Silas Marner (AmazonClassics Edition)

Silas Marner is a quick, short, beautiful, and touching read. Yes, high school freshman, once upon a time the English language had elegance and style. It once not only told what happened, but evoked emotion and sentiment. Being bored my genius says more about the reader than the author. If you find this classic boring, rest assured the failing is yours.

This book explores the best and worst of human nature in people, when they are at their highest and when they are at their lowest points in life. Marner also writes about the good nature in others that can develop after ones worst moments in life. I really enjoyed this book and hope others will to.

-Tipcat

Have read part of it; don't like her writing style with so many diversions and explanations a bit silly. The plot is good but I still don't know who robbed Silas since she wastes my time with explanations quite unnecessary and I don't think the end is even near!

Auto correct will ruin the arts and therefore bring about the end of civilization.
That said, Eliot 's weaver of Raveloe should provide pleasant, moralistic storytelling to distract oneself from this impending doom. Just keep reading it over and over, like a mantra, and all will be well.

I tried reading it in high school and wanted to see if I could do better 62 years later in understanding it. It was like trying to dig a hole to bury a dead horse with only your hands, it began to smell to areonf before I had to finished, I had to give up and walk away.

It is the worst done edition I have received from the store or anywhere else -- filled with typos, misprints, and terrible syntax (not George Eliot's but the so-called simple minded annotations. I do not need and nor does anyone else to be told in the so called Introduction that: "It is about a man.:" Nor do I need to know that it is "an amazing book." AND THE COVER IS WILDLY INAPPROPRIATE COVER ART for the actual story Whatever the CLASSIC GOOD BOOKS is, it is not a legitimate publishing house and should not be part of your enterprise.

Look at pages 214 and 215 if you want to see a waste of paper.... Sorely disappointed.

This book is billed as a reproduction of a classic edition of Silas Marner. It appears as is someone just scanned the pages of a classic edition and bound them together. There is no warmth to this edition. The pages are overwhelimingly bright white with a reproduced page in the middle. Doesn't even have a book title on the edge binding. This is not the edition for anyone who loves the warmth and comfort of reading classic books.

I tried to download Audible.com 's download manager -- but it kept stalling on the manager.exe and download.exe for some unknown reason. They have a support over the internet link that should have connected to someone who could help with downloading and installing their software since once it is installed people should have relatively no real issues later unless they have to change their computer or something. But all I got from a person in their sells department was "our department cannot address that problem." same thing when I then asked for a refund. They gave me the phone number for their help desk that should have been unneeded if the online help desk could do what they are supposed to do -- imagine paying someone from anywhere in the world just to tell people they can't really help you -- reminds me of AT and T. Why waist the labor pay when it will cost you the same just providing the phone contact number and letting people call to begin with.

Yes, I am upset by the clear lack of integrity -- I am sure they would have tried to force me to do the "automatic membership" thing which I don't do anywhere -- I do the store's Prime, but I control the renewal not the store and that is the way it should be and is worth the price actually.

I just which I had a way to inform the store of a lousy association they are making with this whisper association with Audible.com -- if the store put them on a warning of lossed association, then maybe Audible.com might get the people to resolve these things BEFORE they become an issue. I am so tired of subpar business interaction where I have to pay and pay but get nothing of equal value.

XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I do not want to rate this at this time. I would like the option to comment if I feel strongly about it one way or the other.

First a disclaimer... George Eliot is absolutely my favorite author. She was both a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens. Some of her novels are lengthy and intricately worded. Silas Marner is perhaps her shortest and most easily read novel.

I have read Silas Marner at least three times and this last time on Kindle. The Kindle version was completely acceptable. I cannot remember if I paid nothing or .99, but either way it is an unbeatable value.

George Eliot, birth name, Mary Ann Evans, grew up as a young lady in a conventional Victorian family. As such, she had limited opportunities for an advanced education. She solved this with a program of self education that only be described as spectacular. During her lifetime, she had devotees, male and female, who simply wanted to communicate with her and/or be in her company.

George Eliot has a way of expressing sentiments in an almost exquisitely delicate and touching manner. She is never coarse. Her insights and understanding of human nature are incredible. If one reads a number of her novels and her most popular short stories, as well as her lengthy epic poem, "The Spanish Gypsy", one will often find female characters who are willing to make sacrifices for a greater good (Renunciation), and flawed characters who see the error of their ways and who attempt to make reparations.

As far as this novel, Silas Marner is a lovely tale that is somewhat allegorical in nature and as such has the touch of the secular version of a biblical story. There is a point within the story that is almost too painful. But you will find that George Eliot will never let you suffer too much for too lengthy a period.

This is all a matter of taste, of course. But if one has any preference at all for Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, or the Bronte sisters, I really cannot imagine why one would not be enthralled by George Eliot. Thank You.

So, I've been on a classics kick lately. Unfortunately, all of the classics which have been recommended have been depressing and hard to make it through to the end. When I mentioned this to my mother, she mentioned Silas Marner as a book which she especially enjoyed many years ago. It is a bit slow moving in the beginning of the story, and, of course, with the change in language, you actually have to use a bit more of your brain to understand it. But, it is well worth the effort. This was one of the sweetest stories which I have ever read. The author was able to bring about such a wonderful uplifting ending that I know I will re-read this book again. It is nice to know that just because it is a classic, it doesn't mean tragedy. Now off to ask my mother for another recommendation. :o)

“Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe” is set at the end of the 18th century and in the early years of the 19th, between around 1795 and 1825. The title character is a linen weaver in an industrial town in the Midlands, probably based upon Coventry. He is expelled from the Calvinist congregation to which he belongs when he is falsely accused of theft, an accusation brought by a supposed friend who hopes to obtain the hand of Silas’s fiancée. Silas leaves his native town to settle in the rural Warwickshire village of Raveloe. Although he prospers there in his trade as a weaver, he has been embittered by his experiences and becomes a miser and an ill-natured recluse.

And then two things happen to change the direction of Silas' life. Firstly, his hoard of gold, built up over a number of years, is stolen; the reader knows that the culprit is Dunstan Cass, the ne’er-do-well son of the local squire, but Silas and the other villagers do not. Secondly, he adopts an orphan girl who wanders into his cottage one night after her mother has died in the snow outside.

The novel is very short by nineteenth century standards, but nevertheless deals with a number of intertwined themes. George Eliot regarded herself as a freethinker rather than a practising Christian, but this fact is not always apparent from her writing and she could preach a sermon as well as any clergyman. On a simple level, the moral of “Silas Marner” is that “money can’t buy me love”, and it is certainly true that the love of his adopted daughter Eppie- it’s short for Hephzibah- brings Silas far more happiness with than his money ever could have done.

Eliot’s moral lesson, however, goes far deeper than that. It can be seen as a secularised version of Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, or at least of its famous thirteenth chapter. Eliot is not content to say something as trite as “a virtue like love is better than a vice like avarice”. Like Paul, who said “though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing”, Eliot wants to assert the primacy of love not only over the vices but also over other virtues, including some by which her own age set great store. Silas, before Eppie changes his life, may not be a popular man in Raveloe, but he is not necessarily a bad one by Victorian standards. He has all the virtues prized by the Victorian self-help ethos. (Samuel Smiles’s famous book “Self-Help” had been published in 1859, two years before Eliot’s novel). He is honest, reliable, hard-working and thrifty. And yet he has not love. He is an upright man, but a loveless one.

Standing in sharp contrast to Silas is the figure of Godfrey Cass, Dunstan's elder brother. Godfrey, although not an outright villain like his brother, is far from morally upright. And yet it could not be said of him that he has not love. Indeed, it is often love which leads him to act in ways which are less than upright. It is love which induces him to enter into a marriage with an attractive but dissolute young woman and to keep that marriage a secret from not only the villagers but also from his family. And it is also love, as well as concern for social respectability, which leads him to continue to conceal that marriage, even after his first wife’s death, because he fears losing the love of Nancy Lammeter, the beautiful, virtuous girl on whom he has set his heart and wants to make his second wife.

Other important themes in the book are the role of religion in 19th century England, industrialisation and the politics of social class. As a young man about Silas is deeply pious, but after his move to Raveloe, at around the age of 28, he ceases going to church. (George Eliot herself was also brought up in a strict Nonconformist section and also stopped going to church around the same age, albeit for different reasons). His ill treatment at the hands of his co-religionists has disillusioned him with the rigorous Calvinist faith of his youth, and there is no chapel in the village. The Broad Church Anglicanism to which most of the villagers subscribe strikes him as almost literally incomprehensible. (In some parts of the country at this time the towns, particularly industrial ones, tended to be strongly Nonconformist while rural areas remained loyal to the Established Church).

Paradoxically, it is a false allegation of stealing money which gives Silas the chance to become rich, at least by the standards of a nineteenth-century working man if not by the standards of someone like Squire Cass. Around 1795, when the tale opens, it would still have been possible for a traditional handloom weaver like Silas to earn a living in an industrial town. By 1825 such a thing would have become virtually impossible, as such self-employed weavers found themselves unable to compete with the mechanised weaving mills. (This was the period of the Luddite Riots, organised in protest against the way industrialisation was destroying the livelihoods of once-independent workers, especially in the textile trade). Before the coming of the railways, however, it would have been difficult for people living in remote rural areas to obtain mass-produced goods from the big towns, so an independent handloom weaver could still earn a profit in a small village like Raveloe. A key scene comes towards the end of the novel, when Silas revisits his native town, now a big city, and finds that Lantern Yard, the street in which he grew up, has been swept away and replaced by a large factory.

In another paradox, it is the loss of his money in a genuine theft which, although it makes Silas poor in a financial sense, makes him figuratively richer, because if he had still had his money he would never have taken Eppie into his home. Eppie is a blonde, and Eliot makes a direct comparison between her golden curls glinting in the firelight and Silas’s stolen gold. Just as the young Eppie has unwittingly taught her adoptive father that love is worth more than money, she too has to learn that lesson when, as a young woman of eighteen, she has to make a choice between on the one hand a life of ease and wealth and on the other loyalty to her devoted father and to her working-class sweetheart.

In “Silas Marner” and some of her other novels such as “Adam Bede” and “The Mill on the Floss”, George Eliot can be seen as a precursor of the rural realist school of fiction founded by her younger contemporary Thomas Hardy, particularly in her descriptions of rustic characters. Perhaps because of its brevity and its apparently simple moral, the novel was at one time treated almost as a children’s book; my mother had to read it (in the original, not a special children’s edition) when she was a primary school pupil in the 1940s. Yet its apparent simplicity and artlessness conceal a surprising depth.

In case it matters, George Eliot is my absolute favorite author, period... I just state that in case you wish to take what I say with a grain of salt... I have read all of Geogre Eliot's novels and short stories multiple times.

Anyway, Silas Marner is perhaps George Eliot's easiest and most accessible novel for modern readers. Geoge Eliot composed seven major novels. Silas Marner is perhaps half the length of any of the others. It is almost a secular version of a bible story. Silas Marner suffers very much early in life. At some point the pain becomes unbearable to both Silas Marner and, if you really allow yourself to get into the novel, the reader. But Geoge Eliot is not a sadist and she will not allow you to suffer too much, for too long a period.

What a reader will find in this book and many of George Eliot's novels, is the concept of "renunciation". This theme involves a person, usually a female, who makes a noble sacrifice for a greater good. There is almost always a female who demonstrates a degree of nobility and moral courage.

In case it matters, I purchased an audiobook narrated by Nadia May. I listened to that narration while reading the book. Nadia May narrates in the intended dialect and with emotion. It adds to the experience. I think my inner narrator is not always what it needs to be.

The two short stories are not the best short stories of George Eliot. "The Lifted Veil" is an early science fiction. It is most interesting to me in that context, of an early example of science fiction. The story itself as a reading experience is not as moving as many of George Eliot's other works.

"Brother Jacob" is an OK short story. Again it does not really move me the way other works of George Eliot do.

I only mention the following in the event one wishes to read some of George Eilot's best short stories. George Eliot authored three really excellent short stories that were combined into one work, "Scenes of Clerical Life". As far as I am concerned they were the three best of George Eliot's short stories.

Please keep in mind that George Eliot is a female writing in male dominated Victorian England. With that in mind, the third short story, "Janet's Repentence" is my personal favorite. It is a lengthy short story that requires one's attention. It is not a light read. It is about alcoholism and domestic abuse and George Eliot navigates this story with incredible empathy and sensitivity.

The three short stories combined in "Scenes of Clerical Life" are far better examples of George Eliot short stories than the two in this work. Thank You...

Silas Marner, weaver by trade, is living in the community of Lantern Yard when he finds himself wrongly accused of a crime. Prior to the crime, he had a quiet role in the neighborhood. The neighbors might have found him a bit socially repellant, maybe a little unattractive and generally weird, but as a whole most people still found something in him to admire, such as his devout faith and strong work ethic. Many just shrugged and figured he was made a tad quirky for a reason.

Even though he is cleared of any actual charges, he can't escape the still-judging eyes of his neighbors. The relentless gossip eventually ends up ruining his life in Lantern Yard, even causing his fiance to break off their engagement. Fed up with it all, Silas makes the decision to pack up the ol' loom and relocate to the town of Raveloe.

Silas spends the next 15 years in Raveloe dedicating himself to his work. The neighbors see little of him except for when he steps out to gather water each day. Sure, Silas's life develops a sort of monotony to it, pretty much just spending all day at his loom, counting his coins and stashing them away before bed each night, but he finds a certain amount of comfort in the predictability. That predictability is shattered one night when Silas' hidden savings are stolen. The subsequent investigation uncovers ties that lead back to the wealthiest family in Raveloe, some of the members of that family secretly having quite the financial issues.

Silas himself goes years without resolution but makes peace with the loss, in large part due to the arrival of a small child, whose mother died outside one winter night, not far from Silas's residence. The child happened to wander into his home and once he hears the little girl is left without parents to claim her, he takes her in as his own. This unexpected fatherhood gives Silas a daily lesson in what truly matters in a life.

I've seen a number of reviews where people talk about how they were assigned this in school but remembered hating it so in fairness they were compelled to do a re-read in adulthood. As for me, I do remember this one being on assigned reading list for one of my classes in school but *sssh* this Honors kid never read it! I know, I know! And it's one of the shorter classics out there! But, well, I guess I had better things going on at the time. Like naps and TRL marathons. I don't know. But it's all been rectified now and my vote is it's a solid 3 star classic for me. Wasn't gawd-awful, but also not a jaw-dropper.

I liked the themes Eliot brought up in the story -- mainly the idea of valuing people and life experiences over material posessions -- but in the end I was craving a little more conflict to drive those points home. Silas struck me as the kind of guy that was too quick to let life beat him down. Where was his fight, his backbone? He just seemed to be this Eeyore kind of spirit that went about assuming that it was his lot in life for most days to generally suck. I did start to cheer for him though once the story got around to talking about what a dedicated father he became to Eppie. I admit, I am a sucker for stories about great dads :-)

Speaking of Eppie, it was tough to read that whole scene with that guy coming in saying he "had rights to" Eppie, how he "owns her". Talking about the girl like she wasn't even present, right there in front of him. That is one thing about classics that is sometimes tough to bear, those characters trying to keep others in their place -- "I own you" "you owe me" -- makes me so thankful to live in a time when it's ever so much easier to make one's voice heard. There are still limitations, but not nearly to the extent they used to be!

I was also amused at Eliot having the character Godfrey actually converse with his anxiety as if it were another person in the room. Eliot even capitalizes it as Anxiety, and I cracked up at the line, "Anxiety went on... refusing to be silenced even by much drinking." Being a sufferer of anxiety myself, I could appreciate the tinge of dark humor there ;-)

The writing can be a little stiff at times, the plot a bit plodding here and there, and Eliot seems to like to end each chapter on a bit of a moral lesson. Not uncommon for her era. A decent classic but if you're brand spanking new to trying the genre, this one might not be the one to win you over to picking up future oldies. If you're just out to tackle as many classics as possible in your reading life, this is a quick one to get off the TBR that has a sweet (but somewhat sad) story to boot. Also, if you'd like a little extra help understanding the plot, this book was giving a modern (at the time, anyway) retelling in the Steve Martin film A Simple Twist Of Fate.

This is the story of a young man’s disillusionment and what came after. At the start of the book Silas, a weaver, belongs to a strict Dissenter sect. He soon experiences betrayal and is excommunicated after the casting of lots falsely indict him rather than the truly guilty party. Wondering how God could allow such a thing, Silas moves to the small community of Raveloe (where he is perpetually “an outsider”) and loses himself in solitude, work, and the stockpiling of gold. But life (Providence? God?) isn’t done with Silas, and two major events change the course of his solitary, miserly life.

The town of Raveloe is peopled with interesting characters, though occasionally I found their extended folksy ramblings tedious. The most important group to the story is the local squire, his two rascally older sons, and connected spouses and relatives. I wish that the ugly sister-in-law Priscilla had more “screen time” as she was quite amusing…I suspect George Eliot to have partially based the character on herself.

This is essentially a “reclamation” story along the lines of a non-supernatural version of Dickens’ Christmas Carol (Dickens loved it and wrote her a “fan letter”). It touches on themes of “reaping what you sow” and how God’s ways “are higher than your ways.” Overall, it is a sweet, enjoyable book that is well worth reading.

What a beautiful pastoral tale, with characters who take whimsical old folklore to heart as if it's factual, and live their lives by it. The setting seems straight out of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. It's a feel-good story, but also written to get us wondering whether the the traditional things to which we ascribe meaning and happiness are really legitimate.

It's the sort of book where you can't help summing up the whole plot if someone asks, 'What's it about?' However, even though spoilers aren't really an issue, I'll make sure to reveal as few as possible.

As a young man, Silas Marner was betrayed in a nasty manner. Set up by a former best friend, for a crime he didn't commit, he scoots off to the faraway village of Raveloe, where he licks his wounds for fifteen years. He's deeply hurt not only by his friend's deception but by what he perceives as God's decision not to clear his name. It was an instant mindset change from devout believer to disillusioned atheist, and Silas got himself a reputation for being eccentric, aloof, and a tad creepy.

His sole pleasure is hoarding away the money he earns from his cloth weaving business, but one day it's stolen. Grievously let down for a second time, Silas is devastated until it seems the divine powers see fit to restore it, no longer as cold, hard cash, but in the shape of a golden haired little girl. Of course Silas knows there must be some more logical explanation for her arrival by his hearth, but nothing comes to light for several years, during which he becomes her beloved dad.

Little Eppie (short for Hephzibah) is a delight. As Silas brings her up, we see him begin to look at life through her loving and curious eyes - and Eppie takes joy in common pleasures such as birds and flowers. If we really enter into the spirit of the story, it's inevitable that we catch it too. Maybe one of the best things to do for an unhappy person is to encourage them to look at the world through your more optimistic eyes, and kids do this unconsciously. George Eliot pulled it off brilliantly with her invention of Eppie and Silas, for nobody needed little girl therapy more than he did. It could be one of the pioneer daddy/daughter stories.

The story of Eppie's biological father is quite fascinating. Godfrey Cass, the squire's son, is a wishy-washy young man who doesn't stand up and take responsibility for her, for reasons you'll see. Since Eliot presents all Godfrey's faults, I was wondering why we can't help liking him a tiny bit just the same. After all, we despise other guys like him in literature. I'm sure it's because he compares favourably to his brother Dunstan. It's typical of Godfrey to worm out of facing up to things, and he gets us readers doing it for him too. We decide he may be pathetic, but at least he's not a rotten egg all through. Sometimes it seems reasonable to call a guy a hero just because he's not as bad as his brother.

The story is really interesting from a historical perspective, happening as it does near the end of the Napoleonic war and on the very cusp of the industrial revolution, when cottage industries like Silas' began to struggle.

There's the food. Some of us wouldn't have the stomach to live in nineteenth century, rural England. Even supposedly delicious Christmas cooking included such fare as lardy cakes, black pudding and pigs' trotters. I could be wheedled into sampling the first, but the other two are out of the question. These folk loved their food though. We're told, 'The rich ate and drank freely, and accepted gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families.'

Another thing that made me grin about these Raveloe villagers is their attitude to church attendance. Even though they're devout Anglicans, they have the best excuse not to turn up every Sunday in the calendar. It's an omission of generosity. They don't want to show such a greedy desire to get a good standing with heaven that they get an undue advantage over their neighbours. I've got to remember that one next time I feel like staying in bed on a Sunday :)

And there's the wealth thing. Eliot presents several people with excellent social standing and lots of money who aren't happy. And there are people with no social standing and no money who are happy, and it's because the quality which truly brings happiness has nothing to do with money. Even when Silas used to get his thrills from hoarding his crock of gold, he seemed to know instinctively that nothing he could spend it on would buy satisfaction. (Although I do wish he'd gone to a good optometrist in London to get a pair of spectacles. But he just put up with his signature near-sightedness all through the book, possibly regarding it as his lot from above. Come on Silas, admit that money is handy for some things.)

