Demythologizing Silas Marner PDF

Demythologizing Silas Marner
Author(s): Joseph Wiesenfarth

Source: ELH, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 1970), pp. 226-244
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2872399
Accessed: 24-03-2020 19:44 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to ELH
This content downloaded from 5.45.143.68 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 19:44:51 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
DEMYTHOLOGIZING SILAS MARNER
BY JOSEPH WIESENFARTH
The two most important events in Silas Marner are the theft
of the gold and the coming of the child. Both are legendary in
origin,' as is much else in the novel. Eppie comes during Twelfth-
Night, "when the supernatural has sway... and brings fertility
to the land." 2 Moreover, she comes on New Year's eve, from time
immemorial the moment for the death of the old and the birth
of the new.3 And she comes out of the snow, which is associated
both with the womb4 and with Dame Holda, the spinning-wife.5
Fittingly, Eppie comes to a weaver, whose art is traditionally
suspect because it is connected with Clotho, Lachesis, and Atro-
pos, who spin, measure, and cut the thread of life.6 Silas's rela-
tion to the Fates is made even more explicit by his skill in the
use of herbs, for it was thought that all sickness came from
heaven and could be cured only by herbs that were collected and
prepared under certain astrological signs. Furthermore, Silas's
1 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (New York, 1957), p.

"The fact that the real source of wealth is potential fertility or new life, vegetable
or human, has run through romance from ancient myths. . . . A similar association
of treasure hoard and infant life appears in more plausible guise in Silas Marner."
2 Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, trans. from 4th ed. by James Steven Stally-
brass (New York, 1966 [1st ed. 1883]), I, 268.
3 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans.
Willard R. Trask (New York, 1959), pp. 77-80.
'Frye, Anatomy, p. 198: " Psychologically, this image [of a child in a fluid element]
is related to the embryo in the womb, the world of the unborn often being thought
of as liquid; anthropologically, it is related to the image of seeds of new life buried
in a dead world of snow or swamp."
'Grimm, pp. 267 f.: ". . . when it snows, she is making her bed, and the feathers
of it fly. She stirs up snow, as Donar does rain: the Greeks ascribed the production
of snow and rain to their Zeus . . . ; so that Holda comes before us as a goddess
of no mean rank."
aMircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and
Rebirth, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1958), pp. 45 f.
7George Eliot made a lengthy entry on medical superstitions in her commonplace
book (now in the Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript of Yale) in which the astro-
logical conditioning of herbs is discussed, as well as superstitions relating to charms
and incantations; see pp. 131-134.
226 Demythologizing " Silas Marner "
catalepsy is taken as a certain sign of occult powers derived from
communication with Satan.
In spite of this catalogue of legendary associations, George
Eliot saw Silas Marner as a realistic novel: " It came to me first
of all, quite suddenly, as a sort of legendary tale, suggested by
my recollection of having once, in early childhood, seen a linen-
weaver with a bag on his back; but as my mind dwelt on the
subject, I became inclined to a more realistic treatment." 8 In
view of what has already been seen, this statement must mean
that legendary material is an element of the realistic situation
depicted in Silas Marner. In Lantern Yard and Raveloe people
believe in extra-human agencies. But the creator of Lantern Yard
and Raveloe does not. The premise of the modern world, as
George Eliot well knew from Spinoza, is man's responsibility
for man because of the inability of the supernatural to make a
breakthrough into the human.9 And the theme of Silas Marner,
as George Eliot states it, affirms this modern stance: " It sets-
or is intended to set-in a strong light the remedial influences of
pure, natural human relations." 1 The " realistic treatment " of
Silas Marner, then, implies two points of view. To be true to
the time and the social milieu it brings to life, it must depict
8 The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon Iaight (New Haven, Conn., 1954), II, 3
In this discussion, I use " legendary " to include myth, folk lore, and fairy tale, and
I think this is a valid interpretation of Eliot's use of the word. In her translation
of Strauss, legend is necessary to historical mythus: legend is " the seeing of an idea
in a fact, or arising out of it " (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined [London, 1902],
p. 62; see also p. 82). In her review " German Mythology and Legend," The Leader,
VI (1855), 917 f., she seems to distinguish myth from legend; yet she quotes a
story about Christ from Bayrische Sagen urnd Braiiche that has striking resemblances
to the Medea-Pelias myth. In her commonplace books, she includes Grimm's
Deutsche Mythologie-which deals with customs, legends, fairy tales, and myths-
in a list of books for historical studies. In short, I can find no consistent and uni-
vocal use of " legend " on Eliot's part. Nevertheless, she uses " legendary " as distinct
from "realistic " in her letter to Blackwood. And in Marner she uses folk lore,
fairy tale, and myth, and they are not usually considered " realistic." But they are
all generally unauthenticated yet believed true and are all handed down by tradition
and so can appropriately be called " legendary." (For an extended discussion of
the relations between legends, fairy tales, and myths, see Jacob Grimm's preface to
his 1844 ed. of Deutschle Mythologie; vol. III of the Stallybrass translation.)
9 "<. . . it is that postulate of divine immanency and of nature's undeviating order,
leaving absolutely no room for miraculous interferences, which is the fundamental
assumption . . . of all modern philosophy," R. W. Mackay, The Tubingen School
and Its Antecedents: A Review of the History and Present Condition of Moder
Theology (London, 1863), pp. 78 f.
10Letters, II, 382.
Joseph Wiesenfarth 227
legendary material appropriate to such a time and situation. To
be a modern novel and true to George Eliot's own time, it must
depict the reality she believes in-" the remedial influences of
pure natural human relations." Silas Marner, therefore, must per-
form the difficult task of using its legend to enhance its realism.
From this point of view, the action of Silas Marner is best seen
as one of demythologizing: of divesting men, their actions, and
institutions of mythological or legendary attributes in an attempt
to appraise them more accurately.1" All that is ascribed to extra-
human agencies is eventually seen to be caused by human actions,
and all that is legendary is used to demonstrate how human joy
and sorrow stem from moral feeling and human action.
The source of human action in Silas Marner is character, and
character is basically developed by disposition. The only person
who changes significantly in the novel is Silas himself. From
trusting and loving he becomes miserly; from miserly he becomes
trusting and loving again. His character develops in an A-B-A
movement, his first phase making possible his last, and his
middle phase showing a perversion of love and trust. This de-
velopment of character by distinctive radical traits ascribes action
to something deep within human agents and places responsibility
with them. Therefore it provides a framework in which legendary
elements and structures can have a moral meaning. As such a
comedy, Silas contains its extra-human elements in a morally
human framework.
The novel is certainly a comedy-albeit a sometimes somber
one and not a tragedy, as has been suggested.12 George Eliot
conceived Silas Marner as comedy: ". . . I hope you will not find
it at all a sad story as a whole," she wrote to John Blackwood;
and she wrote it in prose, she added, because " in poetry there
could be no equal play of humour."' 3 And humor, said George
Eliot writing on Heine, " affirms all that is genuinely human . . .
and is, in fact, an exuberant sympathy acting in company with
11 DEMYTHOLOGIZE " 1. to divest (a writing, work of art, author, artist,

