Read the following passage carefully and comment on
a)Eliot’s use of metaphor
b)Irony/humour
c)Contrast
d)Eliot’s combination of general and specific comment
e)The motif of light in this passage and the novel as a whole
f)Animal imagery
g)Characterization of Silas Marner
h)Forces which might control the lives of the characters in the novel
And what could be more unlike that Lantern Yard world than the world in Raveloe? — orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty; the large church in the wide churchyard, which men gazed at lounging at their own doors in service-time; the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes or turning in at the Rainbow; homesteads, where men supped heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where women seemed to be laying up a stock of linen for the life to come. There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word could fall that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense of pain. In the early ages of the world, we know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to the streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not unlike the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him that the Power he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned to bitterness. The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrowly, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night.
His first movement after the shock had been to work in his loom; and he went on with this unremittingly, never asking himself why, now he was come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the night to finish the tale of Mrs. Osgood's table-linen sooner than she expected — without contemplating beforehand the money she would put into his hand for the work. He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life. Silas's hand satisfied itself with throwing the shuttle, and his eye with seeing the little squares in the cloth complete themselves under his effort. Then there were the calls of hunger; and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire; and all these immediate promptings helped, along with the weaving, to reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him. Thought was arrested by utter bewilderment, now its old narrow pathway was closed, and affection seemed to have died under the bruise that had fallen on its keenest nerves.
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The Weaver of Raveloe: Metaphor as Narrative Persuasion in "Silas Marner." By: Rochelson, Meri-Jane, Bloom, Harold, Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: Silas Marner,
Database: Literary Reference Center
The strong presence of the narrator in George Eliot's novels and the extensive use of metaphor within their texts are both significant characteristics of Eliot's art, and both have received a great deal of critical attention.
A passage early in Chapter 2 illustrates how the narrator of Silas Marner uses metaphor to bring the reader into the world of the novel, as she explains to the reader Silas's growing alienation from God. Many critics have commented on the way Eliot frequently shifts the perspective of her narrative, like the changing or refocusing of a lens,(n6) and she does so in the following passage early in Silas Marner. The narrator begins at a medium distance: "And what could be more unlike that Lantern Yard world than the world in Raveloe?--orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty; the large church in the wide churchyard, which men gazed at lounging at their own doors in service-time; the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes or turning in at the Rainbow; homesteads, where men supped heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where women seemed to be laying up a stock of linen for the life to come."(n7) The narrator describes Raveloe as an objective traveler might, surveying its landscape and inhabitants from sufficiently near to infer its complacent abundance, but at a distance that still prevents intimate acquaintance. The picture is in many ways inviting, but the remote perspective suggests a coolness or aloofness which is, in fact, confirmed in the second sentence: "There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word could fall that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense of pain." The narrator's view moves closer in, to Silas, and we see that his soul remains untouched by the bounty and activity around him.
There has not been much metaphor in this section so far, so that when it does appear--in the reference to a word that might "stir ... benumbed faith"--its effect is the more dramatic. Analogies have appeared in the paragraph to this point: the orchards "look" lazy, and the women only "seem to be" storing linen for the afterlife. These comparisons help assure the reader of the narrator's perceptive eye, and the content of the second is appropriate to the discussion of faith and varieties of belief that make up the subject of the passage. But that they are straightforward analogies, drawing attention through their form to the fact that the narrator is creating them and that the reality they illuminate is quite ordinary reality, makes one feel, too, how strongly the narrator is in control. This feeling that one is being led along by a calm, perceptive, controlled narrator contributes as much to one's sense of the comfort of Raveloe as the actual images themselves. It is thus not only the shift in perspective, but also the shift to metaphor, that accounts for the discomfort produced by the sentence about Silas. His faith does not "seem" numb, it is numb, and it must be awakened to pain when it begins to feel.
The movement from one means of explanation to another conveys the earnestness of the narrator's desire to explain, and at the same time suggests that nothing can be explained through only a simple presentation of the data. The narrator then makes clear that the shift in perspective (from Raveloe to Silas, from survey of community to analysis of character) and the shift in rhetoric (from literal speech, to analogy, to metaphor) are still not enough to make the reader understand just what Silas Marner is experiencing. The sentence about Silas's benumbed faith is therefore followed by another shift in perspective: "In the early ages of the world, we know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to the streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not unlike the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity."
The wider view provides a comparison between Silas's plight and the lives of "primitive men," and results from the same philosophical impulse as the employment of analogy and metaphor. What the narrator suggests is that fullness of understanding can only be approached if one compares the situation at hand to other situations like it. At base is the idea that all things can be related; as readers, we feel the narrator to be someone who sees in the world a unity between the petty details of life and the cosmic beliefs of ancient men, who cannot tell the story of one weaver without joining it to the lives of all people in all time.(n10) We also sense the narrator's erudition in the fact that she knows about primitive men and their gods; our faith in her reliability as guide and interpreter increases as we appreciate her wisdom. We are impressed by her compassion in going to such lengths to make sure we understand what she is saying, and we are flattered that this wise, all-seeing narrator assumes "we know," as she does, all about ancient religion.
The brief explanation of local deities is presented as a simple, literal, matter of fact. Having already established her own reliability, the narrator thus places the reader in an attitude of respect toward something he might otherwise have treated with some scorn. He is then prepared to sympathize with Silas in his loss of faith. But in a subtle way this particular analogy also prepares the reader to reject, along with the primitive superstitions, certain forms of Christian belief which Eliot is to supplant in the novel with a religion of human compassion. The images of primitive gods take their place beside the lots-drawing of Lantern Yard in a system of references throughout the novel to superstitious faiths whose foundations may be false but whose believers are sincere.
