This is the tale of how a simple, strange man was crushed by tragedy, then twice broken, and later marvelously grew whole again. I love the touching fable in its heart, which Eliot has clad in a realistic painting of English village life in the 1820s. If you’ve never read George Eliot, this is the place to start: Silas Marner is half as long as her other novels, and a mere third of her blockbusters, Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch.
Yes, George Eliot was a woman. Mary Ann Evans assumed the pen name George Eliot for several reasons, principally so that her books would be taken seriously. When her first book appeared under the name George Eliot, it was praised and taken seriously, and no critic suspected that it was in fact written by a woman. Except for one: Charles Dickens.
Meeting Silas the Weaver, then Looking Back to his Lost Youth
The book opens sounding like a fairytale, with Silas looking like Rumpelstiltskin’s big brother:
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. . . . No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring . . . All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or clever—at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers—emigrants from the town into the country—were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness.
In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation 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 questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage . . . he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them take to their legs in terror. For how was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. . . .
And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices. Not that it was one of those barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilization—inhabited by meagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay in the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England, and held farms which, speaking from a spiritual point of view, paid highly-desirable tithes. But it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an hour's journey on horseback from any turnpike, where it was never reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion. It was an important-looking village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the churchyard.
Silas lives apart from the village, he looks weird, and he’s mocked and mistreated by the locals. They’re wary of this loner who came from “North’ard” and, after he works a herbal cure where the doctor had failed, they suspect he’s in league with dark powers. He has no friends, he’s sustained solely by his regimen of constant weaving and the small hoard of guineas that he’s amassed. His chief joy in life is supping alone while admiring his stacks of golden coins.
George Eliot set out with a strong, balanced and integrated, well-shaped story to tell. She was working on another novel when inspiration struck, and Silas Marner sprang out like Athena from Zeus’ brow, as Eliot’s quickest and easiest novel to write. We feel that truth and urgency. On the other hand, she opens with her spotlight on an ugly, boring hero. There’s nothing to like or admire about Silas Marner: he has no friends or family, he does nothing but weave flax and hoard guineas. We feel a slight sympathy, but only because the villagers are colder to Silas than he deserves.
Then Eliot jumps back fifteen years, to show us how our hero got here, physically and emotionally. Silas was raised in a close-knit religious community, in a yard off an alley in a Northern industrial city:
Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to solitude. His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the movement, the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which, in that day as in this, marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least, the weight of a silent voter in the government of his community. Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death. To have sought a medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie therein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a creation; but Silas was both sane and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation—a little store of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest—but of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the inherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the character of a temptation.
That first chapter of Silas Marner is a perfect story unto itself — so short, that you’ve just read a quarter of it in those two excerpts. If you’ve never read any book by Eliot, you truly should: she’s one of our very greatest and most influential novelists. So please go try the opening chapter: Here is the full text of Silas Marner, for free. If you enjoy Chapter I, bookmark the rest to read at your leisure.
George Eliot’s Psychological Insight and Moral Judgment
It takes a natural storyteller to write a good book. To write a great novel also requires a sensitive heart and a mind that patiently digests experience, then marries characters and plot. First is that deft deciphering of human nature; second is the balancing those humans between the ideals and karma we wish were true, and this world that sadly is.
When I first read an Eliot novel — Mill on the Floss — I finished it but then walked away, as wary of Eliot as his neighbors are of Silas. There is emotional darkness and physical disaster in Mill on the Floss, but that wasn’t what put me off. I admired her language and craft, and the vitality in her story, but I felt a judgmental creator behind the book, so dour and severe that I didn’t want to meet her again. She seemed puritanical, even cruel, in how she weighed her characters’ failings.
George Eliot is not, in fact, cruel. Now that I’m more experienced and less quick to judge, now that I’ve read a lot more by and about Eliot, I see her clearer and more comprehensively. She has constant kindness and far-reaching sympathy. She has a brilliant, ever-curious mind that is always digesting experience and books, continually expanding its horizons. She is a supreme autodidact. She works steadily through the crucial problems facing all novelists: comprehending more of humanity, then measuring it between the sharp twists of fate and her steadfast principles of honesty, virtue and love.
