Silas Marner

After a long time spent living on the periphery of the Raveloe community, Silas is slowly integrated into the village through his suffering, thus highlighting the theme of Community as Rejection or Acceptance, as Silas is gradually accepted by Raveloe. His previous attempts at social interaction ended in curmudgeonly failure and further alienation, but he makes an active decision to seek out help once he realizes that his gold is gone. To the villagers, Silas was a strange and eccentric figure. He worked hard and spent in a miserly fashion, accumulating more wealth than most of the working-class residents could hope to earn in their lifetimes. His alienation and his fortune distinguished him; when he steps into the Rainbow and announces that he has lost his money, he evokes their sympathy. Silas’s hardship endears him to the people of Raveloe, who have not had any reason to humanize Silas as more than an outsider. The loss of his money finally humanizes him, allowing the other residents to see that he is not some malicious or supernatural being but a human with genuine emotions who often struggles to express himself. The irony of Silas’s loss is that he gains the richness of his community through the loss of his gold. The missing gold is, in effect, a toll paid for entrance into the village. The grief and the pain that he feels regarding his loss are tempered by the comradery and community spirit that he gains from exposing his emotions to his neighbors and allowing them into his life. His loss functions as a humanizing sacrifice that changes the course of his life. Silas’s community acceptance does, however, simultaneously highlight how challenging his previous rejections, both in Lantern Yard and Raveloe, have been on an emotional level. Acceptance is hard won in communities that a person is not born into.

The people of Raveloe are keen to help Silas recover his money. In a small village where nothing much happens, the loss of a relatively large sum of gold is a remarkable moment. Quickly, clues are found and theories are proposed. One of the most popular theories connects a tinderbox with a peddler who passed through the village in recent times. The eagerness to blame the peddler for Silas’s loss reveals the small community’s natural instinct to blame outsiders while granting Silas insider status within the village. Previously, Silas was considered the outsider. At one time, many people blamed him and his strange behavior for illnesses and bad luck that occurred in the village. Once he has begun the process of integration, however, a new outsider must be blamed for this misfortune. The figure of the peddler represents this newfound “other.” The peddler is not a local man, so he is automatically rejected. He is described as physically different and behaviorally incompatible. The villagers stress that he is not like the people of Raveloe, and this difference makes him inherently suspicious. Previously, they spoke about Silas in this exact manner, but his newfound status as a member of the community means that he is now part of the “in” group, which must always find an outsider to blame. Silas has not yet learned this behavior; he dismisses the suspicions surrounding the peddler, much to the disappointment of the villagers. As they gossip about the peddler’s earrings and skin color, Silas does not engage. Though he is being integrated into the group, he has not yet learned the social value of positioning the community in opposition to outsiders as a way to ratify and validate social bonds between neighbors. This behavior is second nature to the people of Raveloe but brand new to a solitary man like Silas. Moreover, he is preoccupied with his personal loss, so while his community integration has begun, Silas retains many of his prior habits. In other words, he is not yet fully integrated in the way that those born and raised in Raveloe are, and his integration is, at this stage, perhaps more of an outside acceptance than a personal transformation.

Over the course of Part 1 of Silas Marner, Godfrey frets about his father learning the truth. He has a secret marriage to a woman of questionable social status, and he has conspired with Dunsey to steal money from renters that was intended for their father. On several occasions, he resolves to tell the truth. He is tortured by his anxiety and his guilt, so he determines that the only solution is to drag everything out into the open. Almost immediately, however, he backtracks. Godfrey is a fearful man. His cowardice prevents him from doing what he believes he must do. Just as he is about to tell his father the truth, he changes his mind and reveals the bare minimum in order to explain Dunsey’s absence and his horse’s death. Godfrey keeps his secrets, held prisoner by his own weakness and fear. Godfrey is a spineless man who has allowed himself to be bullied by Dunsey for his entire life. Even with Dunsey gone, he allows his own fear to bully him into doing anything that might infringe on his own happiness and incur the wrath of his father. Godfrey refuses to confront the reality of his actions, and he is terrified of the consequences of his behavior. He is rich enough to insulate himself from these consequences, but his rising anxiety demonstrates how he is hurtling toward an inevitable confrontation with the truth.