The second community we meet is Raveloe. To the people of Raveloe, professional weaving is an “alien” way of working. It produces “pallid, undersized men who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.” We are first shown the weaver through the eyes of the peasantry who are very suspicious of Silas’s solitary working round and the compensation he finds in an inward, antisocial life. While Raveloe was a community of uneducated people, the village had a certain practicality about it: “Their sense of his usefulness would have counteracted any repugnance or suspicion which was not confirmed by a deficiency in the quality or the tale of the cloth he (Silas Marner) wove for them.” This suspicion leads to the community in Raveloe at first encouraging poor Silas into isolation.
With a large part of the population in Raveloe highly uneducated and very superstitious, they will only come to Silas for weaving and their ailments. This helps to make him quite a wealthy man and influences his great obsession with the hoard of gold he maintains and uses as a replacement for human contact as we see in chapter two: “He would on no account have exchanged these coins with unknown faces…It was only in the night that he drew them up to enjoy their companionship.” Here, Eliot clearly demonstrates Silas’s loneliness as he is left to befriend inanimate objects such as coins.
But far more memorable than anything is the episode of Silas’s broken water jug whose homely earthenware shape had become dear to him by association: “It had been his companion for twelve years, always standing in the same spot, always lending its handle to him in the early morning, so that its form has an expression for him of willing helpfulness, and the impress of its handle on his palm gave a satisfaction mingled with that of having the fresh clear water.” When he stumbled and broke it he “picked up the pieces with a grief in his heart. The brown pot could never be of use to him anymore, but he stuck the bits together and propped the ruin in its old place for a memorial.” Eliot has purposely used symbolism to show Silas, at present, remains in his extreme isolation without which he could not have been rescued by Eppie. It is part of the evidence proving that though he had lost all faith, still compassion, gratitude and honourable feelings were alive in him, something that is important in his later redemption.
Symbolism is also consistently used for the gentry. For example, the tale told in the Rainbow symbolises the huge contrast between some more distinct members of the Raveloe community and the indifferent Master Marner. The point in the novel is how Marner can achieve reintegration into the community, and this point is illustrated as Silas bursts into the Rainbow reporting his loss, the turning-point of his relations with Raveloe.
The society in Raveloe soon finds a new sympathy for Silas when his obsessive gold hoarding leads to his second betrayal, when Dustan Cass steals his money. The robbery was made easy to the drunken son of the Squire as Silas had few worries about robbery: “Not that the idea of being robbed presented itself often or strongly to his mind.” This is because in the times that Eliot was writing about everyone hoarded their money, making it a universally acknowledged fact that anyone who stole the money would be discovered easily if they were to spend it. It was therefore a waste of time stealing from other village habitants. “How could they have spent the money in their own village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to run away- a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.” Another example of symbolism, Eliot uses the phrase “balloon journey” in the context of the time as air balloons were an alien concept during that period.
When Silas first reports his loss, and blames Jem Rodney, he has been driven to further bitterness by members of the Raveloe community, yet he soon starts to receive social visits from others including Dolly Winthrop. This is purely down to the robbery- and the upper class community in the form of Dunsey Cass. Silas had now made a bridge with the Raveloe community, as while his relations with the villagers follow the same impartial logic as before, his impulse to turn to them for help in his trouble and his accusations of Jem have allowed him a small acceptance into the community. They see him as an innocent soul and in need for help. The sympathetic ears, good advice, welcome presents and soothing attentions all culminate in Dolly Winthrop’s well-judged efforts to reach Silas by all means she feels may work on him. She brings cakes with their religious sanction in the traditionally pricked ‘good letters’: “”There’s letters pricked on ‘em,” said Dolly “I can’t read ‘em myself…but they’ve got a good meaning, for they’ve the same as on the pulpit-cloth at church”.”
She also encourages the weaver to return to church. All these good means fail to reach him, and can sense that something is being conveyed by Eliot in Silas and Dolly’s sometimes comical conversation about the difficulty of achieving any real communication between people who don’t belong in the same community. This further emphasises the point that although Silas’s character is being allowed to develop within the Raveloe community, and the Master himself is being gradually integrated into daily Raveloe life, he is still an outsider to the large part of society.
Silas gets along eventually by adopting all of the village customs without questioning them, but never has the traditional associations which make people benefit by them. We are given an undoubtedly humourous look into the daily pipe smoking which Silas takes up because it is the done thing, and because he is told, against the evidence of his senses, that it is good for him: “Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two years, having been strongly urged to it by the sages of Raveloe, as a practice ‘good of the fits’….Silas did not highly enjoy smoking…he had himself come to appreciate the forms of custom and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life.”
It is ironic that these fits for which Dr Kimble recommended smoking as a cure isolated Silas at first, but later led to Silas’s reacceptance into the community. The catalepsy is necessary to get Eppie into the cottage without Silas knowing so that she seems to him initially to be of supernatural origin. Eliot works the fits into a pattern of events involving a colossal amount of chance; twice chance introduces a thief into Silas’s home, while the same chance lets in Eppie, who makes good the previous losses. When he saw the golden hair of the child, Silas was greatly affected by it and it had a healing power on him. Because of Eppie, Silas grew closer to the village community around him: “That little child had come to link him once more with the whole world.” It is important to remember that Eppie is also a member of the Raveloe community and her influence on Marner began on the snowy night when she lost her mother, Molly Cass.