etc.) of mythological or legendary attributes in an attempt to appraise its or his
merit more accurately. 2. to separate mythological, legendary, or apocryphal ele-
ments from a writing, work of art, historical figure, etc." The Random House
Dictionary of the English Language, unabridged ed.
'2 See Fred C. Thomson, " The Theme of Alienation in Silas Mariner," Nineteenth-
Century Fiction, XX (1965-66), 69-84.
13 Letters, IHI, 382..
9228 Demythologizing " Slas Marner "'
the ludicrous. ..." 14 So in spite of his misgivings about the ending
which George Eliot had not yet written, Blackwood responded to
the comedy that he had already read: " the conclave at the Rain-
bow is beyond price "; Nancy's " toilette in presence of the Miss
Gunns is screaming." 15
The finished Silas Marner has a framework akin to a comedy
of humors. Each character acts in accord with a basic disposition
and more or less conforms to a recognizable type. At the Red
House, Squire Cass is the choleric father who thinks little and
threatens much; Godfrey is the weak-willed and reticently hypo-
critical son; and Dunstan is the unscrupulous, parasitical brother.
Nancy Lammeter is the good but pedantic wife; Priscilla is her
shrewish female confidante. At the Rainbow, Dowlas is the brag-
gart; Lundry, the mild man; Snell, the compromiser; Macey, the
wise fool; Winthrop, the drinking husband with the patient, good-
natured wife. At the Stone-pits, Silas is the miser manquqe and
Eppie the loving lost child. The action of the novel consists in
the Red House society intruding itself onto the Stone-pits society,
with the Rainbow society acting as judge. In the terminology of
classical comedy, the impostor (alazon) society comes into con-
flict with the self-deprecating (eiron) society and is bested; the
rustic (agriko8) society provides choric comment and contributes
mood to the action.16
The mood is one of pensive optimism (good will come to the
good), not hilarity. The very pensiveness of the Rainbow draws
on the humors of its patrons and proprietor and makes their
disagreements about cows, singing, ghosts, pedlars, and Marner
comic. Some of the events, of course, are not comic: Silas is
betrayed, his money is stolen; Molly dies, Dunstan dies; Eppie
is disowned, Nancy is childless. But the novel affirms that these
events issue from reformable ignorance and irresponsibility.17 It
14 Cc Heine's Poems," The Leader, VI (1855), 844.

