Silas Marner by George Eliot (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide

By Bright Summaries

Unlock the more straightforward side of Silas Marner with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot, which tells the story of the titular protagonist, a weaver who moves to a small village after been accused of a crime and forced out of his old community. He is initially distrustful of and alienated from the village’s inhabitants, but this all changes when he adopts an abandoned child and raises her as his own. Silas Marner is one of George Eliot’s best-known works; her other novels include Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, which is considered by many to be one of the greatest English-language novels ever written.

Find out everything you need to know about Silas Marner in a fraction of the time!

This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:
• A complete plot summary
• Character studies
• Key themes and symbols
• Questions for further reflection

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• Language: English
• Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
• Release date: Mar 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9782808014144

Book preview

ENGLISH NOVELIST

Born in Nuneaton in 1819.

Died in London in 1880.

Notable works:

Adam Bede (1859), novel

The Mill on the Floss (1860), novel

Middlemarch (1871), novel

George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Anne Evans. The author spent her childhood in Warwickshire, where her father was employed as an estate manager. In her twenties Evans began to associate with free-thinkers, and translated Strauss’s Life of Jesus (1846), a work which provoked controversy by denying that many of the miracles recounted in the New Testament ever happened. After her father’s death, she moved to London, where she edited the Westminster Review and mixed with radical thinkers. Evans scandalised literary London by living openly with the married journalist, George Henry Lewes, until Lewes’s death in 1878.

With Lewes’s encouragement, Evans turned to writing fiction at the age of 37. Her first novel, Adam Bede (1859), became an immediate bestseller. This was followed by five novels that displayed her developing skill, which reached its apex in her masterpiece, Middlemarch