deal of money hidden somewhere. It occurs to Dunstan that Marner might be the solution to Godfrey's financial woes (he never thinks of such problems as his own, always as his brother's). Dunstan continues on to sell his brother's beloved horse anyway, content with the thought that he can later set Godfrey after Marner's money. At the hunt, Dunstan meets Bryce and Keating, two friends. After some bidding, Bryce buys Wildfire for one hundred twenty pounds, to be paid upon delivery of the horse.

Dunstan decides in his triumph to take Wildfire out for one last hunt. He pushes Wildfire far too hard and impales the horse on a hedge-stake. Dunstan escapes the ensuing fall without a scratch. Dunstan walks back toward Raveloe, brandishing his brother's handsome horse whip and hoping desperately that he will not come across anyone for whom he might appear a figure of fun or pity. His mind is fixed on the thought of Marner's gold, and as he comes nearer and nearer to the stone-pits, he decides to forget about sending Godfrey after the miser's money later. He might as well strike up a rapport with Marner tonight, right now, under the pretense of asking to borrow a lantern.

When he sees that Marner is not at home, Dunstan thinks, Why borrow Marner's money when he could just take it? Dunstan finds the loose brick beside Marner's loom and removes the two leather bags filled with Marner's guineas. After replacing the brick, Dunstan rushes out of Marner's cottage and steps out into the darkness of the night, carrying one of Marner's bags in each hand and still managing, with great difficulty, to brandish his brother's whip.

Chapter Five

Marner, it turns out, had just stepped out of his cottage to walk down to the village for a piece of twine he needed to complete a commission. Those who live lives as monotonous as Marner's cannot imagine that anything really bad will happen to them in the course of their routine, so he leaves his door unlocked. Marner reenters his room without noticing anything unusual; the cottage is warm from the fire, with meat hanging on its thread over the fire. He decides to sup with his gold coins heaped on the table before him, like friends come to share his meal.

When Marner finds his gold missing, he at first is spellbound. In a desperate panic he glances around the room, thinking that maybe, for some reason, he placed his coins elsewhere. After believing with all his might that his coins must be somewhere, he finally acquiesces to the irrevocable truth of their absence and lets out "a wild ringing scream" of desolate despair.

His first, instinctive refuge-as in the case of his betrayal by William-is the loom, at which Marner begins working desperately as his only available assurance of reality. While he gathers his thread, Marner gathers his thoughts, and for the first time the notion of a thief comes to him. Because a thief can be caught, Marner clings to this thought avidly. He accuses Jem Rodney in his mind, simply because Jem had spent more time with him than anyone else had. Marner rushes out into the rainy night and makes for the Rainbow, thinking that he will find help there from Raveloe's more important inhabitants.

Analysis

In Chapter Three, the themes are reformulated. No longer, for the moment, is the book about the trials of solitude. Rather, it becomes an account of the problems of society. The Casses, in status and privilege, could not be more different than Silas. Yet the social life of Lantern Yard is refigured in the life of the Casses; this social life, too, can create alienation, perpetuate ignorance, and lead to a decline in moral values.

In the opening pages of Chapter 3, the narrator notes that "It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar favour of Providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and yeomen down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels." Eliot suggests that although the Casses think that they will go on accruing profits and accumulating debts forever, their lifestyle of lazy, unearned plenitude is ultimately doomed. Soon, all of their triumphs and sufferings will become irrelevant in the sweep of history.

Like Marner's, the Casses' lives are filled with artificial pleasures. Marner's happiness rests in his pile of unspent coins; Dunstan's rests in the difficulties he can create for others, especially his brother; Godfrey's rests in an impossible and shallow vision of future happiness with an idealized vision of Nancy. While Marner's existence is extremely solitary, and the Casses' is extremely social, all of their lives are hollow and fleeting.

Dunstan and Godfrey's Cain-and-Abel rivalry now appears more like the pattern of betrayals of Esau by his brother Jacob later in Genesis. That is, Dunstan's jealousy of Godfrey does not lead to a definite act of betrayal-like Cain's betrayal of Abel, or William's betrayal of Silas. Rather, Dunstan spins a web of blackmail that allows for a continual process of betrayal. These examples of brotherly love gone horribly wrong show how Eliot reworks the broad patterns of Biblical morality narratives for the particular deceit-ridden conflicts of her novel's time. The apparently clean "moralism" of Silas Marner consistently covers a more complicated pattern of betrayal, indebtedness and jealousy.

Chapter Four contains more exciting action. It focuses on the corrupt character of Dunstan Cass, proceeding almost completely from his perspective. Eliot explores a mind at once quite aware of itself and yet wholly flawed. Dunstan, who at first seems to be little more than a selfish, spoiled brat, invites the reader to consider serious questions of self-knowledge, deceit and insecurity, as well as the ironic roles of fate and luck in people's lives.

First of all, Eliot's style in the chapter captures Dunstan's own inner narrative. His phrases and beliefs bleed into the narrator's authoritative voice. For instance, early in Chapter 4 Eliot writes: "Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure they would be-he was such a lucky fellow." Dunstan is so pleased with himself, Eliot suggests, that even the mere appearance of his two bartering partners causes a thrill of self-satisfaction. The same smugness can be detected in Dunstan's style of bartering. Dunstan does not care whether anyone knows he is lying or not-his lying is "grandly independent of utility"-so long as he retains the pleasure of lying. Nothing seems to bother Dunstan, so long as he remains in his position of power-so long, in other words, as it is up to him to lie and strut and barter and pity others, not to be pitied and made fun of himself.