t5 Letters, III, 380. The early reviewers for the Times and Saturday Review con-
firm Blackwood's reaction and praise the humor of Silas Marner; see Gordon S.
Haight, ed., A Century of George Eliot Criticism (Boston, 1965), pp. 13-9t1.
16 This terminology is used by Northrop Frye, " Essay III," Anatomy of Criticism.
In a recent essay, Frye uses a slightly altered terminology. Describing the New
Comedy structure, he writes: " The main action is a collision of two societies which
we may call for convenience the obstructing and the congenial society," " Dickens and
the Comedy of Humors," Experience in the Novd, ed. Roy Harvey Pierce (New
York, 1968), p. 591.
17 Nancy's ignorance and -her code lead her to attribute her childlessness to Provi-
Joseph, WiesenfartA 229
dramatizes them only to contain them in a widened human con-
text. Silas suffers more than any offense of his deserves: his
friendship is betrayed, his engagement broken, his community
taken away, and his God found unfaithful. He is reduced to
loving his money; then that too is taken away. But he recovers
completely because he acts responsibly. He then finds a new
friend (Dolly), a new love (Eppie), a new community (Raveloe),
and a new God (Dolly's " Them "), and has his money returned.
With preeminent poetic justice, the novel affirms the happy issue
of responsibility and leaves its hero and heroine living happily
ever after. "' Oh father,' said Eppie, 'what a pretty home ours
is! I think nobody could be happier than we are.'""8 Silas
Marner ends up proving itself to be not only comedy, but in
George Eliot's view, comedy of a special kind: " We may say of
the highest comedy what Demetrius said in another sense of the
satiric drama-that it is vat~ovo-a rpayo8a, 'tragedy in the dis-
guise of mirth.' A"
The happily-ever-aftering world that ends Silas Marner is a
fairy-tale world, of course. And suitably so. Fairy tales are
always comic once their heroes learn responsibility. Silas Marner
is no different. And one important way that George Eliot gave
a realistic treatment to her legendary material was by having
her comic framework touch a fairy-tale picture at points where
moral feeling-pure, natural human relations-was involved.
There are at least two sets of events, for instance, in which
George Eliot refused to affirm the fairy-tale pattern of the Cin-
derella story: high-born gentleman meets low-born girl; love joins
them; they live happily ever after. In Adam Bedie, George Eliot
wrote,s "No gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer's
niece."20 In Silas Marner, Godfrey Cass, a squire's son, does in
fact marry Molly Farren, a barmaid. The result is his moral
decay as the object of his brother's blackmail and Molly's death
through drink and opium. Later, he tries to take Eppie, his
child by Molly, from a humble life with Silas and Aaron to a
splendid one with Nancy and himself. But Eppie refuses to be
dence, and she confirms it by refusing to adopt a child (see ch. 17). Further,
Godfrey's irresponsibility prevents her from being the mother of his daughter.
18 The Works of George Eliot: Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob
(Edinburgh, 1879), p. 273.
9 9"Menander and Greek Comedy," The Leader, VI (1855), 579.
20 The Works of George Eliot: Adam Bede (Edinburgh, n. d.), p. 206.
Cinderella. Her choice affirms human feeling as the basis of
moral action. Of such feeling the Casses have no understanding
when they come to seek Eppie and when they blame Silas for
not immediately relinquishing her " after her real father had
avowed himself" (257). Eppie, however, understands that there
is no fatherhood without love and refuses to acknowledge any
father but Silas: " And he's took care of me and loved me from
the first, and I'll cleave to him as long as he lives, and nobody
shall ever come between him and me " (258).
Whereas George Eliot rejects a Cinderella-pattern because it
would interfere with the realism of moral feeling that pervades
Silas Marner, she affirms the pattern of another well known fairy-
tale, "Prince Darling." 21 After Godfrey denies Eppie her birth-
right, the narrator muses: "That famous ring that pricked its
owner when he forgot duty and followed desire-I wonder if it
pricked very hard when he set out on the chase, or whether it
pricked but lightly then, and only pierced to the quick when the
chase had long ended, and hope, folding her wings, looked back-
ward and became regret?" (202-03). Prince Darling was given
this unique ring by Fairy Truth; it was meant to prick him
when he did wrong and thus help him to grow to be a good king.
But spoiled as a child, Darling remains spoiled as a man; and
Fairy Truth must remind him that animals and men are not made
for his pleasure. Darling has it his own way, though. He accepts
the counsel of a wicked brother; he tries to force a shepherd girl
to marry him; he imprisons a wise and faithful friend. Of course,
he removes the constantly annoying ring. But immediately he is
transformed into a beast by the fairy. And so he must remain
until he learns responsibility. This he gradually does, and once
again becomes king and finally marries his shepherd girl.
Fairyland paraphernalia removed, Darling's story is Godfrey's.
His father's heir and the village's favorite, Godfrey should be
responsible, but he shirks duty, marries stupidly, and casts off
wife and child. At the same time he courts Nancy, who will not
marry an irresponsible man. Godfrey refuses to be manly, drinks,
and pays Dunstan blackmail. His brother's skeleton finally forces
Godfrey to be truthful and responsible. All is not restored to him
(Silas remains Eppie's father), but Nancy does become more
21 " Prince Darling " is translated and reprinted in Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy
Book. He gives its source as the Cabinet des Fe'es.
his wife. In Silas fairyland becomes real. Godfrey's drinking and
moral inanition substitute for metamorphosis from manhood, and
conscience strengthened by nemesis serves for Fairy Truth and
the pricking ring. Extra-human agencies are placed in the human
realm, and realistic treatment of the perennial truth of legend
is brought about.
Just as the pattern of Prince Darling's life serves the cause of
moral feeling in Silas Marner, so too do some general structures
that fairy tales frequently employ. Structure by triads is one of
them. Like " The Three Birds," " The Three Brothers," " The
Three Feathers," "The Three Spinners," and so many other
tales, Silas Marner is partially organized by sets of three. There
are three caches of money taken: the chapel money by Dane,
Kimble's rent by Godfrey, and Marner's gold by Dunstan. Silas
is broken in on three times: by Dane, by Dunstan, by Eppie.
Silas is absent three times: once physically, twice cataleptically.
There are three agonizing triangular relationships: Dane and
Sarah and Silas, Molly and Godfrey and Nancy, Silas and Eppie
and Godfrey. There are three places of action in Raveloe: the
Rainbow, the Red House, the Stone-pits. These situate three
different sets of people: the folk, their ' betters,' the weaver (and
his child). And there are three sets of parallel relationships in
the novel: Godfrey is compared to Silas, Dunstan to Dane, Eppie
to the gold.
This last triad dramatizes another affinity of the organization
of this novel to that of the fairy tale. Events in fairy tales are
frequently repeated or reversed with the result that what once
cost pain will on repetition or reversal bring joy. The third time
Rapunzel lets down her golden hair she fetches a prince instead
of a witch.22 The faithful servant who releases the fish from the
reeds, saves the ants from being crushed, and sacrifices his horse
to feed the hungry birds is in turn helped by the fish (who re-
trieve the golden ring from the water), by the ants (who gather
the scattered millet), and by the birds (who bring the apple back
from the Tree of Life), and thus he overcomes all obstacles and
wins the princess he loves.23
In the structure of its action, Silas Marner shows-as do the
22 " Rapunzel " in Grimm's Kinder- und Hauvmiirchen; sometimes translate

