Silas Marner: Context (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

In your Eduqas GCSE English Literature exam, you will gain marks for showing your understanding of the context in which Silas Marner was written and published (AO3).

Silas Marner historical context

Silas Marner is set during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, a period of significant technological, economic and social change in England. The narrative contrasts the traditional, rural life of the village of Raveloe with the growing industrialisation symbolised by the town of Lantern Yard.

The Industrial Revolution

• Silas Marner depicts the life of a rural community before the Industrial Revolution:

  • Most of people’s everyday needs, such as food and clothing, were provided within the community

  • In Raveloe, there are no shops and most things are made in the village:

    • As well as food from the farms, people need cloth to make their clothes and soft furnishings

    • Silas Marner, as the local weaver, therefore performs an essential role in the community

• Weavers like Silas Marner carried out their work in their own homes:

  • This type of work is referred to as the “cottage industry”

• New production processes were invented in the early 1800s that enabled goods to be made on a much larger scale, leading to massive social shifts:

  • Textile mills were built in many large towns and cities to produce cloth on a larger scale

  • By the end of the nineteenth century, cottage industries like Silas Marner’s had become rare

• The Industrial Revolution changed British towns and cities as well as affecting rural communities:

  • As centres of production, towns were transformed by the number of factories and warehouses built to produce and store goods

  • Over the course of the nineteenth century, huge numbers of people migrated from villages like Raveloe to towns and cities to find work

  • Many towns expanded and many villages like Raveloe were transformed into centres for agricultural production, rather than self-reliant communities

Silas Marner social context

It is important to view Silas Marner in the context of contemporary attitudes and ideas. Below we include some typical beliefs of a nineteenth-century audience:

Faith and religion

• The importance of Christianity in daily life in nineteenth-century England is reflected in the churchgoing Raveloe community:

  • Christian teachings provided people with a moral framework for their lives

  • Even people who could not read or write, like many of the labouring class of Raveloe, knew most of the Christian Bible by heart

• At the beginning of the 1800s, when Silas Marner is set, a number of dissenting forms of Christianity had become popular:

  • Among these, various forms of Methodism developed large congregations in the cities, and it is likely that Silas Marner’s community in Lantern Yard was one of them:

    • One clue is the fact that Silas went to “chapel”, not church

    • The drawing of lots was practised by some dissenting religions because they believed that only God could influence the outcome

• Christianity was also an organising force in rural communities like Raveloe:

  • Areas were divided into parishes, each with its own church building and officials:

    • Raveloe has a parish clerk, Mr Macey (later Mr Tookey) who leads church services because the village is too small to have its own vicar

    • Mr Crackenthorp is the parish rector, responsible for collecting the village tithes, taxes paid to the parish and used to support people in need

• Eliot was brought up in an Anglican family and developed a close friendship with one of her school teachers, who held evangelical beliefs 

• After moving to Coventry when she was 21, Eliot encountered a number of radical thinkers who held liberal and agnostic views

Morality

• Christianity provided the moral guidance for society, but fiction also featured Christian-centred morality:

  • John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which depicted a hero called Christian who is on a spiritual journey, was an extremely popular text

  • Many children, including George Eliot, read Pilgrim’s Progress and its religious and moral ideas influenced generations of readers

  • One of Bunyan’s main ideas was that of moral consequences for people’s actions

• The moral framework provided by Christianity and texts like Pilgrim’s Progress was common in Victorian literature:

  • In Raveloe, Christian teachings shape the community’s views on right and wrong

  • Silas’ journey from a reclusive miser to a loving father figure is a central moral arc in the novel

• Many Victorian novels depict ethical dilemmas and the repercussions of moral and immoral behaviour:

  • Good actions lead to positive outcomes and spiritual rewards while bad actions result in suffering and punishment

Silas Marner literary context

The novel is situated within the broader literary context of the Victorian era and as a typical Victorian novel it explores moral and ethical questions. 

• Eliot is a key figure in the realist tradition, which explored detailed and truthful representations of everyday life:

  • Realist fiction typically depicted ordinary characters with complex lives and whose personal growth is central to the narrative

  • It also typically explored social, political and ethical issues

• Among the educated classes in society, classical literature was also widely read:

  • Formal education for boys was based on Greek classical literature

  • Eliot had access to a wide range of classical literature in the library at Arbury Hall, which influenced her own writing:

    • Classical drama, in particular, focuses on coincidences and reversals in fortune, which may have inspired these elements in Silas Marner

    • Authors like Ovid depicted magical transformations, which may have been an influence on the symbolism in Silas Marner:

• Fairy tales and folklore were popular forms of entertainment as well as moral instruction for nineteenth-century readers:

  • These often took the form of cautionary tales intended to warn children about the dangers of stepping outside recognised physical and moral boundaries:

    • The fear the village children feel towards Silas has a superstitious quality that is derived from fairy tales and folklore

  • Fairy tales often featured non-human characters, such as goblins, gnomes and brownies:

    • The comparison of Silas Marner with “a useful gnome or brownie” is likely to have been influenced by European fairy tale traditions

• The “legendary tale” that Eliot wanted to write is inspired by all these forms of literature:

  • Eliot refers indirectly to storytelling several times in Silas Marner:

    • The motif of weaving relates to storytelling: “weaving” a story as well as weaving cloth

    • The word “tale” is used several times in the novel to refer to a story that someone has told, but also to the amount and quality of cloth that Silas Marner weaves:

    • This shows that Eliot chose to make the concept of storytelling central to her legendary tale of Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe

• Eliot’s intellectual influences were also formed by her early reading, and included the Christian Bible, classical mythology and poetry:

  • As a young woman in Nuneaton, she was encouraged to use the library at Arbury Hall, which led to her impressive knowledge of literature and historical writing

  • She was drawn to poetry as well, especially that of her hero, William Wordsworth, and she used lines from his poem Michael as a preface to Silas Marner

• Eliot adopted her male pseudonym for two reasons:

  • Like the Brontë sisters, she was aware that male writers had a better chance of being published and this reflects the gender biases of the era

  • Her real name was associated with the scandal of her relationship with Lewes, which had made her a social outcast for many years:

    • This experience of social isolation gave her an understanding of Silas Marner’s rejection by the Raveloe community

How do you get marks for context in Silas Marner?

For the Silas Marner essay marks for context are equally weighted with the other two assessment objectives. However, this does not mean you should allocate a third of your time to cover context in your essay. All analysis of context should be integrated into your discussion of themes and ideas that Eliot is exploring. Any discussion of context should also be directly relevant to the question you’ve been set, and the argument you are making. 

What examiners don’t want to see is “bolt-on” context: irrelevant historical or biographical information that doesn’t add anything to your discussion of Eliot’s intentions.

Eduqas-specific tip

• Apart from details about the author (if relevant), context may also include reference to when and where the novel is set:

  • This is particularly worth bearing in mind if the novel spans a wide time frame (such as Silas Marner) and if key events take place in very different locations

• When writing a response in the exam, you should be aware of any references to the contexts of the novel in the extract:

  • When planning your answer, think about how you could widen the discussion of these contextual features to other points in the text where it is evident

Source:

Eliot, George (1996). Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, ed. David Carroll. Penguin.