Silas Marner (The Weaver of Reveloe)

Silas Marner, a weaver, is an eager and promising young member of a Puritan religious community, Lantern Yard. Marner’s supposed best friend, Willam Dane, frames him for the theft of a pouch of coins. Marner suffers from cataleptic fits which leave him as insensible as stone and vulnerable to Dane’s frame-up. The community of Lantern […]

Chapter 8 The next morning, having dodged Godfrey’s challenge to Eppie, Marner tells his daughter about a plan he has been hatching for some time: to return to Lantern Yard for a visit with Mr. Paston, the minister of his old faith. Marner wants to know whether anything turned up in the years since he

Chapter 7 Godfrey, having returned from his walk, tells Nancy some truly shocking news: Dunstan’s remains have been found at the bottom of the drained stone-pits. With Dunstan’s body, Marner’s gold has been recovered. Godfrey also makes another painful revelation. He finally tells Nancy that the woman found dead in the snow outside of Marner’s

Chapter 6 Silas Marner returns to the village after sixteen years, just as a Sunday service is ending. Godfrey Cass looks fuller in the flesh but still handsome, and his wife, Nancy, has lost the bloom of youth and looks somewhat vexed, though she is still quite beautiful and visibly firm in her principles. Silas

Chapter 5 While Godfrey Cass carries on his tentative flirtation with Nancy, his wife, Molly Farren, slowly makes her way towards the Red House, walking through the snow in rags with their baby girl in her arms. Molly has been planning for a long time to surprise Godfrey and the assembled society on the night

Chapter 4 There is a confrontation between Godfrey and his father, the Squire. True to his decision, Godfrey decides to forgo the opportunity to confess his secret marriage, instead electing to tell his father merely about the death of Wildfire and the innocence of Mr. Fowler.Godfrey approaches his father at breakfast, much to the surprise

Chapter 3 At the Rainbow tavern, while the personages of Raveloe attend Mrs. Osgood’s dance, some of the less lofty villagers drink and talk. Among these is the landlord, Mr. Snell, whose outlook on most matters is neutral, and whose position in most arguments is that of a mediator, befitting one who needs to sell

Chapter 2 Squire Cass is the richest man in Raveloe and the only noble in the village. Godfrey, his older son, is a big, muscular youth and a moral coward. He spends much of his time dwelling on mistakes he has made in the past, hesitating about what to do next, or drinking to forget

Chapter 1 The novel opens with a discussion of the superstitious attitude of provincial English peasants towards the “wandering” tradesmen at the fringes of their society. Such outsiders include weavers. Eliot suggests that villagers in the nineteenth-century England prefer simple, direct experience to the mysterious histories and abilities of weavers. Because such men are generally