" Rampion."
23 "D Die weisse Schlange " in Grimm's German ed.; " The White Snake " in English.
fairy tales-incidents in parallel series that are alternately sad
and joyous. In Lantern Yard, Silas becomes the victim of a
scheming man, who was like a brother to him. Dane believes
himself predestined to salvation and therefore free to do evil;
so he steals money and fixes the blame on Silas. In Raveloe,
Godfrey becomes the victim of an irresponsible man, his brother
Dunstan. Dunstan believes himself a minion of luck; so he ex-
torts Kimble's money from his brother and leaves him to his
father's wrath. The repetition of Silas's life in Godfrey's eventu-
ally leads to Silas's happiness. In Lantern Yard, Silas is accused
of theft because his knife, which Dane had taken, is discovered
with the stolen bag of money. In Raveloe, Silas is finally exon-
erated of faked theft 24 when his money is found with Godfrey's
whip, which Dunstan had taken. Just as the knife identifies Dane
as a criminal, the whip identifies Dunstan as a thief. Finding
the money Dane stole condemned Silas as a young man; finding
the money Dunstan stole saves Silas as he grows old. In Lantern
Yard, Silas loses all while a cataleptic seizure allows Dane to rob
the minister. In Raveloe, he gains all in the cataleptic seizure
that allows Eppie to crawl into his house. What Silas loses in
one Waif (Dane's name in the manuscript) ,25 he gains in another
waif, Eppie.
Events in Silas's life drive him from Lantern Yard; similar
events in Godfrey's life make Silas the father of Godfrey's
daughter. The coming of the precious child in Silas's mental
absence parallels Dunstan's coming in Silas's physical absence.
The working out of the parallel of Godfrey to Silas, Dunstan to
Dane, and gold to Eppie is, in the end, inexorable and unalter-
able. Godfrey, for instance, is not permitted to do what Dunstan
did: he is not permitted to take Eppie, Silas's treasure, from
Marner's house. The structure is presided over by that moral
spirit that pervades the fairy tale and that rewards the labors
and sufferings of the good man.26
24 When Silas announces that his money has been stolen, some people in Raveloe
think he has stolen it himself; see ch. 8.
2 In the MS. William Dane is named William Waif, and the "Waif " supersedes
" Wake " (obviously meant to contrast with Silas's catalepsy), which is crossed out;
see " M. S. Silas Marner," British Museum Additional Manuscript 34,026, pp. 15 f.
28 Further structural parallels are indicated by Jerome Thale, The Novels of
George Eliot (New York, 1959), pp. 65 f. Thale's view of Silas's and Godfrey's
stories and thus of the novel generally is different from mine, however. He sees
Silas's story as fairy-tale and Godfrey's as realistic. In Silas's story, the truth of
Silas gets both the child and the gold; he wins at precisely
those points that the Cass brothers lose. He wins because he
has learned to love and to act responsibly. The Cass brothers
lose because they act irresponsibly; they fail culpably in Raveloe
in the same way that Silas failed inculpably in Lantern Yard.
They trust in chance.
Chance is a legendary force connected in Grimm's Deutsche
Mythologie with fate and destiny.27 In George Eliot's world,
though, human beings create their own destiny. Nemesis visits
the wrong-doer; a better life comes to the good man. Therefore,
chance as a force in life about which one can do nothing is
simply another name for irresponsibility. George Eliot recognizes
the transformation: legendary chance is used realistically as moral
irresponsibility in Silas Marner.
In Lantern Yard, for instance, superstition and chance were
more important in religion than knowledge and character (in
spite of the fact that "Marner was highly thought of in that
little hidden world . . ."). There the most important thing was
the drawing of lots to substantiate Silas's guilt or innocence.
Silas knew himself to be innocent (in spite of Dane's seeing his
catalepsy as Satanic), yet the lots told against him. His character
was overlooked, and the verdict of chance was accepted. Chance
is here revered as Providence. I suspect that George Eliot clearly
rememberd her rendering of a passage from Feuerbach that ana-
lyzes a similar apotheosis.
Religion denies, repudiates chance, making everything dependent on

