DISCUSS THE THEME OF PARENTAL DUTY AS IT IS IN THE CHARACTERS SILAS MARNER AND GODFREY CASS

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DISCUSS THE THEME OF PARENTAL DUTY AS IT IS IN THE CHARACTERS SILAS MARNER AND GODFREY CASS

BY ANIELA INCEMAN 11S

The novel, ‘Silas Marner,’ is considered to be a moral fable. The author, George Eliot placed parental responsibility as one of the book’s main themes. She writes of two different parenting styles, along with the happiness and responsibilities that come with this through two characters, Silas Marner and Godfrey Cass.

At the beginning of the narrative the character, Silas Marner, is a completely different person from the one he was later to become. The book starts by explaining how Silas Marner left his original home- ‘Marner had departed from the town,’ because of a false accusation that his best friend had made about him. The church deacon was extremely ill, and whilst looking after him Silas was accused of stealing the church’s money.  The religious sect that he belonged to, a strict Calvinistic sect, drew lots to decide whether Silas was innocent or guilty. ‘The lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty.’ The lots where superstitious and one of the supertitions was that they believed that their results where God’s will.

 Marner is over come by a sense of betrayal, as it was his best friend who  has committed such a cruel, untrustworthy deed, Marner looses all his faith in God. Marner leaves ‘Lantern Yard’ and moves to a small place named, ‘Raveloe.’ This new place is a completely new environment for Marner; it was as if he had travelled abroad in comparison to our day and age, we can tell this because in the text it states, ‘ he left his own country and people and came to settle in Ravaloe.’ Sadly Marner looses all his trust in people, he moves into a cottage in the forest, isolating himself from human contact. He works his loom producing linen, when he sells this linen he comes into contact with others, this being the only time.

Silas Marner was a skilled handloom linen-weaver, of simple life who had come to live in the village of Raveloe. The sound of his loom was very different from anything the villagers were used to and the village boys would stare in at his window until he chased them away:

‘Silas´s Loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a
half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often
leave their nutting or bird´s- nesting to peep in at the window
of the stone cottage, counter balancing a certain awe at the
mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises,

along with the bent, thread-mill attitude of the weaver´

The boys of the village were afraid that Silas had an 'evil eye´ and that he could harm them by just looking at them. There was a belief that he had some sort of connection with the devil because of his healing powers. When Silas came to Raveloe he did not make any new friends preferring to keep himself busy by just doing his work. The reason for this was because in Lantern Yard he had been betrayed by his 'friend´, William Dane, who had accused him of theft resulting in the lost of his beloved Sarah and his expulsion from the chapel. In fact Dane had conspired with his fiancée whom he wished to marry and framed Silas by taking advantage of his loss of consciousness due to him having an epileptic fit. Although this was bad enough, the church elders found him guilty by the drawing of lots. In Silas´s young mind not only his fellow man but God himself had abandoned him.

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Despite Marner not wishing to have any human communications, he had one thing, which is cherished more than anything. This was his gold sovereigns.  After that he didn´t trust anyone and even lost his religious belief. Therefore when he came to Raveloe he threw himself in to his work. Now future, past and present had little meaning for him. When he was paid in gold for his first piece of weaving in Raveloe he enjoyed the field and the look of it and comforted himself with his new love. Silas started loving gold so much that after that day ...

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