Dunstan's position of power, however, is quite superficial, except in his persuasive power over his brother. The riding whip he brandishes so flamboyantly symbolizes this superficiality. Dunstan's fine, gold-handled whip is actually his brother's, with "Godfrey Cass" even engraved on the handle. At the end of Chapter 4, when he is toting away Marner's two heavy bags of gold, Dunstan remembers to keep one hand around the whip handle-both to retain the status that the fine whip lends his character, and to keep Godfrey's name hidden. Through all of this posing, Dunstan knows that he himself has little social power as the second-born son. Godfrey has the true power, even though he has all but squandered his birthright over Molly Farren. Yet, Dunstan wields Godfrey's name and whip as though the status they bestow is rightfully his-all the while knowing that he is deceiving the world, if not also himself. This is the spiral of the weak man: Dunstan's sense of his own inadequacy reinforces his need to hide his inadequacy and ironically focuses his attention on the very thing he does not want to acknowledge.

Dunstan's "hiding" of the gold inscription on his brother's whip reflects Marner's hiding away of his own gold. Both acts defy would-be robbers, and both are ultimately empty attempts to short circuit the world of human values and social status. Both Marner and Dunstan prefer instead to dwell on proxies for true stability-Marner fondles his coins, and Dunstan appropriates his brother's title and possessions.

To this point, Dunstan has been an exceptionally "lucky" man, it seems. Everything tends to go according to his plan-or at least in a way that allows Dunstan to improvise, even if others may suffer (and, from Dunstan's sadistic perspective, all the better if they do). This antagonistic luck-orchestrating it against-stands in sharp contrast to the kind of luck that increases blessings through the natural course of things, such as Eppie's miraculous arrival into Marner's life.

Dunstan's easy manipulation of the truth, such as when he pretends he does not actually want to sell the horse, invites a comparison between his fictionalizing and Eliot's. Both he and the author invent their own versions of reality. They are fond of being storytellers, loving to play with fate, language, and understanding. They both toy with the happiness of the characters in the novel. After all, the misfortunes of Marner and Godfrey and the whole lot are ultimately the result of Eliot's plot choices.

Chapter Five returns to the perspective of Silas Marner in the traumatic experience of having lost his gold. This loss is like his previous bout of desolation after betrayal by William. Indeed Marner's despair at this new loss is even more violent. He again turns instinctively to his loom for meaning, solice, and control. And he again sets off on a desperate appeal to his community to help him in his anguish. This appeal will not cause further alienation but will turn out differently.

The themes that have become most associated with Marner-his insect-like nature, his nearsightedness, the "hard isolation" of his love-are present again in Chapter Five. Eliot expresses the deep monotony of his life: his activity at the loom "confirmed more and more the monotonous craving for its monotonous response." Marner is caught, fittingly enough for a weaver, in a perpetual, seemingly eternal, self-propelling web. In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope maintained the status quo by endlessly weaving and unweaving the same material. The more Marner clings to his loom and his gold for stability, the more he is dependent upon those things-and only those things-for his sanity. Although Marner does not go mad at the loss of his gold (compare the loss of Dr. Manette's shoemaking habit in Tale of Two Cities--for both of them the habit can be broken), his initial desperation at not finding the gold is akin to madness. Marner loses, to a great extent, his sense of reality when he loses his gold, but the remnant of community feeling he has retained leads him to the tavern for help.

Psychoanalytic critics of the novel see sexual imagery in Marner's panic at having lost his gold: "The sight of the empty hole made [Marner's] heart leap violently.... He passed his trembling hand all about the hole ... then he held the candle in the hole and examined it curiously, trembling more and more. At last he shook so violently that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head, trying to steady himself, that he might think." Inserting the candle into the hole can serve as more than an attempt to bring light to a dark place;it could be a (phallic) reassertion of his power after the loss of the one thing that gave him worth. Besides, if the catharsis of accepting his lost gold is a symbol of conception, we might then note that Marner's lost spread of gold is ultimately restored in the form of a golden-haired child. (Readers should beware of taking this kind of reading too far.)

Marner not only starts to restore his social ties at this moment; he also begins to restore his spiritual understanding. He has the idea that a thief has taken the gold (which means that other villagers could help him), and he also has the idea that a power higher than that of a human being may be responsible for his loss: "Was it a cruel power that no hands could reach which had delighted in making him a second time desolate?" This "vaguer dread" does not seem very inspiring in the context of Chapter Five, yet this reintroduction of the possibility of a greater power, even a malevolent one, represents Marner's first necessary step toward a state of religious redemption. Thus the seeds of Marner's double rescue-the restoration of his faith and of his humanity-are planted just as his idolatrous worship of gold is frustrated.

Chapter Six

At the Rainbow tavern, while the personages of Raveloe attend Mrs. Osgood's dance, some of the less lofty villagers drink and talk. Among these is the landlord, Mr. Snell, whose outlook on most matters is neutral, and whose position in most arguments is that of a mediator, befitting one who needs to sell drinks to men of all walks of life. The skeptical farrier, Mr. Dowlas, cannot enter a conversation without contradicting somebody. Mr. Ben Winthrop, a large and jolly wheelwright who leads the church choir on Sundays, and Mr. Macey, an old man who is full of anecdotes of a Raveloe now mostly past, are two of the other principals in a series of arguments and stories.

In order to distract the company from a pointless argument going on between Mr. Dowlas and the village butcher about a shorthorn cow, Mr. Snell asks Mr. Macey to talk about the Lammeters, the history of whom he knows better than almost anyone. Despite occasional interruptions, Mr. Macey tells about the Lammeters' father arriving in Raveloe from the north, buying the Warrens, and settling into the community. Mr. Macey recalls a peculiar happening at the wedding of Mr. Lammeter and Miss Osgood: when the old rector, Mr. Drumlow, came to the point of pronouncing Mr. Lammeter and Miss Osgood "man and wife," he made a ridiculous mistake. He said, "Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded wife" to Miss Osgood, and, "Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded husband" to Mr. Lammeter. Neither the rector nor the marrying couple caught the error, and they were joined in matrimony in this backward way.

Mr. Macey, with a little further prompting, embarks on the story of the Warrens, Mr. Lammeter's property. The previous owner of the Warrens had been Mr. Cliff, who built an enormous stable to house his horses. After the death of his son, Mr. Cliff spent long nights in the stable, cracking his whip, and many folks of Raveloe believe that his ghost now haunts the stables.

