Silas Marner The Weaver of Raveloe

- By George Eliot
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English novelist and poet (1819–1880) For other uses, see George Eliot (disambiguation). George EliotEliot (Mary Ann Evans) in 1850BornMary Anne Evans(1819-11-22)22 November 1819Nuneaton, Warwickshire, EnglandDied22 December 1880(1880-12-22) (aged 61)Chelsea, London, EnglandResting placeHighgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, LondonPen nameGeorge EliotOccupationNovelist, poet, journalist, translatorAlma materBedford College, LondonPeriodVictorianNotable worksScenes of Clerical Life (1857) Adam Bede (1859) The Mill on the Floss (1860) Silas Marner (1861) Romola (1862–1863) Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) Middlemarch (1871–1872) Daniel Deronda (1876)Spouse John Cross ​(m. 1880)​PartnerGeorge Henry Lewes (1854–1878) Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian[1][2]), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.[3] She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). As with Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside. Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people"[4] and by Martin Amis[5] and Julian Barnes[6] as the greatest novel in the English language. Scandalously and unconventionally for the era, she lived with the married George Henry Lewes as his conjugal partner, from 1854–1878, and called him her husband. He remained married to his wife and supported their children, even after she left him to live with another man and have children with him. In May 1880, eighteen months after Lewes's death, George Eliot married her long-time friend, John Cross, a man much younger than she, and she changed her name to Mary Ann Cross. Life[edit] Early life and education[edit] Mary Ann Evans was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, at South Farm on the Arbury Hall estate.[7] She was the third child of Welshman Robert Evans (1773–1849), manager of the Arbury Hall estate, and Christiana Evans (née Pearson, 1788–1836), daughter of a local mill-owner. Her full siblings were: Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–59), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who died a few days after birth in March 1821. She also had a half-brother, Robert Evans (1802–64), and half-sister, Frances "Fanny" Evans Houghton (1805–82), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (1780–1809). In early 1820, the family moved to a house named Griff House, between Nuneaton and Bedworth.[8] The young Evans was a voracious reader and obviously intelligent. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, Evans was not thought to have much chance of marriage, and this, coupled with her intelligence, led her father to invest in an education not often afforded to women.[9] From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough, from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis—to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed. In the religious atmosphere of the Misses Franklin's school, Evans was exposed to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.[10] After age sixteen, Evans had little formal education.[11] Thanks to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy".[12] Her frequent visits to the estate also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a low church Anglican family, but at that time the Midlands was an area with a growing number of religious dissenters. Move to Coventry[edit] In 1836, her mother died and Evans (then 16) returned home to act as housekeeper, though she continued to correspond with her tutor Maria Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Isaac married and took over the family home, so Evans and her father moved to Foleshill near Coventry. The closeness to Coventry society brought new influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray. Charles Bray had become rich as a ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth in the building of schools and in other philanthropic causes. Evans, who had been struggling with religious doubts for some time, became intimate friends with the radical, free-thinking Brays, who had a casual view of marital obligations[13] and the Brays' "Rosehill" home was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. The people whom the young woman met at the Brays' house included Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this society Evans was introduced to more liberal and agnostic theologies and to writers such as David Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach, who cast doubt on the literal truth of Biblical texts. In fact, her first major literary work was an English translation of Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1846), which she completed after it had been left incomplete by Elizabeth "Rufa" Brabant, another member of the "Rosehill Circle". The Strauss book had caused a sensation in Germany by arguing that the miracles in the New Testament were mythical additions with little basis in fact.[14][15][16] Evans's translation had a similar effect in England, with the Earl of Shaftesbury calling her translation "the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell."[17][18][19][20] Later she translated Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (1854). The ideas in these books would have an effect on her own fiction. As a product of their friendship, Bray published some of Evans's own earliest writing, such as reviews, in his newspaper the Coventry Herald and Observer.[21] As Evans began to question her own religious faith, her father threatened to throw her out of the house, but his threat was not carried out. Instead, she respectfully attended church and continued to keep house for him until his death in 1849, when she was 30. Five days after her father's funeral, she travelled to Switzerland with the Brays. She decided to stay on in Geneva alone, living first on the lake at Plongeon (near the present-day United Nations buildings) and then on the second floor of a house owned by her friends François and Juliet d'Albert Durade on the rue de Chanoines (now the rue de la Pelisserie). She commented happily that "one feels in a downy nest high up in a good old tree". Her stay is commemorated by a plaque on the building. While residing there, she read avidly and took long walks in the beautiful Swiss countryside, which was a great inspiration to her. François Durade painted her portrait there as well.