No, Eliot is not at all cruel. But she has a lot of seriousness in her, more than some readers care for. Beyond that, there is severity in all of her designs, since she saw it in the world around her, and was determined to face it head on. I find it most evident in Mill on the Floss — and much less so in Silas Marner, which has so much insight and compassion for different ways of being in it.
Mary Ann Evans took up with George Lewes. He was a good intellectual match for her, and able to appreciate the many levels of her personality. But he was married. His wife was also unfaithful, but he was unable to divorce her. The adultery was a manageable problem; many Victorians had affairs. But Mary Ann was not willing to dissemble just to save public face — so many of her friends dropped her. Her brother cut off all contact with Mary Ann, and convinced her sister Chrissey (who she was very close with) to cut her off too. So George Eliot knew all about puritanical judgment and, I think, was working through that darkness and cruelty when she wrote Mill on the Floss.
Eliot had had a smaller rupture with her Anglican family, fifteen years before. She moved away from home, she made intellectual, freethinking friends and, at 22, she stopped going to church. Her father was very hurt by this and, after much soul-searching, she resumed church-going — not for belief, but out of kindness, to help her family feel more whole. She continued to expand her moral framework, so that she could accomodate all that felt true in her soul, her own humanism and the best elements of Christianity. Her first two books were translations of religious thinkers: David Strauss’ The Life of Jesus, critically examined and Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity.
In the middle of working on Silas Marner, Eliot wrote in a letter to a friend that
the ‘highest “calling and election” [is] to do without opium and live through all our pain with conscious, clear-eyed endurance . . . As for the “forms and ceremonies” [of religion], I feel no regret that any should turn to them for comfort, if they can find comfort in them.’
A noble principle: to live as bravely and truly as you can, while accepting others who find different paths to virtue. Eliot tests which virtues are solid and real, and finds that she must measure them from many angles to be sure. Good acts? Intentions? Kindness? Frankness? Now that I see better where Eliot’s coming from, and how she wrestled with deep dilemmas and grew morally throughout her life, I respect her judgment and patiently observe all the lessons and hints I find in her writing. She is serious, as is life; she also has more clarity, comprehension and kindness than I find in almost any other novelist. Her christianity transcends the Church’s.
Eliot’s stronger suit, as a novelist, is her penetrating, subtle psychological insight. This is true throughout Eliot’s career. What most impressed me in Silas Marner is her ambition, how Eliot looks beyond what she already knows to unwrap other corners of humanity. Her keystone in this story is Silas’ character, the twists of fate that break and remake his life, and how he changes and grows through this journey. He is an exceptional creation, a most unusual man who always feels true to life, and who we gradually come to know intimately and care tenderly about.
Around Silas, Eliot explores several other paths beyond the worldview she already owns. She looks at gentry and landowners, paupers and criminals, she seeks out alien experience and strives to make sense of it. She gets inside a woman taking opium, and a toddler grasping almost nothing from what she sees around her. She goes inside a rascal animated mostly by spite and selfishness, who’s shrewd at playing his brother and his father. His brother is a more central character, and trickier to find the heart of: he has more good intentions than bad ones, but he is irresolute, and keeps gradually rearranging his principles and how he views things, to pretend that the choices he’s settled for were sound. There’s a woman who doesn’t understand much that she hears in church, but is steadfast in her faith and kindness, always reaching out to help her neighbors and those who suffer around her.
Eliot’s first two novels, Adam Bede and Mill on the Floss, were based in rural England and the social milieux she knew from childhood. In Silas Marner I see her reaching beyond that world, to explore more of the social panorama and moral chiaroscuro that all of humanity entails. There were moments in this book where the flow felt a little jagged, or where minor characters weren’t entirely convincing. But she has such skills, and is learning to extend them: her psychological acumen, her mastery of language and storytelling, the curiosity to keep looking further and the dedication to keep crafting with more precision and clarity. Eliot is embarking on the path that will take her, three novels and ten years later, to the wide empire of Middlemarch.