At this mention of haunting Mr. Dowlas sneers. He adamantly refuses to believe in ghosts and takes up bets that he could stay a night at the stable without seeing a ghost. His superstitious company says that of course he would see no ghosts, because he does not believe in them. The chapter ends with Mr. Macey declaring ironically, "As if ghosts would want to be believed in by anyone so ignorant!"

Chapter Seven

When pale, cold, shrunken Silas Marner is suddenly seen standing in the warm light of the Rainbow, the folks at the bar, the skeptical Mr. Dowlas included, at first mistake him for a ghost himself. For a few moments, while Marner catches his breath, no one says a thing, until finally the landlord speaks up and asks Marner in a more or less friendly way what his business at the Rainbow may be.

Marner gasps that he has been robbed and, seeing Jem Rodney among the company, immediately accuses him of the crime. Jem denies the charge, and the landlord prevails upon Marner to tell them his whole tale. Marner, seated uncharacteristically in the middle of a circle of interested faces, persuades the villagers by the "convincing simplicity of his distress" that he is in fact telling the truth: he indeed has been robbed. The landlord tells Marner that Jem Rodney is not the culprit, since he has been sitting with them all evening. Marner apologizes to Jem.

Mr. Dowlas begins to organize a party to help Marner, saying that because Marner's vision is so poor they ought to have another going-over of the scene of the crime with Mr. Kench, the constable. Mr. Dowlas, in a roundabout way, volunteers himself as one who might accompany Marner to Kench's, and the landlord consents to be another of that party.

Chapter Eight

As Marner and his impromptu posse begin their investigation, we return to Godfrey Cass, who is just returning from Mrs. Osgood's birthday party dance, his thoughts swimming with visions of Nancy Lammeter. He is so distracted with his love for Nancy and his disgust at himself that he does not notice Dunstan's absence, nor does he give a thought to the outcome of the Wildfire/Dunstan/Mr. Fowler affair.

The next morning, however, Godfrey is swept up, like the rest of the village, by the exciting news about the robbery at Marner's place. The investigation the night before had turned up one piece of evidence, a tinder-box, which the villagers assume to be the thief's. Mr. Snell recalls that a mysterious pedlar, who had been in the region recently, had carried a tinder-box to light his pipe when he had stopped in at the Rainbow for a drink. This stranger is recalled as a swarthy, foreign-looking fellow, "bod[ing] little honesty" in the prejudiced imaginations of the villagers. Only Godfrey Cass voices an opinion that the pedlar was not so evil-looking a creature as the village has made him out to be--but his opinion is dismissed as a youthful speculation. The elders of the village are fairly well convinced of the pedlar's guilt.

Several days pass in the course of the investigation, and meanwhile Godfrey has grown anxious about the outcome of Dunstan's attempt to sell Wildfire. Bryce stops by to tell Godfrey about Wildfire's impalement, and Godfrey feels growing within him the need to finally come clean before his father about the whole affair: not just the Wildfire incident, but also about his secret marriage to Molly. In the morning light, however, Godfrey's resolution fails him and he is once again overwhelmed by the thought of unfavorable consequences. He decides to approach his father about Dunstan's absence and Wildfire's death, but to mitigate Dunstan's fault as much as possible so that, for the time being at least, his marriage to Molly can remain a secret.

Analysis

Chapter 6 is probably the most famous chapter of Silas Marner, which may be surprising given that it probably contributes the least to the plot. It was often singled out for praise at the time of its publication, and it has continued to stand as supremely representative of George Eliot's unique artistry. After two of the most exciting chapters of the novel, Chapter 6 is a deliberate and radical change of tone, a hinge of sorts into the next major phase of the novel: Marner's reintegration into human life.

Chapter 6 does not provide particular information, but rather it gives a rich presentation of the character of the villagers, and thereby of the village. The effect is really quite funny, once readers accustom themselves to their dialect. There is no denying that Eliot has an incredible ability to make her "lower class" characters distinctively, almost satirically so, fully human and complicated. Perhaps only William Shakespeare is Eliot's equal in this delicate art of depicting people of the lower classes.

The major structural function of Chapter 6 is to provide a portrait of the "settled" villagers of Raveloe. We have already had a taste, from the very first words of the book, of the character of the wandering tradesmen, like Marner, who live lives of alienation and solitude. Now we see the rest of the village-the wheelwright, the farrier, the landlord of the tavern, the tailor, the butcher, and so on. These villagers ply their trades within the village proper, not out on the outskirts like Marner, or wandering from place to place like a peddler. They are the human hearts of village life (in addition to the higher-up villagers, those at Mrs. Osgood's party like Squire Cass, Mr. Crackenthorp the rector and Mr. Lammeter, the heads of Raveloe). Indeed, the speakers' professions are so central to their characters that for a good part of the chapter they are not referred to by name but as "the butcher," "the wheelwright," "the landlord," and so on.

Whereas Chapter 3 depicts the Squire and his sons as ultimately unaware of the instability of their position, which is soon to render them and those like them broke and obsolete, Chapter 6 shows that the low-status tradesmen of the village consciously historicize themselves. The tradesmen are very interested in the history of their own village and share collective memories rather than tales of leadership and power. The key to their collective memories is Mr. Macey, the eldest among them, who has been present for at least two generations and who retells the stories he recalls with an almost ritual regularity. These are stories of hauntings, of backwards marriages, of nature upended. They cast a spectral sheen on the villagers' lives.

Such stories also place the village authority in question. They are not stories about other working-class folk; the stories compromise the great families-the Lammeters-or the families that aspired to be great and fell short-the Cliffs. The villagers seem to realize that the folks in power are not destined to stay in power forever, that they too are subject to the passage of time, even if the legend of Mr. Cliff suggests that they keep in their places and not try to act like gentlemen themselves.

