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

present organized religion in this book? On the one hand there
is Silas with his joyless, strict Lantern-Yard faith. On the
other hand is Dolly with her buoyant, almost pagan Raveloe
beliefs. Nancy Lammeter's clear-cut beliefs show how
established doctrine can sometimes become too rigid. At times,
Eliot implies that religion is no better than superstition. At
other times, she sympathetically describes how church rituals
comfort the faithful. Religion binds a community like Raveloe
together--even Silas feels lost when he breaks with his sect.
Yet many readers feel he seems stronger for having lost his
faith. He never really regains a belief in God, even after he
joins the church in Raveloe. His "redemption" is a product of
human, rather than heavenly, love. What does George Eliot seem
to propose as the guiding force of the universe?

3. HUMAN AFFECTIONS

What kinds of human ties are important in this novel? There
are family ties--weak at the Casses' house but strong for the
Lammeters. The bonds of parent and child are especially
important, whether they are biological (as with Dolly and Aaron
Winthrop) or adoptive (as with Eppie and Silas). When Eppie has
to choose between her biological father, Godfrey, and her
adoptive father, Silas, what factors count most with her?
Wholesome human affections can restore a damaged personality
like Silas'. Yet stunted affections, like those at Squire Cass'
house, can damage a basically good person like Godfrey. Look at
the way larger communities are bound together, too:
Lantern-Yard, the city Silas came from, Raveloe as a whole, or
the upperclass society of Raveloe.

4. CHANGE

In Eliot's view, all change is the product of a multitude of
tiny factors. The process is so complex that mere humans cannot
presume to control it. To examine this theory, Eliot chose for
her main setting a community with ingrained old beliefs, a place
where change comes slowly. She shows how gradually the
collective "mind" of village opinion shifts until it accepts
Silas. Many individual characters, too, have fixed habits of
thought that are hard to change. Consider, for example, Squire
Cass, Nancy Lammeter, old Mr. Macey, Dolly Winthrop, Godfrey's
wife Molly, and Silas himself. Choosing a long time span for
her story, Eliot shows people changing gradually over the years,
as Silas changes before his robbery and then after finding
Eppie. She also minutely examines step by step the process of
short-term changes--the reasoning that leads Godfrey to keep his
secret marriage hidden or that makes Dunstan rob Silas.

5. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PAST