[22] Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review[edit] On her return to England the following year (1850), she moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer, and she began referring to herself as Marian Evans.[23] She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the radical publisher whom she had met earlier at Rosehill and who had published her Strauss translation. She then joined Chapman's ménage-à-trois along with his wife and mistress.[13] Chapman had recently purchased the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review. Evans became its assistant editor in 1851 after joining just a year earlier. Evans's writings for the paper were comments on her views of society and the Victorian way of thinking.[24] She was sympathetic to the lower classes and criticised organised religion throughout her articles and reviews and commented on contemporary ideas of the time.[25] Much of this was drawn from her own experiences and knowledge and she used this to critique other ideas and organisations. This led to her writing being viewed as authentic and wise but not too obviously opinionated. Evans also focused on the business side of the Review with attempts to change its layout and design.[26] Although Chapman was officially the editor, it was Evans who did most of the work of producing the journal, contributing many essays and reviews beginning with the January 1852 issue and continuing until the end of her employment at the Review in the first half of 1854.[27] Eliot sympathized with the 1848 Revolutions throughout continental Europe, and even hoped that the Italians would chase the "odious Austrians" out of Lombardy and that "decayed monarchs" would be pensioned off, although she believed a gradual reformist approach to social problems was best for England.[28][29] In 1850–51, Evans attended classes in mathematics at the Ladies College in Bedford Square, later known as Bedford College, London.[30] Relationship with George Henry Lewes[edit] Portrait of George Eliot by Samuel Laurence, c. 1860 The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes (1817–78) met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was already married to Agnes Jervis, although in an open marriage. In addition to the three children they had together, Agnes also had four children by Thornton Leigh Hunt.[31] In July 1854, Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin together for the purpose of research. Before going to Germany, Evans continued her theological work with a translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, which she completed in 1856, but which was not published in her lifetime because the prospective publisher refused to pay the requested £75.[32] In 1981, Eliot's translation of Spinoza's Ethics was finally published by Thomas Deegan, and was determined to be in the public domain in 2018 and published by the George Eliot Archive.[33] It has been re-published in 2020 by Princeton University Press.[34] The trip to Germany also served as a honeymoon for Evans and Lewes, who subsequently considered themselves married. Evans began to refer to Lewes as her husband and to sign her name as Mary Ann Evans Lewes, legally changing her name to Mary Ann Evans Lewes after his death.[35] The refusal to conceal the relationship was contrary to the social conventions of the time, and attracted considerable disapproval.[citation needed] Career in fiction[edit] Photograph (albumen print) of George Eliot, c. 1865 While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans resolved to become a novelist, and set out a pertinent manifesto in one of her last essays for the Review, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"[36] (1856). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary fiction written by women. In other essays, she praised the realism of novels that were being written in Europe at the time, an emphasis on realistic storytelling confirmed in her own subsequent fiction. She also adopted a nom-de-plume, George Eliot; as she explained to her biographer J. W. Cross, George was Lewes's forename, and Eliot was "a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word".[37] Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances or other lighter fare not to be taken very seriously.[38] She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as a translator, editor, and critic. Another factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny, thus avoiding the scandal that would have arisen because of her relationship with Lewes, who was married.[39] In 1857, when she was 37 years of age, "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", the first of the three stories included in Scenes of Clerical Life, and the first work of "George Eliot", was published in Blackwood's Magazine.[40] The Scenes (published as a 2-volume book in 1858),[40] was well received, and was widely believed to have been written by a country parson, or perhaps the wife of a parson. Eliot was profoundly influenced by the works of Thomas Carlyle. As early as 1841, she referred to him as "a grand favourite of mine", and references to him abound in her letters from the 1840s and 1850s. According to University of Victoria professor Lisa Surridge, Carlyle "stimulated Eliot's interest in German thought, encouraged her turn from Christian orthodoxy, and shaped her ideas on work, duty, sympathy, and the evolution of the self."[41] These themes made their way into Evans's first complete novel, Adam Bede (1859).[40] It was an instant success, and prompted yet more intense curiosity as to the author's identity: there was even a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. This public interest subsequently led to Marian Evans Lewes's acknowledgment that it was she who stood behind the pseudonym George Eliot. Adam Bede is known for embracing a realist aesthetic inspired by Dutch visual art.[42] The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised and shocked many of her admiring readers, but this did not affect her popularity as a novelist. Her relationship with Lewes afforded her the encouragement and stability she needed to write fiction, but it would be some time before the couple were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1877 when they were introduced to Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. The queen herself was an avid reader of all of Eliot's novels and was so impressed with Adam Bede that she commissioned the artist Edward Henry Corbould to paint scenes from the book.