Silas Marner Setting

This essay sample on Silas Marner Setting provides all necessary basic info on this matter, including the most common “for and against” arguments. Below are the introduction, body and conclusion parts of this essay.

This essay plans to tell the reader about the early chapters in the book Silas Marner. Part I begins with the description and comparisons of the two settings that are introduced to us in this book, it then goes on to tell the reader about Silas himself, Silas’s physical drawbacks and his membership of the sect in the Lantern Yard.

Part II then goes on to tell the reader about the more social aspects of Silas’s life and then about his settlement in Raveloe.

In the opening chapters of this book we are introduced to two types of setting. Firstly we are introduced to Raveloe (pages 10 through to 12), this is quite a verdant village, a woody village tucked away in the back woods of the fresh English Midlands.

The way Raveloe is placed geographically and its seclusion from the rest of the Midlands, the intellectual and spiritual confinement of its quite simple and its very misunderstood tastes to the countryside are premeditated. In this setting the writer George Eliot captures all the views of the bygone era, prompted by her indelible Warwickshire memories.

The second setting that we are given is one that is not written in the text but one, which we have to look for. Just before the industrial revolution was due to begin is the book’s second setting.

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This is between the decades 1810 and 1840, when the first signs of industrialization were being seen in the urban areas, the first roads into the English countryside had begun to be put in place and land enclosures had fallen off the agenda and the peasants were being forced to move into the towns and cities to earn a decant living. Whilst this was proceeding, Raveloe village itself was remaining unaffected by this looming industrialisation and it continued to proceed with its rural backdrop still fertile and exuberant. The spinning wheels still hummed busily in the farmhouses, the bigger families lived in wealth and luxuries swearing by the thriving land, inherited estates and still using their ancestral tankards.

Silas Marner Is Which Type Of Novel?

Whilst these events are continue in the Raveloe village, Silas’s life as a weaver is starting to become quite easy for him and he is becoming quite a prosperous member of the village, but his fortune is still very secret and nobody knows the amount of money he has stored away apart from him. Silas is a very simple and extremely trusting man who lives for his work and works with pride. Silas’s has a “Thread-bore” physique; he appears to be very shabby and untidy. His body is not one thriving with muscles but a rather slender build. His eyes are very protruding and myopic (short sighted) and are quite baggy due to his heavy workload.

Silas has a condition known as catalepsy, which is a suspension of the senses, all bodily powers and movements, with muscular rigidity and in some parts of the world called a trance. We first find out about the catalepsy around page twelve when Jem Rodney tells us that “on coming up to him, I saw that Marner’s eyes were set like a dead man’s, and he spoke to him, shook him, his limbs were stiff, and his hands clutched the bag as they’d been made of iron.” The children of the village are terrified of Silas and after a while they begin to associate him with the devil. Jem Rodney then goes on to describe Silas as “a dead man, come to life.” Mr Macey believes that Silas’s soul leaves his body and goes into other people’s body to see what is going on in their lives.

This plays a vital part in the early plot of the novel, while Silas is still a member of the Lantern Yard sect. The leader of the sect Deacon is suffering from a very bad illness; almost knocking on heavens door and it was Silas’s turn to watch him. Whilst he watches him he falls into a fit and William Dane knows this and takes advantage of it, by going in to the room and stealing the churches money from the cabinet where it is kept. He uses Silas’s knife, which he borrowed a few days before to cut some cloth, to pick the lock so he cannot be framed for the theft. Silas is obviously found guilty and banished from the sect; he does not only lose his religion but his best friend and fianc�e too.

In this sect at Lantern Yard Silas has a major to play in the running and organization inside of the sect. He does his fair share of the work for it and is very highly thought in the sect. He is a man of exemplary life and he has a great faith in god and its surrounding faith. He was very trusting and thought that his best friend and fianc�e would not abandon him in his moment of need and when they did he was ashamed to have even known them and upon losing them, he lost his life and everything that meant anything to him. He felt that he had been betrayed by everyone and especially God because in the end he begins to call God “The God of Lies.”

William Dane was one of Silas’s best friends during his time at the sect, but when it comes to the end of Silas’s time at the sect he stabs him in the back by not supporting him and then going on to marry his fianc�e. Dane had very narrow slanting eyes but that was not his only unusual facial feature, his lips seemed to be always very compressed. This gives us an impression that he is quite a sadistic man and sometimes can be evil. Dane describes Silas’s fit as “a visitation of Satan” only after Silas has moved on out of the sect and they are no longer friends.

For Silas to be found guilty of the theft the leader has to draw lots out of a black bag and if the number drawn is even he is innocent but if it is an odd number drawn he is guilty. This is done on the basis that the leader of the sect puts them in but God takes the power of his hand as he puts them in. After the sect find him guilty of theft and they turn their backs on him, he loses the framework of his life, his friends, his belief in god and then goes on to resent God in a way that can not be described in words but not only does he lose all of this he also loses the one person in the whole world which he loves dearly.

When we first come into contact with Raveloe it has been fifteen years since Silas had first come to settle there. There are three reasons given in the book to why Silas chose to settle there. It begins by telling us that believes that he is “safe” and is disconnected from the rest of the world and from God. It is a low wooded area and is quite populated so there is enough custom to ply his trade and earn a good living, and also that this village is very different from the sect at Lantern Yard and this will help him to forget all the bad memories he posses from there.

When Silas arrives in Raveloe for the first time the villages form impressions on Silas because not only are they both intellectually and physically slow they arse also very superstitious. This new person moving into the village also intrigues them. They find the way he works at his loom all day long with few breaks quite mysterious and not moving to scare away peeping scoundrels just to stare at them without a mumble of a word, they suspected that this stare gave the children or even adults a disease that would paralyse them or even kill them. They already knew that Silas had learnt about herbal remedies and this struck both fascination and fear into them. The ladies in Raveloe know that he is in not interested in them or he never lets anyone over his doorstep to talk or never goes for a quiet drink in the pub.

Silas sits at his loom working all day because he has nothing left to do, while doing this he becomes quite prosperous. The gold that he earns replaces everything that he had from Lantern Yard. The rhythm and framework has gone from his life ever since he was banished from the sect. He lost all his belief in God, lost and any routine that he once might have had but now all he is left with is his loom and gold. The routine that he had is now replace by the counting of his gold, he enjoys doing this because it is warm and soft to touch, another reason we are given for his counting of the gold is he thinks that gold cannot betray him like his old friends did.

George Eliot uses two references to natural imagery in the early chapters of the book. She explains about Silas’s weaving pattern by saying, “He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without a minuets reflection.” He used the weaver’s chair as a comfort zone where he relaxed and freed himself of bad feelings. She described his life after the sect to be like a rivulet. An old drying up, small stream that is leading to nowhere or not coming from anywhere.