Silas Marner — Key Facts
General
- Author★
- George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans).
Dates
- Year published★
- 1861 (William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London).
- Time setting
- c. 1800–1820; early Industrial Revolution, rural England.
Locations
- Primary setting★
- Raveloe, a fictional English Midlands village, isolated from industrial change.
- Secondary setting
- Lantern Yard, northern manufacturing town; Silas's former Calvinist community.
People
- Protagonist★
- Silas Marner, a linen-weaver exiled from his religious community, living as a recluse in Raveloe.
- Antagonist
- Godfrey Cass's weakness and Dunstan Cass's greed drive the central conflicts; no single villain.
- Key secondary character★
- Eppie, Silas's adopted daughter; biological child of Godfrey Cass and Molly Farren.
- Narrator and POV
- Third-person omniscient narrator; free indirect discourse throughout.
Structure
- Genre★
- Moral fable; Victorian realist novel with pastoral and fairy-tale elements.
- Tone
- Warmly ironic, morally earnest, elegiac.
- Structure
- Two parts plus a conclusion; Part I focuses on loss and isolation, Part II on community and redemption.
- Climax★
- Eppie refuses Godfrey's claim and chooses to remain with Silas (Part II, Ch. 19).
- Major conflict★
- Silas's spiritual and social alienation vs. redemption through human love and community belonging.
Themes
- Redemption through human love★
- Community and belonging★
- Duty, secrecy, and moral cowardice★
- Faith and providence