[43] Blue plaque, Holly Lodge, 31 Wimbledon Park Road, London When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Eliot expressed sympathy for the Union cause, something which historians have attributed to her abolitionist sympathies.[28][29] In 1868, she supported philosopher Richard Congreve's protests against governmental policies in Ireland and had a positive view of the growing movement in support of Irish home rule.[28][29] She was influenced by the writings of John Stuart Mill and read all of his major works as they were published.[44] In Mill's The Subjection of Women (1869) she judged the second chapter excoriating the laws which oppress married women "excellent."[29] She was supportive of Mill's parliamentary run, but believed that the electorate was unlikely to vote for a philosopher and was surprised when he won.[28] While Mill served in parliament, she expressed her agreement with his efforts on behalf of female suffrage, being "inclined to hope for much good from the serious presentation of women's claims before Parliament."[45] In a letter to John Morley, she declared her support for plans "which held out reasonable promise of tending to establish as far as possible an equivalence of advantage for the two sexes, as to education and the possibilities of free development", and dismissed appeals to nature in explaining women's lower status.[45][29] In 1870, she responded enthusiastically to Lady Amberley's feminist lecture on the claims of women for education, occupations, equality in marriage, and child custody.[29] However, it would not be correct to assume that the female protagonists of her works can be considered "feminist", with the sole exception perhaps of Romola de' Bardi, who resolutely rejects the State and Church obligations of her time.[46] After the success of Adam Bede, Eliot continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a year of completing Adam Bede, she finished The Mill on the Floss, dedicating the manuscript: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21 March 1860." Silas Marner (1861) and Romola (1863) soon followed, and later Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) and her most acclaimed novel, Middlemarch (1871–1872). Her last novel was Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, after which she and Lewes moved to Witley, Surrey. By this time Lewes's health was failing, and he died two years later, on 30 November 1878. Eliot spent the next six months editing Lewes's final work, Life and Mind, for publication, and found solace and companionship with longtime friend and financial adviser John Walter Cross, a Scottish commission agent[47] 20 years her junior, whose mother had recently died. Marriage to John Cross and death[edit] Eliot's grave in Highgate Cemetery On 16 May 1880, eighteen months after Lewes' death, Eliot married John Walter Cross (1840–1924)[43] and again changed her name, this time to Mary Ann Cross. She was much older than he, likely generating comments, but it pleased her brother Isaac. He had broken off relations with her when she had begun to live with Lewes, and now sent congratulations. While the couple were honeymooning in Venice, Cross, in a suicide attempt, jumped from the hotel balcony into the Grand Canal. He survived, and the newlyweds returned to England. They moved to a new house in Chelsea, but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease with which she had been afflicted for several years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.[48][49] Due to her denial of the Christian faith and her relationship with Lewes,[citation needed] Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey. She was instead interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London, in the area reserved for political and religious dissenters and agnostics, beside the love of her life, George Henry Lewes.[a] The graves of Karl Marx and her friend Herbert Spencer are nearby.[51] In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets' Corner between W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas, with a quote from Scenes of Clerical Life: "The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second something to reverence". Personal appearance[edit] George Eliot was a physically unattractive woman; she herself knew this and made jokes about her appearance in letters to friends.[52] Yet somehow the force of her personality overcame her ugliness. This was noted by numerous acquaintances.[52] Of his first meeting with her on 9 May 1869, Henry James wrote: ... To begin with she is magnificently ugly — deliciously hideous. She has a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth, full of uneven teeth & a chin & jawbone qui n'en finissent pas ["which never end"] ... Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth & charms the mind, so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her.[53] Spelling of her name[edit] She spelled her name differently at different times. Mary Anne was the spelling used by her father for the baptismal record and she uses this spelling in her earliest letters. Within her family, however, it was spelled Mary Ann. By 1852, she had changed to Marian,[54] but she reverted to Mary Ann in 1880 after she married John Cross.[55] Her memorial stone reads[56] Here lies the body of'George Eliot'Mary Ann Cross Memorials and tributes[edit] Several landmarks in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named in her honour. These include the George Eliot Academy, Middlemarch Junior School, George Eliot Hospital (formerly Nuneaton Emergency Hospital),[57] and George Eliot Road, in Foleshill, Coventry. Also, The Mary Anne Evans Hospice in Nuneaton. Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery, in Riversley Park, home of collection on writer George Eliot A statue of Eliot is in Newdegate Street, Nuneaton, and Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery has a display of artifacts related to her. A tunnel boring machine constructing the Bromford Tunnel on High Speed 2 was named in honour of her. [58] Literary assessment[edit] Portrait by Frederick William Burton, 1864 Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town persecution. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis is at the heart of Middlemarch, in which she presents the stories of a number of inhabitants of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832; the novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits. The roots of her realist philosophy can be found in her review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review in 1856. Eliot also express proto-Zionist ideas in Daniel Deronda.[59] Readers in the Victorian era praised her novels for their depictions of rural society. Much of the material for her prose was drawn from her own experience. She shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much value and beauty to be found in the mundane details of ordinary country life. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to stories of the English countryside. Romola, an historical novel set in late fifteenth century Florence, was based on the life of the Italian priest Girolamo Savonarola. In The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot made a foray into verse, but her poetry's initial popularity has not endured. Working as a translator, Eliot was exposed to German texts of religious, social, and moral philosophy such as David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity; also important was her translation from Latin of Jewish-Dutch philosopher Spinoza's Ethics. Elements from these works show up in her fiction, much of which is written with her trademark sense of agnostic humanism. According to Clare Carlisle, who published a new biography on George Eliot in 2023,[60] the overdue publication of Spinoza's Ethics was a real shame, because it could have provided some illuminating cues for understanding the more mature works of the writer.[34] She had taken particular notice of Feuerbach's conception of Christianity, positing that our understanding of the nature of the divine was to be found ultimately in the nature of humanity projected onto a divine figure. An example of this philosophy appeared in her novel Romola, in which Eliot’s protagonist displayed a "surprisingly modern readiness to interpret religious language in humanist or secular ethical terms."[61] Though Eliot herself was not religious, she had respect for religious tradition and its ability to maintain a sense of social order and morality. The religious elements in her fiction also owe much to her upbringing, with the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss sharing many similarities with the young Mary Ann Evans. Eliot also faced a quandary similar to that of Silas Marner, whose alienation from the church simultaneously meant his alienation from society. Because Eliot retained a vestigial respect for religion, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche excoriated her system of morality for figuring sin as a debt that can be expiated through suffering, which he demeaned as characteristic of "little moralistic females à la Eliot."[62] She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By the time of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she had faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the posthumous biography written by her husband, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with the scandalous life people knew she had led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics, most notably by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".[4] In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom placed Eliot among the most important Western writers of all time.[63] In a 2007 authors' poll by Time, Middlemarch was voted the tenth greatest literary work ever written.[64] In 2015, writers from outside the UK voted it first among all British novels "by a landslide".[65] The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to the wider reading public. Works[edit] Novels[edit] Adam Bede (1859) The Mill on the Floss (1860) Silas Marner (1861) Romola (1863) Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) Middlemarch (1871–1872) "Quarry for Middlemarch", MS Lowell 13, Houghton Library, Harvard University (A digital facsimile of the manuscript of research notes) Daniel Deronda (1876) Short story collection and novellas[edit] Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton Mr Gilfil's Love Story Janet's Repentance The Lifted Veil (1859) Brother Jacob (1864) Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879) Translations[edit] Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined) Volume 2 by David Strauss (1846) Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) by Ludwig Feuerbach (1854) The Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza by Benedict de Spinoza (1856) Poetry[edit] Knowing That I Must Shortly Put Off This Tabernacle (1840) In a London Drawingroom (1865) A Minor Prophet (1865) Two Lovers (1866) The Choir Invisible (1867) The Spanish Gypsy (1868) Agatha (1868) Brother and Sister (1869) How Lisa Loved the King (1869) Armgart (1870) Stradivarius (1873) Arion (1873) The Legend of Jubal (1874) I Grant You Ample Leave (1874) Evenings Come and Go, Love (1878) Self and Life (1879) A College Breakfast Party (1879) The Death of Moses (1879) Non-fiction[edit] "Three Months in Weimar" (1855) "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856) "The Natural History of German Life" (1856) Review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review, April 1856 "The Influence of Rationalism" (1865) Explanatory notes[edit] ^ While the biographical consensus is that Lewes and Eliot had a perfect partnership, this view has been somewhat modified by Beverley Park Rilett, who argued in 2013 and 2017 that Lewes's protective love may have amounted to coercive control.[50] References[edit] Citations[edit] ^ Ashton, Rosemary (1996). George Eliot: A Life. London: Hamish Hamilton. p. 255. ISBN 978-0241134733. ^ Jacobs, Alexandra (13 August 2023). "George Eliot's Scandalous Answer to 'The Marriage Question'". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 August 2023. ^ "George Eliot (…) is the most earnestly imperative and the most probingly intelligent of the great mid-Victorian novelists". In: Sanders, Andrew The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Clarendon Press, 1994. p. 440 ^ a b Woolf, Virginia. "George Eliot." The Common Reader. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1925. pp. 166–176. ^ Long, Camilla.Martin Amis and the sex war, The Times, 24 January 2010, p. 4: "They've [women] produced the greatest writer in the English language ever, George Eliot, and arguably the third greatest, Jane Austen, and certainly the greatest novel, Middlemarch..." ^ Guppy, Shusha. "Interviews: Julian Barnes, The Art of Fiction No. 165". The Paris Review (Winter 2000). Retrieved 26 May 2012. ^ Cooke, George Willis. George Eliot: A Critical Study of her Life, Writings and Philosophy. Whitefish: Kessinger, 2004. [1] ^ "George Eliot Biography – life, childhood, children, name, story, death, history, wife, school, young". www.notablebiographies.com. Retrieved 23 July 2018. ^ Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. Norton, 1995. pp. 24–25 ^ Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. Norton, 1995. p. 31 ^ Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. Norton, 1995. p. 52 ^ Christopher Stray Classics Transformed, p. 81 ^ a b "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 6 August 2017. Retrieved 22 October 2023. ^ The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined by David Friedrich Strauss 2010 ISBN 1-61640-309-8 pp. 39–43, 87–91 ^ The Making of the New Spirituality by James A. Herrick 2003 ISBN 0-8308-2398-0 pp. 58–65 ^ Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth by Michael J. McClymond (2004) ISBN 0802826806 p. 82 ^ The historical Jesus question by Gregory W. Dawes 2001 ISBN 0-664-22458-X pp. 77–79 ^ Mead, James K. (2007). Biblical Theology: Issues, Methods, and Themes. Presbyterian Publishing Corp. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-664-22972-6. ^ Hesketh, Ian (2017). Victorian Jesus: J.R. Seeley, Religion, and the Cultural Significance of Anonymity. University of Toronto Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-1-4426-6359-6. ^ Tearle, Oliver (2016). The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History. Michael O'Mara Books. p. 90. ISBN 978-1-78243-558-7. ^ McCormick, Kathleen (Summer 1986). "George Eliot's Earliest Prose: The Coventry "Herald" and the Coventry Fiction". Victorian Periodicals Review. 19 (2): 57–62. JSTOR 20082202. ^ Hardy, Barbara. George Eliot: A Critic's Biography. Continuum. London: 2006, pp. 42–45. ^ Eliot, George (4 April 1851). "Marian Evans". Letter to John Chapman. The George Eliot Letters, Ed. Gordon S. Haight, Vol. I, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press (RE: First known instance of George Eliot signing her name as ′Marian Evans′). 348. ^ Mackenzie, Hazel (2014). "A Dialogue of Forms: The Display of Thinking in George Eliot's 'Poetry and Prose, From the Notebook of an Eccentric' and Impressions of Theophrastus Such" (PDF). Prose Studies. 36 (2): 117–129. doi:10.1080/01440357.2014.944298. S2CID 170098666. ^ Bodenheimer, Rosemarie (2014). "Review of Before George Eliot: Marian Evans and the Periodical Press; Modernizing George Eliot: The Writer as Artist, Intellectual, Proto-Modernist, Cultural Critic, by Fionnuala Dillane & K. M. Newton". Victorian Studies. 56 (4): 714–717. doi:10.2979/victorianstudies.56.4.714. ^ Dillane, Fionnuala (2013). Before George Eliot: Marian Evans and the Periodical Press. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-10703565-2. ^ Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. London: Penguin, 1997. 88ff. [110]. ^ a b c d Fleishman, Avrom (2010). George Eliot's Intellectual Life. Cambridge University Press. pp. 140–142. ^ a b c d e f Szirotny, June (2015). George Eliot's Feminism: The Right to Rebellion. Springer. pp. 26–28. ^ Ladies College UCL Bloomsbury Project ^ Henry, Nancy (2008). The Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge. p. 6. ^ Hughes, Kathryn, George Eliot: The Last Victorian, p. 168. ^ de Spinoza, Benedict (2018) [1981]. "The Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza, Translated by George Eliot". The George Eliot Archive. Retrieved 12 June 2022. ^ a b Spinoza, Benedictus de (2020). Carlisle, Clare (ed.). Spinoza's Ethics. Translated by Eliot, George. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691193236. ^ Haight, Gordon S. (1968). George Eliot: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 523. ^ "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" Archived 5 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine text from The Westminster Review Vol. 66 old series, Vol. 10 new series (October 1856): 442–461. ^ Cross (1885), vol 1, p. 431 ^ There were a few exceptions, such as Nature and Art, by Elizabeth Inchbald, published under the name "Mrs. Inchbald" in 1796. ^ Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. Norton, 1995. pp. 237–238. ^ a b c Craigie, Pearl Mary Teresa (1911). "Eliot, George" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 275–277. ^ Surridge, Lisa (2004). "Eliot, George". In Cumming, Mark (ed.). The Carlyle Encyclopedia. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp. 141–144. ISBN 978-0-8386-3792-0. ^ Rebecca Ruth Gould, "Adam Bede's Dutch Realism and the Novelist's Point of View," Philosophy and Literature 36:2 (October 2012), 404–423. ^ a b Rosemary Ashton, "Evans, Marian [George Eliot] (1819–1880)", (Later Works) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 ^ Fleishman, Avrom (2010). George Eliot's Intellectual Life. Cambridge University Press. p. 59. ^ a b Newton, K. M. (2018). George Eliot for the Twenty-First Century: Literature, Philosophy, Politics. Springer. pp. 23–24. ^ Sanders, Andrew The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Clarendon Press, 1994. p. 442 ^ 1881 census ^ "George Eliot". BBC History. 15 October 2009. Retrieved 30 December 2009. ^ "George Eliot (Obituary Notice, Friday, December 24, 1880)". Eminent Persons: Biographies reprinted from the Times. Vol. II (1876–1881). London: Macmillan and Co. 1893. pp. 232–239. hdl:2027/osu.32435022453492. ^ Rilett, Beverley Park (2017). "The role of George Henry Lewes in George Eliot's career: A reconsideration". George Eliot–George Henry Lewes Studies. 69 (1): 2–34. doi:10.5325/georelioghlstud.69.1.0002. Retrieved 23 August 2021. ^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3rd ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 14016). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition. ^ a b Mead, Rebecca (19 September 2013). "George Eliot's Ugly Beauty". The New Yorker. ^ Ashton, Rosemary. "Henry James Visits the Priory". 19. ^ Hardy, Barbara. George Eliot: A Critic's Biography. Continuum. London: 2006, pp. 1–2, 8. ^ "George Eliot: Biography". Archived from the original on 23 August 2009. Retrieved 24 August 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) ^ Banerjee, Jacqueline (29 July 2017). "George Eliot's grave: Highgate Cemetery, London". The Victorian Web. Retrieved 21 August 2023. ^ BIRMINGHAM REGIONAL HOSPITAL BOARD GROUP 20 HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE. Birmingham Regional Hospital Board Group 20 Hospital Management Committee. 1944–1974.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) ^ "Bromford Tunnel". HS2. Retrieved 18 September 2023. ^ Stanislawski, Michael (2017). Zionism: a very short introduction. Very short introductions. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-062520-7. ^ Carlisle, Clare (2023). The Marriage Question. George Eliot's Double Life. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0241447178. ^ Bidney, Martin (2002). "Philosophy and the Victorian Literary Aesthetic". In Baker, William; Womack, Kenneth (eds.). A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Westport: Greenwood Press. pp. 100–101. ^ Thomas J. Joudrey. "The Defects of Perfectionism: Nietzsche, Eliot, and the Irrevocability of Wrong." Philological Quarterly 96.1 (2017): 77–104. ^ Bloom, Harold. 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. p. 226. New York: Harcourt Brace. ^ Grossman, Lev (15 January 2007). "The 10 Greatest Books of All Time". Time. Retrieved 9 February 2017. ^ Flood, Alison (8 December 2015). "The best British novel of all time: have international critics found it?". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 February 2017. General sources[edit] Ashton, Rosemary (1997). George Eliot: A Life. London: Penguin, 1997. Bloom, Harold. (1994). The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace. Cross, J. W. (ed.), (1885). George Eliot's life as related in her letters and journals, 3 vols. London: William Blackwood and Sons. Fleishman, Avrom (2010). George Eliot's Intellectual Life. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511691706. ISBN 9780511691706. Haight, Gordon S. (1968). George Eliot: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press. Henry, Nancy (2008). The Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511793233. ISBN 9780511793233. Karl, Frederick R. (1995). George Eliot: Voice of a Century: A Biography, New York, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1995, ISBN 0-393-31521-5. Szirotny, June Skye (2015). George Eliot's Feminism. doi:10.1057/9781137406156. ISBN 978-1-349-48784-4. Further reading[edit] Library resources about George Eliot Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By George Eliot Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Stephen, Leslie. George Eliot, Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-108-01962-0 (1st ed. 1902). Haight, Gordon S., ed., George Eliot: Letters, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1954, ISBN 0-300-01088-5. Henry, Nancy, The Life of George Eliot: A Critical Biography, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012 Context and background[edit] Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, ISBN 0-521-78392-5. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-300-08458-7. Hughes, Kathryn, George Eliot: The Last Victorian, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998, ISBN 0-374-16138-0. Maddox, Brenda, George Eliot in Love, New York, St. Martin's Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0230105188. Mintz, Steven. A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture, New York University Press, 1983. Pinney, Thomas, ed., Essays of George Eliot, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, ISBN 0-231-02619-6. Rignall, John, ed., Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot, Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-860099-2 Shuttleworth, Sally, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25786-7. Speaight, Robert, George Eliot, London, Arthur Barker, 1954. (The English Novelists series) Uglow, Jenny, George Eliot, London, Virago Press, 1987, ISBN 0-86068-400-8. Critical studies[edit] Alley, Henry, The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot, University of Delaware Press, 1997. Beaty, Jerome, Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel: A Study of George Eliot's Creative Method, Champaign, Illinois, University of Illinois, 1960. Calder, Simon. "George Eliot, Spinoza, and the Ethics of Literature" in Spinoza Beyond Philosophy, Beth Lord, ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2012, 268-187. Carlisle, Clare, The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. Carroll, Alicia, Dark Smiles: Race and Desire in George Eliot, Ohio University Press, 2003. Carroll, David, ed., George Eliot: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971. Daiches, David, George Eliot: Middlemarch, London, Edward Arnold, 1963. Arnold, Jean, ed., Marz Harper, Lila, ed., George Eliot: Interdisciplinary Essays, Springer International Publishing, 2019. Gatens, Moira. "The Art and Philosophy of George Eliot". Philosophy and Literature 33(1) 2009, pp. 74-90. Graver, Suzanne, George Eliot and Community: A Study in Social Theory and Fictional Form, Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1984. Hardy, Barbara Nathan, The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form. Oxford UP, 1967. Harvey, W J, The Art of George Eliot, London, Chatto & Windus, 1961. Leavis, F R, The Great Tradition, London, Chatto & Windus, 1948. External links[edit] George Eliot at Wikipedia's sister projects Media from CommonsQuotations from WikiquoteTexts from WikisourceData from Wikidata George Eliot Archive George Eliot Review Online George Eliot Scholars The George Eliot Fellowship The Victorian Web: George Eliot George Eliot Archived 18 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine at the British Library Online editions[edit] Works by George Eliot at the George Eliot Archive, Works about George Eliot at the George Eliot Archive, George Eliot Review Online, and George Eliot Scholars Works by George Eliot in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by George