But village life is as much common sense as superstition, and the very same bunch who tremble at the thought of Mr. Lammeter's haunted stable also manage some cutting bits of horse sense. One particularly representative instance occurs when Mr. Macey says to Tookey, the local punching-bag, "There's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself." This epigram on self-knowledge seems quite astute, and it could be applied to many of the book's characters, especially the Casses. The clear irony in this case is that Mr. Macey himself has a very lofty self-opinion, so pleased at his own wit and intellect, while he is really a bit of a windbag.

Chapter 7 associates Marner again strongly with death, especially in his appearance out of the rain. Jem, upon seeing Marner says, "He's been robbed, and murdered too, for what I know." He is also compared to an insect again, when Dowlas chides him for his nearsightedness. These and other instances of the old prejudice about Marner is ghostly gradually give way, before the sincerity of his distress, to a revised opinion of the man: Marner is not dead after all, nor is he an insect, but he is an unfortunate, lonely soul. This small start is the beginning of a new view of Marner in the village. Marner initiated it by seeking help at the tavern. This is "the beginning of a growth" within him, Eliot writes. This is the re-growth, perhaps, of his human soul, though he has a long way still to go.

Chapter 7 thus sets in motion a tentative reentry of Marner into society. The experience of seeking the help of others in the village is entirely novel to him, and although the effect of "feeling the presence of faces and voices" and "sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own" is not immediately apparent to Marner, it has its effect.

Eliot also continues the ironic strain of Chapter 6, wryly commenting on the villagers' interpretations of Marner's distress. For example, when Mr. Macey and the rest propose that a supernatural fiend is responsible for stealing Marner's treasure, Eliot writes, "Why this preternatural felon should be obliged to wait till the door was left unlocked, was a question which did not present itself." She also very delicately renders Mr. Dowlas's volunteering of himself as a deputy, which he clearly wants to be, if only for the authority such a position will grant him, but which he manages while pretending that he is being put upon to be deputized.

Perhaps the most signifcant interpretation of Marner's visit to the Rainbow, though, is that Marner has come to the right place in coming to the Rainbow to find his gold. The pun here is that Marner appears not so much as a ghost as a shrunken, somewhat supernatural leprechaun. He does not find his gold here, although he takes the first step in realizing his new gold: a renewed faith and humanity.

Chapter 8 serves the dual function of continuing the entanglement of Marner's and Raveloe's affairs, shown in the general interest in the investigation, and of reintroducing us to the doings of the Casses, who have been absent from the novel for quite a while. It is also, like Chapter 4 for Dunstan, a portrait of Godfrey's character at a moment of crisis.

Godfrey's character is hardly malicious like Dunstan's. He shows flashes of wisdom and honesty, as in his quiet assertion that the pedlar everyone blames for the theft of Marner's gold is not such an evil-looking fellow as people have said. Unlike his brother, who delights in telling falsehoods even when everyone knows they are false, Godfrey hates to lie. Godfrey's main problem is that he is a coward. Although he hates his deception, he figures that his current misery, to which he has grown much accustomed, is better than the unknown consequences of coming clean.

But secret stashes-whether they involve a wife in Batherly or bags of gold in a hole in the floor-are not good for the soul. Godfrey, like Marner, is in need of redemption. Their two fates are thus tied together thematically, and they will soon be even more closely tied.

As for the detective story emerging in the village, Eliot depicts the villagers as naturally inclined to spread the blame for any crime outside the village proper. Their collective imagination, ignited, fittingly, by the tinder-box, naturally creates an unnamed, swarthy, foreign pedlar as the interloper who disturbed their peace. Until his latest misfortune, at least, Marner and the pedlar were considered to be of the same "race"-being wanderers, outsiders. Marner too was demonized in the general opinion, and some of the village still holds to the opinion that he is diabolical, either faking his robbery or in trouble with some otherworldly power come to take his gold away.

But Marner has now joined somewhat in the throng blaming an utterly guiltless pedlar for the robbery of his hoard. This is an ambivalent fact: it shows Marner's integration into the "us" rather than the "them," while at the same time it suggests that such an integration is possible largely through the demonization of "someone else"-the ubiquitous "other." Marner is no longer, perhaps, an outsider. He's merely a local oddity who has been "mushed," misused by fate. But the poor innocent pedlar instantly fills the hole Marner left in the local imagination. Along these same lines, it is not hard to imagine that if someone else's stash had been stolen, poor harmless Silas Marner immediately would have been the villagers' natural suspect.

Chapter Nine

There is a confrontation between Godfrey and his father, the Squire. True to his decision at the close of Chapter 8, Godfrey decides to forgo the opportunity to confess his secret marriage, instead electing to tell his father merely about the death of Wildfire and the innocence of Mr. Fowler.

Godfrey approaches his father at breakfast, much to the surprise of the Squire, who is used to eating alone in the mornings, and he tells the Squire that there has been "a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire." Godfrey explains about the horse and says that Bob Fowler has paid the one hundred pounds, which Godfrey neglected to give straight away to the Squire at Dunstan's bidding.

The Squire turns purple at this conspiracy. In his anger he threatens to disown the whole lot of his children. He asks why Godfrey should give the money to Dunstan without some reason at the bottom of it, and he makes a very close guess about what exactly is going on, saying, "You've been up to some trick, and you've been bribing [Dunstan] not to tell." Godfrey, desperate to keep his dirty secret hidden, reassures his father that it was a personal matter.

The smoke begins to settle, and Squire Cass, still blustering a bit, turns the conversation toward Godfrey's shortcomings (he has quite given up on Dunstan). He asks Godfrey why he has been hesitating in taking Nancy for his wife. The Squire, much to Godfrey's chagrin, suggests that he himself will approach Mr. Lammeter about the prospect of their children getting married.

Godfrey entrusts his fate to chance, hoping against hope that by some miracle he will be able to rid himself of all his burdens and gain all that he desires in one fell swoop. Eliot expands upon Godfrey's notion of chance, calling "Favourable Chance" the "god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in." Godfrey ought to be careful for what he wishes.

