"Cliff Notes - Silas Marner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)Godfrey is wracked with disappointment. He's been urging her to
adopt Eppie, but Nancy feels it's against the will of God to adopt a child who is not her own. Then the stone-pit beside Silas' cottage is drained to create new fields. Dunstan's skeleton is discovered at the bottom, clutching Silas' gold. Shaken by the sight, Godfrey tells Nancy the truth about his first marriage. To his surprise, she agrees to adopt Eppie, Godfrey's real daughter. They go to Marner's cottage with their proposal. Though Silas' gold has been restored to him, he's distraught at the prospect of losing his second, more precious treasure, Eppie. But he lets Eppie make her own choice--and she chooses to stay with Silas. Godfrey and Nancy return home, sad but reconciled. In the spring, Eppie marries Aaron and they walk back to Silas' cottage to live with him. ^^^^^^^^^^ SILAS MARNER: SILAS MARNER When she first conceived of the story of Silas Marner, George Eliot thought immediately of one of her favorite poets, William Wordsworth. He was the first to show country life realistically in poetry, as Eliot was the first in prose fiction. To some degree, Silas Marner is a typical Wordsworthian hero--a simple, whose life has a natural dignity. But a novel works differently from a poem, and Silas Marner is an unlikely hero for a novel. It isn't just that he's poor, although before George Eliot few authors cast working folk in major roles in novels. It isn't just that he's skinny and pale, with bulging brown eyes--physically unattractive heroes, like Shakespeare's Richard III or Cervantes' Don Quixote, can make powerful literary material. And it isn't just that he's a loner and an alien in Raveloe. Outsiders have made great heroes throughout literature, from Shakespeare's Othello to Emily Bronte's Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights to R. P. McMurphy in Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. These, however, are charismatic, complex personalities. Silas Marner is not. Yet George Eliot gives this simple linen-weaver all the attention most authors save for their most glamorous characters. Some readers see Silas as a fairy-tale character, like the typical poor old woodcutter who endures poverty and misery in lonely silence for years. In this, he is also like a biblical character, Job. (Silas, however, loses his faith when he is unjustly punished, whereas Job heroically hangs on to his faith while God tests him with rounds of suffering.) Silas simply seems the plaything of some great force guiding the universe, whose plan is inscrutable and maybe even unfair. He's subject |
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