Silas Marner: Themes (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

Silas Marner: Themes

Paper 2, Section B of your Eduqas GCSE exam will contain an extract from Silas Marner. You need to link the theme of the extract and question with the whole novel, demonstrating your knowledge of Eliot’s characters, techniques, ideas and the novel’s context.

Your exam question could focus on any topic. Understanding the following main themes will help you produce a response that addresses the whole novel:

• Isolation and community

• Gold

• Belief

Isolation and community

The importance of community and the negative effects of being isolated from a community are central themes in Silas Marner. Eliot’s focus on the theme of isolation and community is illustrated in Marner’s progress from lonely exile to acceptance and respect. 

Knowledge and evidence:

• Marner’s self-imposed exile from the community of Lantern Yard at the beginning of the novel is the root cause of his loneliness and alienation:

  • The unjust accusation of theft and the betrayal by his best friend, William Dane, has made the world seem like “a hopeless riddle” to him

• Eliot depicts the village of Raveloe as an insular village community:

  • Marner is regarded with suspicion because of his solitary occupation as a weaver, his unknown origins and his “fits”

• Eliot’s depiction of Raveloe’s social structure reflects typical village communities at the beginning of the nineteenth century:

  • Working-class characters, like the Winthrops, often cannot read or write, and their work is usually physical and hard

  • The Cass, the Osgood and Lammeter families own land or property and get their income from rents paid to them by tenants

• The social and moral norms of such a small community play an important role in shaping characters’ actions:

  • For instance, Godfrey Cass’ relationships with his father, his brother Dunstan and Nancy Lammeter demonstrate how people are affected by moral and social expectations, and what happens when they transgress them

• Eliot presents Raveloe as socially integrated:

  • The villagers accept the social hierarchy without question, and gather together at church, at celebrations like Squire Cass’s New Year’s Eve dance and at the local pub, the Rainbow

• Marner’s adoption of Eppie increases his social contact with his community:

  • As Eppie’s adoptive father, he starts to interact with his neighbours and attend church 

  • His friendship with Dolly Winthrop helps him learn to trust people again and the community grows to accept him

What is Eliot’s intention?

• Eliot wants to show how important a sense of belonging can be to a person’s self-perception and wellbeing:

  • Her depiction of Raveloe as an integrated community emphasises Marner’s outsider status

• Eliot’s presentation of the villagers’ acceptance of the social hierarchy illustrates her belief in social cohesion:

  • It has also been criticised as an unquestioning approval of social stasis, which limits human potential according to their class status

• Ultimately, Silas Marner demonstrates that social isolation can cause terrible mental suffering, and that social connection is essential for happiness

• Eliot stresses the importance of family in linking people with their community

Gold

Gold is both a theme and a motif that appears throughout Silas Marner. It represents money, greed, obsession, corruption and, finally, Eliot’s ideas about what is truly valuable. 

Knowledge and evidence:

• Money is used twice as an important plot device in the novel:

  • First, William Dane’s theft of the church money and his framing of Marner lead to Marner’s departure from Lantern Yard

  • Later, the theft of Marner’s gold makes him ask for his neighbours’ help for the first time

• Marner is paid in gold guineas for his work as a weaver:

  • For the first time, he possesses something that is “quite aloof from the life of belief and love from which he had been cut off”

• Marner’s obsessive relationship with his hoarded gold illustrates his extreme loneliness:

  • His gold coins become his “familiars” or companions

  • His relationship with them replaces his need for social contact

• Gold is the source of the greed that motivates Dunstan Cass’ actions:

  • Eliot presents Dunstan Cass as a corrupt character who blackmails his brother and steals Marner’s gold

• Eliot uses the motif of gold to represent Eppie’s appearance in Marner’s home:

  • Her golden curls initially make Marner think his gold has returned to him

  • He comes to believe that, somehow, “the gold had turned into the child”

What is Eliot’s intention?