Chapter Ten

The excitement of the theft of Marner's gold has dwindled. The pedlar has not been found, and though conversation continues apace about the robbery, it occurs sleepily. It occurs to no one to connect the disappearance of the gold and that of Dunstan. Not even his brother suspects him, since he has been known to run off in the past, and the Wildfire affair is taken as ample motivation for him to have done just that.

While his misfortune thus provides the town with fodder for conversation, Marner himself has slipped into an inexpressibly deep depression. Although his was a dreary existence before, at least with his hoard he had something on which to focus his energies, some evidence of his importance to the world. Without his gold, he is left hollow and desolate, fulfilled only by a low, moaning grief.

Still, Marner has changed in the eyes of his fellow villagers. He is no longer considered a diabolical master of the unknown art of the loom. He is seen as rather stupid but also humanly unfortunate, too dull to take care of himself. The villagers pity him somewhat, visiting and bringing gifts. Mr. Macey, in his attempt to cheer Marner up, merely manages to insinuate that it is obvious that Marner is too weak and frightened himself to be suspected of anything like deception. This attempt at kindness falls upon Marner "as sunshine falls upon the wretched."

Another visitor to Marner, Mrs. Winthrop, proves to be a truly conscientious soul. She visits on Christmas Day with her son, Aaron, and a gift of lard-cakes. Mrs. Winthrop says that Marner really ought not be working on a Sunday, but that he should come to church instead for the Christmas service, or at least come into town to the bakehus to prepare something hot to eat on Sundays. While Marner appreciates her good faith, he is just about completely indifferent to her theology. Marner does not recognize Mrs. Winthrop's religion as akin to that of his own past. After Aaron sings a verse of "God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen," Mrs. Winthrop, seeing perhaps the futility of her visit, gets ready to leave, mentioning to Marner meanwhile that he should not count the loss of his money as so awful. After Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron have gone, Marner is relieved to be able to return to his weaving and his moaning, as desolate as ever.

Meanwhile, there is a to be massive dance at the Red House for all the society of Raveloe and Tarley. The chapter closes with preparations in full swing for this coming party. Godfrey is again in torment: Dunstan's disappearance is a source of joy for Godfrey, on the one hand, because he can spend the coming New Year's dance admiring Nancy. Yet anxiety reminds him that soon his reckoning will have to come, for Molly is in need of money, and she is not likely to remain quiet much longer.

Chapter Eleven

Nancy Lammeter arrives at the Red House New Year's Dance looking beautiful as always, and after an awkward greeting with Godfrey, she makes her way into the ladies' dressing room. There she finds the two Miss Gunns, visitors from Lytherly who are dressed in the height of fashion. Nancy converses with her aunt, Mrs. Osgood, with whom she has a special though formal bond. Nancy's sister, Priscilla, enters and begins chatting. Both she and Nancy are wearing the same gown, a sisterly idea of Nancy's that, needless to say, accentuates the difference in beauty of the two sisters. Still, they get along fine, and Priscilla, blunt as ever, greets the Miss Gunns by saying, more or less, that "we homely girls have our advantages too." The shallow, prim Miss Gunns are much offended--and Priscilla couldn't care less. She continues to offer her strong opinions while they finish dressing, speaking on men and marriage. She likes to "see the men mastered," and as for marriage, she says that "Mr. Have-your-way is the best husband."

The dinner preceding the dance begins. Nancy is seated between Godfrey and Mr. Crackenthorp. Conversation is merry and generous; Dr. Kimble and the Squire trade jokes and laughs. Much to Godfrey's dread, the Squire makes extravagant compliments about Nancy's appearance. Godfrey is racked with panic lest the conversation turn too directly to marriage. The Squire secures Godfrey the first dance with Nancy who, though quite upset at Godfrey's treatment of her in the past, does not say no.

The dance begins. The rector, the Squire, Mr. Lammeter and of course Godfrey and Nancy take a turn on the floor. Mr. Macey and Ben Winthrop watch the dancing while they share a drink. Mr. Macey finds fault with just about everyone, though Nancy escapes his censure. Meanwhile, Nancy has experienced a minor wardrobe malfunction on the dance floor. She asks Godfrey's help in escorting her, and they take this opportunity to have it out a little bit: Nancy makes bitter cracks about his pleasure-filled life, and Godfrey makes solemn statements that no pleasure means so much to him as her company. Their rapport ends with the coming of Priscilla to Nancy's aid. Godfrey turns aglow at the thought that Nancy must still have feelings for him.

Analysis

Chapter 9 is a continuation, in a sense, of the last half of Chapter 8. It develops our understanding of Godfrey's moral cowardice while also giving us, indirectly, an account of how his character came to be formed. Godfrey has lived in the Red House his whole life without maternal guidance. His mother died before he knew her, and although this fact has been mentioned before, here we see for the first time just what this absence has rendered. There are no courtesies in conversation, no shared meal times. The Squire is wholly absorbed in his own life and his own petty grievances. His appearance is slovenly and disgusting, made more so by his haughty comportment. He treats his children more like tenants than like family, to be dismissed or ordered about or evicted. All of this, Eliot suggests, comes from lacking a nurturing mother figure.

In this context it is very easy to see what Nancy Lammeter means to Godfrey. He sees her as a surrogate mother. She would bring him an orderly life, smiles, pleasant conversation, a sense of his own worth. So it is clear what is at stake for Godfrey if he should lose his chance at Nancy: he would lose his hope of a functional family. Certainly, for all his weaknesses, the reader must feel that Godfrey deserves such a family. Alas, it is almost impossible for him to expect such a happy ending at this point in the novel.