The comparison between Silas and the early believers is stated explicitly, and as the paragraph ends the narrator reminds us of the more immediate comparison with which it began, the contrast between Raveloe and Lantern Yard: "It seemed to him that the Power he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned to bitterness." All the strands of explanation gradually come together here, in a powerful, simple metaphor. The sense of the whole paragraph is finally epitomized in the last sentence of the passage, an example of the "summary metaphor" that characterizes Eliot's narrator's rhetoric. By its very existence as metaphor, this statement adds something to the narration that could not have been rendered exactly any other way: "The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrowly, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night."
This sentence moves from light to darkness as the chapter so far has moved from the spiritual brightness of Silas's early life to the blankness of his later existence. In the "blackness of night" we have the clearest presentation yet of just how desolate his spiritual state is. With the metaphor, a "curtain" comes down on the bright and active scene of Raveloe life; it is blotted out for the reader just as, for Silas, the benevolent possibilities of that life are made invisible by his disillusionment. It is as if the narrator knows the reader cannot truly understand Silas's plight unless he has all the facts, and through every possible means. If we understand the narrowness of his "light," we will not be too impatient with Silas when frustration removes it completely. And in taking such a well-worn metaphor as the "light of faith" and transforming it into a physical light one may possess--a feeble, useless light, at that--the narrator reveals the pathos of Silas Marner's situation while at the same time suggesting the homely, personal quality of faith. We are led to speculate as to the solace a faith might provide, were its light only wide enough.
Use of the phrase – “poor Silas”
Chapter 2
lls among which he had lived from his birth. and poor silas was vaguely conscious of something not
Chapter 7
l to back 'em were not likely to be so mushed" as poor silas was. rather, from the strange fact tha
Chapter 10
inions of collateral importance.but while poor silas's loss served thus to brush the slow cu
Chapter 14
for his watchfulness and penetration. sorely was poor silas puzzled on such occasions by the incomp
Lightand Dark
PinkMonkey At the end of this second paragraph, light stands for knowledge and darkness stands for uncertainty. Right now Silas is frightened by life's mysteries- "the blackness of night." This image recurs at the end of the next paragraph, too, in his "dark" future. Yet in the paragraph after that, when he receives his first gold coins, their "brightness" seems simply to mean they're desirable.
What does the name ‘Lantern Yard’ suggest?
Chapter 1
that its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour. a less truthful man than he might
Chapter 2, where men supped heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where women
Chapter 5
.any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale face, strange straining
Chapter 8
ir opinion that it was not a robbery to have much light thrown on it by tinder-boxes, that master ma
Chapter 12
ing cloud, from which there came now and then the light of a quickly veiled star, for a freezing win
Chapter 13
nd the goodly ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the gaze of respectable admirers. it wa
Chapter 16
child, it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or leastwise that the robber would be
Chapter 21
robbery. and mr. paston was a man with a deal o' light -- i want to speak to him about the drawing
Chapter 1
f these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog
Chapter 2
ngers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark, for there was no unseen love that cared for
Chapter 3
e. on this ground it was always contrived in the dark seasons, when there was little work to be don
Chapter 4
od luck. but now the mist, helped by the evening darkness, was more of a screen than he desired, fo
Chapter 5
night, and then forgotten it? a man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on slid
Chapter 6
the landlord."aye, aye; go that way of a dark night, that's all," said mr. macey, winking m
Chapter 8
debating. but when he awoke in the still morning darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his ev
Chapter 10
s empty, and the lock was broken. left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, silas had in
Chapter 12
ling and smiled upon, hiding her existence in the darkest corner of his heart. but she would mar hi
Chapter 13
parition from that hidden life which lies, like a dark by-street, behind the goodly ornamented facad
Chapter 21
-- that's the way we must go.""oh, what a dark ugly place!" said eppie. "how it hides the
GradeSaver Many individual motifs and images have more extensive roles in the book. The most important of these, probably, are Marner's likeness to an insect or a spider, and Eppie's likeness to plant life. Marner's large, blurry eyes, his solitary and antisocial lifestyle, and his very profession all invite comparison with an insect or spider. Like a spider's, Marner's life before Eppie is full of thoughtless repetition; he spins his linen and counts his coins, but he does not remember why. It is only when he recalls his place within the natural order--shown in his reclaiming of the herb-gathering of his past, for instance--that he becomes fulfilled and more human than animal. Eppie, with her nurturing father, does not grow up alienated from the natural world. Like a plant, she is organically connected to her father and to nature. This is the positive meaning of Mrs. Winthrop's statement that Eppie will grow like grass, and she expresses her natural integrated with sprigs in her wedding gown. Whereas Marner's spidery behavior demonstrates his failure to integrate, Eppie is attuned to the integration and interdependence of nature and society.
SparkNotes Throughout the novel, Eliot draws on the natural world for many images and metaphors. Silas in particular is often compared to plants or animals, and these images are used to trace his progression from isolated loner to well-loved father figure. As he sits alone weaving near the start of the novel, Silas is likened to a spider, solitary and slightly ominous. Just after he is robbed, Silas is compared to an ant that finds its usual path blocked—an image of limitation and confusion, but also of searching for a solution. Later, as Silas begins to reach out to the rest of the village, his soul is likened to a plant, not yet budding but with its sap beginning to circulate. Finally, as he raises Eppie, Silas is described as “unfolding” and “trembling into full consciousness,” imagery evoking both the metamorphosis of an insect and the blooming of a flower. This nature imagery also emphasizes the preindustrial setting of the novel, reminding us of a time in England when the natural world was a bigger part of daily life than it was after the Industrial Revolution.