• Eliot often presents gold, in the form of money, as a corrupting influence: 

  • Money causes William Dane’s greed and deception of Marner

  • Marner’s gold replaces his need for social contact, isolating him further

  • Money motivates Dunstan Cass to blackmail his brother and become a thief

• However, Eliot also uses gold to represent her ideas about the concept of value:

  • The theft of Marner’s gold brings him into contact with his neighbours and evokes their pity, beginning his integration into the community

  • The focus on Eppie’s golden curls signifies that she is Marner’s real treasure:

    • His adoption of her comes to “link him once more with the whole world” and their mutual devotion is life-affirming and emotionally priceless

  • Eliot confirms the true value of emotional bonds over money:

    • This is illustrated when Eppie refuses Godfrey and Nancy’s offer to adopt her, arguing that “I should have no delight i’ life any more if I was forced to go away from my father”

Belief

Belief of many different kinds is a key theme in Silas Marner. Eliot uses her portrayal of religion, superstition and morality as a vehicle for her ideas about human beings and their relationships. The theme of belief includes Eliot’s ideas about luck, chance, fate, agency and the moral consequences of people’s actions

Knowledge and evidence:

• At its most basic level, belief plays a crucial role in the plot when the Lantern Yard community believes Marner is a thief, which leads to his loss of faith and self-exile

• Eliot refers to the Raveloe villagers’ superstitions frequently:

  • She reflects the beliefs of a community where “many of the old echoes lingered”, such as faith in magical cures and Wise Women

• In Raveloe, people’s beliefs shape the way the plot unfolds:

  • Folk beliefs, superstitions and suspicion of the unknown make people wary of Marner from the start, ensuring his social isolation

  • People believe that the theft of Marner’s gold must have been committed by an outsider, so the search is inconclusive:

    • They do not even suspect Dunstan, who has a high social status in the community

  • Nancy believes that it is God’s will that she is childless, so she refuses to adopt Eppie at an earlier stage when it might still have been possible

  • Religious faith and church attendance are central to the life of the Raveloe community:

    • When Dolly persuades Marner to have Eppie christened and start attending church, the villagers begin to accept him

• Eliot places a strong emphasis on chance and coincidence in Silas Marner:

  • Both the theft of Marner’s gold and Eppie’s appearance are dependent on chance events: 

    • Dunstan finds Marner’s hut empty and Eppie’s mother dies nearby

  • Chance is also linked to Godfrey’s lack of firm moral beliefs:

    • The narrator observes that many people favour “the worship of blessed Chance” as “the mighty creator of success”, rather than strong principles and good actions

• Eliot presents the Raveloe villagers as having a firm belief in fate and moral consequences:

  • The villagers’ view that Marner has “brought a blessing on himself by acting like a father to a lone motherless child” illustrates their belief in moral consequences:

    • Marner has done a good thing, so good things have happened to him

• Eliot also weaves the concepts of agency, fate and moral consequences into the structure of Silas Marner:

  • Dunstan Cass, who believes he has “got the luck” that his brother lacks, drowns in the stone-pit after stealing Marner’s gold

  • Godfrey Cass doesn’t acknowledge Eppie as his daughter for years, which causes him emotional suffering and threatens his marriage to Nancy

  • Marner’s kindness towards Eppie results in his happiness and his financial security once the gold is found

 What is Eliot’s intention?

• Eliot describes the way that Marner’s congregation condemns him in order to criticise unquestioning religious faith

• Nancy’s suffering and her decision not to adopt a child can be seen as a criticism of her rigid religious beliefs 

• Eliot presents the Raveloe villagers’ beliefs and superstitions as both negative and positive:

  • Their superstitions and insularity make them slow to accept outsiders, including Marner

  • Dolly Winthrop’s “simple belief” that even terrible things happen for a reason is a positive influence on Marner and helps him to accept his past misfortunes

  • Eliot’s ambivalent presentation of these beliefs places the emphasis on human agency: 

    • The beliefs are secondary to their positive or negative effects on others

• Eliot’s presentation of fate and moral consequences achieves two things:

  • It ensures that moral justice is seen to be done, so people suffer or are rewarded according to their actions

  • It enhances the “legendary” aspect of Silas Marner by making it feel like a fairy tale, in which everyone gets their deserved outcomes and the story has a traditional happy ending

Sources:

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