The Squire, for his part, is equally responsible for Godfrey's miserable character. He is utterly unaware of his own foolishness, subscribing instead to the belief that folly is a monopoly of the young. Others share this opinion. It is cited, for instance, in dismissing Godfrey's claim that the mysterious pedlar was not an evil man-a thoroughly reasonable claim. Eliot ironically suggests, then, that folly is at least as much the property of the old as the young. Indeed, Godfrey is able to manipulate the prejudice against a youngster's folly later in the chapter, when he tells his father that the Bob Fowler affair was a private, foolish matter of youth between himself and Dunstan. It is not so foolish to exploit the appearance of folly, while it is much more foolish to swallow such a line, as the Squire does.

Eliot closes Chapter 9 with a kind of mini-essay on Favourable Chance. The capitalization of the words is itself a mockery, suggesting that folks in Godfrey's extreme position look upon even the random pattern of luck with abstract awe. Dunstan seems to have all the luck without ever asking for it, while Godfrey, who does nothing but pray for luck all day, never gets it. Thus Dunstan has already been associated with Favourable Chance. As the novel develops, we see more and more how akin Dunstan and Chance really are. They both seem immune to injury or repercussion. As Godfrey says of Dunstan in Chapter 8: "He'll never be hurt-he's made to hurt other people." The same might be said of Chance. And Godfrey, unable to stand for his own life, entrusts his future happiness to both of those slippery entities, Chance and Dunstan. It becomes clear that Chance, for those in Godfrey's shoes, is not to be trusted.

Chapter 10 depicts, in the extremely lovely prose of a narrative poem, the whole panorama of Raveloe at Christmastime, from Marner's lonely cottage to the preparations for the bustling Red House New Year's Eve party. And while the chapter pivots around Marner's change in the eyes of the villagers, it ultimately emphasizes Marner's continued distance from Raveloe life. After all, it was not merely William's betrayal many years ago that made Marner so unfit to be a part of society; it was also his having grown up in a strict Puritan religious community, with strange and unique customs. While the robbery provided Marner with an opportunity to reenter society, his foreignness remains obvious and, for the moment, insurmountable.

This foreignness is clear in the visits by Mr. Macey and Mrs. Winthrop. Mr. Macey expressly visits Marner to let him know that he has changed his mind about the reclusive weaver and that Marner is not so bad after all. Yet, Macey's visit is as much an indication of the old man's high opinion of himself as it is of any changed opinion about Marner. The reason for this change of opinion is hardly flattering. Macey squarely asserts that Marner is too simple to invent anything like the story of his own tragedy. He says that Marner is not capable of "making out a tale"--that is, of telling a lie--unwittingly making a pun on the weaver's trade ("making tales" in the old sense of "weaving linens"). Marner is figured as a tale-maker who cannot make a tale.

Mrs. Winthrop's visit, though plagued by some of the same cultural problems as Marner's visit with Macey, is altogether more amiable. While Marner's upbringing in Lantern Yard precludes him from understanding the religious significance of the Sunday bells (there were no bells in Lantern Yard) or the Christmas carol (only psalms were sung in Lantern Yard) or the importance of going to church (service was held in chapel), there is still, Eliot suggests, a bond of sorts between Marner and Mrs. Winthrop. Marner's dull, half-despairing need for outside help is the first step toward redemption. This cautious beginning of a return to faith is best symbolized in the lard-cakes that Mrs. Winthrop brings Marner, which are stamped with the Greek abbreviation for Christ's name. Marner thus digests a cake representing Jesus Christ. This is a kind of new communion, a taking of the sacrament on Christmas Day. Combined with little Aaron's Christmas hymn and Mrs. Winthrop's sermon, the visit amounts to a church service right in Marner's cottage. So although Eliot keeps Marner and his visitors ignorant of the symbolic significance of the visit, she carefully shows the sacredness of the occasion. Marner has already begun his return to the community of faith, although he does not yet know it.

The visits of Mr. Macey and Mrs. Winthrop have a strong resonance with the Biblical book of Job. God teaches Satan a lesson about righteousness and faith after Job, a virtuous man, suffers great and worsening miseries until he is left sitting alone, covered in sores, on a dung heap. Several of his friends visit him there to offer awkward consolation and advice, but Job retains his faith. Similarly, Marner is an honest, good Christian who has everything he believes in taken from him by a deceiver. He is reduced to pitying himself as though he were Job, and in this state he is visited and consoled. Both the book of Job and Silas Marner, invite contemplation of the mysteries of fate and divine justice.

In Chapter 11, the dance at the Red House shows the village of Raveloe in its best light. Good humor and generosity abound. The grand old manor teems with femininity and wit and dancing. This picture contrasts with our last view of the Red House, when Godfrey had his confrontation with the Squire. Then there had been no evidence of nurturing, no hint of generosity or understanding. The New Year truly has a restorative function in Raveloe: "This was as it should be ... and the charter of Raveloe seemed to be renewed by the ceremony." Even so, the dance is a special occasion, expressing themes of costume and superficial performance as much as it points toward lasting values. Once the women have left the Red House, it will return to the bachelor's kingdom it has become, and the Squire will resume his self-important idleness. For Godfrey, especially, the dance is a time of escape, not affirmation.

Chapter 11 also uses a distinct tone. Readers might think of Jane Austen as Eliot observes the manners of rural society with a deft wit. The introduction of Priscilla Cass uncovers the hypocrisy and pettiness of the assembled rich folk. Priscilla provides something of a feminist point of view, thanking her stars that there are pretty women like her sister, Nancy, to keep the damned men away from her. She swears she will never have a master for a husband, and she delights in seeing men overpowered by women. Her sincerity here is unclear, but it may seem refreshing to the other women to see such disobedience. Eliot's other works, which are generally more realistic in tone and plot, contain a great deal more of this perspective, especially The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch.

Also noteworthy in Chapter 11 is the clarity of class lines in the village. Although it seems that a fairly large subset of villagers is welcome at the Red House dance, only the most powerful families-the Lammeters, the Osgoods, the Casses, the Kimbles, the Crackenthorps-and their guests seem to be full members of the festivities. Mr. Macey and Ben Winthrop, being "privileged" members of the village, are nevertheless invited to sit on long benches aside the dance hall, being relegated to the position of observing the pleasures of their betters.