Whatever criticism scholars might level at George Eliot over the years, this book convinces me that I might've got along really well with her. Her character development is the reasonable type, where people don't have turnarounds that encompass an entire personality change. Godfrey is a spoiled git at the start, and he's slightly less of a git by the finish. Here's what we're told about his dissatisfaction. 'I suppose it's the way of all men and women who reach middle age without a clear perception that life never can be thoroughly joyous.' I reckon Eliot just used Godfrey to sum up the crux of a midlife crisis, although they wouldn't have recognised it as such back then.

By the end, Eppie knows her priorities without giving the matter a thought, which is the opposite to her birth father. It's almost enough to make us wish we could pack up, go back in time and live next door to Eppie and Silas. Then we remember the lack of basic mod cons such as electricity and hot running water, and decide maybe not. But the nearest thing is to put this book up among my bad mood busters, and highly recommend it for George Eliot's wise insights into human nature as well as the sweet story.

Now for some good quotes from various characters, major and minor.

Jem Rodney (when he's briefly accused of stealing Silas' gold): What could I ha' done with his money? I could as easy steal the parson's surplice and wear it. (Good point about thefts in small settlements. This guy is the village mole catcher. How's that for a nice old English job description?)

Squire Cass (to his son, Godfrey): You hardly know your own mind enough to make both your legs walk one way. (That was spot on, and spoken without knowing a fraction of Godfrey's messy dilemma.)

Ben Winthrop: When I've got a pot o' good ale I like to swaller it and do my insides good, instead o' smelling and staring at it to see if I can find fault wi' the brewing. (A sound attitude about being critical. This guy's wife also has plenty of simple wisdom, but I'll give her a post of her own)

Miss Priscilla Lammeter: You'll never be low when you've got a dairy. (An interesting cure for depression.)

Silas Marner: When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as takes it in. (Bravo! What a suitable last word.)

No, I was not one of those children foolishly required to read this in high school. But almost as bad: it was the novel I chose myself (because it was short) as my introduction to George Eliot. Mistake! I hated it fifty years ago, and have been off Eliot ever since. (I did succeed with DANIEL DERONDA a while back, but I have twice failed with MIDDLEMARCH. My loss, I am sure; but at least this attempt at reconciliation now is a step in the right direction.

For yes, this time I did like SILAS MARNER, quite a lot. I see what I could not stomach before -- the lack of humor, an occasional tendency to preach rather than simply tell the story, and a touch of sentimentality, especially at the end. But what I remember of the plot -- the miserable old miser finally redeemed when an orphan child comes to his door -- turns out to be a gross simplification; no surprise, I suppose. In fact there are two stories: the one about the lonely weaver Silas Marner, and another about the sons of the local squire, Godfrey and Dunstan Cass, and Eliot gives equal time to each. The two are connected, of course, and in an important way, but the odd thing is that this connection does not really affect the course of either plot line. The effect is to give relief from the story of the title character, whose life is nowhere near as grey and un-nuanced as I had remembered. Indeed, my big surprise was to find myself sympathizing with Silas, sorry when things do not go his way, and rejoicing with him when he finds happiness at the end. The Cass story I found distinctly less gripping, though Godfrey is an interesting character, combining some aspects of both hero and villain, and morally ambiguous almost until the end.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, that is to say) writes in several different distinct voices. The one I like the least is that of the moral philosopher, going on for long paragraphs in a vein like this:

Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow
their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in.
Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he
is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the
possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable
results of that posiition. Let him live outside his income,
or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he
will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor,
a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his
interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person
not yet forthcoming. […]

In utter contrast to this is the language of the ordinary people of Raveloe, where the novel is set. Here for instance is the midwife Dolly Winthrop, who becomes Silas’s nearest friend, trying to work out in her bumbling way the theology of what happened to him:

But what comes to me as clear as the daylight, it was when
I was troubling over poor Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes
into my head when I'm sorry for folks, and feels as I can't
do a power to help 'em, not if I was to get up i' the middle
o' the night -- it comes into my head as Them above has got
a deal tenderer heart nor what I've got -- for I can't be
anyways better nor Them as made me, and if anything looks
hard on me, it's because there's things I don't know on;
and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o' things I
don't know on, for it's little I know -- that it is.

And then there are passages of simple description which achieve a particular radiance towards the end, which make them the greatest joy in the novel. Here, for example, is Silas, his life changed by the orphan girl he calls Eppie, venturing outside of his cottage to enjoy the open air:

And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the
buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen
in the sunny mid-day, or in the late afternoon when the
shadows were lengthening under the hedgerows, strolling out
with uncovered head to carry Eppie beyond the Stone-pits to
where the flowers grew, till they reached some favorite bank
where he could sit down. […]. Sitting on the banks in this
way, Silas began to look for the once familiar herbs again;
and as the leaves, with their unchanged outline and markings,
lay on his palm, there was a sense of crowding remembrances
from which he turned away timidly, taking refuge in Eppie's
little world, that lay lightly on his enfeebled spirit.

You can’t entirely absolve such passages from the charge of sentimentality, and there are several pages (which I shan’t quote) that may well go over the line. This is exacerbated by the curious form of the book, which is divided into three: Part One (155 pages in my edition), Part Two (50 pages), and Conclusion (3). To all intents and purposes, the story is over by the end of Part One. Yes, there are some loose ends to be tied up, which Eliot takes care of in Part Two, set 14 years later, but most of that section is merely basking in the situation that had been reached at the end of the previous part. But it does end in a celebrated paragraph that, sentimental or not, brought tears to my eyes:

"No," said Silas, "no; that doesn't hinder. Since the time
the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself,
I've had light enough to trusten by; and, now she says she'll
never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die."

======

I reread the novel in my old hardback that is long since out of print. I did go to a store, however, to consult this Barnes & Noble edition I am ostensibly reviewing here. It has a simply gorgeous (and apt) picture on the cover. But it largely fails where I hoped it would be helpful, in providing notes on the numerous unfamiliar words and concepts. While there are indeed some notes, they are lamentably few, even for someone like me who has some experience in historical reading.

It's way too hard to try to understand the writing. It's written in the old english and takes a dictionary to wade thru it. If you want a great story of a man who is a miser raising a child buy or rent Steve Martin's movie A Simple Twist of Fate which he wrote the screenplay for by basing it on this book.

oor Silas. He can't get a break. After falsely being accused of a crime, he relocates to another village, where he focuses on working and earning money, living an isolated, antisocial existence. He loves his money. In fact, that's all he loves. Then someone robs him, taking every last coin.

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Anne Evans, wrote several novels capturing life in 19th century England. Silas Marner, first published in 1861, remains a timeless, moving story of one man's struggle and redemption in the face of adversity. When Silas was a young man, one of his closest friends betrayed him by framing him for a crime and stealing his girl. As if being betrayed by his friend wasn't enough, he was also betrayed by the church; the drawing of lots declared his guilt.

Moving to a new town, he earns his living as a weaver, and lives a miserly existence. He had no other purpose in life but to earn and save money. "His life had reduced itself to the mere functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended." His only pleasure, all he looked forward to, was taking the money out every night, counting it, stacking it, sorting it, and handling it. Until one night, it was gone.

And as suddenly as the money disappeared from his home, a little girl appeared. Silas found the mother frozen by the road near his home. Without hesitation, Silas took on the task of raising her as his own, finding the fulfillment he had been missing all those years: "Now something had come to replace his hoard which gave a growing purpose to the earnings, drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money."

As the mystery of the missing money and the unknown parentage of Eppie, Silas's adopted daughter, come together, the story comes together in a clash of class and family that, while perhaps bordering on melodrama, is nevertheless moving and satisfying. When Godfrey, Eppie's biological father and a nobleman, comes to Silas and Eppie, the reader takes heart in Silas and Eppie's love for one another. On a personal note, I found the thoughts of Nancy, Godfrey's wife, on adoption were interesting. After they lost a baby and weren't able to conceive again, she had resisted Godfrey's wishes to adopt a child. "To adopt a child, because children of your own had been denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Providence: the adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn out well, and would be a curse to those who had willingly and rebelliously sought what it was clear that, for some high reason, they were better off without." I wonder how widespread this attitude was then, or even today. Certainly Silas's adoption of Eppie contradicts Nancy's view; Eliot clearly strikes a positive note for adoption here.

As you might expect from a novel of the mid-19th century, many passages seem overly wordy and unnecessary. But even the dialogue and action that seems irrelevant to the story, like the men chatting in the pub, and the girls chatting as they're getting dressed for a formal dinner, add to the ambience by giving a realistic portrayal of the culture and language of the time.

Eliot, decidedly not a believer, has little good to say about the church in Silas Marner. But Christians can don't have to try very hard to resonate with the moral lesson of the novel. The joy and rewards of life can be measured not by how much we save of what we earn, but by how much we give ourselves away in the service of others. James says pure religion is looking after orphans; Silas certainly embraced that call.

Eliot's story is timeless and moving, and though it's a bit of a slog at times for the 21st century reader, it's certainly worth your time.

Silas Marner is a man with a past. Every man has a past, of course, but in his little English village, Silas becomes known as THE man with a past. Years ago, he fled his own hometown for reasons that shall remain nameless (for now) and arrived in this sleepy little town, keeping to himself and weaving in order to make a living. However, Silas realizes a few things: that he’s pretty good at weaving, for one, and that he’s making more money than he used to (and that money means more to him now that he has nothing else to love), for another. Silas grumbles about, collecting coins and trying not to like anyone he comes into contact with, and it seems as though his life will remain the same until the day he dies.

But one night, Silas finds a little girl and her dead mother outside his house. Since the girl seems to have no other kin, Silas takes her in and is surprised by how much he grows to love her. Eppie, as the girl is eventually called, grows up beautiful, kind, and a credit to her foster father. But will her true family try to reclaim her? And could her true family even be someone that Silas already knows?

This is a sweet redemption story that isn’t written at all badly, although Eliot’s writing takes a little while to get used to. However, sweet and competently written is about all this book is. Although Silas and his transformation from hopeful young man to miser and back again are sympathetic, most of the other characters are fairly derivative (I honestly don’t remember any names besides Eppie and Silas). There are some good, suspenseful plot points, but those are melodramatic and weakly executed by turns.

Even so, this book is extremely short and not a major strain to read. If you’re looking for a “classic” that won’t take up too much of your time and will give you something to brag about to your friends, “Silas Marner” may fit the bill. Perhaps those who are already fans of Eliot would enjoy it as well. This is my first Eliot read. It may not have converted me, but I’m willing to try some of her other work. Maybe you will be, too.

In the nineteenth century, men didn't typically adopt children by themselves. Even today, it's a relative rarity -- when a single person adopts a baby, it's usually a woman.

But the exception proves the rule in "Silas Marner," George Eliot's novel about a hermit-like weaver whose life is changed forever when a child wanders into his house. While Eliot explores the pliancy of gender roles and qualities, at heart this is just a heartwarming story about love and family. The ending is rather predictable and a little sappy, but it's a pleasant glimpse of English village life in the 1800s.

Weaver Silas Marner moves to the town of Raveloe, and takes up residence far from other people. Nobody knows why, except for the readers -- he was betrayed by his best friend, dumped by his girlfriend, framed for a robbery and expelled from his church. He also suffers from cataleptic seizures, as if life for him didn't suck enough. Now he wants just to be alone in his remote house, and hoard the gold that he earns over fifteen years of weaving cloth.

Then one night, the squire's dissolute younger son Dunsey Cass steals his gold and vanishes from the town, leaving Silas without the one thing he has come to love. Meanwhile, Dinsey's older brother Godfrey is freaking out because of an ill-advised marriage to a poor drug addict, which would probably get him disinherited if his strict father knew.

But then the wife is found frozen to death in a blizzard, and her toddler child -- Godfrey's daughter -- wanders into Silas' house. And to the surprise of all Raveloe, Silas declares that since "it's a lone thing—and I'm a lone thing," and that he's going to care for the child from now on. This adoption will not only change Silas' life, but Godfrey's as well -- and as the child Eppie grows to adulthood, will finally bring about the admission of long-hidden secrets.

As a woman who wrote serious literature in a time when women's literary skills were scoffed at, George Eliot knew something about the bendability of gender roles. Even though the main character is a heterosexual male, she subtly positions him as having a strong feminine side -- he has a job associated with femininity ("you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning"), he's the perceived successor of the local hedgewitch, and he has nothing to do with the "manly man" pursuits of boozing it up in the local pub every night, as literally all the local men do.

And, of course, he cares for a young child with the tenderness and soft-heartedness that was usually attributed to women, not men. And yet, Eliot never treats this character with anything but respect -- he is not seen as less than other men because he has traditionally feminine traits, but as MORE. And these traits are ultimately what brings him happiness, love and friendship from everyone in the community.

But while Silas is the center of the story, Eliot fleshes out the village of Raveloe with deft strokes, from the wealthy (Godfrey and his insufferable girlfriend/wife Nancy) to the ordinary working-class folks whose lives intersect with Silas'. And she knows both the good and bad of these communities -- they have good hearts and kindness, but they also tend to be kind of judgmental and ignorant of people different from themselves. The best example of this is Dolly, a smart, take-charge woman who becomes Silas' best friend and advisor.

And twined together with Silas's story is the story of Godfrey, whose life withers as Silas' blooms. He's essentially a very weak man who shies away from telling the unpleasant truth to anyone, and misses out on fatherhood because of it. It's hard to see why he is so enamored of Nancy, though -- she's a rigid, moralistic priss who holds everyone to her impossibly high standards (for instance, she's opposed to adoption because she's decided, based on nothing at all, that it's against God's will).

The story's biggest problem? Well, in some regards the story is rather predictable, with a heartwarming ending that borders on sappy. More subtle handling is given to Silas revisiting his old home, and discovering what has come of the betrayals he's suffered.

"Silas Marner" is a fascinating little novella, twining together a story about love and family with a subtle message on gender roles. Not bad for such a simple little story.

In the nineteenth century, men didn't typically adopt children by themselves. Even today, it's a relative rarity -- when a single person adopts a baby, it's usually a woman.

But the exception proves the rule in "Silas Marner," George Eliot's novel about a hermit-like weaver whose life is changed forever when a child wanders into his house. While Eliot explores the pliancy of gender roles and qualities, at heart this is just a heartwarming story about love and family. The ending is rather predictable and a little sappy, but it's a pleasant glimpse of English village life in the 1800s.

Weaver Silas Marner moves to the town of Raveloe, and takes up residence far from other people. Nobody knows why, except for the readers -- he was betrayed by his best friend, dumped by his girlfriend, framed for a robbery and expelled from his church. He also suffers from cataleptic seizures, as if life for him didn't suck enough. Now he wants just to be alone in his remote house, and hoard the gold that he earns over fifteen years of weaving cloth.

Then one night, the squire's dissolute younger son Dunsey Cass steals his gold and vanishes from the town, leaving Silas without the one thing he has come to love. Meanwhile, Dinsey's older brother Godfrey is freaking out because of an ill-advised marriage to a poor drug addict, which would probably get him disinherited if his strict father knew.

But then the wife is found frozen to death in a blizzard, and her toddler child -- Godfrey's daughter -- wanders into Silas' house. And to the surprise of all Raveloe, Silas declares that since "it's a lone thing—and I'm a lone thing," and that he's going to care for the child from now on. This adoption will not only change Silas' life, but Godfrey's as well -- and as the child Eppie grows to adulthood, will finally bring about the admission of long-hidden secrets.

As a woman who wrote serious literature in a time when women's literary skills were scoffed at, George Eliot knew something about the bendability of gender roles. Even though the main character is a heterosexual male, she subtly positions him as having a strong feminine side -- he has a job associated with femininity ("you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning"), he's the perceived successor of the local hedgewitch, and he has nothing to do with the "manly man" pursuits of boozing it up in the local pub every night, as literally all the local men do.

And, of course, he cares for a young child with the tenderness and soft-heartedness that was usually attributed to women, not men. And yet, Eliot never treats this character with anything but respect -- he is not seen as less than other men because he has traditionally feminine traits, but as MORE. And these traits are ultimately what brings him happiness, love and friendship from everyone in the community.

But while Silas is the center of the story, Eliot fleshes out the village of Raveloe with deft strokes, from the wealthy (Godfrey and his insufferable girlfriend/wife Nancy) to the ordinary working-class folks whose lives intersect with Silas'. And she knows both the good and bad of these communities -- they have good hearts and kindness, but they also tend to be kind of judgmental and ignorant of people different from themselves. The best example of this is Dolly, a smart, take-charge woman who becomes Silas' best friend and advisor.

And twined together with Silas's story is the story of Godfrey, whose life withers as Silas' blooms. He's essentially a very weak man who shies away from telling the unpleasant truth to anyone, and misses out on fatherhood because of it. It's hard to see why he is so enamored of Nancy, though -- she's a rigid, moralistic priss who holds everyone to her impossibly high standards (for instance, she's opposed to adoption because she's decided, based on nothing at all, that it's against God's will).

The story's biggest problem? Well, in some regards the story is rather predictable, with a heartwarming ending that borders on sappy. More subtle handling is given to Silas revisiting his old home, and discovering what has come of the betrayals he's suffered.

"Silas Marner" is a fascinating little novella, twining together a story about love and family with a subtle message on gender roles. Not bad for such a simple little story.

In the nineteenth century, men didn't typically adopt children by themselves. Even today, it's a relative rarity -- when a single person adopts a baby, it's usually a woman.

But the exception proves the rule in "Silas Marner," George Eliot's novel about a hermit-like weaver whose life is changed forever when a child wanders into his house. While Eliot explores the pliancy of gender roles and qualities, at heart this is just a heartwarming story about love and family. The ending is rather predictable and a little sappy, but it's a pleasant glimpse of English village life in the 1800s.

Weaver Silas Marner moves to the town of Raveloe, and takes up residence far from other people. Nobody knows why, except for the readers -- he was betrayed by his best friend, dumped by his girlfriend, framed for a robbery and expelled from his church. He also suffers from cataleptic seizures, as if life for him didn't suck enough. Now he wants just to be alone in his remote house, and hoard the gold that he earns over fifteen years of weaving cloth.

Then one night, the squire's dissolute younger son Dunsey Cass steals his gold and vanishes from the town, leaving Silas without the one thing he has come to love. Meanwhile, Dinsey's older brother Godfrey is freaking out because of an ill-advised marriage to a poor drug addict, which would probably get him disinherited if his strict father knew.

But then the wife is found frozen to death in a blizzard, and her toddler child -- Godfrey's daughter -- wanders into Silas' house. And to the surprise of all Raveloe, Silas declares that since "it's a lone thing—and I'm a lone thing," and that he's going to care for the child from now on. This adoption will not only change Silas' life, but Godfrey's as well -- and as the child Eppie grows to adulthood, will finally bring about the admission of long-hidden secrets.

As a woman who wrote serious literature in a time when women's literary skills were scoffed at, George Eliot knew something about the bendability of gender roles. Even though the main character is a heterosexual male, she subtly positions him as having a strong feminine side -- he has a job associated with femininity ("you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning"), he's the perceived successor of the local hedgewitch, and he has nothing to do with the "manly man" pursuits of boozing it up in the local pub every night, as literally all the local men do.

And, of course, he cares for a young child with the tenderness and soft-heartedness that was usually attributed to women, not men. And yet, Eliot never treats this character with anything but respect -- he is not seen as less than other men because he has traditionally feminine traits, but as MORE. And these traits are ultimately what brings him happiness, love and friendship from everyone in the community.

But while Silas is the center of the story, Eliot fleshes out the village of Raveloe with deft strokes, from the wealthy (Godfrey and his insufferable girlfriend/wife Nancy) to the ordinary working-class folks whose lives intersect with Silas'. And she knows both the good and bad of these communities -- they have good hearts and kindness, but they also tend to be kind of judgmental and ignorant of people different from themselves. The best example of this is Dolly, a smart, take-charge woman who becomes Silas' best friend and advisor.

And twined together with Silas's story is the story of Godfrey, whose life withers as Silas' blooms. He's essentially a very weak man who shies away from telling the unpleasant truth to anyone, and misses out on fatherhood because of it. It's hard to see why he is so enamored of Nancy, though -- she's a rigid, moralistic priss who holds everyone to her impossibly high standards (for instance, she's opposed to adoption because she's decided, based on nothing at all, that it's against God's will).