Silas begins to do things for the sake of Eppie, and his character changes because of this. Firstly, his insistence in keeping Eppie influenced the villagers’ feelings in favour of the weaver who saw it as some recompense for his stolen savings: “The money’s gone, I don’t know where, and this is came from I don’t know where.” Furthermore, Silas, committed to bringing Eppie up with love not punishment, found links with the people of Raveloe who also had experience of bringing up children.
A potent point that demonstrates the way in which Raveloe influenced the development of Silas Marner’s character is the parallel plot based around Godfrey Cass. Godfrey Cass, son of Squire Cass and later squire himself, doesn’t, in comparison to Marner, change a great deal throughout the novel. He remains self-centred and, slight as his chances were of getting Eppie to live with him as his daughter, it is not until he makes clear, inadvertently, how he thinks of the working class that he alienates Eppie and Silas forever. The Casses retire helpless and humiliated, and we feel impelled to cheer as our entire sympathy now lies with Silas and his daughter. Godfrey loses any sympathy we may have felt for him by his selfishness, his ignorance of the feelings of the Marners and his dishonesty in persuading himself that he was doing for Eppie’s good what essentially now suits himself.
By the time these events occur, the novel has moved forward 10 years and Silas is seen leaving church on Sunday with Eppie: “The bells of the old Raveloe church were ringing the cheerful peal which told that the morning service was ended…It was impossible to mistake Silas Marner…close by his side…Eppie.” His rehabilitation and acceptance by the Raveloe community seems complete and Silas’s character is far from the isolated weaver near the beginning of the novel. Largely down to Eppie, Dolly Winthrop is instrumental in this; she took Silas under her wing and influenced the rest of the community to accept the man they used to suspect. Almost without noticing, Silas has become and integral part of the community, both admired and respected, in a way Godfrey Cass can never be.
While the communities of Raveloe and Lantern Yard do have a huge influence on Silas Marner’s character, I believe he needed, as a human being, to have successful relationships with others to fulfil his potential as a human, which is why he subconsciously allows the two societies to influence him so greatly. Silas’s isolation grew gradually through his sense of injustice causing him to live an uninteresting life. The influences of Dolly, Eppie and all the other characters in the book aid Silas in his need for reacceptance which we see as his character is redeemed.
The change of Silas Marner’s character leads to his return to Lantern Yard in an attempt to clear his name. As a reader, it remains for me to determine the theme that runs through the novel of Silas’s past suffering (more specifically in the city). Upon Dolly’s innocent encouragement for Silas to return to the city we fall upon factors in George Eliot’s personal life which forced her to undertake the novel. Hating the conditions of life in London, she remembered her childhood not only for the green fields but for the agricultural way of life. Form drawing a conclusion to Silas Marner’s life from her own experience, Eliot makes a realistic point in what generally follows a fairy-tale theme throughout.
When Marner returns to the city, he is shocked by what he sees. The old Lantern Yard and its inhabitants who treated him so very badly have all disappeared and no-one knows of their whereabouts. This places a huge weight on Silas’s shoulders as he is left unable to make the people of Lantern Yard acknowledge the truth about the situation those many years ago when he was accused of stealing. However, it also influences Silas to realise his true home is in Raveloe as he says “I’ve no home but this now” and we can see that his acceptance into daily Raveloe life has finally changed his character for the better.
Eliot uses Silas’s visit to the old city to create strong contrasts between the two communities. This is obvious with the ‘light/dark’ imagery she uses. In the chapter following Silas’s return to Lantern Yard, Eppie has her fairy-tale wedding to Aaron Winthrop. While Silas Marner I feel gives the reader a good insight into the society of the time and the influences the members of a community had on one another, there is still a fairy-take element to the story. This is most poignant in the dream wedding of Eppie and Aaron: “She seemed to be attired in pure white…like the dash of gold on a lily…the flowers shone with an answering gladness.” This quote is only one example of the positive, light imagery that is used to create sharp contrasts with chapter twenty-one. Eliot also uses colours to create a more vivid image for the reader, one you can almost feel yourself being part of and while Lantern Yard is, to Eppie at least a “dark, ugly place” and “worse than the workhouse” Raveloe remains light, friendly and ““a pretty home”.”
In conclusion, Silas Marner’s character was greatly influenced by the two communities in which he spent his life. Firstly, Lantern Yard, his original home, caused him to turn inward and forced him to enter into a downward spiral, something from which he was eventually lifted by the Raveloe community. While Raveloe did, at first allow him to carry on in isolation, the community eventually changed his character, and aided him in the path to self discovery as he subconsciously endeavoured to learn to trust again, learn to love again and how to be loved.
