Reading Order
Silas Marner Reading Order
Silas Marner (1861) by George Eliot is the most concentrated and most fable-like of her novels — the story of a linen weaver named Silas Marner who is driven out of his Nonconformist community by a false accusation of theft, settles in the village of Raveloe in the English Midlands, and becomes a miser whose only relationship to the world is through the gold he accumulates. When his gold is stolen and a golden-haired orphan child crawls in out of the snow to take its place, Silas Marner is gradually restored to the human community through the love of the child (Eppie). Eliot wrote Silas Marner quickly, after The Mill on the Floss, as a 'relief' from the longer work; it is organized almost as a formal parable of the replacement of money by love, of isolation by community, of past by present. The Godfrey Cass plot (the young squire who is Eppie's unknown father) provides a realistic counterpoint to the fable-like quality of Silas's story, and Eliot uses the contrast between Silas's restoration and Godfrey's trapped respectability to investigate the relationship between honesty, community, and the possibility of happiness.
Where to start
Silas Marner (1861) — the complete short novel. Best George Eliot reading order: Adam Bede → The Mill on the Floss → Silas Marner → Middlemarch → Daniel Deronda.
Complete Silas Marner Book List
- 1Buy
Silas Marner
George Eliot·1861·The complete short novel — Silas, Eppie, and Godfrey Cass. Eliot's most accessible work and a good entry point into her fiction; the Penguin Classics edition has a useful introduction to the social and religious context - 2Buy
Adam Bede
George Eliot·1859·The companion first novel — Adam, Hetty, and Dinah. The companion as the longer investigation of the same English Midlands rural world: where Silas Marner is a concentrated parable, Adam Bede is the full tragic drama of the same community - 3Buy
The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot·1860·The companion — Maggie Tulliver's search for a life the world cannot give her. The companion as the autobiographical investigation of the same provincial world: written immediately before Silas Marner, and the darker, more personal, and more tragic version of the same English Midlands community - 4Buy
Middlemarch
George Eliot·1871·The companion masterpiece — Dorothea Brooke and Lydgate. The companion as the fully realized version of Eliot's social investigation: the same provincial world at a more complex scale, with a richer philosophical investigation of the relationship between aspiration and the limits of the social world - 5Buy
The Winter's Tale
William Shakespeare·1611·Shakespeare's companion investigation of the same fable-like form — Leontes's jealousy, Hermione's revival, Perdita's restoration. The companion as the literary tradition that organizes Silas Marner: the pastoral tragicomedy that moves from loss to restoration, from winter to spring, through the agency of a child who embodies the possibility of new life - 6Buy
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens·1843·Dickens's companion — Scrooge's conversion from miser to benefactor. The companion in the Victorian tradition of the miser's redemption through love: Silas Marner and Scrooge are companion figures — both men whose relationship to money has replaced their relationship to the human community, and both are redeemed by a form of grace - 7Buy
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse·1927·Hesse's companion investigation of the isolated man's restoration through love. The companion as the modernist version of the same investigation: Harry Haller's isolation from the human community and his restoration through Hermine and the Magic Theatre is the twentieth-century version of the same story that Eliot tells in its most concentrated form in Silas Marner - 8Buy
Daniel Deronda
George Eliot·1876·Eliot's companion last novel. The companion as the fully realized late Eliot: where Silas Marner is organized around the most direct and fable-like investigation of isolation and community, Daniel Deronda is organized around the most complex and politically engaged investigation of the same themes
Silas Marner — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Silas Marner about?
Silas Marner is about a linen weaver named Silas Marner who is unjustly driven out of his Nonconformist community in Lantern Yard by a false accusation of theft and the treachery of his best friend, and who settles in the isolated village of Raveloe, where he gradually becomes a miser — his relationship to his accumulated gold replacing his former relationship to God and the community. When his gold is stolen by the young ne'er-do-well Dunstan Cass and a golden-haired orphan child (Eppie, the illegitimate daughter of Dunstan's respectable brother Godfrey and a woman Godfrey has secretly married and now hopes to forget) crawls in out of the snow to take the gold's place, Silas is gradually restored to the human community through his love for Eppie. The Godfrey Cass plot (his inability to acknowledge Eppie as his daughter) runs in counterpoint to Silas's restoration, and when the truth finally comes out, Eppie refuses to leave Silas for the respectable father who denied her.
Why did George Eliot write Silas Marner?
Eliot wrote Silas Marner quickly in 1861, immediately after The Mill on the Floss, which she had found exhausting and which had received a mixed critical response (particularly to its ending). She described Silas Marner as 'a story that thrust itself between me and the other book I was meditating' — a natural, unforced piece of work rather than a planned novel. The initial inspiration was a childhood memory of a linen weaver with a bag on his back who seemed to her, as a child, to have a mysterious and isolated quality. She shaped it into a moral fable — partly because the fable form suited the story she wanted to tell (the replacement of gold by love, of isolation by community), and partly as a counterweight to the tragic entrapment of The Mill on the Floss. The novel is often seen as Eliot's most optimistic work — the one in which the possibility of restoration and community is most fully realized.
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