The story's biggest problem? Well, in some regards the story is rather predictable, with a heartwarming ending that borders on sappy. More subtle handling is given to Silas revisiting his old home, and discovering what has come of the betrayals he's suffered.

"Silas Marner" is a fascinating little novella, twining together a story about love and family with a subtle message on gender roles. Not bad for such a simple little story.

In the nineteenth century, men didn't typically adopt children by themselves. Even today, it's a relative rarity -- when a single person adopts a baby, it's usually a woman.

But the exception proves the rule in "Silas Marner," George Eliot's novel about a hermit-like weaver whose life is changed forever when a child wanders into his house. While Eliot explores the pliancy of gender roles and qualities, at heart this is just a heartwarming story about love and family. The ending is rather predictable and a little sappy, but it's a pleasant glimpse of English village life in the 1800s.

Weaver Silas Marner moves to the town of Raveloe, and takes up residence far from other people. Nobody knows why, except for the readers -- he was betrayed by his best friend, dumped by his girlfriend, framed for a robbery and expelled from his church. He also suffers from cataleptic seizures, as if life for him didn't suck enough. Now he wants just to be alone in his remote house, and hoard the gold that he earns over fifteen years of weaving cloth.

Then one night, the squire's dissolute younger son Dunsey Cass steals his gold and vanishes from the town, leaving Silas without the one thing he has come to love. Meanwhile, Dinsey's older brother Godfrey is freaking out because of an ill-advised marriage to a poor drug addict, which would probably get him disinherited if his strict father knew.

But then the wife is found frozen to death in a blizzard, and her toddler child -- Godfrey's daughter -- wanders into Silas' house. And to the surprise of all Raveloe, Silas declares that since "it's a lone thing—and I'm a lone thing," and that he's going to care for the child from now on. This adoption will not only change Silas' life, but Godfrey's as well -- and as the child Eppie grows to adulthood, will finally bring about the admission of long-hidden secrets.

As a woman who wrote serious literature in a time when women's literary skills were scoffed at, George Eliot knew something about the bendability of gender roles. Even though the main character is a heterosexual male, she subtly positions him as having a strong feminine side -- he has a job associated with femininity ("you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning"), he's the perceived successor of the local hedgewitch, and he has nothing to do with the "manly man" pursuits of boozing it up in the local pub every night, as literally all the local men do.

And, of course, he cares for a young child with the tenderness and soft-heartedness that was usually attributed to women, not men. And yet, Eliot never treats this character with anything but respect -- he is not seen as less than other men because he has traditionally feminine traits, but as MORE. And these traits are ultimately what brings him happiness, love and friendship from everyone in the community.

But while Silas is the center of the story, Eliot fleshes out the village of Raveloe with deft strokes, from the wealthy (Godfrey and his insufferable girlfriend/wife Nancy) to the ordinary working-class folks whose lives intersect with Silas'. And she knows both the good and bad of these communities -- they have good hearts and kindness, but they also tend to be kind of judgmental and ignorant of people different from themselves. The best example of this is Dolly, a smart, take-charge woman who becomes Silas' best friend and advisor.

And twined together with Silas's story is the story of Godfrey, whose life withers as Silas' blooms. He's essentially a very weak man who shies away from telling the unpleasant truth to anyone, and misses out on fatherhood because of it. It's hard to see why he is so enamored of Nancy, though -- she's a rigid, moralistic priss who holds everyone to her impossibly high standards (for instance, she's opposed to adoption because she's decided, based on nothing at all, that it's against God's will).

The story's biggest problem? Well, in some regards the story is rather predictable, with a heartwarming ending that borders on sappy. More subtle handling is given to Silas revisiting his old home, and discovering what has come of the betrayals he's suffered.

"Silas Marner" is a fascinating little novella, twining together a story about love and family with a subtle message on gender roles. Not bad for such a simple little story.

Spoilers.

I came to this because I so thoroughly enjoyed Middlemarch. There are, of course, similarities, but this gave me less pleasure. I still appreciate the way that Eliot has so few out and out villains - people can do undeniably cruel, irresponsible, selfish, and inconsiderate things, but they are not generally simply dismissed as a thug, a snob, a miser, a saint or whatever. Nancy, for example, is kind and self-controlled, but not merely the good girl she thinks she is. Despite the lack of self-awareness, she is still admirable. There are interesting things happening with class, particularly in the climactic confrontation. I was surprised, however, that of all the characters to dismiss, Eliot chose working class Molly, the abandoned wife: there's little sympathy, and her death appears as both a brutal plot device and a favour to all concerned. Still, Eliot is hardly dismissive of all her peasant women, nor does she fawn on the higher classes. Moreover there is a very deliberate inversion of the fairy-tale morality: our princess rejects her castle and lineage. It's nice, though, that even though Godfrey Cass is put in his place, he isn't merely a laughable or contemptible figure (cf. Lady Catherine de Bourgh): he's a mix of flaws and graces, and he is still allowed to figure, albeit slightly, in Eppie's future.

It's also interesting looking at how Eliot deals with fate - or providence - or God - or `Them' (as Dolly would say). Was Silas taken through this torturous betrayal and redemption for some divine reason (or even an authorial Count of Monte Cristo one)? I don't know enough about popular contemporary stories, but was this a reaction to other morality tales - inasmuch as it seems to give a bit more room to move? Dolly is our chorus, our theologiser, but I don't know that she is set up to be either accepted or rejected - you can read it either way. She even has the grace to be unsure. The central events are sensational, but the interaction and development of characters is often layered and insightful.

Still this book works for me in a similar way to James' An International Episode, where I found discussing it more interesting than reading it. I acknowledge Eliot's craft, and I particularly appreciate the different plot turns she offers, but I didn't relish most of the book the way I did large chunks of Middlemarch.

Silas Marner is an excellent classic novel set in early Nineteenth Century England. In this story, George Eliot (pen name for Mary Ann Evans) depicts a man named Silas Marner, a weaver by trade. He lives happily in his home town of Lantern Yard, until his best friend William Dane betrays him by setting him up as a thief. William then marries Silas' fiancée, and Silas is shunned from the town. He eventually settles in a very small cottage in Raveloe, where he spends his days making cloth and other materials for the townspeople. Due to his now secretive and reclusive ways, the people of Raveloe never really come to know Silas, and he lives in solitude, having turned away from his former faith and happiness.
But one winter's night, a small orphan girl comes to his house, and everything changes. Silas cares for the child (with the help of his neighbor, Mrs. Winthrop, whose family soon befriends him), and his heart begins to soften.
This is a very good representation of the redeeming power of love, and the consequences of a person's actions. For people who enjoy classic literature, this is definitely a must-read.

Ryan Robledo
Author of the Aelnathan:

The first two chapters of Silas Marner are excellent. We are introduced to the title character, a mild-mannered, hardworking weaver who occasionally suffers from spells of catalepsy. Silas is active in his church and has plans to marry his sweetheart, but his simple, pleasant life is taken away from him when his best friend frames him for the theft of some church funds. Silas is forced to leave his hometown in disgrace. He settles in the village of Raveloe, where he takes up a reclusive existence that inspires suspicion in his neighbors. With no friends, no love, and no church, Silas concentrates solely on his occupation, and begins to fixate on the compensation he receives for operating his loom. He becomes a miser, adoringly hoarding every bit of gold that comes into his hands.

From there the book takes a sharp downturn, as from that point on Silas becomes a supporting character in his own book. Author George Eliot never delves very deeply into Silas’s miserliness. His avarice is not as finely drawn as Charles Dickens’ Ebeneezer Scrooge or Honoré de Balzac’s Gobseck. Rather than thoroughly investigate the psychological causes and effects of Silas’s affliction, Eliot treats the fact that he’s a miser as almost an afterthought, a plot element to be dispensed with in favor of other storylines. We are introduced to the local Squire’s two sons, Godfrey and Dunstan. The former is an inveterate gambler and the latter has a weakness for the ladies. While each of these sinners has some atoning to do, their personal dramas aren’t nearly as interesting as the weaver’s, and the reader finds himself eagerly anticipating the return of Silas. There are plenty of other distractions as well. Entire chapters are devoted to the irrelevant chatter and ignorant superstitions of the townspeople. Such banter may provide atmosphere, but does little to advance the story. Thankfully the book improves in its second half.

For much of its length, Silas Marner, originally published in 1861, is simply a bore. However, it is largely redeemed by its skillful and satisfying ending. At about the three-quarters mark, there’s a major surprise. From that point on, everything comes full circle and each character learns his or her life lesson. You’d have to be carved out of ice not to be moved by the conclusion. Silas’s story is truly heartwarming, and not in a cloying or syrupy way. This novel has some valuable lessons to teach about love and redemption. Too bad it takes such a roundabout way to get there.

Although Silas Marner ends up being a pretty good book, I’m not sure it merits 150 years worth of admiration. If it didn’t have author George Eliot’s name attached to it, allowing it to ride on the coattails of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, this novel might just have faded into obscurity like so many other romantic morality tales. Fans of Victorian literature will surely enjoy it, but the general reader of classic books can take it or leave it.

A weaver friend of mine lent this book to me because I am also a weaver. It is my first George Eliot book. I found it rather boring. The story could have been told as a novelette and gotten the same moral points across. I also found the moral points to be one-sided and hence, not interesting. The characters are pretty much one-dimensional never really straying from their initial set of traits. There are a few women in this book, but they have very minor, slim roles: mother, wife, lover, daughter.

Also, there was a religious bent to it that I didn’t fully get. Silas came from northern England and there attended chapel. Whereas in Raveloe people attend church. I am not too sure what the distinction is and how it relates to 1800s England. But it was clear that church was the way to go if you wanted to be a fine upstanding citizen. Also there was one scene where a neighbor’s wife comes over with her youngest to teach Silas some basics of child care and she brings lard cakes. She uses a stamp (probably iron) to put some letters in to the top of the lard cakes while squishing them flat (IHS) which she assumes are good letters as she sees them at the church. She is illiterate and doesn’t know what they mean and the book never explains to the reader assuming everyone will know. When I see IHS, I think industrial hygienists. But I am guessing these stand for some Latin religious phrase. The religious bent itself didn’t bother me; the lack of explanation so that I, the reader, can fully understand the culture bothered me.

The book ends with a strong scene that upholds the morals already laid out in the book. While the over all message seems to be that love is extremely important to a happy life, it is given to the reader is a very high-handed way.

Narration: The narration was decent. Each of the female characters had individual voices. Silas’s voice was well done. The various Casses kind of blended together, but they are related so I can see how the narrator wanted them to all sound similar. The best voice was that of Dolly Winthrope, the neighbor’s wife who helps Silas with his young charge.

Here's a blast from the past. I must have been nearly illiterate when Silas Marner turned up as part of my 9th grade English class. By all recollection, the text was reprinted into our English text book for that year; and it was a class-wide assignment during that year.

My best memory is that I couldn't read it; I couldn't understand a thing about it; it was daunting. Somehow, I got a good grade in the class: it was either that the standards had already fallen or maybe that it was just the Cliff's Notes allowing me to escape the experience with pretense that I may have actually read it at the time.

So, it happened to come across my desk four decades later (February 2013); actually it showed up on my Kindle app when we purchased the complete works of George Eliot, when my wife wanted to read Middlemarch --- who knew that George Eliot was a pen name for a female author of the early 1800s, at a time when only male authors could garner a readership.

I suppose a theme of man's moral certitude and the perseverance of man's spirit could be a central message here. But I wasn't struck with a particularly artistic nor elegant narrative. It all seemed a bit on the stilted side, although with some flowery language sprinkled in. The unfolding of events is more or less just told straight out, and not revealed using a colorfully narrated unfolding of events.

I ploughed through it with a sense of duty to complete something that I only pretended to complete in high school. And I was immensely relieved to discover that it wasn't unreadable, as I had thought all these years. Tony Morrison and Immanuel Kant, however, do remain unreadable.

Fortunately, I did not have to read this book in grade school, because I would not have gotten anything out of it at the time. For those interested in character-driven stories and with the patience for 19th-century prose, however, Silas Marner is worth reading.

This short book tells the story of a man who more or less withdraws from life after a crushing betrayal, to be eventually reawakened through his love for a child. It's a sweet story, at times saccharine and with some all-too-convenient plot elements, but still, it's a good one. The writing, of course, is excellent, sometimes sarcastic, and peppered with incisive observations about human nature. For the most part, the characterization is also excellent; I fully believed in Silas and the Raveloe villagers, and even the minor ones are distinct and realistic.

But then there is Eppie, the original Pollyanna: so perfect she's more plot device than person. Even when she misbehaves, she does so adorably; as a toddler she never throws tantrums, and as a teenager she's never for a moment rebellious or selfish or withdrawn. She's a fantasy child, with none of the human foibles the other characters display, and it's because of her that the later part of the novel sometimes becomes saccharine.

Overall, though, a sweet, enjoyable story from a gifted writer. I decided to try this one before Middlemarch, and it's good enough that I'm eager to try Eliot's major work.

I failed miserably at reading The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, but I loved Silas Marner. I think it was just that my edition of The Mill on the Floss has really off-putting font, and seems really long. At any rate, I sped through Silas Marner, which is a slim little volume, and is quite interesting. "Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and that of the little girl he adopts, is entwined with Godfrey Cass, son of the village Squire, who, like Silas, is trapped by his past. Silas Marner, George Eliot's favourite of her novels, combines humour, rich symbolism and pointed social criticism to create an unsentimental but affectionate portrait of rural life." (from the Penguin Classics edition). Yes, "her." George Eliot was a pen name. My question is, why do we still use the pen name in this case, but Charlotte Bronte's pen name (Currer Bell) isn't used anymore? I might research that...

The actual edition that I read called it a moral fairy tale, and I would agree with that term. The book is fairy-tale-like, and highly entertaining, but also thought-provoking, as moralities (and fairy tales for that matter) are supposed to be. The sentences can be very long, but somehow, unlike Charles Dickens, they don't seem overwritten; they seem to fit the tone of the story just right.

I loved how the little golden-haired orphan Eppie made her appearance; she is the child of Godfrey Cass, and when her mother keels over, Eppie toddles into the cottage of none other than Silas Marner, who now has a chance for redemption. She is the reappearance of his precious gold that he lost.

A chance for redemption. I suppose that's not really the right phrase; Silas Marner isn't bad per se. He's complicated, and yes, he's miserly, but that's because he was wrongfully accused of a crime in his past life. He's just drawn into himself, and he no longer wishes to associate with the rest of the world or have anything to do with religion. But bright little Eppie gives him a chance to get past that and start again. Godfrey too isn't strictly good or evil. He's conflicted, and he's done some bad things which he wants to forget about, and he's done some good things. I won't tell how the book ends, but suffice to say that Silas Marner is an amazing classic novel, for its social commentary, and its humor, and its symbolism. I would highly recommend it, and am thinking of trying to tackle The Mill and the Floss once again. Or perhaps Middlemarch. I do think Silas Marner is a good book to start off with if you're going to read George Eliot; it's short and (it seems to me) less overwritten.

My blog is at novareviews.blogspot.com.

I've always heard Silas Marner described as a drab read, a lesser work of George Eliot that is forced upon school children because it is George Eliot's shortest novel. I am happy to report that Silas Marner is neither drab nor a lesser work of Eliot. I found it to be an engaging, ultimately heartwarming and moral story about the true price of gold and human relations. It was a story that in many ways I found to be very relevant to today's society. As Jane Austen did before her, Eliot writes about human characteristics that transcend time.

As the story starts, Silas Marner is a happy man with a good job as a weaver, a productive member of his church, a great best friend, and a fiancée. Things suddenly take a turn for the worst when Marner's best friend frames him for a crime he didn't commit, and also steals his fiancée. Bitter against his fellow church goers and town, Silas Marner moves away to a place where he is not known and where his weaving is prized. Making a good living, Marner values his gold and puts it above all human relations. Things soon change when his gold is stolen and a young child shows up on his door step shortly thereafter. He raises young Eppie as his own, until her real father shows up when Eppie is a teenager and wants to take her back. Will Eppie stay with Silas Marner or go to the father that abandoned her as a child?

George Eliot created a wonderful cast of characters in Silas Marner. Silas is the main character, but his neighbor lady Dolly Winthrop, is a wonderful lady who helps him raise Eppie. Squire Cass and his family are also fleshed out and discussed in great detail as their lives often intersect with Marner's. I enjoyed listening to all of their lives. Nadia May was a great narrator. This was also the first book I listened to on my phone from the library. I love the system, but wish that there were more copies of digital audiobooks available to check out!

The most fascinating part of the book for me was how George Elliot captured timeless qualities in human interactions and life. My favorite example of this is how a bunch of old guys are together talking about how the youth of today are lazy and nothing like when they were young lads. How often have I heard this talk throughout my life about how the youth of whatever day are terrible compared with older generations.

Another example of this is problems with drugs. We hear about drugs in the news often and it seems like a problem just of today, but in Silas Marner, Eppie's mother has a drug addiction that leads her to take one last fix that ultimately kills her and leaves her child an orphan in the snow. The drug of choice may have changed over time, but the deadly effects of them haven't. As I continue to explore Victorian literature this year, I've noticed that drugs play a prominent role in many famous novels of that time.

Overall, Silas Marner is a moving, intriguing story, with characters and situations that are timeless.

This edition of Silas Marner by George Eliot was published in 1951
by Scott,Foresman,and Company and is an ADAPTED
version (adapted by Lou Bunce). "Adapted" means that the original
story has been changed by making the sentences simple and removing
material that is not needed. this particular book contains some nicely done
illustrations by Seymour Fleishman. This is the book I read and I am reviewing.

I very much enjoyed this story,not having read it before-only heard about it
over the years...living in the early 19th century, Silas Marner is a classic
character who is drenched in loneliness(somewhat of his own making). Silas ,a
weaver by trade,is accused and found guilty of a theft(he was innocent). Silas
left the place of his birth to move to the village of Raveloe. Once there he made
money weaving but,turned his back on friendship,love and God. His life is incredibly
lonely but, he has an obsession with money-gold coins-later on the gold is stolen.
Silas is almost destroyed by this loss but,thereafter,a two year old orphan child wanders
into his cottage and his life. The child-whom Silas names"Eppie"- brings him back to life
again and the villagers gain new respect for Silas.
It is fascinating to read the villagers reactions to Silas and even his own reactions to
the people and happenings around him. this is one of the finer parts of the story-the outcast,
the loner-making do but,barely hanging on to life. I do not want to spoil the whole story by
revealing the end but,suffice to say,it does have a happy ending.

If readers are looking for a simple version of Silas Marner,this is it.
I cannot say what the original is like but,i think it is very slow,lengthy,and heavy
for us modern readers. I like my short version which,is to the point.

This is a classic and should be read as such. Going in, you have to know that Eliot is a master at words and dialects and that this will not be easy reading. I did find that reading it was tedious at times. It wasn't the kind of book that I couldn't put down or that I'd look forward with eagerness to picking up again.

That said, there is much to recommend this book. The morals and the values are excellent. From the first few chapters, you might be afraid that the book is going to be filled with rather amoral, money-grubbing characters, but you will soon find that the good, decent people here are head and shoulders above many people. There is one thing about certain writers of classics--when people are good or evolve from good to better they are superior people. You'd be hard put to find such perfect people. The father-daughter relationship in this book is incredible. I'm always amazed at the classics that have extended families living together and it's all so beautiful. The in-laws become beloved family members and look after the old folks as though they were blood relations. It's a fairy-tale experience, but if you can suspend judgment and believe that people can live together in harmony, not to mention choosing the spiritual over the material, your heart and soul will be warmed by this story.

But be warned that although it's a short book there is a multitude of wordiness to get through. You may have trouble with unfamiliar dialects and long sentences that never seem to end, but your patience will be rewarded. There is nothing stereotypical about this story. It's quite unusual, has some twists and turns, and ultimately a very satisfying finish.

Just a postscript: I decided to read this book because I remembered a nun who recommended it. She had just had our junior class in high school plow through Eliot's Adam Bede which is considerably longer, but we all enjoyed it. So she said that Silas Marner was good also and several girls groaned audibly. This was all I needed to hear--those groans convinced me that this wouldn't be easy reading for a 17-year-old young woman. But the nun said, "Oh, girls..." in the most wistful manner. I always wondered what there was about Silas Marner to make Sister look so moony-eyed. Now I know. I had to groan a little through all the verbiage, but I did find the warmth that Sister had evidently discovered.

"Life is what happens while we're busy making other plans..." John Lennon's lyric are words to live by in this hardy Victorian chestnut about a simple miser who finds love at his doorstep one snowy evening.

