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.
(Reviewed:04-Apr-00)
Grade: (A)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA: Your search: "george eliot"
-OVERVIEW:
George Eliot (Victorian Web, Brown U.)
-George
Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (1819-80)
-George
Eliot (1819-1880) Pseudonym for Mary Ann Cross, also Marian Evans,
original surname Evans (kirjasto)
-George
Eliot: Biography
-The
San Antonio College LitWeb George Eliot Page
-ETEXT:
SILAS MARNER The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot
(Mary Anne Evans) 1861
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE: Silas Marner by George Eliot. (SparkNote by Debra Grossman)
-NovelGuide:
Novel Analysis: Silas Marner
-Cyberguide
- Silas Marner
-§26.
"Silas Marner". XI. The Political And Social Novel. (The Cambridge
History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes)
-REVIEWS:
Epinions.com - Silas Marner
-REVIEW:
of THE LIFTED VEIL By George Eliot (George Levine, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
John Bayley: Eminent Victorian, NY Review of Books
George Eliot: The Last Victorian
by Kathryn Hughes
-REVIEW:
George Eliot: The Last Victorian, by Kathryn Hughes (Daniel O'Hara,
Gay and Lesbian Humanist)
-REVIEW:
Millicent Bell: George Eliot, Radical, NY Review of Books
George Eliot, Voice of a
Century: A Biography by Frederick R Karl
The Real Life of Mary Ann
Evans: George Eliot, Her Letters and Fiction by Rosemarie Bodenheimer
-REVIEW:
of GEORGE ELIOT Voice of a Century: A Biography By Frederick R. Karl
(CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of GEORGE ELIOT, VOICE OF A CENTURY A Biography. By Frederick R. Karl
(John Bayley, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of GEORGE ELIOT A Life. By Rosemary Ashton. (William S. Peterson,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Harold Bloom: On the Heights, NY Review of Books
Selections from George Eliot's
Letters edited by Gordon S. Haight
-REVIEW:
of SELECTIONS FROM GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTERS Edited by Gordon S. Haight
(Gillian Beer, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
George Eliot, Dorothea and Me: Rereading (and Rereading) 'Middlemarch'
(Mary Gordon, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Louis Menand: Eliot Without Tears, NY Review of Books
George Eliot's 'Middlemarch'
directed by Anthony Page and produced by BBC Television
-REVIEW:
of PARALLEL LIVES Five Victorian Marriages. By Phyllis Rose (Nina Auerbach,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. By Phyllis Rose (Anatole
Broyard, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
SUCCESS AND THE PSEUDONYMOUS WRITER: TURNING OVER A NEW SELF (Joyce
Carol Oates, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
THE
COUNTRY OF GEORGE ELIOT (Selected Writings of William Sharp, Vol. IV,
Literary Geography)
-ESSAY:
"George Eliot" by Virginia Woolf
GENERAL:
-The
Victorian Web (Brown U.)
-Victorian
Literature Website
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