Chapter Twelve

While Godfrey Cass carries on his tentative flirtation with Nancy, his wife, Molly Farren, slowly makes her way towards the Red House, walking through the snow in rags with their baby girl in her arms. Molly has been planning for a long time to surprise Godfrey and the assembled society on the night of the Red House dance with the sight of their child. Molly is an opium addict, and that drug has taken nearly all her hope away. Her only remaining spark of love is reserved for her sleeping child, whom she cradles as she walks.

Molly set out from her town early in the morning with vengeance foremost in her mind, but a snowstorm caused her to take cover for much of the day, so she lost a lot of time. Unused to the vicinity of Raveloe, Molly does not realize how close she is to the dance. When she is near the stone-pit, a need for comfort grips her, and she removes from her rags a vial of laudanum. She hesitates for a moment at the thought of her child, then drinks the vial and slips into an opium stupor, wanting nothing more than to lie down and sleep. As she slips into a dream, unaware of the cold that is killing her, her child wakes up.

The toddler sees a brightness in the distance and moves toward it, curious. She comes to Silas Marner's cottage, which is standing with a full fire and the door wide open, and she continues right up to the warm hearth, dragging her ragged bonnet behind her. The weaver has set a coat in front of the fire to dry, and the baby, who is accustomed to finding her own way even at her young age, takes it for a blanket, wraps herself within it and falls asleep.

Silas Marner, meanwhile, stands in a cataleptic fit by the door. When he awakes, he notices that the fire has gone somewhat cold. As he stoops to rekindle the flame, his myopic eyes see a patch of gold on the hearth in front of him. Thrilled, he reaches down to touch his returned gold, but instead of the hardness of metal he feels the softness of a baby's curls. He looks closer and sees that it is not gold on his hearth, but a baby child.

He first thinks about the baby sister whom he lost when a youth in Lantern Yard, and with this thought a flood of memory and emotion returns to him for the first time since he came to Raveloe. Tenderness mounts within him as the child awakes, crying softly for "mammy." Marner comforts and feeds the child, realizing only after a while that the child came in from the snow. Marner follows her footprints out away from his door and comes to a huddled body in the snow.

Chapter Thirteen

The festivities at the Red House come to a sudden halt with the dreadful appearance of Silas Marner, who has slipped in through the servant's entrance carrying a baby. Although Godfrey has not seen the baby girl for some months, he is sure that the child is his. The Squire rudely asks Marner what business he has barging in on them, and Marner says that there is need for a doctor near his cabin. He has found a body.

Dr. Kimble, much irritated at the interruption, readies himself to go out. When Mrs. Kimble moves to relieve Marner of the child, Marner resists, saying he will never part from the child until someone with a better right to her comes along and asserts a claim. The fierceness of his tie to the child surprises everyone, including Marner himself.

Godfrey decides that the best way to deal with the agony of suspense is to go see the body. He volunteers to fetch Mrs. Winthrop, who is always first on everyone's mind in such circumstances, and rushes out in a panic without changing out of his dancing shoes. By the time he and Mrs. Winthrop arrive at the stone-pit, the doctor has already pronounced Molly dead.

Godfrey gives Marner a half-crown to buy the toddler some new clothes and returns to the dance. Privately, Godfrey resolves to take this incredible change of fortune as a sign that he is worthy of a life with Nancy after all, and he vows to do what he can to aid in the welfare of his child, even as he passes for childless.

Chapter Fourteen

Molly Farrell is given a pauper's burial in Raveloe. She was such an unfortunate soul that no one much pays attention to her passing, let alone investigates the circumstances of her passing through Raveloe. Godfrey is thus, due to the town's laxity in such matters, free from scrutiny.

The villagers are eager to give Marner advice about raising his foundling child, but Marner solicits help only from Mrs. Dolly Winthrop, who offers her experience "without any show of bustling instruction." She gives Marner her son Aaron's old baby clothes and teaches Marner how to wash and dress the child. Dolly also helps Marner consider the question of how he is going to watch after the child, since he spends most of the day weaving. Marner decides the best way would be to tie a long piece of linen around her waist and connect it to the leg of his loom.

On Dolly's advice, Marner agrees to have his child baptized in the Raveloe church. He chooses his mother's name, Hephzibah, which was also the name of his sister, and when Dolly suggests that the name doesn't seem Christian, Marner tells her the name is Biblical. They can use the nickname Eppie anyway.

With Eppie in his life Marner returns to his mother's art of herbs, exploring the woods and fields with Eppie. His love for the child grows vast and articulate. As Eppie grows older (around the age of three), she begins to develop a taste for mischief, so Dolly warns Marner that will have to learn how to punish Eppie. After one half-hearted attempt to punish Eppie after she runs away, Marner decides to raise his child without punishment.

Indeed, Marner loves Eppie completely. He thinks of everything in relation to her, and he wants nothing but the best for her life. He knows full well that her appearance in his life means redemption, and that for all that she owes him, he owes her the rescue of his very soul.

Chapter Fifteen

Godfrey Cass watches Marner raise Eppie with special attention, of course. He is glad that his child is being cared for, but he realizes that to satisfy his conscience he will have to find discreet ways to provide for her, fulfilling his fatherly duty.

The death of Godfrey's wife and the introduction of Marner as Eppie's caretaker has made Godfrey feel "like a man of firmness." Dunstan, still missing, has been given up entirely. Godfrey does not worry about the shadowy power of his brother. He envisions himself as a married man-to Nancy, of course-playing with the children around his own hearth.

Analysis

The novel's themes begin to reach fulfillment in Chapter 12, the first appearance of the bond between Marner and the child who is the key to his redemption. The chapter opens with the most miserable character in the novel, Molly Farren. Her addiction is depicted in surprisingly frank terms, as a need that asserts itself despite her instinctual love for her child.