Published in 1861, George Eliot's novel has a reputation for dreary earnestness that kept me away from it for quite some time, until I decided to make an effort at reading all the books I successfully avoided in high school. "Silas Marner" turned out one of the easier assignments, not only because of its shortness and simplicity, but for Eliot's engaging manner of writing, which feels less wedded to its time than even more famous writers of her generation like Dickens.

Marner is a weaver and a kind of social exile who sets up his home and business in the English country town of Raveloe. Not happy but content, he spends his time either working or sleeping, his sole recreation being the counting of his gold coins. All this is suddenly taken away from him, but Silas's misfortune turns out to be a blessing, pushing him out of what had been a rut-like comfort zone.

"Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us," Eliot notes early on in Silas's transformation. "There have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud."

There's a lot to like about "Marner" the novel. The title character is a real treasure of literature as Eliot describes him, not because he's particularly exciting so much as because he's so readily identifiable, especially with those of us who are old enough to know disappointment in life. Many reviewers here compare him to Scrooge; Marner is a materialist and a bitter social outcast, but unlike Scrooge he retains a certain palpable sympathy and humanity throughout. This in turn makes the character's journey more compelling.

Eliot captures a pastoral vision of English village life that feels absorbing and affecting, even if it is a bit gauzy. Her philosophic asides are marvelously quotable without ever getting in the way of the narrative. Her plot twists are well designed and hardly predictable, at least to me; I was especially impressed by how she dealt with a long-absent antagonist late in the story.

But here's an odd criticism for a Victorian novel: It wasn't long enough. That's actually a problem, as the central game-changing transformative act of "Silas Marner" takes place when the novel's already half-over, and from then on the story speeds toward a spotlessly tidy resolution. The development of Silas's relationship with the others in his village, and with the little girl that changes him, feels rushed.

To want more of a book is thin criticism of what is there. Perhaps a solution might be to read it again, for Eliot's ruminations on how people deal with the specter of misfortune, using various designs to try and ward it off, are both deep and charming. Her metaphysics are a trifle muzzy (I'm not sure if she was a Deist or an agnostic; maybe she was both at various times) but her take on the human condition comes across as well-grounded and relevant. She is a keen social critic, but not a blanket one; her take on organized religion manages to be both dubious and positive.

In short, this woman with a man's nom de plume is very hard to pigeonhole, which also goes for her nifty novel. To adults like me of a certain age, the title may suggest boring homework assignments thankfully dodged, but "Silas Marner" is a real treat worth picking up.

I think this book deserves 3.5 stars, but as usual the five star system fails me.

This classic reads a bit like a book written by a Hobbit about life in the shire; Not a book written by Tolkien, but by a Hobbit. It has a bit of a fairy tale tone to it. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it wasn't exactly what I expected for a story with such heavy subject matter. Overall I liked it and I do recommend it, but beware it is a bit slow for a modern audience. It's not a long book, though.

I listened to this story on CD's I got from my local library. There were two readers with British accents and sometimes I found them hard to understand, but not often. Like most of the readers of audio books I am in awe of their talents.

Hope this helps.

The novel Silas Mariner is 182 pages in length, and this is one of the shorter novels by George Eliot. This is an interesting story and a recommended read. Is it pure gold? No. That is an over-statement. It is not another "Notes From the Underground" or "Death of Ivan Ilych." It is a bit of a romance smaltz novel, and it is short. It is a long short story. But it is different from what one might think. After all, consider the author and the times in which it was written.

The novel does have a measure of charm. The title is taken from the name of the lead character. He is a weaver in a small English town. One might say that he is a very dull character. But he has a few interesting events in his life - which I will not reveal here. There are only four interesting characters that run the complete length of the novel. They all live in the same small village. Also, there is a secondary set 3 or 4 characters. These are interesting and almost Dickens-like characters who drift in and out of the action.

Coincidences give away the plot. That is a weakness. After 100 pages or so, or about 60% through the read, it starts to become clear what will happen. And, from that moment going forward it follows a most predictable script. Still, it is well written and colourful, and the novel does hold some delightful surprises.

The novel is a quick read.

Recommend. It ranks 4 stars.

Silas Marner spends his days weaving for the village-folk of Raveloe, weaving and saving, hiding his money in leather bags in the floor of his home. At nights, he counts the money, tinkling it between his hands, memorising the increasing total. He spends little, and has no friends or family. His life consists of waiting to leave his life, an endless weave that seems to have no beginning and no end.

But Silas was not always a weaver. As a young man, he was engaged, and living in another town. But his best friend, William Dane, who was jealous of his good fortune and hopeful prospects, engendered a plan to strip Silas of everything he held dear. His hometown, convinced he was involved with the robbery of a senior deacon, accused him of theft and he was forced to leave. He stumbles upon Raveloe and begins to weave, and fifteen years past.

It is to George Eliot's credit that a story with such fairy tale qualities is so successful. From the very beginning we are made aware of character-types and ideas, with Silas being an innocent man wrongly accused, and then, as a weaver, a giant metaphor of toil and struggle in an unfair world. The townsfolk of Raveloe, as they are outlined, remain simply that - a thick line that purports to show the broad details of a person, but in no way offers the subtle shading that makes a character come to life and become a person. But this is to the story's credit, for we are not interested so much in depth of character and complexity of situation, as we are in the constant weaving, the endless sadness, of Silas Marner's self-imposed exile.

While we learn of Marner's new life as a hoarder, a miser, a weaver, we come to see other characters and situations. There is a young man, Godfrey, who is running out of money and seeks a desperate measure to fix his worries. There is his father, who disapproves of his life and choices. One New Year's, the two stories intersect, and after Silas is robbed of all his money, a young girl, blonde and innocent and nameless, is found on his doorstep. Her mother, an opium addict, is discovered nearby, frozen to death. A father, if there is one, does not step forward.

Here, Eliot allows us to know the secret well before Silas or Eppie, his newly christened adopted daughter. Godfrey is the father, and it is a secret he carries with him well past necessary. His duplicitous action is flagged at a very early stage, which sets in our mind the idea that a comeuppance, or a truth revealing set piece, is somewhere along the line. Because this is known - for what fairy tale does not, in the end, end in goodness and retribution and justice for those who deserve it? - we are able to enjoy the experience of Silas as he becomes a good father, and learns how to love.

In a sense, the themes surrounding Silas are trite and over-used. The idea of a sad, lonely man discovering the beauty of the world again through love, is nothing new. Yet Eliot's mastery of character and evocation of place allow us to sail along with Silas as he sheds the hard carapace of armour that he has placed around himself. He becomes, as we do, devoted to Eppie. She is a caricature, a purely good and ultimately pure girl who, through the tutelage of her father, understands the meaning of love even where Godfrey, her real father, does not.

Eliot makes heavy use of dialect in Silas Marner. As a personal taste, I distinctly dislike dialect, because I find I spend more time translating what is being said than enjoying and understanding the character as they are presented. Yes, it can aid in characterisation and 'realism', but at what cost? Much like Wuthering Heights, several characters in Silas Marner were ruined for me, purely because I had to work so hard at what they were saying. And of course, upon figuring out their obscure words, I realised that they were saying nothing meaningful at all. A great disappointment, that.

Throughout, various characters are introduced and then pushed to the background, as needed by the story. When Silas is in difficulties concerning the raising of a child, a goodwife is found, Dolly Winthrop, who provides him with advice and stresses that the child must be christened. Later, a love interest is given to Eppie, because what happy ending does not finish with a wedding?

But these are minor quibbles. As a fairy tale, Silas Marner excels. There are good people done wrong, and bad people who come right in the end. There is a happy - or mostly happy - ending for everyone who deserves it, and a few that don't. But more than that, there is the construction of a wholly sympathetic man, and that is Silas Marner himself. Eliot does not stray down an easy route with him - when he becomes a miser, there is sadness, not avarice, in our minds as we sympathise.

This novel is considered minor Eliot; it is not hard to fault that estimation. Middlemarch is a towering literary achievement, whereas Silas Marner is merely a single flower in a garden of like experiments with words. But what flower does not deserve to be smelled, at least once?

Silas Marner is a skillfully crafted novel to be enjoyed by readers with varied tastes. It was written by a woman, who found it necessary to use a man's name because of attitudes in England in the nineteenth century. It is built around problems that all of us face in our lives, such as, "How important is money?" As in all great novels, the characters change as the plot develops.

SILAS MARNER is a realistic novel because it portrays life in a real and believable fashion. The author, Mary Ann Evans, who used the pen name, George Eliot, pays careful attention to a few distinguishing details about here characters and settings.

For example, we can see Silas Marner, the central character of the novel, with his pale skin and undersized body. We know how he looks with his large, near-sighted, bulging eyes. We can see the important-looking village of Raveloe, which lives peacefully in opulent neglect.

When I was a teacher, I directed many high school sophomores to read SILAS MARNER. Most students dreaded reading the novel included in their literature textbooks. Once they met Silas and spent enough time with him to become acquainted with his unique personality, they became eager readers of this well-crafted classic.

It has some of the same qualities that made Pride and Prejudice (Vintage Classics) an endearing and enduring novel. In both works, the idyllic English countryside is an enjoyable escape from everyday life. There is romantic courtship in both, but the romance of SILAS MARNER is not the central theme; therefore it is not as compelling as that in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Since the readers are not required to become obsessed with yearning for romantic fulfillment, young guys who were in my class felt free to enjoy it. (Sixteen year old young men are still self-conscious about these matters.) Both books contain the same kind of satire buffered with compassion. In both novels we laugh with the local rural and village people. Because the language in SILAS MARNER is less complex, adolescent readers enjoy it more than they do PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

When as a student I first read SILAS MARNER in high school and when I read it with my students, I considered the coincidences plot weaknesses. Life doesn't work that way, I thought. Now that I have experienced a life of incredible coincidences, I no longer find anything in the book unbelievable. Events caused by Silas Marner's catalepsy seemed unlikely, but now they represent no problem.

Theft with its resulting bitterness provides conflict with which the readers can identify. Earlier I found it difficult to believe that the lightning of theft could strike twice, but that part of the plot is one more realistic element now. Other twists and turns with their ironic mysteries are typical of human life as I have lived it.

All the parts of the novel that seemed to be a contrived fairy tale are now a vignette of life. Even if I could not believe it all, the book would still break my heart the way Forrest Gump does with its twists and turns of satirical accounts.

When I enjoyed SILAS MARNER in my twenties with thirty teenagers at a time, I did not notice the shaping of Silas' religious beliefs as much as I do now. I remember that the students and I were indignant about the way Silas was duped by the evil church members at Lantern Yard. Now I have compassion for them, especially William, as well as for Silas.

Mary Ann Evans showed the futility of idolatry. All my students understood the disaster of worshiping money. If I could return to my students, I would like to ask them what they thought of the villagers who seemed to rely on the habits of their church to bring them close to God. Could we discuss that in the 21st century? I feel sure we would discuss the addiction to narcotics as it is realistically portrayed.

SILAS MARNER is a great English novel not difficult to read, but rich in insights. It shows what is evil and what is good in human hearts.

Strange that so many people complained about this book after having been forced to read it in High School. I had never heard of this particular Elliot book until I acquired the list of "1001 books to read before you die." I can see where the language in this book would be troublesome to many young students, particularly if they have little to no experience reading anything from the time, much less anything written in phonetic slang. But the theme should be universal.

Short Synopsis - we follow to individuals through the tale, the title character - Silas Marner, a weaver who has had a long run of bad luck in dealing with people who has then holed himself away from society and fills his days with weaving and counting his slowly growing stack of gold. The other is Godfry Cass, a wealthy son of a land owner who's poor in morals and scruples. Through a series of events triggered by Godfry and his brother, Silas is thrust into various situations of both grief and joy. Always Silas maintains his high moral standard and simple way of life and is thusly rewarded for it.

As is standard in the literature of the time - the good get what they deserve and the morally lacking get their just ends. The interesting part that Elliot weaves in to the tale is that the unfortunate events that happen to Silas, all end up leading him to true happiness. Now I don't want to give the story away as many others have, but I will say that once you get past the first third or so (where the reader will find themselves wondering if ANYTHING is ever going to happen) the book picks up and becomes very enjoyable.

The language may be tough for some, but once you get about 20-30 pages in, you shouldn't have much trouble reading it. If all else fails, read it out loud. On the whole this is a very enjoyable book, though not my favorite - the story is fun and happy and leaves the reader feeling rather warm and fuzzy.

George Eliot, born Marian Evans in 1819, spent most of her early life in rural Warwickshire. This early upbringing is apparent from her easy comfort in writing about country settings, with attention to detail and niceties that a born-Londoner would generally not be able to provide. Eliot's life was not that of the typical Victorian lady; she worked in publishing, including periodicals, translations, and writing her own fiction. Eliot led a 'colourful' life; living in a common-law marriage with Lewes, a man who left his wife and children for her, she then married after his death a man twenty years her junior, only to die eight months later.

In the novel, Silas is a weaver, a rather grumpy and sour man, whose primary occupation and avocation is the making of money. He is an outsider in Raveloe, having been driven from his earlier community under the false accusation of theft, an accusation that also cost him his engagement to his beloved, and left him with little faith in human nature, particularly that of the church-ly humans.

The high society in Raveloe reached the pinnacle in the Cass family. Squire Cass had two sons, Godfrey and Dunstan, each his own unique form of scoundrel. Godfrey, who had an illicit marriage to a local barmaid Molly, is being blackmailed by his spendthrift brother Dunstan. Alas, Godfrey is expected to marry another, Nancy Lammeter, daughter of another society family. Godfrey attempts to buy off Dunstan with his horse, Wildfire, and during a journey to sell the horse Dunstan accidentally injures and kills Wildfire.

Dunstan is stranded in the countryside, but sees light from a cottage -- the home of Silas Marner, reputed after fifteen years of weaving and miserly activity of having accumulated a large stash. He steals the bags of money he finds in the deserted cottage, and disappears into the night.

Silas reports the theft, but is unaided. He is heartbroken, for his life's purpose has been the accumulation of this wealth. No one seems to make the connexion between the lost money and the disappearance of Dunstan (one flaw in the novel, in my opinion). Silas gradually recovers from this blow, and the people of Raveloe begin for the first time to see him in terms of friendship.

At a Christmas party, the Cass family is in full celebration, for the upcoming marriage of Godfrey and Nancy. However, Nancy is not pleased, given Godfrey's reputation. Later in the holiday season, Molly makes her way to the Cass estate and confronts Godfrey with a two-year-old daughter in tow. Upon her return from the estate, she falls and dies in a drunken, drug-induced stupor, and the child wanders through the snow to the cottage of Silas. Silas lays claim to the golden-haired child, and Godfrey is relieved to be free from Molly and paternity.

Sixteen years pass, and we come to meet a very different Silas, one who is now a truly human being, who is loved, and has an object of love in his daughter Eppie. Eppie is in fact about to be wed to the nice Aaron Winthrop. Godfrey and Nancy, however, have had a loveless and childless marriage.

Things develop rapidly near the end of the novel. A pond near Silas' cottage is drained, and the remains of Dunstand with two bags of gold coins is found. Godfrey feels compelled to tell his wife now everything, how Dunstan dishonoured the family, how he (Godfrey) was being blackmailed, and admits his paternity of Eppie. Nancy is strangely tolerant -- she only complains of not having been told sooner. They decide to demand that Eppie be returned to them.

In a beautiful scene of compassion and love, Eppie, given the free choice of deciding between Silas and connexion with the noble Cass family, opts for the man who was her true father, and chooses to remain with Silas.

Later, Silas and Eppie revisit Lantern Yard, from which Silas was expelled so many years before. Here in no longer the old church, his old home, or his old friends -- all has changed; life has gone on. The old place is dirty and noisy by comparison to the serene Raveloe. The question of Silas' guilt or innocence cannot be resolved, but then, is no longer a question of concern for anyone in either place. Eppie then marries Aaron, in a wedding paid for by Godfrey, who cannot attend due to business, and Eppie declares in the end that 'nobody could be happier than we are.'

Elliot intended to show that misfortune can lead to greater things, and provided a typical Victorian happy ending.

This novel has been a traditional one assigned to students of secondary school age for decades now; it is a classic, fairly simple in construction and vocabulary, and brings up the timeless themes of good, evil, fate, and has a wide range of characters who change over time. Alas, many school-age readers come away cold, often determined never to read another novel again, as it is presented poorly and not put in a more modern context which students will more readily understand. But, it remains a good story, and a fine representative of the Victorian novel.

(I read this out of the Bantam Classics edition; I'm sure the Dover is fine though the text in Dover editions is often a little harsh compared to Penguin/Bantam/Signet.)

Without revealing any details that occur later in the book, one sees the author's talent straight from the beginning. At once, Eliot shows how the title character loses his faith in God and becomes miserly. The first of these, describing a loss of faith, can be difficult to do without letting prejudices run in and color how it is explained. The author writes in such a way that anyone (even believers) can feel sympathy for the changes that occur in Marner's heart. As for his fall into the state of a miser, she makes this entirely believable, and explains how the stereotypical miser could really come to exist within concrete circumstances.

I won't spoil any of the rest of the story, but she does a very good job tying up loose ends. Oh! And the accents of those in the village are a delight to read. It's always pleasant to see an author pull that off well. This book is a classic and one will do oneself good to read it.

While reading SILAS MARNER, I kept thinking of a scene from Season Five of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, in which Tara's father and other relatives come to take her back home with them, very much against her inclination. Once Buffy realizes that Tara wants to stay, she states that they can take Tara only by going through her first, which causes the father to ask, "We are Tara's blood-kin. Who are you to interfere in her affairs?" To which Buffy replies, "We're family." The same emotions that I felt watching that episode of BUFFY came roaring back in the marvelous scene near the end of this novel when Mr. Cass decides to reveal after sixteen years of denial that Eppie is his daughter and will take her to live with him instead of Silas when he says, "Your coming now and saying 'I'm her father' doesn't alter the feeling inside us. It's me she's been calling her father ever since she could say the word." And Eppie herself adds, "And he's took care of me and loved me from the first, and I'll cleave to him as long as he lives, and nobody shall ever come between him and me." It is one of the lovelier climaxes of any 19th century English novel.

SILAS MARNER is very much a novel about faith and the search for those values that make life worth living. Marner himself seeks early on to find hope in a superstitious religion that ultimately disappoints him, and later in the acquisition of gold through hard labor, gold that is stolen from him. The money is later returned to him, but during the long interval he discovers the power and greater importance of love and simple human relationships, as he inadvertently inherits a young toddler who miraculously appears inside his cottage whom he adopts as his own child. Despite his hurts and crusty personality, Marner in loving the child is brought into the larger community as well, and achieves a kind of happiness he scarcely imagined earlier in his life.

These concerns were very real to Mary Anne Evans, better known by her penname of George Eliot. Though of humble intellectual origins, she was precociously intelligent, and no figure of the 19th century overcame such obstacles to become one of the leading intellectuals of her day. In the 20th or 21st century, Evans would have held a chair of religion or literature at Cambridge or Oxford. Instead, she wrote literary reviews on a host of books on a wide range of subjects, made some of the most important translations into English of crucial German theological texts ever made (Feuerbach's THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY and David Strauss's THE LIFE OF JESUS), and wrote some of the most intellectual novels of the century. Eliot's novels are remarkable for their intellectual diversity and depth. Her novels constitute a fascinating exploration for how to have faith in a post-Christian world, and in this way she is the most typical post-Darwinian novelist of the 19th century. Furthermore, during the first half of her career as a novelist, she brought the novel down to earth. If Dickens was unique in writing in his books about many lower and working class characters in an urban setting, George Eliot did much the same for the rural poor. In novels like ADAM BEDE and THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, the bulk of her characters, even the landed characters, are very much below virtually all of the characters in Jane Austen's novels, and set even more off the beaten path than hers. Although she would turn to more universal, less specifically rural characters in themes beginning in ROMOLA and her later novels, SILAS MARNER represents her last exploration of the rural poor. She manages to catch in her pages a rapidly changing world, setting SILAS MARNER in an area where the lone weavers such as Marner were disappearing in favor of industrialized cloth manufacture and the countryside was giving way to a rapidly expanding coal industry (Eliot's part of England is very near what would later be the setting for D. H. Lawrence's coal mining novels, with Lawrence also reflecting in his pages on the changes industrialization had wrought, although he writes from the end of the process while she writes at its beginning).

