In Victorian age, due to
industrial revolution the social issues and moral standards were being
remolded, diversified, and modified. George Eliot shows these impacts of
industrialization in her novel Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. ∆
Silas serves an indicator of
industry in the rural village of Raveloe as his life is degraded to the status
of a machine. His work and his wealth is the only thing that drives him in life
though it is costing him his health and is prematurely aging him. This portrays
the machine-like lifestyle that comes along with industrialization:∆
“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 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.”∆
Eliot uses the characters
Godfrey and Dunstan to portray the way in which industrialization and the greed
for money can corrupt and break relationships. Dustan blackmails and bribes
Godfrey to accumulate more wealth. Godfrey on the other hand, allows his first
wife and daughter Eppie to suffer.∆
The sense of community
portrayed in the rural Raveloe is completely opposite to the industrialized
place where Silas is originally from. In
chapter twenty-one Silas returns to Lantern Yard with Eppie and he found that
it has become “a great manufacturing town.”They are ill
at ease on the noisy, crowded streets filled with strangers. Silas says, “Lantern
Yard’s gone, It must ha’ been here, because here’s the house with the
o’erhanging window-I know that it’s just the same; but they’ve made this new
opening; and see that big factory! It’s all gone-chapel and all”. Eppie finds it “a dark, ugly place”
that “hides the sky”; troubled by “begrimed faces” gazing out
from a gloomy doorway, she feels “stifled” and wonders how people can
live packed “so close together.”The alteration of
Lantern Yard is a key moment in the novel. Change, which the villagers of
Raveloe so fear, has happened in Lantern Yard, and it marks the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution, which will have profound impacts throughout England.
this writing is incredible
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