"Silas Marner"

Silas Marner by George Eliot

George Eliot has been a revelation to me. I had spent years avoiding her, mostly because I'd been warned that "Middlemarch" was a long, tedious book that would test my patience. Then I bit the bullet, read it and loved it. I didn't find it tedious, my patience didn't suffer at all, and I was happy to have a new (to me) author whose backlist I could add to my tbr.

Silas Marner is the story of a man who left his hometown when he was accused and found guilty of a theft he didn't commit. With his faith in God and man destroyed, he moved to a new place to practice his trade as a weaver of cloth. There he kept to himself, saving every coin he earned until he had hoarded two bags full, making them the center and purpose of his life. But one day the unthinkable happened and his money was stolen. In his despair he became even more isolated and withdrawn, until one night a golden-haired child, drawn by the light of his fire, wandered into his cottage.

When the child's mother was found dead in the snow, Silas decided to raise the child himself.  She restored his humanity and brought him into relationship with his neighbours. She lived a contented life with him until she was about seventeen years of age, never hearing from the man who was her biological father. Then, one day, the mystery of what happened to Silas's money was solved, Eppie's real father stepped forward to claim her as his daughter and....the rest of the story awaits you in this wonderful book. 

I read somewhere a review of Silas Marner in which the writer referred to it as a fable, a good description I think. Fables offer up lessons, of which there are several here. It teaches the folly of putting all our hope in gold, the withering of the soul when we separate ourselves from human contact, and the hope and joy a child brings into our lives. The epigraph is from a Wordsworth poem:

"A child, more than all other gifts 

That earth can offer to declining man, 

Brings hope with it, forward-looking thoughts." 

This was a beautiful story, one that deepened the appreciation I found for Eliot after reading Middlemarch. I wish I hadn't avoided her for so long, but because I did all her books are still waiting to be read and that, as Martha would say, is a good thing.