We tend sometimes to think of those who reacted against the Christian faith following Darwin and David Strauss as having forsaken faith entirely, but that is very much not the case. Most Victorians who forsook Christianity looked instead for alternate forms of faith. Take the philosopher Henry Sidgwick, who ceased to believe in Christianity, but founded the Royal Society of Psychical Research. Like many of his age, Sidgwick believed that a supernatural realm was essential to provide the ultimate validity of morality, and no longer believing in Christianity, sought to investigate like a 19th century Fox Mulder a wide range of supernatural phenomena to validate some vague form of faith. Eliot in this novel is desperately trying to believe in something. Like Mulder with the poster on his wall reading "I Want to Believe," Eliot wanted faith. Not merely that, but she was convinced that there had to be a viable form of faith to make life worth living. She was hardly the atheistic materialist that many wrongly believe that Darwin produced.

Just as Sidgwick believed that there was a supernatural order that make sense of morality (in particular instances of self-sacrifice), so George Eliot clearly sees a divine order in the workings of the world. This is illustrated over and over in SILAS MARNER, where everything balances at the end. Although she no longer believed in the Christian teachings, she remained very much a person of faith and ultimately an optimist. By the end of the novel, no bad deed has gone unpunished and no scales are left unbalanced. In the old expression, "Bad deeds will out." But it is also a novel of redemption, with Marner finding his anti-social sins being forgiven and through family and friends discovering, very much to his surprise, happiness.

Though George Eliot always liked to write superficially simply stories that were in fact paragraph by paragraph commentaries on the intellectual debates of her age (she had, for instance, been reading widely in German and English theorists on the folktale when writing MARNER), her surface simplicity always feels real and unforced. And the story she created is a lovely one, with vivid characters, a marvelous plot, and a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. I will confess that I came to this novel much, much later than most others who read the book, and only after having read many of her other books. This is one unquestionably one of her most enjoyable and marvelous works.

Silas Marner is a nineteenth century Englishman. He belongs to a religious community; is falsely accused of theft and repairs to the isolated midland village of Raveloe. He is considered an alien by the clannish townsfolks. Marner is a Midas who enjoys collecting gold coins earned through long hours of weaving. One day the money is stolen by the dissolute Duncan Cass the son of the wealthy Squire Cass.

Marner is devastated by this theft. And then love enters his life. Love is incarnated in little Effie the child who is orphaned by the death of her opium eating mother who dies on her way to confront Godfrey Cass with the child he and she have had together. Effie's mother was abandoned by Cass who seeks to wed the rich znd lovely Nancy.

Through a series of plot machinations the ending is resolved when Effie is wed and is able to live with Silas. Godfrey Cass repents of his sordid past; acknowledges his parentage of Effie and confesses all to his forgiving wife Nancy.

George Eliot wrote this short novel in 1861 prior to beginning her long and largely forgotten novel "Romola "The novel reminds this reviewer of the tale woven on the loom of Dickens imagination called "A Christmas CArol" dealing with the redemption of the miser Ebeneezer Scrooge. Scrooge is redeemed by the ghosts of Christmas and the sick lad Tiny Tim.

George Eliot was a freethinker who held to a high moral standard of behavior. She knew rural England and its folkways well for it was here she grew to womanhooid. Her use of the customs, dialects and culture of the British peasantry is superb. She was before Thomas Hardy on the literary landscape and surpasses that great author in her ability to delve deeply into the human heart in conflict with itself.

Many readers may have been turned off to Eliot through being forced to read "Silas Marner" in high school. These readers deserve to reread this beautiful parable of love and redemption. "Silas Marner" was the favorite novel by George Eliot. It deserves to live as long as the English language. Its message of loving hope is eternal.

This is George Eliot's most compact novel, but it is a stunner.

It is basically the story of loss of faith, and its replacement--first, by money, then (when the money is stolen) by love. It is also a secular resurrection story: Silas, after losing his friends, his faith, and his fiance, becomes a reclusive, obsessive weaver, who is essentially dead to society and himself. He hoards his money, but when it is lost, he finds the baby, Eppie, who is a greater treasure, and who essentially restores his life.

It is also a terrific study in Class Conflict--a favorite of Eliot's. Silas, of the lowest (almost serf) class, is hardworking, honest, helpful, whereas the Casses, Dunstan and Godfrey, are both aristocratic scoundrels. Dunstan steals Marner's money; Godfrey attempts to steal his child.

The language may be daunting to modern readers, but it was standard prose for Victorian novels. Oddly, the most difficult chapter for readers today, Chapter 6, was the one most loved in Eliot's day: it is a tour de force of local dialect of the Midlands.

Eliot, as usual, sees clearly, almost like God: she knows everyone's flaws and strengths, and is harsh on what causes harm to others; but she is always generous-hearted and understanding.

George Eliot, born Marian Evans in 1819, spent most of her early life in rural Warwickshire. This early upbringing is apparent from her easy comfort in writing about country settings, with attention to detail and niceties that a born-Londoner would generally not be able to provide. Eliot's life was not that of the typical Victorian lady; she worked in publishing, including periodicals, translations, and writing her own fiction. Eliot led a 'colourful' life; living in a common-law marriage with Lewes, a man who left his wife and children for her, she then married after his death a man twenty years her junior, only to die eight months later.

In the novel, Silas is a weaver, a rather grumpy and sour man, whose primary occupation and avocation is the making of money. He is an outsider in Raveloe, having been driven from his earlier community under the false accusation of theft, an accusation that also cost him his engagement to his beloved, and left him with little faith in human nature, particularly that of the church-ly humans.

The high society in Raveloe reached the pinnacle in the Cass family. Squire Cass had two sons, Godfrey and Dunstan, each his own unique form of scoundrel. Godfrey, who had an illicit marriage to a local barmaid Molly, is being blackmailed by his spendthrift brother Dunstan. Alas, Godfrey is expected to marry another, Nancy Lammeter, daughter of another society family. Godfrey attempts to buy off Dunstan with his horse, Wildfire, and during a journey to sell the horse Dunstan accidentally injures and kills Wildfire.

Dunstan is stranded in the countryside, but sees light from a cottage -- the home of Silas Marner, reputed after fifteen years of weaving and miserly activity of having accumulated a large stash. He steals the bags of money he finds in the deserted cottage, and disappears into the night.

Silas reports the theft, but is unaided. He is heartbroken, for his life's purpose has been the accumulation of this wealth. No one seems to make the connexion between the lost money and the disappearance of Dunstan (one flaw in the novel, in my opinion). Silas gradually recovers from this blow, and the people of Raveloe begin for the first time to see him in terms of friendship.

At a Christmas party, the Cass family is in full celebration, for the upcoming marriage of Godfrey and Nancy. However, Nancy is not pleased, given Godfrey's reputation. Later in the holiday season, Molly makes her way to the Cass estate and confronts Godfrey with a two-year-old daughter in tow. Upon her return from the estate, she falls and dies in a drunken, drug-induced stupor, and the child wanders through the snow to the cottage of Silas. Silas lays claim to the golden-haired child, and Godfrey is relieved to be free from Molly and paternity.

Sixteen years pass, and we come to meet a very different Silas, one who is now a truly human being, who is loved, and has an object of love in his daughter Eppie. Eppie is in fact about to be wed to the nice Aaron Winthrop. Godfrey and Nancy, however, have had a loveless and childless marriage.

Things develop rapidly near the end of the novel. A pond near Silas' cottage is drained, and the remains of Dunstand with two bags of gold coins is found. Godfrey feels compelled to tell his wife now everything, how Dunstan dishonoured the family, how he (Godfrey) was being blackmailed, and admits his paternity of Eppie. Nancy is strangely tolerant -- she only complains of not having been told sooner. They decide to demand that Eppie be returned to them.

In a beautiful scene of compassion and love, Eppie, given the free choice of deciding between Silas and connexion with the noble Cass family, opts for the man who was her true father, and chooses to remain with Silas.

Later, Silas and Eppie revisit Lantern Yard, from which Silas was expelled so many years before. Here in no longer the old church, his old home, or his old friends -- all has changed; life has gone on. The old place is dirty and noisy by comparison to the serene Raveloe. The question of Silas' guilt or innocence cannot be resolved, but then, is no longer a question of concern for anyone in either place. Eppie then marries Aaron, in a wedding paid for by Godfrey, who cannot attend due to business, and Eppie declares in the end that 'nobody could be happier than we are.'

Elliot intended to show that misfortune can lead to greater things, and provided a typical Victorian happy ending.

This novel has been a traditional one assigned to students of secondary school age for decades now; it is a classic, fairly simple in construction and vocabulary, and brings up the timeless themes of good, evil, fate, and has a wide range of characters who change over time. Alas, many school-age readers come away cold, often determined never to read another novel again, as it is presented poorly and not put in a more modern context which students will more readily understand. But, it remains a good story, and a fine representative of the Victorian novel.

There are few great novels about people who are basically good and who are, in the end, rewarded for it. I can think of only three others I have read in this genre that had any literary merit: Eliot's ADAM BEDE; Elizabeth Gaskell's CRANFORD; and Oliver Goldsmith's THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. I can see why SILAS MARNER is usually regarded as a novel to be read by the young, if only because it reinforces values that most of us see as desirable.
Granted that Marner starts out as a miser, if only because he is so isolated from the rural community in which he lives. When Marner's small fortune is stolen, a strange thing happens: His neighbors gather closer to him and help him, drawing him out of himself and illuminating the goodness that was always inside of him. Marner's neighbor, Dolly Winthrop -- a poor, inarticulate wheelwight's wife who does everything she can to make Silas a part of the village of Raveloe -- particularly shines through in an excellent supporting role, one of many in the book.
When a toddler whose mother dies crawls into Marner's house, the process begins to accelerate as he adopts her. The weaver now has someone to live for; and the love between him and the little Eppie begins to flower.
Good seems such undynamic a quality in literature. George Eliot is one of the few writers who can make the tribulations of a good person worthwhile reading. In weaver and his neighbors, Eliot has created an entire community that strives for the greatest good (with the sole exception of Dunsey Cass, who steals Marner's fortune). The best books always make you wonder what happens next; and SILAS MARNER kept me turning the pages, marvelling at my own reactions to what I would once have thought was too simple and flimsy to engage my attention.
George Eliot is a writer of many surprises and many surprising strengths. I had approached this book only because I was filling in a gap in my reading. Having read it, I urge anyone to pick up this book if you are young and hope for the best in life -- or come to it, like myself, an adult who has been "nicked by the scythe," who has forgotten some simple truths about which he needed reminding.

George Eliot is the best woman author I've ever read. She had God-given talent that you or I, no matter how much we read, no matter how much we write, could not consciously replicate. She had something which can't be taught, a kernel of genius hidden somewhere in the brain, which was allowed to express itself...to our collective benefit.

Silas Marner, while not perfect, is something recognizably special--a book with lingering phrases, a book with extraordinary insight, a book that instates the reader with the feeling that the author knows what the hell she is doing. It's a book that matters.

I know what you are afraid of: you are afraid this book will be a bloated succession of tea parties and persiflage with mutton-chopped vicars. No fear: the plot is credibly organic, and moves along briskly, wrapping itself up in just over two-hundred pages. It should hold your interest so that you can discover the ten or so gem-sentences dispersed throughout. Sentences that are not just airtight, but that meld with your mind, and cause an "Aha!" reaction. You know what I'm talking about.

Perhaps the most convincing signal I can offer of my sincere regard for her abilities is the fact that I'll now seek out her other works...something I can't say about Virginia Woolf, for instance, whose literary inferiority to Eliot I would take as axiomatic. (Ironic, isn't it--or maybe not--that feminists seem to esteem Woolf more highly than Eliot?)

Silas Marner / 0-553-21229-X

"Silas Marner" is a wonderful story of maintaining perspective in life - a tale extremely comparable to Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol". In the height of his youth, when he is healthy, happy, and totally in love, young Silas is betrayed, cast down, and taught the 'lesson' that only the criminal and avaricious get ahead in life. He moves to a new town and abandons any attempt to connect with the society around him, instead focusing on hoarding his wealth and lovingly counting his money nightly. When his precious hoard is stolen, Silas is again crushed, but the arrival of a small "angel" - a little orphan girl with golden curls - starts him down the long road to redemption.

A powerful aspect of this novel is the use of foils and counterparts against the main character as he learns his life lessons. The members of the local nobility live out their seemingly "perfect" lives unhappily, having not learned the lesson that Silas has learned through his exploitation as a lower-class member of society. By the time the local nobility realize what a treasure Silas' adopted orphan would have been in their barren home, it is too late; only the poor and miserly old man truly understood in time the value of living life for the sake of another.

~ Ana Mardoll

Like so many other American high- schoolers I with great difficulty went through this work. Years later I subjected one of my children to the same ordeal when she needed to write a book- report. And this because I found then and now, this moral tale of redemptive love to be moving and instructional. For young people and I expect for most readers today the complexity of Eliot's language is an obstacle to be overcome. She writes the kind of sentences the masters of style have been teaching Americans not to write for years. But she writes with great intelligence and intuition, great moral feeling. The story of the weaver unjustly accused of a robbery, who retreats into his own private world and who is later redeemed by his meeting and taking care of an orphan child is one which cannot help but touch the heart. And as Hawthorne said when the heart is touched we begin to be .And this work comes alive with the old codger's care for and love of the orphan child. Like Scrooge the other great scowling isolato of nineteenth century Literature he exemplifies and proves the greatest moral lesson of all, that in loving and caring for other human beings we become human ourselves.

Who can make it through the difficult language will find not only a very detailed and convincing description of English village life in the early nineteenth century but also a warm tale of the human heart healing itself through love.

This 19th century classic by George Eliot/Maryann Evans retains its timeless appeal; it charms and touches us no matter how jaded or sophisticated we consider ourselves. Perhaps the characters are something out of Dickens (in their extreem personality types and the idealized heroine). Yet this novel reaches our inner selves, where it is safe to applaud the unselfish and the compassionate, to appreciate social redemption and sincere devotion.
Silas, a disillusioned weaver who lives the life of a recluse, has never been accepted by the villagers of Raveloe. Paid in gold for his fine cloth, Marner hoards most of it in an iron pot buried in the sand under his loom. Having lost faith in God, church and his fellow men because of a tragic injustice in his former town, he lavishes his lamentable affection on indifferent gold. Until it is stolen.
The theft of this gold--his only friend as it were--leaves him desvastated. Yet fate seems to compensate him by the sudden apperance of a golden-curled baby, who toddles over his doorway one night when he is in a mild catatonic state.
How Eppie pulls at his heart and transforms his miserable, miserly life is the soul of this novelette. Evans' weaves a tapestry of tenderness and redemption through juvenile affection. SILAS MARNER remains a contemplative read for students 14 and up, and for all who enjoy British classical literature. The action is in the Heart.

This short novel has a lot going for it: criminals being punished, justice for the innocent, little kids, and all set in a bucolic English world of the 1800's. I enjoyed the story and the characters but what I found a real drawback is when the English country folk speak in native dialect. You can barely understand what they are saying at all. "Gell" is "girl" and "nor" means "than" and all this other confusion had me scratching my head. Otherwise a good read.

The modern world with its IVF initiatives and other assisted fertility procedures have lead us to reflect on the role of nature and nurture as the prime developmental instrument in the character and personality of children - and also of the rights of parents. But it was a great surprise to me to find George Eliot writing of this so long ago - and I think there is little doubt where her sentiments lay (but then the issue in 'Silas Marner' was clouded by the involvement of the innocent and victimised, versus the guilty and self-possessed - but I'm sure that was written by design to emphasise a point).
For a while 'Silas Marner' is a detective story. I had always thought Edgar Alan Poe was the originator of the detective story - but perhaps 'Silas Marner' may have been a trigger. This is an interesting mystery because we know who the culprit is and who the victim is - but will the culprit be exposed? and if so, how? For me, the circumstances of the crime was a little contrived but it did create a stimulating situation. But then the events of the story overtake the mystery and displace its resolution. When the resolution does come it is a real shock, not only to the reader but to characters as well - the ending is gripping and brings forth such desires for the four principle characters that I found it quite breathtaking to read.
Some reviewers have bemoaned the use of this novel as a student reading text. I agree with them. I remember struggling through books inappropriate to my time when I was a student. It is only when people get older that they start becoming attuned to their history and the background to their society. The first George Eliot novel I read was 'Adam Bede' and its portayal of the Methodism I grew up with as an innovative cult was fascinating. But, as a youth, I'm sure it would have been just wierd. What would I recommend as a student text? Something current and engaging. As I have suggested elsewhere Philip K Dick's 'A Scanner Darkly' with its non-judgemental observations on the tragedy of individual destruction by the use of drugs, might have many levels of value to a student learning about literature.

Newspaper readers were invited recently to submit their choices for the greatest works published in the English language. When the choices were totalled, two works by Shakespeare featured in the top ten. Also featured, I was pleased to see, was a novel by George Eliot. Internet users, familiar with her works, will probably guess which of her novels was chosen. For those unfamiliar with her works, the best one to start with is "Silas Marner", a much shorter one. It is short, it is easy, it even works well in schools (as I can testify), and yet it is undoubtedly a masterpiece.
George Eliot sets her 1861 novel in the early decades of the nineteenth century in rural England. Silas Marner is a weaver. In the pattern that life weaves, he usually features as a victim. Because he is unjustly "framed", he loses his reputation and his betrothed in the town where he grew up. After years working as a weaver and living like a hermit in a rural district then, he is robbed by an unknown thief who uncovers and makes off with the cache of gold guineas Silias keeps under his floor. Happiness and joy come to Silas, however, and at the end of the novel he is told, "Nobody could be happier than we are".
George Eliot tells her tale with a mixture of womanly sympathy, sharp observation, tact, and humour. Her depiction of a long-gone past, and her clear pointing of right and wrong impulses, give the story qualities that are sometimes found in morality plays or in fairy tales. Don't skip over the scenes in the local inn, the Rainbow, where the simple-minded rustics discuss relevant issues, including the existence of ghosts.
For those who appreciate hearing good literature read aloud, I recommend the unabridged audio format of "Silas Marner" where the reader is Andrew Sachs. As you might expect of this fine English actor, who made Manuel from Barcelona so memorable in "Fawlty Towers", he is especially wonderful in portraying the argumentative, credulous, muddle-headed rustics that foregather at the Rainbow. His reading extends for nearly seven hours.

This is an odd little book, but it's a good one. It's odd because the famous story of the old miser who is redeemed by taking in an angelic little girl to raise doesn't really even begin until half-way through the novel. This was definitely a surprise to me, but it wasn't a bad one. It ends up that there is a lot more to this novel than I thought there would be. In that first half of the novel, George Eliot brilliantly elucidates the fallen nature of both Silas Marner and the community. They're are revealed to be such selfish and sinful people. They are all in the throws of despair, lamenting their plight as humans and questioning a God who placed them in their lives. Eliot is really wonderful at capturing the need of each individual for redemption and also that need in the community as a whole. The individuals are criticized as is the unfair societal structure. Into this fallen world comes the angelic Eppie, and that's when the story really picks up. Eppie is the catalyst of grace offering redemption to Silas and the rest of the community.
Silas Marner is really an extraordinary little novel. It's a thoroughly enjoyable book (especially after you get through the first half) with a lot of valid criticism and some hope. It's a really beautiful little classic.

George Eliot, born Marian Evans in 1819, spent most of her early life in rural Warwickshire. This early upbringing is apparent from her easy comfort in writing about country settings, with attention to detail and niceties that a born-Londoner would generally not be able to provide. Eliot's life was not that of the typical Victorian lady; she worked in publishing, including periodicals, translations, and writing her own fiction. Eliot led a 'colourful' life; living in a common-law marriage with Lewes, a man who left his wife and children for her, she then married after his death a man twenty years her junior, only to die eight months later.

Silas is a weaver, a rather grumpy and sour man, whose primary occupation and avocation is the making of money. He is an outsider in Raveloe, having been driven from his earlier community under the false accusation of theft, an accusation that also cost him his engagement to his beloved, and left him with little faith in human nature, particularly that of the church-ly humans.

The high society in Raveloe reached the pinnacle in the Cass family. Squire Cass had two sons, Godfrey and Dunstan, each his own unique form of scoundrel. Godfrey, who had an illicit marriage to a local barmaid Molly, is being blackmailed by his spendthrift brother Dunstan. Alas, Godfrey is expected to marry another, Nancy Lammeter, daughter of another society family. Godfrey attempts to buy off Dunstan with his horse, Wildfire, and during a journey to sell the horse Dunstan accidentally injures and kills Wildfire.

Dunstan is stranded in the countryside, but sees light from a cottage -- the home of Silas Marner, reputed after fifteen years of weaving and miserly activity of having accumulated a large stash. He steals the bags of money he finds in the deserted cottage, and disappears into the night.