Eliot at Project Gutenberg Works by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) at Faded Page (Canada) Works by or about George Eliot at Internet Archive Works by George Eliot at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) vteGeorge EliotNovels Adam Bede (1859) The Mill on the Floss (1860) Silas Marner (1861) Romola (1862–1863) Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) Middlemarch (1871–1872) Daniel Deronda (1876) Short story collections Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) The Lifted Veil (1859) Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879) Related Griff House George Henry Lewes vteGeorge Eliot's Silas MarnerFilms Silas Marner (1916) Silas Marner (1922) Bangaru Papa (1955) A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) Television Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith (1876 play) Other Michael (poem) Authority control databases International FAST ISNI VIAF National Norway Chile Spain France 2 BnF data 2 Argentina Catalonia Germany Italy Israel Finland Belgium United States Sweden Latvia Japan Czech Republic Australia Greece Korea Croatia Netherlands Poland Portugal Vatican Academics CiNii Artists MusicBrainz ULAN People Deutsche Biographie Trove 2 Other RISM SNAC 2 IdRef
CHAPTER II
Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible, nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas-where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. But even their experience may hardly enable them thoroughly to imagine what was the effect on a simple weaver like Silas Marner, when he left his own country and people and came to settle in Raveloe. Nothing could be more unlike his native town, set within sight of the widespread hillsides, than this low, wooded region, where he felt hidden even from the heavens by the screening trees and hedgerows. There was nothing here, when he rose in the deep morning quiet and looked out on the dewy brambles and rank tufted grass, that seemed to have any relation with that life centring in Lantern Yard, which had once been to him the altar-place of high dispensations. The whitewashed walls; the little pews where well-known figures entered with a subdued rustling, and where first one well-known voice and then another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition, uttered phrases at once occult and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the pulpit where the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and fro, and handled the book in a long accustomed manner; the very pauses between the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and the recurrent swell of voices in song: these things had been the channel of divine influences to Marner-they were the fostering home of his religious emotions-they were Christianity and God's kingdom upon earth. A weaver who finds hard words in his hymn-book knows nothing of abstractions; as the little child knows nothing of parental love, but only knows one face and one lap towards which it stretches its arms for refuge and nurture.
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.
But at last Mrs. Osgood's table-linen was finished, and Silas was paid in gold. His earnings in his native town, where he worked for a wholesale dealer, had been after a lower rate; he had been paid weekly, and of his weekly earnings a large proportion had gone to objects of piety and charity. Now, for the first time in his life, he had five bright guineas put into his hand; no man expected a share of them, and he loved no man that he should offer him a share. But what were the guineas to him who saw no vista beyond countless days of weaving? It was needless for him to ask that, for it was pleasant to him to feel them in his palm, and look at their bright faces, which were all his own: it was another element of life, like the weaving and the satisfaction of hunger, subsisting quite aloof from the life of belief and love from which he had been cut off. The weaver's hand had known the touch of hard-won money even before the palm had grown to its full breadth; for twenty years, mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire; and as Silas walked homeward across the fields in the twilight, he drew out the money and thought it was brighter in the gathering gloom.
About this time an incident happened which seemed to open a possibility of some fellowship with his neighbours. One day, taking a pair of shoes to be mended, he saw the cobbler's wife seated by the fire, suffering from the terrible symptoms of heart-disease and dropsy, which he had witnessed as the precursors of his mother's death. He felt a rush of pity at the mingled sight and remembrance, and, recalling the relief his mother had found from a simple preparation of foxglove, he promised Sally Oates to bring her something that would ease her, since the doctor did her no good. In this office of charity, Silas 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. But Sally Oates's disease had raised her into a personage of much interest and importance among the neighbours, and the fact of her having found relief from drinking Silas Marner's "stuff" became a matter of general discourse. 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. Such a sort of thing had not been known since the Wise Woman at Tarley died; and she had charms as well as "stuff": everybody went to her when their children had fits. Silas Marner must be a person of the same sort, for how did he know what would bring back Sally Oates's breath, if he didn't know a fine sight more than that? The Wise Woman had words that she muttered to herself, so that you couldn't hear what they were, and if she tied a bit of red thread round the child's toe the while, it would keep off the water in the head. There were women in Raveloe, at that present time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman's little bags round their necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child, as Ann Coulter had. Silas Marner could very likely do as much, and more; and now it was all clear how he should have come from unknown parts, and be so "comical-looking". But Sally Oates must mind and not tell the doctor, for he would be sure to set his face against Marner: he was always angry about the Wise Woman, and used to threaten those who went to her that they should have none of his help any more.
