A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

176.
psychological terms; there is no such separation in her mind. -:lhnt we
are examining is an identification between these two aspects of the self.
The character of Silas Marner provides a very explicit illustration
of George Eliot's belief that a healthy, accepting relationship with the
past is a necessary concomitant of an integrated sense of self. We do
not need critical analysis to make us aware of the Wordsworthian flavour
of this short novel. George Eliot herself wrote in a letter to Blackwood
that she had not expected it to engage anyone's interest but her own
"since William Viordsworth ~a~ deaQ;." 26 The little novel is a blend of
fairytale and reality. The story of Godfrey
Cass belongs to the world of
uni versal causality, where one action entails another and where "conse-­
quences are unpitying"; 27 the story of the weaver in exile, regenerated
and reintegrated into the life of the community by the offices of a
little orphan girl, is a fairy fantasy, a moral fable of suffering and
despair converted into healing and recovery. Silas' rejection by the inmates
of Lantern Yard and especially by his trusted friend, Vlilliam
Dene, sends him into a state of exile, "in Ylhich the past becomes dreamy
because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy be-
0t 0.. I
cause 1 15 11nked W1th no memories.
28
I
His life as an outcast and his miserly obsession with his c;old provide
him with no links between his past life and his present by means of
which he can re-establish his identity. There is a potential but temporary
respi:te when he responds to the needs of Sally Oates and prescribes
for her the herbs he had seen his mother take for the same affliction.
"In this office of charity, Sile.s felt, for the first time since he had
come to Raveloe, a sense of unity between his past and present life,
which might have been the beginning of his rescue from the insect-like
existence into which his nature had shrunk." 29 Unfortunately, however,
the epi:1ocle \'las too ephemeral to break dO\'nl his neighbours' distrust of