Silas reports the theft, but is unaided. He is heartbroken, for his life's purpose has been the accumulation of this wealth. No one seems to make the connexion between the lost money and the disappearance of Dunstan (one flaw in the novel, in my opinion). Silas gradually recovers from this blow, and the people of Raveloe begin for the first time to see him in terms of friendship.

At a Christmas party, the Cass family is in full celebration, for the upcoming marriage of Godfrey and Nancy. However, Nancy is not pleased, given Godfrey's reputation. Later in the holiday season, Molly makes her way to the Cass estate and confronts Godfrey with a two-year-old daughter in tow. Upon her return from the estate, she falls and dies in a drunken, drug-induced stupor, and the child wanders through the snow to the cottage of Silas. Silas lays claim to the golden-haired child, and Godfrey is relieved to be free from Molly and paternity.

Sixteen years pass, and we come to meet a very different Silas, one who is now a truly human being, who is loved, and has an object of love in his daughter Eppie. Eppie is in fact about to be wed to the nice Aaron Winthrop. Godfrey and Nancy, however, have had a loveless and childless marriage.

Things develop rapidly near the end of the novel. A pond near Silas' cottage is drained, and the remains of Dunstand with two bags of gold coins is found. Godfrey feels compelled to tell his wife now everything, how Dunstan dishonoured the family, how he (Godfrey) was being blackmailed, and admits his paternity of Eppie. Nancy is strangely tolerant -- she only complains of not having been told sooner. They decide to demand that Eppie be returned to them.

In a beautiful scene of compassion and love, Eppie, given the free choice of deciding between Silas and connexion with the noble Cass family, opts for the man who was her true father, and chooses to remain with Silas.

Later, Silas and Eppie revisit Lantern Yard, from which Silas was expelled so many years before. Here in no longer the old church, his old home, or his old friends -- all has changed; life has gone on. The old place is dirty and noisy by comparison to the serene Raveloe. The question of Silas' guilt or innocence cannot be resolved, but then, is no longer a question of concern for anyone in either place. Eppie then marries Aaron, in a wedding paid for by Godfrey, who cannot attend due to business, and Eppie declares in the end that 'nobody could be happier than we are.'

Elliot intended to show that misfortune can lead to greater things, and provided a typical Victorian happy ending.

This novel has been a traditional one assigned to students of secondary school age for decades now; it is a classic, fairly simple in construction and vocabulary, and brings up the timeless themes of good, evil, fate, and has a wide range of characters who change over time. Alas, many school-age readers come away cold, often determined never to read another novel again, as it is presented poorly and not put in a more modern context which students will more readily understand. But, it remains a good story, and a fine representative of the Victorian novel.

Silas Marner is a broken man. In training to be a religious man, he is falsely accused of being a thief and is betrayed by his best friend. Marner leaves town in disgrace and moves to a new place, where he mostly keeps to himself, weaving all day to make money. His gold, stored in a secret hole during the day and taken out to be stacked and counted in the evening, is his only companion.

When Marner's money is stolen, his world is rocked again, and he lives in devastation and regret. But when an orphan appears in his cabin and nobody steps forward to claim her, Marner finally finds something of meaning in his life.

This is a really sweet story of how a child's love can melt even the toughest of hearts. The path to Marner's destruction is long and heartbreaking, and my only complaint about the book is that there is so little about the life Silas and Eppie live together. I would have liked to have seen more of her growing up and the two of them forming a bond.

Don't read the review following this one unless you want all the plot points revealed.

If you've read George Eliot before, you know to expect interweaving plot lines, good characterizations and moral themes. This story is shorter than Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss, therefore not as deep in its levels and plot lines, but still absorbing and satisfying.

It's the story of a bitter man (older than his years) a young child who changes him, and how their lives are interweaved with the lives of another, wealthy family. It's filled with life: tragedy, comedy, scenes you want to read out loud. George Eliot is a wonderful writer, one who can transport you to the English countryside and to the time period so you feel like you are there, and you always care deeply for the characters.

I think very young readers might find feel there are "too many descriptions," but I found it very entertaining all the way through. And I love those old-fashioned endings, where you find out what happens to everyone.

For any true connoisseur of life's ironies, there can be few finer than the fact that the radical Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) is chiefly remembered for this completely traditional and eminently conservative tale. We needn't rehearse the elements of the story in detail because virtually every English speaking youth on the planet reads it in school. Just to jog your memory, Silas Marner is a devoutly religious weaver who is unjustly accused of theft. He moves to Raveloe where he becomes fairly reclusive both because he wishes it so and because the villagers find him odd. He devotes himself to the accumulation of wealth, but is once again devastated, this time when he is the victim of theft. Ultimately he is redeemed by a young girl who wanders up to his door. He raises the child and they come to love one another as Father and Daughter. The lesson being that neither religious fanaticism nor the love of filthy lucre will suffice to save a man's soul, but the basic love between two humans will do the trick.
It's a fairly simple and straightforward story about the capacity of love to heal spiritual wounds and make damaged beings whole, hence its power. Her other novels are in vogue right now, particularly the unreadable Middlemarch, but this is clearly Eliot's best and one of the most affecting novels of the 19th Century.
GRADE: A

George Eliot, born Marian Evans in 1819, spent most of her early life in rural Warwickshire. This early upbringing is apparent from her easy comfort in writing about country settings, with attention to detail and niceties that a born-Londoner would generally not be able to provide. Eliot's life was not that of the typical Victorian lady; she worked in publishing, including periodicals, translations, and writing her own fiction. Eliot led a 'colourful' life; living in a common-law marriage with Lewes, a man who left his wife and children for her, she then married after his death a man twenty years her junior, only to die eight months later.

Silas is a weaver, a rather grumpy and sour man, whose primary occupation and avocation is the making of money. He is an outsider in Raveloe, having been driven from his earlier community under the false accusation of theft, an accusation that also cost him his engagement to his beloved, and left him with little faith in human nature, particularly that of the church-ly humans.

The high society in Raveloe reached the pinnacle in the Cass family. Squire Cass had two sons, Godfrey and Dunstan, each his own unique form of scoundrel. Godfrey, who had an illicit marriage to a local barmaid Molly, is being blackmailed by his spendthrift brother Dunstan. Alas, Godfrey is expected to marry another, Nancy Lammeter, daughter of another society family. Godfrey attempts to buy off Dunstan with his horse, Wildfire, and during a journey to sell the horse Dunstan accidentally injures and kills Wildfire.

Dunstan is stranded in the countryside, but sees light from a cottage -- the home of Silas Marner, reputed after fifteen years of weaving and miserly activity of having accumulated a large stash. He steals the bags of money he finds in the deserted cottage, and disappears into the night.

Silas reports the theft, but is unaided. He is heartbroken, for his life's purpose has been the accumulation of this wealth. No one seems to make the connexion between the lost money and the disappearance of Dunstan (one flaw in the novel, in my opinion). Silas gradually recovers from this blow, and the people of Raveloe begin for the first time to see him in terms of friendship.

At a Christmas party, the Cass family is in full celebration, for the upcoming marriage of Godfrey and Nancy. However, Nancy is not pleased, given Godfrey's reputation. Later in the holiday season, Molly makes her way to the Cass estate and confronts Godfrey with a two-year-old daughter in tow. Upon her return from the estate, she falls and dies in a drunken, drug-induced stupor, and the child wanders through the snow to the cottage of Silas. Silas lays claim to the golden-haired child, and Godfrey is relieved to be free from Molly and paternity.

Sixteen years pass, and we come to meet a very different Silas, one who is now a truly human being, who is loved, and has an object of love in his daughter Eppie. Eppie is in fact about to be wed to the nice Aaron Winthrop. Godfrey and Nancy, however, have had a loveless and childless marriage.

Things develop rapidly near the end of the novel. A pond near Silas' cottage is drained, and the remains of Dunstand with two bags of gold coins is found. Godfrey feels compelled to tell his wife now everything, how Dunstan dishonoured the family, how he (Godfrey) was being blackmailed, and admits his paternity of Eppie. Nancy is strangely tolerant -- she only complains of not having been told sooner. They decide to demand that Eppie be returned to them.

In a beautiful scene of compassion and love, Eppie, given the free choice of deciding between Silas and connexion with the noble Cass family, opts for the man who was her true father, and chooses to remain with Silas.

Later, Silas and Eppie revisit Lantern Yard, from which Silas was expelled so many years before. Here in no longer the old church, his old home, or his old friends -- all has changed; life has gone on. The old place is dirty and noisy by comparison to the serene Raveloe. The question of Silas' guilt or innocence cannot be resolved, but then, is no longer a question of concern for anyone in either place. Eppie then marries Aaron, in a wedding paid for by Godfrey, who cannot attend due to business, and Eppie declares in the end that 'nobody could be happier than we are.'

Elliot intended to show that misfortune can lead to greater things, and provided a typical Victorian happy ending.

This novel has been a traditional one assigned to students of secondary school age for decades now; it is a classic, fairly simple in construction and vocabulary, and brings up the timeless themes of good, evil, fate, and has a wide range of characters who change over time. Alas, many school-age readers come away cold, often determined never to read another novel again, as it is presented poorly and not put in a more modern context which students will more readily understand. But, it remains a good story, and a fine representative of the Victorian novel.

With the publication of SILAS MARNER in 1861, George Eliot countered the rise of what she saw as the patently false view of life that the conventional pastoral engendered. Eliot opposed the cheery images of villagers happily frolicking in their quaint but comely homes. She intended to inject a lasting note of rustic realism in the person of Silas, a character deliberately conceived as a fairy tale creation. By depicting the metamorphosis of Silas from one of twisted values to one of traditional humanistic ones amidst the background of the pastoral fairy tale, Eliot was able to present a believable tale of personal redemption that made use of the political, economic, and social changes that were transforming England from a rural to an industrial based economic system.

Silas is initially seen as a sympathetic character who suffers from a false accusation of theft in his small rural village. It is this village that connotes a totality of pre-industrial images of which much of England's older population still retained vivid memories. After his journey to Raveloe, he lives in a small cottage where he works as a weaver and slowly accumulates a hoard of gold which he keeps buried in the floorboards. He likes to play with his gold in a non-productive manner that now calls to mind the similar antics of the cartoon character Scrooge McDuck, both of whom saw their treasure only in terms of watching it grow. This gold is the central symbol of the book, for when he encounters the golden haired Eppie, he transfers his fascination from coin to strand, a changeover which mirrors a similar melding of gold as non-functional to gold as human functional in that a growing capitalist society began to include increasing numbers of newly rich middle class entrepreneurs who put their gold to productive use. As Silas raises Eppie from baby to young woman, he similarly raises his own consciousness so that the bitterness that led him to Raveloe he now sees as but the first step in his redemption. It is not only his ability to shed his bitterness that marks his emotional growth. He now can reintegrate himself into the community of men that he symbolically discarded when he entered the isolation of his secluded home. He further comes to trust in a Higher Power that he was sure had discarded him earlier. Finally, through Silas, Eliot shows that personal redemption also includes the belief that justice delayed is not justice denied. Contrapuntally, the one who stole the treasure for which Silas was blamed did not escape justice. He was killed by falling into a stone pit. Godfrey Cass, who refuses to identify himself as the true father of Eppie, is punished for doing what Silas does willingly. Godfrey must endure seeing his daughter raised by the very one whose purse is dwarfed by Godfrey but whose heart dwarfs Godfrey's. In the regeneration of Silas' nearly lost humanity, Eliot shows that as long as one has someone to care for, then the giving of care results in its return with interest, sort of like investing gold rather than hoarding it.

Eliot's short masterpiece about a miserly English weaver whose life is transformed when a child arrives at his house is an allegorical tale about grace filled with keen character portraits, gentle irony, and an insightful evocation of provincial English life in the early 19th century. Some of the dialect is difficult to wade through as is Eliot's often circuitous prose, but the novel is touching and the story recurs in various other works, like the Czech film "Kolya."

"Middle March" is often regarded as George Eliot's greatest novel but "Silas Marner" is undisputedly a novel foray by the Victorian authoress into the realm of the rustic. First published in 1861,this masterpiece has transcended much beyond the bars of time and even in the 21st. century retains its ambition to tell a colossal saga in a genteel fashion boldly underlined by a conversational tone. "Silas Marner" is a brief and tightly cultural story invoking a symmetrical plot and adroit symboism to depict the tale of a linen-weaver who loses everything in his life only to discover them in a more divine,vibrant and concord dimension.

Silas Marner is a poor,hapless linen-weaver who leaves his own village after being framed in a robbery case by his friend William Dane who goes on to marry his lover Sarah. Ignominy,betrayal and a haunting sense of being abjectly wronged conspire to lead him elsewhere and Silas Marner finds respite from his unforgiving past in the village of Raveloe. Here none is cognizant with his bitter history and Silas becomes a "simple weaver" and all the more enigmatic for it. He creates an atmosphere of mysteries around him and remains confined in this narrow scope of self-development for fifteen heavily limping years. He hoards up a massive amount of gold and silver but favours miserly expenditure. And then when everything gives the impression of being normal and steady,life takes a sharp bend for Silas Marner and forces him into a strange world.

Running parallel with this story of a diminutive figment of the domain of village is the gentryfolk version of a life inndated with posh manners and biting apprehensions,this too in Raveloe. Godfrey Cass is the eldest son of the Squire who succumbs to his brother Dunsey's blackmail and leaves him his horse to sell. Dunsey Cass epitomises all that is lavish and bad and nonsense and grotesque and crooked and deceitful and cunning in a gentry society. He kills the horse in a freak accident and then to save his skin,steals the money from Silas Marner's dilapidated house. At the heart of "Silas Marner" lies his robbery---it lends an excuse to George Eliot to intersect two different,and at times poignantly contrasting,worlds and in this scheme,the reader is invariably led to ruminate on William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice",where the two parallel stories,one concerning Antonio's plight thrusted upon by Shylock and the other describing Bassanio's endeavour to win Portia,coincide at the critical junction to shape the drama into the right posture. This comparison is not to say that Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and Eliot's "Silas Marner" resonate with each other but goes a long way really to prove tat the intersection of the various works of literature are not that detached from the intersection of events in a single work of the same.

This robbery transmutes the eponymous protagonist of the novel from "a half-crazy miser" to a God-fearing man of depth and substance. That very same night Silas Marner's house is radiated by the return of the lost gold and silver pieces in a more divine and colourful form:"a tamp's child". Silas is bold enough to accept her as his daughter and despite being a bachelor,he undertakes for the development of the girl-child he baptises as Eppie. Eppie's growth and realisation of the world in the subsequent years spent amidst poverty and few glimpses of fortune results in Silas's own comprehension and rise from a one-dimensional figure to a pluralistic person,"There's good i' this world---I've a feeling o' that now;and it makes a man feel as there's a god more nor he can see,i' spite o' the trouble and the wickedness"---this may seem as the ultimate realisation of Silas Marner but it's not as much the understanding of Silas about life as the authoress's recurrent theme:that life,despite all the human,divine and unforseen forces perpetually thretening to distort its shape,is always beautiful.

"Silas Marner" is virtually a ballad inprose and so inevitably always soaked in a gentle reassurance of poetic justice. Throughout these pages,the reader discerns elements of ballad structure,most notably in instances where the vivid flow of the tale is punctuated by phiosophical discourse. George Eliot's general framework of things in this book is great and occasioned with touches of delicate humour and subtle satire blent with the accent of superstitions so vehemently disturbing the society during the writer's era---all these features being reflected in the conversation at the Rainbow---augment the authoress's successful employment of a taut and intense yet elaborate and defining language. George Eliot may be focusing on a particular character in this novel but she doesn't neglect the suitable etching of other characters. art is symbolic in tone with singular effigies representing wider landscapes and in "Silas Marner" this nature is made pretty evident. Geofrey Cass embodies a man repressed by circumstances and personal fears,Dunsey is the sole villain in the piece,Nancy Lammeter proves a dedicated and devoted wife to Godfrey despite illustrating herself of a meek submissive nature bordering on self-denial,whilst Dolly Winthrop is the most accomplished of women characters in the novel,a constant source of sometimes vain but forever honest judgement and help to Silas Marner.

George Eliot's language in this book is typically idyllic with a stunning coupling of narration and dialogue,the former being personal as well as philosophical and the latter neither lofty nor mundane but in essence commonplace and genuine. Dunsey's end is an apt revelation of the writer's belief that truth can never be obscured or erased. The book doesn't attempt to keep many mysteries from the reader---Eppie's father is forever a known person,Dunsey's ultimatum is never in doubt and the conclusion isn't that difficult to fathom. "Silas Marner" is not a superb classic only for the easy flow of its plot but also for the easy fairy-tale gratifications that it manages to combine with massive social and personal insights. This work must rank alongside the best novels of all time and indeed when George Eliot remarks this about Nancy's elder sister Priscillia,"She serves a little pepper to sprinkle over the talk---that's the reason why she never puts too much in her pies",we can easily qualify this statement to the authoress's ability to weave magic with her own talks and pies.

On the surface, Silas Marner is a fairly simplistic fable about a jaded weaver who finds solace only in weaving and in counting his gold each night until a little girl appears on his doorstep and he finds meaning and life in her love loosing his obsessions and becoming a well adjusted and well liked person. I can see how some do not find it interesting. It was several weeks after I read it that I realized that maybe Silas Marner was not the main point. He doesn't actually do anything, after all. Everything happens TO him. He simply responds to what happens to him. To rediscover life through the love of a child is a good theme but look at Les Miserables. There is no comparison.
Look instead at Godfrey Cass and consider the story with him as the main character. If Silas Marner is actually the counterpart for him instead of the other way around (like a constant in a science experiment), it starts to take on the qualities of a classic. Godfrey Cass is also jaded and harassed but he schemes. He tries to manipulate the circumstances to his best benefit - not in a malicious way, no more than Voltaire's Candide. If we look at it that way, what we have here is an English Candide for, with Silas as the counterpart instead of Godfrey, the moral changes to become, basically, 'Roll with the punches', or - as Voltaire put it, 'We must cultivate our gardens'.

This is definitely one of the least gripping "classics" I have ever read. It seems a bit shallower than the books I think of as real "classics", but at the same time is too slow and too full of long-lost North England dialect to be of any value to children or high school students.

The fact that the store has so many editions of Silas Marner available indicates that it is truly a classic if it is still being read more than 150 years after it was written.
It is unfortunate that some high school reviewers (or former high school readers) feel that they had this book "forced" on them. Yes, the English language has changed since the early 19th century, especially for American readers of this British author.
My suggestion would be to listen to "Silas Marner" as an audiobook, perhaps while reading along. I recently finished listening to this fine book narrated by Margaret Hilton, but I couldn't find her rendition among the titles available here. I'm sure there are many fine versions available.
So, give this tale a listen, and let the language flow into your ears. Then you will discover why this tale about a miserly old weaver, who has been wronged by his neighbors more than once, finds redemption and a new life when he adopts the little girl left on his doorstep is truly a classic.

Early in the story Silas Marner has a great life - he's happily engaged, living among good friends, and doing work he enjoys. Unfortunately he is framed by his best friend who then marries the woman he is engaged to. Silas leaves the village and travels far away. He stays as secluded as he can, and hordes the money he earns as a weaver.

His money, the only thing he loves, is taken away from him, and while stewing over that, a young child appears at his door that he accepts as from God. "Men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand it put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."

A good summary of the story from Mrs. Winthrop: "Them above has got a deal tenderer heart... And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner--to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten."

Question: How can you ensure that a person will hate a book? Answer: Make her read it for 7th grade English class, make sure that the language is old-fashioned, and above all, make sure that the ideas and concepts are over her head. If that's what happened to you, and that's why you have an aversion to Silas Marner, and you are now over 30, pick it up again. Read it twice. Silas Marner is one of the greatest novels in the English language.
Yes, it starts out sad, as our pathetic hero looses both his trust in humanity and his faith in God. But the power of love replaces his lust for money, and wins out in the end. Meanwhile, morally poor but financially rich, high-living Godfrey Cass provides a counterpoint to simple Silas. At the end there's a surprise when the fate of Godfrey's evil brother is revealed.
When you're all done, before you file Silas Marner on the shelf, go back and read the paragraph about Silas' thoughts when he discovers that his hordes of coins are missing. If you have ever felt sudden extreme loss, you will recognize the stages of despair from disbelief to acceptance "like a man falling into dark water." Which is why this book is not suitable for children, and is most appreciated by those who have undergone their own moral redemption.
Silas has been the inspiration for many other characters, including Dicken's Scrooge. He has been portrayed in movies, including "A Simple Twist of Fate" starring Steve Martin. But none is as good as the original. If you haven't read it since junior high, try it again. Silas Marner is an excellent book. There's a gem of human understanding in every chapter.