God, explaining everything by means of him; but this denial is only
apparent; it merely gives chance the name of the divine sovereignty.
For the divine will, which, on incomprehensible grounds, for incom-
prehensible reasons, that is, speaking plainly, out of groundless, abso-
lute arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as it were, determines or
predestines some to evil and misery, others to good and happiness,
has not a single positive characteristic to distinguish it from the power
of chance. The mystery of the election of grace is thus the mystery of
chance.28
aspiration is realized; in Godfrey's, the truth of experience shown. Because Godfrey's

story parallels Silas's, Thale finds the novel " seamless," combining two visions of
life-aspiration and experience. Because, in this essay, I find Godfrey implicated in a
fairy-tale world and because I find a realistic treatment of all fairy-tale elements, I
find it difficult to subscribe fully to Thale's argument.
27 Teutonic Mythology, II, 856-79.
28 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York,
1957), p. 188.
p234 Demytholoqizing " Silas MarnerI
It is noteworthy that Silas was unsure of his election and that
Dane was certain of his. Dane's security led to his irresponsibility.
His chance selection by the Power (the name for God in Lantern
Yard) permitted him to make Silas a victim because his own
salvation was assured. In this way a religion that supports
chance is shown to be humanly pernicious. After Silas's human
character has been established by his responsible care of Eppie,
he returns to Lantern Yard and finds it gone. What it stands for
in the novel is gone too; that is, life determined by luck or
chance. Chance is mercilessly removed; it is exposed as a legen-
dary force that deserves no place at all in real life.
The pricking ring and the pricking conscience of Prince Darling
and Godfrey, however, are calls to responsibility, and responsi-
bility is the opposite of chance because it demands that one accept
the consequences of his actions rather than try to avoid them.
That actions have consequences is the basic law of human exist-
ence is Silas Marner. This is the lesson that Godfrey must learn.
This is the lesson the narrator makes explicit:
Favourable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices
instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of
these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind
will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the
calculable results of that position. . . . Let him neglect the responsi-
bilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the
chance, that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of supposed
importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore
that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the
hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft
that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature
never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of
blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of
success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the orderly
sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind. (112-13)
The man who believes in the religion of Chance wants to assert

in the face of contrary natural evidence that one is not responsible
for what one does.
Dunstan Cass is such a man. He trusts completely in chance,
which he calls luck. Dunstan has a "'taste for swopping and
betting'" (34). When he convinces Godfrey to allow him to
sell Wildfire, Dunstan says, "I'm always lucky in my weather.
It might rain if you wanted to go yourself." He adds, " You've
got the beauty, I've got the luck. . ." (43). After he sells the
horse, Dunstan, "encouraged by confidence in his luck," decides
to ride it to the hunt (52). With Wildfire staked and Dunstan
uninjured, Bryce can only think of Dunsey as Godfrey's " lucky
brother " (97). Dunstan's luck runs out though, and he falls prey
to his own irresponsibility. He has had too much to drink, and he
is agitated and nervous because he has stolen Silas's money. In
this condition, he goes into the dark night and makes his way
along the muddy banks of a stone-pit. There he becomes the
victim of the chance he took.
With a great deal of subtlety, Dunstan's life is again linked
with Dane's. It is clear that Dunstan is connected with Fortune
as Dane is with Providence. Dunstan brings to life Grimm's
" darling of fortune " and " child of luck," 29 just as Dane brings
to life Feuerbach's man elected by Providence. If Dunstan be-
lieves that the weather will be good for him but bad for Godfrey,
he obviously considers himself favored, no matter what. Grimm
puts it succinctly: " The people believed in a predetermining of
fates, as they did in the certainty of death." 3 The lucky man,
like the predestined one, fears doing no evil because no evil can
come to him. He believes in Chance; he cultivates no moral
feeling; he acts irresponsibly.3" He is beyond the remedial effect
of natural human relations.
Trusting in Chance, Dunstan robs Silas; and trusting in Chance,
Godfrey refuses to acknowledge Eppie. But their moments of
trust in Chance are precisely those that release Silas from its grip.
Because his money is taken from him, human feeling is stirred
in Silas-he is " mushed." Because Eppie comes to him, the stir.
rings of feeling burgeon into love and responsibility. The moral
and emotional hardness that encased Silas from the time that
29 Teutonic Mythology, II, 869.

80Ibid., p. 860.
F' For further comment on chance, see David R. Carroll, "Silas Marner: Reversing
the Oracles of Religion," Literary Monographs, Vol. 1, ed. Eric Rothstein and Thomas
K. Dunseath (Madison, Wisconsin, 1968); my findings are independent of Carroll's.
See also, Q. D. Leavis on Luck in the new Penguin ed. of Silas (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, 1967), pp. 259 f. Her statement that " Luck is good fortune that has
always to be deserved" cannot be completely accepted. Dunstan is lucky before he
is unlucky; Silas unlucky before lucky. Also, the attribution of her notion of Luck to
Teutonic mythology cannot be sustained when luck and destiny are linked to birth,
as they are by Grimm. Nevertheless, with these reservations, her analysis provides
some valuable insights and emphasizes the comedic direction of Silas.
Dane betrayed him is chipped away until a human being is
revealed.
This process of revelation registers ever so gradually on the
Raveloe mind because Silas has been considered connected with
Satan for years: " this trade of weaving . . . could not be carried
on without the help of the Evil One" (3-4). The devil as a
legendary force interfering with and controlling human action is
as old as the story of Adam and Eve. Just as Chance must be
demythologized as a meaningful force in human life, so must
Satan. The process reveals once again how George Eliot develops
her theme by treating a legendary subject realistically. Silas,
first feared as demoniac, finally is loved as human; this process
of Raveloe's change of heart is best expressed by Mr. Macey, who
is himself a legendary character.
Mr. Macey is Raveloe's privileged villager (156): he is a judge
of his 'betters' (158), a fount of wisdom (125), a man worthy of
special notice (272), and an "oracular old gentleman" (89).
(Since George Eliot emended her manuscript to insert " oracul
the title seems especially worthy of remark.) 32 Mr. Macey is the
voice of Raveloe. He reminds one of the mythmaker whom
George Eliot met in Otfried Muller's Prologemerac33 and used
in her own " Janet's Repentance "-the man who expresses the
consensus of the community in his stories and judgments: the
c enunciator of ancient myth " who makes " the assemblage dis-
tinctly conscious of the common sentiment that has drawn all
together." 34
Mr. Macey's recital of the story of the Lammeter-Osgood wed-
ding and the story of how the Warrens became the Charity Land
(including the legend of Cliff's holiday) 3 is ritual. The stories
are the heritage of the community, all listen attentively to them,
and a certain few ask premeditated questions at designated
moments in the course of the recital. " Every one of Mr. Macey's
audience had heard this story many times, but it was listened
32B. M. Add. MS. 34,026, p. 116.