Chapter 12 also provides a first pass at the child's character. She is attracted to light, motion and life. She sees Marner's light and comes toward it not because she wants to come in out of the cold, but because "That bright living thing must be caught." She embodies the spirit of animation and change, whereas Marner embodies that of death and monotony. Eppie is much like the fire she is drawn to-fiery, shifting, alive, warm. And her salubrious effect on Marner is immediate, sparking within him the restorative forces of love, faith, and sweet memories. He is instantly tender toward the girl, he finally recalls the feeling of trusting a power greater than himself, and he remembers his lost sister, which triggers a return to the world of meaning he left behind in Lantern Yard.

Eppie's arrival in Marner's life is remarkably similar to Dunstan's, even as the effect of her arrival is the exact opposite. Dunstan, too, was drawn to the light, enjoyed the warmth of Marner's fire, and came in unannounced during the very brief moment when such an arrival was possible. Marner's opinion of the whole series of events, that he does not know how the gold left or how the child arrived, underlines the odd echo of the two trespasses. Eppie's golden hair is the new form of his lost gold. The new gold is soft and yielding, whereas his gold was hard and cold. This gold is living and growing whereas his lost gold was inert.

Marner's nearsightedness blossoms as a major theme in this chapter as well. In earlier chapters, it stood for the narrowness of his life, his lack of a broader vista of meaning and purpose. But in this chapter Marner's nearsightedness reflects that fact that he has been unable to see the positive change building in his life since the loss of his gold. In earlier chapters, Marner insensibly began to regain his soul.

Eppie's appearance at Christmastime is a sort of virgin birth. It is also a spiritual rebirth for Marner (another theme strongly associated with Christianity). Marner's redemption is fully underway in Chapter 12.

In Chapter 13 Marner learns the depth of his love for the child he has encountered. His fierce declarations that he will not give the baby up surprise him. His tenderness is still inarticulate. Toward the end of the chapter, though, Marner shows his first signs of a renewed eloquence when he speaks of the baby in his arms, explaining why he wants to keep her: "It's a lone thing-and I'm a lone thing. My money's gone, I don't know where-and this is come from I don't know where. I know nothing-I'm partly mazed." When Marner refers to the baby as "it," he shows that he still lacks the full power of expression. Eliot is careful to show us the development of Marner's language posterior to the development of his feelings, just as his tenderness precedes his ability to recognize that tenderness. Though he speaks of Eppie as "it" perhaps as though she is his money, this issue too will be resolved with time.

For Godfrey, Chapter 13 fulfills his desperate prayer for an intervention by Favourable Chance. He is overjoyed at being disburdened of his wife even while he feels the horror of his conscience at the death of his wife. Godfrey is not likely to learn the moral courage he needs, however, after a stroke of "good" fortune in the death of his own wife. His conscience repairs itself as best it can, and he is off to pursue Nancy. Godfrey, however, is not yet living a clean life. He has not yet made an honest man of himself, and there is no doubt, however kind Fortunate Chance has been to him in his moment of immediate need, that a more complex fate than "happily ever after" is in store for him.

In Chapter 14 Eppie both inspires Marner's memory for the things he loved about his own upbringing at Lantern Yard and challenges Marner to learn new things and engage with the world even as a child himself. Eliot's epigraph to the novel, drawing from Wordsworth, clearly expresses Eppie's effect: "A child, more than all other gifts / That earth can offer to declining man, / Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts." Eppie inspires both forward-looking and backward-looking hope. Her name recalls Marner's deceased mother and sister and his faith from earlier times.

The Biblical Hephzibah was the wife of Hezekiah and the mother of King Mannaseh (2 Kings 21). The name is also used in Isaiah as a symbolic name for Zion, representing God's favor. It literally means "my delight is in her," which is fully apt from Marner's perspective.

Through Eppie's influence, Marner returns to the nurturing ways his own mother taught him long ago. Marner learned about herbs from his mother but abandoned his knowledge after his herbalism was mistaken for knowledge of the occult by the people of Raveloe. Before, Marner's past alienated him, but his past now helps bind him to the present. The herbs now represent the art of cultivating life-raising a child. Eppie herself is compared to the herbs when Mrs. Winthrop says that she will "grow like grass i' May," and when she offers Marner her son Aaron's old clothes, which are "clean and neat as freshsprung herbs."

The villagers surprisingly reason that Marner is more suited to raising a child than most other men are. They consider his trade, weaving, a feminine pursuit. Thus weaving, like herb-gathering, becomes a metaphor for Marner's maternal impulses-at least in the eyes of the villagers. Marner's fastidiousness at the wheel is expanded in his care and attentiveness to Eppie's development. No longer is weaving a symbol of repetition and misery; it is an expansive, narrative action, like the weaving of a tapestry.

Marner's transformation from miser to nurturer is not yet completely achieved in Chapter 14. He is still too possessive about Eppie: "She'll be my little un ... nobody else's." Still somewhat confused about the apparent transformation of his gold into a little girl, he clings to her somewhat greedily. Still, in clinging to another human being, Marner expands his love. He even comes to realize that Eppie's importance involves both his love for her and her love for him. His gold was never reciprocal like the love of a child.

Dolly Winthrop serves as an ideal friend for Marner. With her patient, non-patronizing guidance, she provides child-raising advice as well as simple and sincere exhortations to join the faithful of Raveloe in church.

By far the shortest chapter in Silas Marner, Chapter 15 is a bridge to Part Two of the book. Godfrey Cass, having narrowly escaped complete disaster, seems quite firm, resolute, sober and happy. Certainly Nancy will marry him, given his about-face, and certainly all will be well, he imagines. But Godfrey has not yet sacrificed a thing. He is still his normally dishonest, cowardly soul. Circumstances have changed--his wife has died, his child is being taken care of, Dunstan has disappeared again--but nothing substantial has changed in Godfrey's character. He is still susceptible to his old weaknesses. In Part Two, Godfrey finally will have to face up to his cowardice.