What changes does Eppie make to Silas' life?
What changes does Eppie make to Silas' life?
In order to understand the changes that Eppie made to Silas' life we must first understand the kind of man he had become. We can do this by examining why and how he has been mentally hurt in his early life.
Silas originally led a very religious life in the church, he was happy and contented. Silas had friends and a fiancée whom he loved. This all led to disaster as his best friend William also loved his fiancée. Silas has a disorder which causes him to have cataleptic fits at irregular times. One day Silas had a cataleptic fit while he is caring for the senior Deacon in the Church. William then betrayed Silas by coming into the room of the Deacon and stealing the Deacon's money by prising open the safe with Silas' knife. Then, when Silas comes out of his fit, he finds the Deacon dead. He calls for help. Later the Church discovers the money has gone and Silas' knife was used to open the safe. Silas is charged with robbery and humiliated in front of everyone, including his fiancée, Sarah. 'The lots declare that Silas Marner was guilty' (9.13). Silas is cast out from the church and told never to return. He is aghast and feels that he has been let down by God, 'But you may prosper, for all that: there is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against the innocent' (2.14).
Silas goes home and sits in self-pity too sad to weep and trying to decide whether or not to go and persuade Sarah that he was innocent. Marner then goes back to weaving but does not leave his room, the minister and the deacon brought him a message from Sarah renouncing their engagement. Silas never saw any one but did come to hear that his Sarah was getting married to William. Marner left immediately, his life in tatters and forever stained with this misfortune.
On his travels Silas comes upon a small village called Raveloe and settles down just outside the town beside the stone pits, making a living from weaving. He came into Raveloe but once a week to buy food, cloth, and sell his wares. Silas lives a life of solitude and loneliness for fifteen years talking too few people and not socialising at all 'minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lutheran influence of exile' (2.15). The town's folk come to see and think of him as a reclusive man, someone ...
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On his travels Silas comes upon a small village called Raveloe and settles down just outside the town beside the stone pits, making a living from weaving. He came into Raveloe but once a week to buy food, cloth, and sell his wares. Silas lives a life of solitude and loneliness for fifteen years talking too few people and not socialising at all 'minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lutheran influence of exile' (2.15). The town's folk come to see and think of him as a reclusive man, someone who is just thought of as scary even though he has never done anything to hurt anyone. Silas became obsessed with his money. He spent very little but made quite a lot out of his weaving. The highlight of the day would be getting the two large bags out from under the floor boards and counting his money piece by piece, in silence, completely obsessed.
One day Silas left the house without locking it, to fetch some twine for his work. A thief came into the house and found Silas' money and ran away with it. Silas returned that night and found his money gone, he looked everywhere and then went to the town to report the robbery, but it was too late no one could be found and the money was lost forever. Silas was devastated and could barely bare the loss for a second time of something he loved so much.
One New Year's Eve, fifteen years since Silas had come to Raveloe; Silas was having one of his cataleptic fits while holding his door open to check that his money was not coming back to him. Silas then returned inside and was sitting on his chair when before his eyes appeared some golden locks. Silas first reaction was that his gold had returned to him as he was short sighted, then as he touched the golden locks he realised that they were locks of hair, a child's hair, which was sleeping right before him. This child changed the rest of his life in every possible way. The child was later christened Eppie. She was the love of Silas life and they could not be parted in any way.
Silas had never had had the experience of a child (except for his baby sister who had died at an early age) and needed help with the bringing up of Eppie. He was helped by Mrs Dolly Winthrop 'I'll come and see to the child for you' (9.121) who was very helpful as she was always giving old clothes of her child's to Silas as she had no more use for them. This was very helpful to Silas, but he was also very protective of Eppie: he did not want her brought up thinking that he had done nothing for her welfare and he did want to learn how to care for her: 'But I want to do things for myself, else it may get fond o' somebody else, and not fond o' me. I've been used to fending for myself in the house - I can learn, I can learn.' (2.122)
Silas' life was changing in every respect. He was seen in town more often with Eppie and was genuinely happy: 'But now Silas met with open smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions and difficulties could be understood' (3.130) Silas had always been rejected in society because he was so unsociable since his downfall at Lantern Yard, but now this child Eppie had made the link between a world of reality and the world Silas wanted to live in, so that he felt he was being accepted.
Eppie also kept him so busy 'The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for now Eppie must be washed, and have clean clothes on (2.129,) that he had no time to morn over his lost money and so his personality was changing as he did not care for the unimportant things and was not greedy 'The gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeating circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compact of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onwards, and carried them far away from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit' (5.125)
Children can do many incredible things like this. The fate of a child can change the fate of any human being who has any feelings or a heart as their welfare comes before anything else, 'But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's' (5.131).
Silas began to rethink things that he would have never thought of or done before such as smoking a pipe daily and going to church again; 'and as with reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between his past and present' (1.143).
Silas rethinks these things because of Eppie. Children were treated as little adults in the eighteenth century but in the early nineteenth century all these things were changing as adults were coming to understand that children were the future and their future and so the better treated they were the happier every one would be. So they trusted children and did some things they would not normally have done, and such was the respect that Silas had for Eppie that he contemplated doing things just to please her and improve her life.
After Silas' catastrophe at Lantern Yard, the first person that he trusted was Eppie and she started to persuade him that not everyone was a thief and that not everyone was trying to deceive and betray him. So he started to trust other people again and see them as friends not enemies.
Silas has come from being unpopular and unhappy to really quite happy and enjoying life at the end because he has made his own way from being feeble and almost useless to a friendly face that people enjoy seeing and talking to, and he has made it all this way on his own.
So Eppie changes Silas life in the most extraordinary ways that no normal human being could do, only a child's long-term influence on a lonely old man can do. For something to change in you, you must believe in that thing and they will happen with out you even knowing it.
Jamie Bromfield
05/02/04