33 Carl Otfried Miller, Prolegomena zu ciner wissenschaftichen Mythologie (1825).
" Works of George Eliot: Scenes of Clerical Life, (Edinburgh, n. d.), II, 96. This
is a paraphrase of a long passage from Muller which Eliot translated in Leben Jesu.
Muller provided Strauss with the key definition of myth that enabled him to produce
his monumental volume. See The Life of Jesus, sec. 14; pp. 80-82 in the edition
cited in n. 8 above.
3 Seq Q. D. Leavis, pp. 20-28, for an excellent discussion of Cliff's story in
relation to Silas's life.
to as if it had been a favorite tune, and at certain points the
puffing of pipes was suspended, that the listeners might give their
whole minds to the expected words. But there was more to come;
and Mr. Snell, the landlord, duly put the leading question " (77).
Mr. Macey's voice is here clearly heard as the single voice that
orchestrates the many.
One of the unusual things peculiar to Silas is his proneness to
cataleptic seizures. When Jem Rodney reports having seen Silas
in the course of one-eyes set like a dead man's, limbs stiff-Mr.
Macey interprets: " But there might be such a thing as a man's
soul being loose from his body, and going out and in, like a bird
out of its nest and back; and that was how folks got over-wise,
for they went to school in this shell-less state to those who could
teach them more than their neighbours could learn with their five
senses and the parson" (9). In other words, Silas is going to
school to Old Harry, the devil. Silas is from the North, a
stranger; he is a weaver, not a farmer; he has more money than
most; he knows something about the medicinal value of herbs.
In short, he is an alien and a puzzle to the rustic mind: he is
regarded with a " mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and
suspicion " (62) . The normal way for Raveloe to deal with
what it does not understand is to attribute it to an occult
agency. " When Doctor Kimble gave physic, it was natural that
it should have an effect; but when a weaver, who came from
nobody knew where, worked wonders with a bottle of brown
waters, the occult character of the process was evident" (25).
Therefore Silas is put into medical school by Mr. Macey-a
medical school where Old Harry is principal lecturer.
To the narrator, neither catalepsy nor herbs is a puzzle, and
weaving in the North no mystery; to the narrator, who has told of
love lost, Silas's miserliness is also clear: " The light of his faith
quite put out, and his affections made desolate, he had clung
with all the force of his nature to his work and his money. .
His gold, as he hung over it and saw it grow, gathered his power
of loving into a hard isolation like its own " (63). Mr. Macey
in ignorance has recourse to demoniac powers; the narrator in
knowledge to human causality.
When Silas emerges like a phantom from the stormy night
and materializes at the Rainbow, Mr. Macey sees him as evidence
that ghosts do exist:
238 Demythologizing " Silas Marner"
The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement, like the antennae
of startled insects, and every man present, not excepting even the
sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw, not Silas Marner in
the flesh, but an apparition; for the door by which Silas had entered
was hidden by the high-screened seats, and no one noticed his ap-
proach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost, might be sup-
posed to have felt an argumentative triumph, which would tend to
neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always said
that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul
went loose from his body? (83)
But after the first shock, Silas's entry into the company of his
neighbors refutes Mr. Macey's theory. It allows Silas to be seen
for the first time as a human being. Even Mr. Macey recon-
siders Silas's association with Old Harry: " 'Folks as had 'the
devil to back 'em were not likely to be so mushed' as poor Silas
was " (86). It seems to Macey that the devil has turned against
Silas: " his disreputable intimacy in that quarter, if it ever existed,
had been broken up, and . . ., in consequence, this ill turn had
been done to Marner by somebody it was quite in vain to set
the constable after " (89). When Silas grieves for his lost guineas,
the old man suggests where they are: " 'Ay, ay, they're gone
where it's hot enough to melt 'em, I doubt,' said Mr. Macey "
(88). The discovery of the tinder-box allows Macey a few mo-
ments of skeptical cynicism: " Mr. Macey . . . pooh-poohed the
tinder-box; indeed, repudiated it as a rather impious suggestion,
tending to imply that everything must be done by human hands,
and that there was no power which could make away with the
guineas without moving the bricks " (92).
Macey's paradigm for thinking is clear: if something is mys-
terious, the devil is the agent behind the mystery. But Silas
is no longer mysterious when he appears " mushed "; therefore,
the devil has robbed him and turned him into a victim. Later,
when Mr. Macey comes to know Silas better, he exonerates him
further. Finally, at the end of the novel, he forgets completely
and conveniently much of what he once thought of Silas and
accentuates only the positive: " ' Well, Master Marner,' he said
in a voice that quavered a good deal, 'I've lived to see my
words come true. I was the first to say there was no harm in you,
though your looks might be again' you; and I was the first to
say you'd get your money back. And it's nothing but rightful
as you should '" (272). In the end, Silas as victim of Dunstan
and Silas as father of Eppie make him relatively intelligible to
Raveloe. Positive evidence has put Old Harry to flight in Mar-
ner's case-though, of course, there is no telling where he will next
show up. Mr. Macey speaks for the community when he finally
addresses Silas as a man among men. It has taken Silas some
thirty years to emerge as totally human in the mind of Raveloe;
the narrator, of course, has known him to be such from the be-
ginning. That is because the narrator has known the character of
Silas, and Raveloe has not.
What Raveloe does in the person of Mr. Macey is substitute
knowledge for superstition and make a final judgment of Silas
on the basis of his character. This in small reflects the orienta-
tion of the whole novel. Character is insisted on because from it
come actions that affect one's own and others' lives. Therefore,
the Old Harry of legend-like Chance, the enemy of moral feel-
ing and personal responsibility-is relentlessly demythologized in
Silas Marner.
Finally, the central event in Silas's life is demythologized to
the same end. The coming of Eppie is a secularized form of
Christian redemption emphasizing the human rather than the
divine. It sets in the strongest light " the remedial influences of
pure, natural human relations." Silas is a stranger to such influ-
ences for fifteen years. Raveloe, as we have seen, considers him
demoniac and equates him with the Wise Woman of Tarley. He
is a foreigner, a weaver, a medicine man, a miser-an oddity in
Raveloe: " how was a man to be explained unless you at least
knew somebody who knew his father and mother? " (4). But his
condition changes: he suffers and then he begins to love. Because
of Eppie he is delivered from his condition as a weaving spider.
He becomes a father who works to support a daughter. Eppie
links him to a community:
the child created fresh and fresh links between his life and the lives
from which he had hitherto shrunk continually into narrower isolation.
Unlike the gold which needed nothing, and must be worshipped in
close-locked solitude-which was hidden away from the daylight, was
deaf to the song of birds, and started to no human tones-Eppie was
a creature of endless claims and ever-growing desires, seeking and
loving sunshine, and living sounds, and living movements; making
trial of everything, with trust in new joy, and stirring the human
kindness in all eyes that looked on her. (192)
240 Demythologizing " Silas Marner"
Eppie is christened at Dolly Winthrop's insistence, and Silas is
thus drawn back into a church community too. Eppie redeems
Silas, then, by connecting him with what he once lost: personal
love and faith. The feelings are reestablished in him, and he
once again becomes a human being: " as her life unfolded, his
soul . . . was unfolding too, and turning gradually into full
consciousness" (184). Significantly, this change is effected in
Silas by a child who comes to him during the Christmas season.
At the end of the second chapter, the narrator states that
"about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great
change came over Marner's life. . ." (31). It is just prior to
Christmas that Silas's change begins with the theft of his mone
" his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside;
but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken " (124).
Silas's neighbors interest themselves in his affairs, and he re-
ceives them at his cottage. Dolly comes with Aaron. She urges
Silas to attend church on Christmas day, and Aaron sings to him:
God rest you, merry gentleman,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas-day.36
Dolly also brings Silas lard-cakes with I. H. S. stamped on them,

