Resumo de Silas Marner - Eliot, George

George Eliot, one of the most admired authors in English literature,
was born in 1819 in Britain, near Nuneaton, as Mary Ann Evans. She
wrote all her novels under this male pen-name, the reason of which
might be reflected in Virginia Woolf's opinion of Eliot's books as
literature for adult people, in contrast to insipid ladies' novels,
written to suit young innocent girls. Already early in life Eliot took
an independent interest in questions of faith, literature and social
problems.
It's widely testified that Eliot was not only a remarkable
intellectual, but in every respect a warmhearted and honest person. Her
private tragedy was that the man she loved was already married. They
nevertheless lived as man and wife, though it took a long time until
their happy union was acknowledged by some of their famous
contemporaries, but only some. The shadow of this candid but
unconventional arrangement fell on her for all of her life--and on her
only, not the husband, such were the times. Against this background the
story of Silas Marner, published in 1861, becomes even more
moving.
Silas Marner is a poor weaver shunned on false grounds from a small
urban religious sect, with a distorted view of justice. He comes to
live as a total out-sider in a small village where he eventually gets
entangled in the fate of an influential family, where two brothers are
rivals for the upper hand, not always using righteous means. They both
have something to hide: there are misdemeanours that are fatal to one
of them and threaten to spoil the marriage of the other. This love
story could in itself have been the object of an interesting novel. Now
it just makes the book the more rich and the treatment of the main
themes, love and the meaning of life, more full.
In his solitude and forsakenness Silas Marner has become obsessed by
saving what little he can of his meager earnings. He changes the
pennies into gold coins by and by. When he is robbed of them, no one
could be more destitute, half-blind due to his profession, all alone in
the world and fearful of his neighbours after the shunning experience
as he his. As a consequence of an other strain of the story-line, a
small girl-child happens to come to his cottage in a blizzard, after
which the child's mother is found dead. One of the brothers never
returns, a disappearance which seems unconnected.
The advent of Eppie, the little girl, transforms Silas's life, for him
she is a miracle. She grows up to be a lively, diligent girl with a
great deal of pluck and pride. The story of her up-bringing by Silas is
a defence of bringing up children by means of loving kindness rather
than discipline.
Eppie herself looks upon Silas as her father. But her real father, who
out of egotistical reasons doesn't acknowledge her until he thinks
there's something to gain by it, lives not at all far away from the
happy but very modest home, much improved by Eppie's new loving circle
of plain but reliable people.
In her description of the way of life in the cottage and the village
Eliot shows us an unspoiled England that she deeply loves and admires.
When she composes the knots and solves them again she is as engaging as
any detective story writer ever has been. The book is full of
excitement and yet it's quite simply about the great power of real
love. The telling itself is so powerful that it's in no way moralizing
or sentimental, even when it almost touches the archetypal form of a
legend.
This is simply a flawless novel. It has action, intrigue, charm and
wisdom - and on the top of it: glimpses of a great sense of humour.

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