If you're required to read this book in high school, then kudos to your teacher for introducing you to George Eliot.

Having said that, when I was in high school, I wouldn't have appreciated George Eliot either. She was a master crafter of literature, choosing words thoughtfully and laying patiently the foundation of characters, observations, storylines to form a more perfect novel. In other words, to most high school readers of classic literature, her books can be boring.

But wait at least 10 years, pick up her works again, and find yourself pulled into stories that simultaneously take you back to provincial Victorian England while portraying the lives of characters who could be your friends, family, yourself.

Silas Marner is a wonderful precursor to Eliot's Middlemarch. The story focuses on the main title character, of course, following this sad little weaver from the time he was a respected member of his community to the moment he was cast out to his wandering and settling in sleepy Raveloe where he seeks to be left alone. Betrayed by his best friend and rejected by his fellow worshippers at Lantern Yard, Silas loses faith in God and people. He means to live the rest of his life in Raveloe, shielded from the God who failed him and from people who would only disappoint and hurt him.

He passes the next 15 or so years of his life, shunning society who responds to this odd-looking stranger by alienating him. Silas finds solace in weaving, weaving, weaving, accumulating gold for his work, and transferring his love to these gold pieces.

Silas' core is shaken again by a shocking event, and he is in danger of soon dying a broken man. He is restored when a little girl with golden curls toddles into his life. He comes to believe the gold he lost came back to him in this "golden-haired replacement." And from then, Silas is slowly drawn back to life, back to society, back to faith in God. The little orphan he saves and names Eppie ends up saving him.

Sounds like a simple almost sappy story, no? Under George Eliot's pen, it's a wonderful telling of faith (in God, in people, in life) lost and found because of unconditional love for a little child. But it's also much more than that. The story explores themes of alienation, societal rejection of otherness and being different, questions of where one fits in society and how that role is interdependent on one's participation in society as well as its acceptance of one on what terms, love of course as a restorative panacea, love between a father and his adopted daughter trumping all, and so many different aspects of life and its challenges and rewards.

All of these ideas are so expertly presented and turned over, my eyes were sometimes stopped dead in their tracks by a passage that I would then reread several times to appreciate the beauty of its truth and language. I'm about to date myself (I'm currently in my late 30s), but I just had to share one of the most memorable observations I'd read in a long time. It's about Godfrey Cass, a man who seems to have everything, except a child to call his own:

"Meanwhile, why could he not make up his mind to the absence of children from a hearth brightened by such a wife? Why did his mind fly uneasily to that void, as if it were the sole reason why life was not thoroughly joyous to him? I suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that life never *can* be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dulness of the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good."

I don't think George Eliot is saying here that Godfrey is silly for wanting a child when he has everything else a man could possibly want. It is the idea of many men and women never being able to be truly happy and forever chasing some thing, which they find is lacking in their life at that time, because they're sure that thing will make them happy. This is the classic middle crisis, but it is universal in us all to desire what we can't have and to think our happiness depends on us getting it. It doesn't of course.

I say this book is a precursor to Middlemarch because we start to see in this novel George Eliot's beginning of writing novels with distinct townsfolk full of characters as memorable as the main characters -- folks that populate a village and are as recognizable as your kind neighbor, local bartender, neighborhood elder. I'm thoroughly entertained George Eliot's creations here: Mr. Macey, Dolly Winthrop, Squire Cass and his brood, Nancy and Priscilla and their respectable kin.

So why did I not give this 5 stars? Honestly, it was too short. Much time was spent on Silas and his life before finding Eppie, but not enough was flushed out in the story after. I loved the chapter when Eliot described how this old bachelor is suddenly befuddled by the two-year-old he's adopted and becoming a father to her. Where does he begin? And when Eppie turns 3 and mischievous, it's hilarious to follow Silas as he tries to discipline his precious...and can't. Those little nuggets are treasured by this newish mom. But it comes to an end too soon and Eppie is next seen as an 18-year-old girl about to embark on her new life.

The second part of the book feels hastily completed. Loose ends are tied up; difficult conversations improbably take place and are resolved in one day; Silas' journey to his old life at the former Lantern Yard and back home to Raveloe is rushed; and Eppie's story has its happy ending.

Had George Eliot wanted to keep writing to flesh out all these paltry scenes, I would have happily kept reading and delighted to have given this book a 5-star rating.

I have to begin by saying I took a Victorian Literature class in college about 11 years ago. I had to read this book... and I did not like it at all.
As another reviewer mentioned, I am now thirty and read it again. I now love this story! It is a story of loss, love and redemption.
A miserly Silas Marner loses the one thing that makes him feel complete, at least he thought it did. His stash of Gold gone Marner opens up to the people around him for the first time in years. He also meets the little girl who changes his life forever.
Silas Marner is a story about finding love and learning how to love someone else. It is also about the miniscule value of possesions as compared to the relationships we can build with those in our lives.
Read this book... If you read it before and hated it, or have never read it... It is well worth your time. This classic story written by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) will change your view of the world.

Set in nineteenth-century England, Silas Marner is a weaver who has moved to a new town, Raveloe. Repulsed by his appearance and cataleptic fits, he is ostracized by the community. After losing his faith and having his fortune stolen from him, his fortunes change over time.

The fascinating subject is not Marner but the town, Raveloe, whose characters are of particular interest. It is interesting how Eliot spends more time discussing their thoughts and actions than the does Marner, the title character.

I was interested in this book from reading Middlemarch and found Marner to be decidedly more entertaining, but not as in-depth. Yet there are important themes found in Marner--the loss of faith, the good of the community vs. the rights of the individual, and the importance of social class (this is present in every British novel).

Marner is a masterpiece--written by a woman in the nineteenth century, the book's unassuming nature belies its importance as a great literary work. It is also an entertaining book to read, and not too difficult, seeing its short length. Those interested in reading Eliot may want to start with this classic.

Long ago George Eliot breathed some life into these characters and their world of Raveloe, and if you look in on that place and time through the words on these pages, you'll find that things are still very vibrant there today. "Silas Marner" lives on because of the outstanding prose style and moral connundrums Eliot lays down as the foundation of her story.
Her descriptions of people and places are so beautiful, her command of language so complete, and her style so refreshing, that it makes the world these people inhabit seem more alive and real than the worlds other authors attempt to spin. Her dialogue occasionly lets slip a touch of upper class pride, but overall her characters are expertly drawn, well filled out, and entertaining.
The moral underpinnings of the story make it seem like a fable almost, but Eliot fortunately leaves final judgement of her characters up to the reader. Seeing Silas vindicated after so much going wrong for him made this worth the read for me. Despite some of the harsh realities of the class differences depicted, it is pleasant to watch the goings on in a small English town and to see Silas Marner at last catch some breaks and come into his own as a person. Even if it's a little unrealistic, heck, it's a novel so that's part of the fun.
The choices we make for ourselves only determine part of our fate, Eliot seems to say with this story. Other things are not up to us, and those happen to us independent of any choices we make. I enjoyed pondering my own fate that way, through the lens of the little world of Raveloe. For such a short book, "Silas Marner" packs a lot of power in both language and meaning. This was my introduction to the work of George Eliot, and now I look forward to reading some of her other works.

Silas Marner by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Evans, is a well-written story, made more so by the fact it was written by a woman in the Victorian Age. The novel is set in the early nineteenth century England, during a time that society had three distinct classes: the rich and powerful, the working people, and the tradesmen.

While the characters personalities in the book seem exaggerated to make there qualities or faults more obvious, Eliot's detailed descriptions of the people made it easy to create a mental picture of them. Though the book is well written, the style of language makes it hard to read and even harder to understand. I found I had to read it more then once and spend time thinking it through to get to the point of enjoying it. Silas Marner has many valuable moral and lessons in it, the most important one being that people are worth more than gold.

Silas Marner is a wonderful story about life and love. It begins with our hero, Silas Marner, a lonely, luckless old man, being robbed of his life savings. But then a mysterious appearance of a homeless, golden-haired little girl opens up an unexpected new chapter in his life. Silas Marner was a weaver who through loneliness and through life's occurrences becomes bitter and miserly. The theft of his life savings causes him to rethink everything about his life. Ms. Eliot also introduces Godfrey Cass to her cast of characters. Godfrey is a foil to Silas. He is the real father of Eppie, the young girl that Silas adopts. We watch as Silas' lot and outlook on life improve, Godfrey's life dissolves into disappointment, fear and guilt. The book is not "preachy", but a reader cannot help but be improved by reading and learning the moral lessons that it delivers.

Reviews of this novel, seem to fall into three categories: those written by people who like to read great literature; those written by people who would prefer to read brain candy; and those written students forced to read the novel as a class assignment and,in some cases, would prefer not to read anything (if the third category is discarded, the average rating is much higher).
One of the most remarkable things about this novel is the fact it was written by a woman, using a male pen name, in 19th century England when women were generally oppressed, i.e., they were not encouraged to have careers or to do anything outside the home. The story is well known. A man who blacks out during seizures, not remembering what happened, is falsely accused of theft of money from his church. He is shunned by his former friends and becomes a recluse. When he is later robbed of his savings, and an abandoned child appears on his doorstep in place of the gold, his life is changed as he takes responsibility for the child.
This is classic literature from that time period, and is most certainly easier to read than many other novels from the same period (students should consider themselves fortunate that they were not assigned to read one of Thomas Hardy's novels). I first became acquainted with the novel when it was assigned reading in a high school English class. That was over 50 years ago, and the story is one that has stuck in my mind.

A humble miser would seem to be a contradiction in terms. Not so, as this simple story full of plain symbols shows.

Early in the nineteenth century, Silas Marner belongs to the religious community of Lantern Yard located in a small English village. He weaves for a living and spends his free time with his best friend. He courts a young lady of his community. While Silas watches over a sick man, he falls asleep and some money in the man's possession is stolen by Silas's friend. The community suspects Silas but he denies stealing the gold. The community elders draw lots to determine Silas's innocence or guilt. Found guilty by the lots Silas leaves Lantern Yard, bitter at the injustice but sure that things will be well. Silas's humility tempers his dour pessimism.

He walks for a few days and finds himself in Raveloe, another English village. Raveloe is bigger and livelier than Lantern Yard. Silas settles in a small stone cottage there. He has lost everything he loved: his friend, his intended bride, his home, his church. The only thing that remains to him is his work.

A naturally industrious and skillful man, he finds solace in weaving and his only satisfaction in life is the gold he earns. Silas Marner loves gold, not because of a greedy nature but because gold is the only thing left him, his trust in mankind having been shattered by his friend's betrayal.

The gold is stolen one day but it is soon replaced by a greater treasure. An abandoned infant finds her way into Silas's cottage. At first his poor eyesight has him mistake her fair blond hair for his lost coins. When he realizes his confusion, he is neither disappointed nor joyful. He merely seeks to care for the child. When her mother is found dead, he takes her in.

As time goes by, the girl grows up and gives Silas an object for his love worthier than was his gold. And though he understands that she belongs to herself and not to him, Silas loves his daughter as his true treasure.

Vincent Poirier, Quebec City

I first read Silas Marner when I was 18 years old, and loved every word. I started reading it again immediately after finishing it! As said in other reviews, perhaps 9th grade is indeed too early because at that age, this older language style is difficult to "get into" quickly enough to hold their interest. I found myself wrapped in this little town with its odd characters and gossip, and wished I'd lived there. The imagery is so strong and sweet I still refer to the scenery evoked by this novel when I read completely unrelated historical articles! The story itself cannot be called remarkable because it is one of the basic stories about humanity and what matters in life. Yet George Eliot surpasses all others in the telling of it. There is a reason this book is on all the reading lists -- it is a great achievement.

When I read, I tried instead of condemning Silas Marner, to see the book through his eyes. And as the book went on, I almost felt myself getting dimmer,more cut off from society. It was rather sad.

The book isn't the best representative of what life in 19th century England would have been like, but it is a very good picture of how uncultured people treat other people from other lands. It's only when misfortune falls upon that person, do they accept them.

I absolutely loved the fact that Silas found a "golden-haired replacement". That was the sweetest thing I've read in my life, how he instantly wanted to protect her and give her the best things in life. Godfrey seemed nice at first, but as the book uncovered his past, I started to like him less and less. He needed to act like a man, buck up and take control of his life, and not be constantly cowed by his father. I can understand due to the time period why he thought Eppie would come with him and Nancy, but still, the way he kept asking even after she said no the first time was rude.

The book was very uninteresting in the beginning. I had to force myself to read it. It was only after Dunsey stole Silas's money that it began to be interesting. Still, it was a sweet book and I liked it a lot.

I was under the sexist opinion that George Eliot was a man. How pleasantly surprising that George was actually Mary Ann Evans, a woman gifted with powerful insight into human behaviour.

The story of Silas Marner is that of a wronged man who finds solace in solitude and hoarding. The ritual and monotony of his loom keeps him captive, the reckoning and manifestation of his gold gives him companionship.

One day his gold is stolen replaced by a far more precious gem, an orphan girl. An abandoned child offers Silas salvation, a withered miser offers the child a home. Together they change each other and those around them.

The story is replete with penetrating behavioural analyses applicable to all of us but just beyond our reach.

George Eliot's SILAS MARNER is a literary classic. What does that mean? A classic is a book that has passed the test of time. A book taken out of its historical milieu and placed in a contemporary one, e.g. our 2008 society, and still reads fresh is a classic.

SILAS MARNER still reads fresh, if you are a sophisticated reader or have a teacher to guide you through the ground mines of vocabulary and complex writing. However, wrapped inside those is a great story, even a soap opera that students recognize as soon as the Cass brothers are introduced.

Two story lines run parallel until they intersect with the theft of Silas's gold. Silas Marner has been in this village for seventeen years, living a life of isolation, while he makes a living as a weaver. Even if he had chosen to live amongst people, he possesses two things that would always hinder acceptance: he is a herbalist and a victim of catatonic seizures. He discontinues his use of herbs early on, but he cannot stop catatonia, which of course becomes a metaphor for his life with others before Eppy appears.

It is these quiet seizures that result in blackouts that--bottom line--cause his banishment from a religious community where he was highly respected. In the seventeen years near Raveloe, nothing has happened to change his life with a dead heart. His great love in this time is his growing stacks of gold. He loves it! He idolizes it!

Enter Godfrey and Dunstan Cass, two landed gentry, both dissolute in differing ways, both catalysts in the change in Silas Marner's dull life. The younger brother, Dunstan, is a n'er-do-well, a gambler in debt and subject to embarrassment by a man to whom Dunstan owes a great deal of money. He finds gold in Silas's house. On the other hand, Godfrey leads a superficial respectable life, because he too has indulged himself and has a child born out of wedlock.

One cold, dark, stormy night two stories intersect: Dunstan steals Silas's gold, then disappears forever, and Silas is devastated by the loss of his gold. However, this loss brings Silas into community. The night the golden-haired child appears magically on Silas's hearth clinches Silas's total acceptance into village life. Silas adopts this child and Dolly Winthrop becomes his guiding angel in helping to raise the child.

When the two secrets are revealed concerning Dunstan and Godfrey, the reader cheers Silas on, directs hisses at Godfrey, and stands amazed at Dunstan's revelation.

Inside this "soap opera" is a fabulous story of love and redemption. Without love one man lives a life of solace in gold with a heart dried and shriveled. With love his heart beats passionately and lovingly and makes him live fully with family and friends. No greater lesson can come from a story as one of redemption. From the still-point of one golden-haired girl radiates a life that redeems a man.

George Eliot, or Mary Ann Evans, is a genius in depicting the lives of men and women and their influence on others for good or evil. Eppy is the source of good out of sinful circumstances and selfishness on Godfrey's part. Godfrey continues his static life force by not claiming his child at one point and trying to claim her when it is too late. The contrast between one man who has little and the other who has everything is instructive in explaining the ways of the heart.

If I were marooned on a deserted island and could take ten books with me, SILAS MARNER would definitely be on the list. It is a great book to teach and listen to students respond to it (and NO, I won't be stranded with students). Watching their faces in class discussion concerning Dunstan's re-appearance in Raveloe is absolutely priceless. Even though the foreshadowing is huge, students never figure out what happens.

Just think of all the choices we make in our lives, some irrevocable as to cause and effect. SILAS MARNER is a caution and a beacon to making the right choices. Making wrong choices to hide one's actions, more often than not, results in dire consequences. Silas shows us that right actions produce right results. I love this book!

Early in the story Silas Marner has a great life - he's happily engaged, living among good friends, and doing work he enjoys. Unfortunately he is framed by his best friend who then marries the woman he is engaged to. Silas leaves the village and travels far away. He stays as secluded as he can, and hordes the money he earns as a weaver.

His money, the only thing he loves, is taken away from him, and while stewing over that, a young child appears at his door that he accepts as from God. "Men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand it put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."

A good summary of the story from Mrs. Winthrop: "Them above has got a deal tenderer heart... And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner--to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten."

A rather sentimental tale of the recluse who regained faith and the ability to love his fellow man. If this didn't have the name George Eliot on it, I doubt this would still be in print, cause honestly, there isn't much to see here (move along.) Middlemarch is fan-freakin-tastic, don't get me wrong, but this one is nowhere near to that status. The story itself is rather unexciting, and there isn't (to my eyes) a depth of examination by a probing mind to merit serious study. Poor kids, having to read this in school! There's so much better, so much more worthwhile....

I'm buying this for my husband to read since he wants to read some interesting classic works. This is my favorite version of this work. Ok this is the one my parents own & I read when I like 12 or 11. I enjoy this author's writing very much and the message of this book. A bit later I watched A Simple Twist of Fate with Steve Martin & realized it was a modern day Sila Marner. Drug issues, hording of $$, greed, single parents and etc. still exist today. It's an interesting look at age old problems during a time when they were supposed to be very moral.

I cannot more agree with the reviewers who say Silas Marner is slow moving at the beginning, and that it is slow moving for the first half of the story, however I find that Silas Marner is not actually a story, more a biography, or a discription of the times. The scenes are that era are very vivid; the characters are very true and clear. Silas's betrayal, his 'death' and his obsession with money are reflected in the monotony of the book, just when you begin to feel the story has completely lost track of any clear-cut line, something new happens. Then, Silas is reborn, he remembers who he has been and his family. The most wonderful thing about this book is its summing up, happy ending. Nothing is left hanging, this book definatly has a good ending, and a book with an ending such as this is clearly the work of a gifted author; such as George Eliot. Do not read this book in search of thrilling plot, and captivating characters, read it for it's planning, and mostly for it's joyful conclusion.

"Silas Marner" by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is a wonderful book about love, betrayal, responsibility and the authoritative role that religion can have on someone's life. You travel with Silas Marner (the main character) as he finds himself through the love of a child. You see him abandon his previous life and travel far away as he starts again in a place that is unknown to him. You encounter the Cass brothers who have everything to hide and nothing to give. You will see through this novel how lies can only seep you in farther and how chance can give you everything back. This novel will have you wondering what happens next and how people will get out of trouble. You'll see Silas go from a lonely man to a law abiding citizen of his little town and how friendship and neighbors (in any form) can be helpful. The best thing about this book is that you'll see how the love of a child can change everything about a person from what they believe in to how they live their day to day life. BEWARE...you will have to get over the obstacle of reading the first couple of chapters before you get to the "meat" of the book. Don't fall into despair and throw the book away!!! Keep on reading. Everything in the first couple of chapters is needed. DO NOT SKIP IT!! I promise you will find yourself loving this book just as I have come to love it.

Eliot is clearly a master - I've read "Mill on the Floss" and loved it, and I look forward to reading "Middlemarch." However, "Silas Marner" was a bit of a disappointment. The supporting characters are well-drawn as is the town, which is really the star of this book. I found the character of Silas Marner to be vague and unbelievable. His growing isolation is described in a fair amount of detail, but his transformation is glossed over too quickly. It is simply not believable that someone who shuns others would be so willing to adopt a child and change so quickly. The message that love can transform even the most hardened person is beautiful, and the ending is wonderful, but I found it difficult to make it through most of this book.

I'm sure there are other good versions of Silas Marner available on CD or audiotape, but I must express my admiration for the reading by Andrew Sachs in an excellent unabrdiged edition of this Victorian classic. I was perhaps fortunate that I was not forced to read this book in high school when I might have found it a chore, so I approached the story with an open mind. Sachs manages beautifully to convey the inner life of Eliot's characters through his acting talent and his choices of slightly differing voices for each individual. A great reading of a great novel.