which neither of them can identify as the first three Greek letters
in the name Jesus. But Silas remains home at Christmas because
he is not in sympathy with the God-Man who came to earth
long ago.
The fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had not yet
been unlocked, and his soul was still a shrunken rivulet, with only
this difference, that its little groove of sand was blocked up, and it
wandered confusedly against dark obstruction.
Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas
Marner who once loved his fellow with tender love, and trusted in an
unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had become
dim. (132)
So Jesus Christ our Savior born on Christmas day does nothing

for Silas, who is no merry gentleman. But a little girl who crawls
" John Blackwood raised a tentative objection to the use of this carol, but Eliot
refused to delete it; see Letters, III, 389.
to his hearth and whom he names Hepzibah (meaning, she in
whom is my delight), after his mother and sister, revives the
past of love and faith for Silas. She redeems the sad gentleman
to life, brings him cheer and companionship, and returns him to
a faith in divine goodness by being someone he can love. Thus
the epigraph of the novel:
A child, more than all other gifts

That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.
Eppie is a Christ-event on the human level of religion as feeling

in Silas Marner. Silas describes her as a " precious child " sent
to " save me" (248). Clearly, this is Feuerbach's version of the
Redemptive-Incarnation that George Eliot dramatizes during
Silas's fifteenth Christmas in Raveloe.
Nevertheless the essential idea of the Incarnation, though enveloped

in the night of religious consciousness, is love. Love determined God
to the renunciation of his divinity. Not because of his Godhead
as such, according to which he is the subject in the proposition, God
is love, but because of his love, of the predicate, is it that he renounced
his Godhead; thus love is a higher power and truth than diety.
Who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? God or Love? Love; for
God as God has not saved us, but Love, which transcends the differ-
ence between the divine and human personality.38
Just as Feuerbach here takes the Christmas story as a myth that
needs to be stripped of its theological trappings to be understood
in a human context, George Eliot dramatizes Silas's response to
the love that Eppie brings on New Year's eve, not to the doc-
trine Mr. Crackenthorp preaches on Christmas day. The saving
event in his life is human love: " In old days there were angels
who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the
city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet
men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into
theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright
land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be
a little child's" (201).
The pattern in Silas Marner is to return mystery to the human
level where it originated. " We can conclude that a miracle,
whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere ab-
3 James Hastings, ed., Dictionary of the Bible (New York, 1963).

