"Cliff Notes - Silas Marner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

people's lives. She is motherly, not only toward her own child
Aaron but toward Eppie. As a wife, she's tolerant of her
husband's drinking but fairly independent. She knows she's no
scholar, but she earns great respect from Silas for her ability
to see matters clearly, almost instinctively.

Dolly's friendship with Silas demonstrates concretely how the
village gradually accepts him. But Dolly serves another
function, too--she is the spokesperson for Raveloe religion,
holding it up against Silas' Lantern-Yard beliefs. Dolly
believes in religion without knowing the fine points of
doctrine. While the rituals of the church comfort her, she
concentrates on good deeds here on Earth rather than on a
relationship with God. Her concept of God is almost pagan, a
fuzzy vision of "Them up above." But with true peasant wisdom,
she sees a divine pattern in events, working out over long
years. She makes Silas look upon his life with this kind of
long-range view, showing him that all his sorrows were simply a
path leading to his finding Eppie.

^^^^^^^^^^
SILAS MARNER: EPPIE

On the title page of Silas Marner, George Eliot placed a
quotation from Wordsworth's poem "Michael":

A child, more than all other gifts

That earth can offer to declining man,

Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.

In the novel, that prophecy is fulfilled by Eppie, the
abandoned child that Silas Marner adopts. Symbolically, she is
the golden treasure that replaces his stolen gold.
Psychologically, she is the force that pulls Silas out of his
isolation and restores him to harmony with the human race, as
well as with his own past.

Although Eppie fulfills these functions in the novel, she is
also an interesting character in her own right. She is
believable as a toddler, wandering away from her careless mother
toward a shiny light. Her needs are simple--she's hungry and
her feet are wet--and she clings lovingly to Silas once he has
taken care of these needs. Later, you see her as an active
little child, getting into anything that's in her reach.

Pretty Eppie is blonde like her biological father, Godfrey.
She's no common village girl, though Eliot says this is the
result of her loving environment, not her upperclass blood. In