This book is considered a true classic. The story about a miser who was driven from his original home by false acusations to end up as a miserable weaver in a new town. His life changes when he finds a foundling and begins to care for her. It turns out the girl is the daughter of landed gentry who now want her and Silas does not to give her back. The story is not bad, but I do not understand why it is such a classic. I must be missing something because it was originally written in 1861. It is possible I am missing the forest for the trees in this case. It is a fast read and it is not a bad book by any definition.

I've just spent the day reading this book. It's one of those stories that unexpectedly warms the soul and grips the heart.
The plot is simple: Silas Marner, a naive young weaver, is betrayed by his best friend. Deeply hurt, he leaves his home for a village where he cares for no one and has no connections. He becomes increasingly reclusive, focusing only on the his weavings and the gold they'll bring. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, Silas covets his gold until it's the only thing he's living for. And then the gold is stolen.
It takes a miracle for the gold to come back in the form of a fair-haired, trusting little girl whom Silas names Eppie. Once, the gold robbed Silas Marner of the outside world; now, it comes back to help him reclaim his joy.
I'm fifteen years old and will remember this story for the hopeful message it builds up, but I know anyone be uplifted when they get to know Silas and Eppie.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I read a plot synopsis on the back of a book, I like for that story to kick in at some point. However, that's not how this book is written. The basic plot doesn't get set into motion until about 120 pages in...and the book is 183 pages. To put it bluntly, the first 120 pages are spent aimlessly pondering life's many riddles and offering sometimes interesting, yet mostly tiring social commentary (I really don't care how the people at the Red House and the Rainbow act similarly despite class differences. I just want to finish this reading assignment so I can actually enjoy my summer). A plodding, slow book for the first two-thirds, it picks up somewhat before somehow managing to wrap things up in 10 pages...making me wonder why the book is even this long in the first place.

Like some of the other reviewers, I found this a heartwarming story about Silas Marner, a solitary hermit who discovers things about himself he has forgotten, or may never have known. When his solitary existence is turned upside down by the departure of his treasure and the arrival of an unexpected guest, Silas takes the opportunity to examine his life and make the best of what life has given him. I felt this was an uplifting story telling how much the choices we make define who we are, and that it's never too late to decide to be something more.

Sad, profound and beautiful! One of the most moving books - ever written.

Forget if you had to read it in school or not, its needs to be read as a mature adult, after you have experienced something of like. I almost challenge anyone in their 30's to read it. 40 and over will understand it.

I wont go into a literary review, as that has been done for this book better than I can, I will just add this book is flawless, and beautiful.

Prepare to be moved!

If compared to Eliot's best (Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss), Silas Marner is almost a disgrace. The brilliant literary style of Eliot seems all but gone, and the story could have easily been dispensed with in a form of a short story. The story, taken on its own, is heart-warming. But there is so much "background noise" to contend with. Overall this book should be a definite miss, even for Eliot fans (like me!).
In addition I'm quite surprised this novel is used as part of the English literature curriculum in many schools (here in England at least). I feel sorry for those young minds having to wade through this. I hope schools will choose Mill on the Floss instead despite its length.

For some reason, everyone had a difficult time getting past the first chapter. But those who persisted ended up loving it. A true classic, heart-warming, great discussion material. Much to think about here.... Very sweet story. This edition is close to perfect. Inexpensive and decently printed.

SILAS MARNER/ By George Eliot/ David Campbell Publishers Ltd. *****

What is faith? Faith can be something one believes in without knowing if it is really there. In the novel Silas Marner, George Eliot makes clear how a weaver loses faith in God. The weaver [Silas Marner] regains belief when he finds a little girl around the age of two wondering around his cottage. He raises her [Eppie] and becomes very close to her. While raising Eppie, Silas takes her to church to be raised and taught like a Christian. This novel has a great shift when his love for Eppie starts changing his personality. George Eliot describes Silas's as a person with no hope. He describes the lost of devotion when his best friend steals a bag of money from a dying man. His best friend then blames it on him. The decision was left to God; whether or not he was to blame. This method convicted Silas, which is when he decided to loose all his faith. Silas hesitates when he finds out that Eppie is Godfrey's daughter.

Sometimes having faith can help people continue their daily activities. This novel is really captivating, and interesting. It can make you understand the different ways in which God protects his children. When Silas was to busy avoiding confrontation with God, God put Eppie on his path. If you are a person in need of finding yourself it would be a great idea to read this novel. It focuses in the struggles one has throughout their lives. The many obstacles one will have to go through to know that at end everything will be alright. Sometimes it helps to know that there is someone waiting for you on the other side. This novel's rating is a five because it captivates the readers mind.

This book is as sentimental as "Middlemarch" is complex. I found that the long introductory sections made for a difficult set up to the primary situation. The narrative involving the actual bond between Marner and the child were condensed and telegraphed so quickly that the reader is forced to take the author's word that there was an attachment. As a result, the emotional climax feels like a tear-jerker rather than an honest resolution of the characters' lives. It gives the impression of a 19th century "Afterschool Special."

Silas Marner became a bitter, lonely miser after he was accused of stealing church money. Declared guilty even though he wasn't, Marner lost his relationships with friends and loved ones. He moved away to a small town and secluded himself from any social activities or events. The people in this new town didn't bother him, but they thought he was strange and evil. Silas found his security in his gold which he stored up in his house. His treasure became his only companion. But when his gold was stolen one night, Silas thought he would die right then and there. He had no reason to live. Then one day, a little girl walked into his home and into his life. Her mother had died, leaving her as an orphan. So Silas adopted her and raised her in a poor hard-working sort of way. But, she loved him and he loved her. The treasure that Silas had lost had returned to him in a new form. He began to socialize with the people in his town, and no longer did they think he was weird or possessed. This girl brought about changes in Silas' life. He discovered that there are some things more precious than gold.

George Eliot did an excellent job of showing the heart of man in his place as father or grandfather. Even those who seem feeble and old are able to summon strength when needed to support those they love.
This edition has a very pretty cover and has nice text that is not tiny.

A great story about a misunderstood town recluse who hoards all the money he earns as the town weaver. I'm tempted to say more, but I don't want to spoil the story for those that haven't read it. The ending is amazing, and you will see how the crook who destroys the weaver in the beginning is brought to justice. I read the free kindle version and couldn't have been happier with it.

This heart-warming book tells the story of Silas, a bachelor who has lived alone for 15 years after being cast out from his town of origin. He's the village's weaver, and lives the life of a miser until little Eppie toddles into his cottage. He then starts to realize the true meaning of love and family. This book is a light, easy read and shows that blood is not always thicker than water.

I may only pity the plight of American society, for time and time again I hear complaints lodged against the British literary canon (indeed, even the American canon) that the books written long ago simply hold no relevance and plod along with no point. There is no relevance to an outcast being condemned in Victorian society for being an outsider and different? But certainly this country has no racial problems, particularly as we are so incredibly lucid and politically correct. Look at how openly we welcome outsiders into our society. We are nothing like the people of Raveloe.
Is this George Eliot's masterpiece? No.
Yet what parent hasn't felt the dilemma Siras faces with his future with Eppie? Who hasn't had their faith deeply questioned by a deeply-felt wrong in the world? Who hasn't felt the guilt of being unable to speak the full truth to those loved the most?
Oh, the plot isn't there. That may be the point, for can the life of a man who lives without the presense of love and only ambition call his existence a plot? I hardly find that irrelevant.

This is the first book I read by George Eliot and it may well be the last. I thought it would serve as a good intro into her work but the novel was far too simple in prose and spirit. While there is nothing wrong with the story of spiritual rebirth that's all it adds up to - a story. For me the definition of great literature is not just a good story but something which takes advantage of the art of writing by plumbing into the heart of humanity and translating it so the reader can feel what has been written. To put it simply, great literature can not be translated into a movie without losing what made it so great. This book can be easily translated into a movie as there is not much going on outside of the story. No deep character analysis, no discourse on anything really outside physical perception. From the plot the book should have been a very emotional read but it wasn't. Eliot's prose wouldn't allow it. She really serves as an outsider looking on these characters and situations rather then someone intimately familiar with the emotions and thoughts which make up the themes of the book. So, in turn, I felt like an outsider reading it. This would make a good movie where the story and physical emotion are the most important aspects, but as a novel it doesn't do the craft justice. In terms of English Victorian era literature Silas Marner just can't compare to novels by the likes of Thomas Hardy and Emily Bronte.

I hear so many high school students and even adults using the word boring when describing a book or anything for that matter. I guess it is a sign of the times. We are raising our kids with such heavy doses of the idiot box (television for those of you who don't know what an idiot box is)that when they are introduced to anything of value, they become overwhelmed.

I have wanted to read this for a long time ever since seeing a TV adapatation of Silas Marner with Ben Kingsley from 1985. I am very happy that I can now have it to own, excellently formatted and very well illustrated. Well worth the wait!

If you have a heart, the story of Silas Marner will warm it. You are better coming to it fresh, without knowing anything of the simple yet solid plot, so I will say nothing of it. I will just urge you to read this wonderful book. Eliot writes beautifully and from page one, you realize you are in the hands of a true artist. This is a very human, very English story of simple people living through those very basic emotions that make the world turn and give the universe meaning.

George Eliot's Silas Marner is the tale of a mistreated, recluseful weaver who rescues an orphaned child only to find that the child has actually rescued him. This book is not light reading, but well worth the effort!

George Eliot does a beautiful job of showing us how the heart of man can be strong even though he is weak in outward appearance. This edition brings a classic masterpiece into a very nice and clear format.

Some classics stand the test of time due to their readability, others due to their literary quality. I'm a particular fan of writers from the late 1800s, but this story's plot line, set in an earlier period, snagged my attention. I fully anticipated enjoying "Silas Marner," even though it falls in a period a bit more obscure to a modern reader.

Alas, I am that modern reader. When Silas Marner was center-stage, the story moved along, and it was hard not to empathize with the false accusations he endures and the self-exile he chooses. I enjoyed the plots twists from darkness and isolation to deeper darkness, and finally to unexpected redemption. The appearance of the little girl, though less enigmatic than the synopsis implied, was a nice touch. Despite these highlights, I found myself plodding through numerous pages and scenes. The writing has some high moments, but it violates so many of the modern rules of fiction-telling, telling us instead of showing us, pounding home its points instead of letting them simmer just below the service. I truly wish English teachers would use creative minds of their own, instead of succumbing to intellectual pressures and pushing books with little accessibility or interest to a new generation of readers.

I can fully understand this book's appeal to readers of its day. It wrestles with certain issues of class and status, with the hypocrisy of the rich and the religious, and the superstitious but honest efforts of the working class. I'm glad to have entered the world of "Silas Marner," but, sad to say, I was also glad to leave it behind.

So the story begins with this hermit of a man living (but at the same time not living) in the little town of Raveloe, but is not exactly there by choice. He was betrayed and framed by his best friend and lost his fiance to that same so-called friend. This gloomy and depressing beginning leads to a wonderfully happy ending. Sound familiar? Yes, Silas Marner is one of those "everything works out" kind of books, but in this case does that make it good? Well yes. Is it still interesting? Yes it is. Was it a page turner? Not exactly, but it reading it wasn't a waste of time. George Eliot's style is nothing short of classic. The character flaws are perfectly calculated especially with the character Godfrey whose mistakes add irony and slight comedy to the piece. This book comes short of perfect but it has comedy, death, betrayal, happiness, and a cohesiveness that is admirable.

After Silas Marner's hoard of money was stolen, I was afraid this would be another dreary, Bronte-like novel, full of doom, gloom and cruelty. I almost decided not to finish it. However, I looked up a plot summary online and found that it was not so dark. I'm glad I went ahead and finished the book. The author paints for us all kinds of interesting scenes of life in a small English village in the 19th century. We read of virtue and vice, pompousness and humility, love and devotion, and even of good intentions backfiring.

All in all, this is a pleasant read. The good are rewarded and the bad get their just deserts.

I love reading, and I love to read all sorts of books, including those that others often find old and, "stuffy." With that in mind, I can confidently tell you that this is one of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure of attempting to read. This is god awful, boring, boring, boring, boring dreck. Watching clothes dry on a line while stabbing yourself with an icepick and drinking ipecac is more fun than trying to read this book.

I hadn't heard a single positive comment about this book until I came to the store.com and read some reviews. To me, Silas Marner was the book that everybody was forced to read in high school, and that everybody hated through the generations.
Perhaps it is appreciated because of its interesting historical background...but now, it is OLD-FASHIONED. Not that an old, slower style of writing is bad--I have nothing against old books. What I imply when I say "old" is that we've outgrown this and expect more from books these days than a story like this.
There are too many other excellent books which do a better job of exploring the same themes better to waste a few HOURS of your life in the pages of "Silas Marner."

A beautifully articulated story full of local color, vernacular, and hope, unlike few contemporary novels. For that reason, it can take some time for the modern reader to appreciate this writer's gift. She identifies what is common to all humanity as she skillfully develops her plot. Well worth reading!

"Silas Marner", the main character of the book, began as a normal person in society. Silas enjoyed being very religious. A friend wanted to be with Silas's wife and he framed Silas for doing something he really didn't do. The town basically outcasts Silas and he finds a new community and is very quiet and unsociable. Silas weaves and collects gold coins in his new community. I read the book of "Silas Marner" and personally to me the book was not that great. It is supposed to be a classic, but I don't have a taste for this type of book. The story didn't seem to have much adventure or anything in it. When I think of a good book I should like the plot. I feel that the author in places went off describing the details and the scene to much that it made the book frankly boring and it didn't need to be told. Silas's lifesaving's in gold is stolen; he found a girl that ends up in his house, raised her and much more. Find out about the story in "Silas Marner" by George Eliot.

I was worried that I would not enjoy this recording after discussing it with my local librarian. I was very pleasantly surprised. In a few places, the language is a little tedious. Mostly, it is read with a lively colorful and varying voice, that brings the novel vibrantly alive. That is saying a lot since it is piece of writing that is almost 150 years old.

I use Silas Marner with many of the students I tutor because it so effectively portrays that there are consequences to wrong actions. In contrast, what is right stands out purely (Silas and the child). I also use Silas Marner to make students aware of their own predispositions toward people who are "different"...people they don't want to know. The superstition of the townspeople toward Silas Marner reveals the common human tendency to deny a stranger his own personal history by conjuring one for him. This is an excellent book, especially for pushing young people to THINK!

Silas Marner is a great classic that tells a wonderful truth. I loved reading about the village and how mysterious it was. George Eliot twines a great story about a lonely man who keeps to himself until a surprise shows up at his house. It was fun and intriguing to watch Silas change and grow along with his suprise. The end is great!

I loved this book. I remember first reading it when I was a child but rediscovering it as an adult has been fantastic. Sometimes the classics can be a bit heavy going but Silas Marner is easy to read and is a great, heart-warming story. I love the way the author shows the relationships between the characters and the way they are described makes them seem real somehow. A great book.

Silas Marner is a masterpiece. The deep characters beg the reader to understand them. The story is thought-provoking yet heart-warming. The questions and themes this short book presents are so deep and real and need to be thought about. You will be challenged about religion, views of God, light and darkness, and redemption. This book is such an enjoyable read, yet complex and challenging. Read it and you'll want to read it again!

I thought this book was fantastic. In the beginning, it was hard to read though. But the story itself was marvellous! It made me think of redemption (Godfrey Cass kept many secrets from people) and rebirth (Silas's new love in his life: Eppie). The story provides moral things and it made me think of the most precious things in my life (-> not money).

In retrospect, I actually enjoyed the characters of the book. They were very well developed and had great depth. However, it was a chore to finish.
The book started and ended with me spellbound, but the middle was the slowest I've read. Overall, I wouldn't say I hated the book, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody but the most PATIENT reader.

I had to read this book for english class for some dumb reason. First of all it is really slow, secondly, I hardly got anything from this book, all I got was that if you think there is no hope there really is, and you dont have to read a long slow book with fluffy writing to learn that, you've probally heard it bfore anyways DON'T READ IT!

This is the worst book I have ever read in my entire life. I read it as a freshman three years ago and still have not forgotten how awful it is. The only remotely interesting charachter is the opium-addicted woman and she dies at the beginning. I wanted to die every time I opened the book. Silas Marner is the most boring charachter ever created. Eppie has no personality once she has grown up and is an obnoxious child to read about. I have no idea why so many people love this book; it was on a list of the most boring books ever written- number 7. Don't waste your time with this story, and don't watch the movie because it is even worse.

A powerful novel about despair and redemptiom, when everything in Silas's world was gone something unexpected happened to replace his gold with a new golden life.Always darkest before the dawn.Hope for the hopeless.

do not recommend this book to anybody for a number of reasons. First of all, it is very boring and reading can become extremely tedious at some points. The storyline and plot is actually very interesting, but I think that if Eliot had presented it in a less descriptive and detailed way, it could have been much easier for a larger spectrum of readers to comprehend the messages she was attempting to transcribe through this story. This is definitely a selection that should be avoided by and young reader with any lack in patience or determination. This book is aimed much more towards scholars, historians, and English teachers.

I can not describe how painful this book was. The first quarter of the book goes at the pace of a moderately entertaining tale, but then grinds to a halt as soon as Silas is leashed with the orphan girl. This book stands out in my memory not just for instilling a loathing of the written word that nearly took my away from literature for the rest of my life, but for the great amount of negative space it left in my brain when I try to recall some of the "excitement" of the drudgery of Silas's everyday life.

Truly a GREAT classic to unload on junior high children.

I am one of the former students who long ago was forced to read this rot for a HS english class. I can not think of a book that would be of less interest to a teen age american boy than this one. All the reviewers who praise this book make me wonder about what else they read. It was beyond boring and had no possible points of reference to me. There are literally thousands of British novels that would be better choices. If you are going to assign students a British Novel pick one that at least they would enjoy reading. Thank god I liked to read or after this experience I would probably not read anything for years. I hope to god that this is no longer assigned or rather forced reading for HS. When there are books like 1984 or Brave New World available why use one that has so little possible interest to students.

George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)wrote "Silas Marner" in 1861 and it is still being read to date. I read it first in junior high school, so long ago I had forgotten what it was about so I reread it. I had high expectations for it, lasting so long but I was disappointed. First, it is a hard read, her sentences are so long and so convoluted it is hard to maintain the connection from one sentence to the next. In addition many sentences are written phonetically, to create, I guess, the sense of the spoken word in the time period (early 1800's) as well as its sound and locale(Warwickshire, middle England). Add to that the coincidences involved to have the novel generate the correct happenstances of most of its characters and you have a novel incorporating most of the defects most stressed in English writing courses. How could this story have survived 150 years? If the reader is a juvenile he or she empathises with the characters and wants them to get their just desserts, and the reader has an opinion of who gets what. Eliot satisfies these desires and the young reader has read a story with characters who strike a responsive chord with the reader who then keeps the story in memory.
Most accounts of the novel speak highly of the effect of Eppie, the supposed orphan, on the protagonist, Silas Marner. But she does not appear until about two thirds of the book has been read and I think this makes her a minor character. The book is primarily devoted to character changes in Silas Marner and Godfrey Cass, that is what the book is about. Yes, Eppie is the major factor in Silas's changed character but first his character must be developed. The same is true of Godfrey Cass, the biological father of the girl. His character is developed independently of her; Nancy Lammeter does her duty towards him but she does not get the attention Eppie does. The title of the book is Silas Marner but he only gets a slightly greater mention than Godfrey, the title must be the deciding factor. I think the book is highly overrated and is a book for juveniles except its construction is so difficult it is hard to praise for young readers. But I think I read it in juhior high, has reading changed for present day youth?

Bought this for my sons English class. He is reading it and announces it is missing pages 59-90. Sure enough, it skips from chapter 9 to chapter 12. Now I have to find another COMPLETE copy for him to read and take notes on before school starts in two weeks! Not happy.

Ok, I cant take it when people are like "ahh, its beautifuly written, and..." spare me! I love books like Timeline, or The Great Gatsby. NOT Silas Marner! This book is soooo RIDICULOUSLY slow, it baffles me. I just barley could read it during my senior year. I struggled so hard to get it done! If you feel the need to read this for fun, do not do it! I am forwarning you. It is by far the worst, most boring book ever written.

I am convinced that if they did not force people to read this book in tenth grade, no one would ever read it again. I love to read and I love books, but I hated this book in tenth grade and many years of life experience since then have not made it one iota more palatable.

Please bear in mind that this review is purely based on my personal experience and weltanschauung. Your mileage may vary.

This has to be the most boring book i have ever read! It seems like it takes like 10 pages just to say what could be said in one paragraph. oh my goodness completely boring please dont put your self through this.