3 The Essence of Christianity, p. 53.
242 Demythologizing "Silas Marner "
surdity," wrote Spinoza in the Tractatus, which George Eliot
translated in 1849. ". . . what is meant in Scripture by a miracle
can only be a work of nature, which surpasses, or is believed to
surpass, human comprehension." 39 None of the mysterious events
in Silas remains in the end beyond the comprehension of the
careful reader.40 The novel continually shows how things have
become what they are. Silas is revealed as the victim of a broken
friendship, a lost love, and a mistaken trust in chance. The
miserly cataleptic is really the lonely, introverted man, not a
Satanic figure. Chance is revealed as the god of irresponsible
people, who believe " in a predetermining of fates "; whereas, what
seems to happen by chance-Eppie's coming to Silas, for ex-
ample-is revealed as the issue of human action and the oppor-
tunity for human responsibility.41 And the Christ-event of Chris-
tianity is shown to be the coming of love. In addition, selected
fairy-tale structures enforce the importance of love and responsi-
bility as major themes in the novel. Throughout Silas Marner,
therefore, George Eliot puts legendary material at the service of
realistic art. And so the novel gathers to itself all the romance of
legend while at the same time it asserts all the realism of life.
The novel that began so darkly thus ends brightly. Silas Mar-
fner finally declares itself a comedy that does not avoid tragedies
but contains them. Silas loses all to find all and dies that he
might live. The novel moves " from threatening complications to
a happy ending and a general assumption of post-dated inno-
cence in which everyone lives happily ever after." 42 Aaron, the
gardener, marries Eppie, the motherless child, and they go to
Silas's house, which is surrounded by a new garden presided over
by Unseen Love.43 In this new paradise, Silas has the place that
"Eliot's translation is lost. I quote from The Chief Works of Benedict De

Spinoza, trans. R. H. Elwes (New York, 1955), I, 87.
40 An opposite point of view is expressed by Robert B. Heilman, "Retum to
Raveloe: Thirty-Five Years After," English Journal, XLVI (1957), 1-10; he writes:
c . Eliot is unwilling to reduce life to naturalistic certitudes, to such explanations
and finalities as are, provided by society and the natural world."
" Silas's door is open on New Year's eve because he is keeping the traditional
vigil, which he hopes will bring him good luck and the restoration of his money.
Molly dies from drugs on her way to revenge herself publicly on Godfrey at the
Red House party. Eppie leaves her dead mother and seeks light and warmth. What
seems to be fortuitous is in fact the consequence of character and action.
42 Frye, Anatomy, p. 162.
43 Cc Unseen Love" is the narrator's term (p. 2,3). It should be noted that mi
Lantern Yard God is " Power " and in Raveloe, Dolly's " Them." The; narrator stands
affection has made for him. For the moment, at least, Eppie's
words ring true: " I think nobody could be happier than we are."
With the new Adam and the new Eve in the new Garden with
their new God, the implication is that, recreated and sustained
by love, human society will achieve the condition it longs for.
Thus with a hero who has died only to rise by love, Silas Marner
ends, gently but ironically, positing the utopian myth of a de-
mythologized world.
University of Wisconin
Madion
outside these two societies-" in which form and feeling have never been se
by an act of reflection " (p. 18)-and sets up a new society and inaugurates a n

Demythologizing Silas Marner PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Demythologizing Silas Marner PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Demythologizing Silas Marner

Author(s): Joseph Wiesenfarth

1 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (New York, 1957), p.

226 Demythologizing " Silas Marner "

Joseph Wiesenfarth 227

11 DEMYTHOLOGIZE " 1. to divest (a writing, work of art, author, artist,

9228 Demythologizing " Slas Marner "'

14 Cc Heine's Poems," The Leader, VI (1855), 844.

Joseph, WiesenfartA 229

230 Demythologizing " Silas Marner "

Joseph Wiesenfarth 231

22 " Rapunzel " in Grimm's Kinder- und Hauvmiirchen; sometimes translate

232 Demythologizing " Silas Marner "

Joseph Wiesenfarth 233

Religion denies, repudiates chance, making everything dependent on

aspiration is realized; in Godfrey's, the truth of experience shown. Because Godfrey's

p234 Demytholoqizing " Silas MarnerI

The man who believes in the religion of Chance wants to assert

Joseph Wiesenfarth 235

29 Teutonic Mythology, II, 869.

236 Demythologizing " Silas Marner "

32B. M. Add. MS. 34,026, p. 116.

Joseph Wiesenfarth 237

238 Demythologizing " Silas Marner"

Joseph Wiesenfarth 239

240 Demythologizing " Silas Marner"

Dolly also brings Silas lard-cakes with I. H. S. stamped on them,

So Jesus Christ our Savior born on Christmas day does nothing

Joseph Wiesenfarth 241

A child, more than all other gifts

Eppie is a Christ-event on the human level of religion as feeling

Nevertheless the essential idea of the Incarnation, though enveloped

3 James Hastings, ed., Dictionary of the Bible (New York, 1963).

242 Demythologizing "Silas Marner "

"Eliot's translation is lost. I quote from The Chief Works of Benedict De

Joseph Wiesenfarth 243

244 Demythologizing " Silas Marner "

You might also like