What are the links between the women in Silas Marner's life?

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Silas Marner

What are the links between the women in Silas Marner’s life?

   There are four women in Silas Marner’s life; Mrs Dolly Winthrop, Miss Nancy Lammeter, Molly Farren and, of course, Eppie. There are clearly many links between these women and the ways in which they are involved with Silas Marner.

   Some interesting connections become apparent: there is a discreet link between Eppie’s mother, Molly Farren, and Nancy Lammeter, which is only known by the reader and Godfrey Cass. Godfrey married Molly, a young drug-addicted woman, who makes an appearance in the story only for a short time.  Godfrey was keeping her a secret. This is shown by a discreet line, which says that he was ‘willingly loosing all sense of that hidden bond…’ She had embarked on a short journey, which was ‘a premeditated act of vengeance, which she had kept in her heart ever since Godfrey, in a fit of passion, had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge her as his wife.’

  She was making her way to Raveloe, the little town where Godfrey lived with his family and Nancy Lammeter, the woman whom he was wooing. George Eliot (the author) doesn’t write things bluntly in this book; instead of writing ‘Molly was addicted to drugs,’ she writes, ‘she needed comfort, and she knew but one comforter…but she hesitated a moment, after drawing out the black remnant, before she raised it to her lips...’ Eliot writes about how Eppie’s mother commits suicide in order to pay Godfrey back for treating her unkindly. All through the suicide, Godfrey is trying to win Nancy’s attention at the New Year’s Eve party, completely oblivious of the events happening just outside the little town.

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   Thus begins the link between Eppie and Nancy. At the time of her mother’s suicide, Eliot makes Eppie known as ‘the child,’ and hereafter things are written from the ‘child’s’ point of view.

   Earlier in the story, we were told about Silas Marner and how he came to leave his previous town, ‘Lanterns Yard,’ and move to Raveloe. It is clear how much Silas depends on the gold coins he is given for the work he does on his loom. ‘He handled them, he counted them, till their form and colour were like the satisfaction of a ...

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