Silas now found himself and his cottage suddenly beset by mothers who wanted him to charm away the whooping-cough, or bring back the milk, and by men who wanted stuff against the rheumatics or the knots in the hands; and, to secure themselves against a refusal, the applicants brought silver in their palms. Silas might have driven a profitable trade in charms as well as in his small list of drugs; but money on this condition was no temptation to him: he had never known an impulse towards falsity, and he drove one after another away with growing irritation, for the news of him as a wise man had spread even to Tarley, and it was long before people ceased to take long walks for the sake of asking his aid. But the hope in his wisdom was at length changed into dread, for no one believed him when he said he knew no charms and could work no cures, and every man and woman who had an accident or a new attack after applying to him, set the misfortune down to Master Marner's ill-will and irritated glances. Thus it came to pass that his movement of pity towards Sally Oates, which had given him a transient sense of brotherhood, heightened the repulsion between him and his neighbours, and made his isolation more complete.
Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the half-crowns grew to a heap, and Marner drew less and less for his own wants, trying to solve the problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen hours a-day on as small an outlay as possible. Have not men, shut up in solitary imprisonment, found an interest in marking the moments by straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit? That will help us to understand how the love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into a larger square; and every added guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this strange world, made a hopeless riddle to him, he might, if he had had a less intense nature, have sat weaving, weaving-looking towards the end of his pattern, or towards the end of his web, till he forgot the riddle, and everything else but his immediate sensations; but the money had come to mark off his weaving into periods, and the money not only grew, but it remained with him. He began to think it was conscious of him, as his loom was, and he would on no account have exchanged those coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. He handled them, he counted them, till their form and colour were like the satisfaction of a thirst to him; but it was only in the night, when his work was done, that he drew them out to enjoy their companionship. He had taken up some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he had made a hole in which he set the iron pot that contained his guineas and silver coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced them. Not that the idea of being robbed presented itself often or strongly to his mind: hoarding was common in country districts in those days; there were old labourers in the parish of Raveloe who were known to have their savings by them, probably inside their flock-beds; but their rustic neighbours, though not all of them as honest as their ancestors in the days of King Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough to lay a plan of burglary. How could they have spent the money in their own village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to "run away"-a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.
So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and love-only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory. Strangely Marner's face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes that used to look trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they had been made to see only one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny grain, for which they hunted everywhere: and he was so withered and yellow, that, though he was not yet forty, the children always called him "Old Master Marner".
Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened, which showed that the sap of affection was not all gone. It was one of his daily tasks to fetch his water from a well a couple of fields off, and for this purpose, ever since he came to Raveloe, he had had a brown earthenware pot, which he held as his most precious utensil among the very few conveniences he had granted himself. It had been his companion for twelve years, always standing on the same spot, always lending its handle to him in the early morning, so that its form had an expression for him of willing helpfulness, and the impress of its handle on his palm gave a satisfaction mingled with that of having the fresh clear water. One day as he was returning from the well, he stumbled against the step of the stile, and his brown pot, falling with force against the stones that overarched the ditch below him, was broken in three pieces. Silas picked up the pieces and carried them home with grief in his heart. The brown pot could never be of use to him any more, but he stuck the bits together and propped the ruin in its old place for a memorial.
This is the history of Silas Marner, until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath. But at night came his revelry: at night he closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold. Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent themselves flexibly to every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the dark leather mouths! The silver bore no large proportion in amount to the gold, because the long pieces of linen which formed his chief work were always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpences to spend in this way. He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver-the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the work in his loom, as if they had been unborn children-thought of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years, through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite hidden by countless days of weaving. No wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journeys through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of the once familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand.
But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great change came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a singular manner with the life of his neighbours.

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Word Lists:

Unhinged : mentally unbalanced; deranged

Weaver : a person who weaves fabric.

Loom : an apparatus for making fabric by weaving yarn or thread.

Weave : form (fabric or a fabric item) by interlacing long threads passing in one direction with others at a right angle to them

Erudite : having or showing great knowledge or learning

Recurrent : occurring often or repeatedly

Occult : supernatural, mystical, or magical beliefs, practices, or phenomena

Amulet : an ornament or small piece of jewelry thought to give protection against evil, danger, or disease.

Falsity : the fact of being untrue, incorrect, or insincere

Revelry : lively and noisy festivities, especially when these involve drinking a large amount of alcohol

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Additional Information:

Rating: Words in the Passage: 3274 Unique Words: 1,028 Sentences: 80
Noun: 802 Conjunction: 319 Adverb: 185 Interjection: 1
Adjective: 220 Pronoun: 323 Verb: 545 Preposition: 435
Letter Count: 14,168 Sentiment: Positive Tone: Neutral Difficult Words: 615
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