Silas Marner
Silas Marner is a novel by George Eliot ( pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) and was published in 1861. The work, a development novel, is the author's shortest novel and was written in four months. The novel is quite popular in England and is often used as school reading. It is well suited for a first acquaintance with the great narrator.
Course of action
The linen weaver Silas Marner, who lives in a strictly religious Puritan parish Lantern Yard, an undisclosed industrial town in the north of England, is expelled from the parish through the intrigue of his friend under the false accusation that he embezzled parish money; at the same time he loses his bride to this false friend. He finds refuge in the rich farming village of Raveloe. Avoided by the locals with suspicion and superstitious fear - also because of his cataleptic attacks - he lives there completely lonely and isolated; his only consolation is his tireless work as a weaver and his growing gold treasure kept in the hut. This is stolen from him by the junker's failing son, Dunstan Cass, who then disappears. Silas Marner falls into despair and forever loses his faith in God and Providence. Dunstan's older brother Godfrey Cass loves the wealthy farmer's daughter Nancy Lammeter, but has already entered into a secret and unhappy marriage to a run-down woman from a neighboring town. Godfrey finally wants to force Godfrey to recognize her and her daughter and brings her child to Raveloe on a cold New Year's night in order to gain access to the New Year's Eve party at the Cass house. She is on opium and dies in a blizzard. Her two-year-old daughter finds her way to Silas Marner's hut. He adopts her and names her Eppie in memory of his late sister, and she gives him happiness and new zest for life.
After 16 years, when a pit near Silas Marner's hut was being drained, Dunstan's corpse and the stolen gold came to light. This revelation moves Godfrey, who is happily married to Nancy but has remained childless, to recognize Eppie as his daughter and to propose her adoption. Eppie immediately rejects this socially tempting offer and stands by her adoptive father.
interpretation
While almost all of George Eliot's great masterpieces also show weaknesses, Silas Marner, along with her main work Middlemarch , is critically regarded as the author's most perfect work. The novel appears as a realistic processing of the fairy tale motif of the curse that weighs on a man and from which he is redeemed by an innocent girl. The inner development of Silas Marner and the life in the village community of Raveloe are presented convincingly and realistically, the latter with loving irony. The novel, especially in the dialogue parts spoken in dialect, is considered a successful study of country life in the good old days in Merrie Olde England , when this world was already threatened by advancing industrialization.
A continuous motif of the novel is the contrast between the world of the puritanical Silas Marner and the Anglican world of the village of Raveloe. Raveloe lies in a fertile valley, its residents enjoy their lives and show their luxury. Silas Marner from Lantern Yard, on the other hand, comes from the tradition of nonconformists and the world of early industrialization. He lives a consciously meager life with total renunciation of consumption. According to Max Weber's theory of the inner-worldly asceticism of the Puritans , he transformed his religious zeal into restless hard work and then into greed for more and more gold. His life is determined by moral rigor, sincerity and straightforwardness. The farming community of Raveloes, still caught up in class thinking, on the other hand, shows human weaknesses, small frauds, rivalries and morally disreputable behavior, but also cordiality, mutual understanding and helpfulness. Her narrow horizons and superstitions, especially with regard to Silas Marner's epilepsy attacks, contrast with his knowledge of natural medicinal herbs and his rational way of life.
The novel describes a multiple transformation of Silas Marner. The convinced Christian and respected member of the sect community becomes someone forsaken by God who spends his life in total loneliness, isolation and monotony. When he tries to free himself from it by accumulating gold, the loss of the gold plunges him into an even deeper despair. From this he is miraculously released by the child Eppie. It gives his life a new content and opens him up for contact with fellow human beings and the beauties of nature.
The inner development of the novel shows a movement from opposition and separation to union and mutual understanding, from despair of a world that has not been understood to self-discovery, reconciliation and redemption. This is partly caused by the fact that the quirky and rather negatively drawn male figures of the village of Raveloe gradually fade into the background, making way for the women Nancy Lammeter and Dolly Winthrop. Nancy helps her husband Godfrey Cass to free himself from his guilt complex, to open up to her and to face his own moral wrong and those of his family and to come to terms with his past. After Eppie's appearance, the understanding, helpful and compassionate Dolly Winthrop establishes a deep relationship with Silas Marner and, together with Eppie, helps him to overcome his status as a stranger in the village. Their conversations about religion and God lead to the common, surprising finding that their religions, believed to be totally different, have almost nothing in common and hardly any differences in the points that are essential for them. Finally, there is also a happy ending : Eppie loves and marries the son Dolly Winthrops.
At the end of the novel, the aged Silas Marner tries, together with Eppie, to come to terms with his old sect community. But he can no longer find it, it has perished in the midst of a rampant industrial landscape. For Silas Marner, the former seeker of God, the rule of God remains inexplicable until the end, as it is partly for Dolly; there can be no way back to God for Silas Marner. The idol of gold took the place of God, but then Eppie and his fellow men in Raveloe took this place.
Film adaptations
The novel has been made into a film several times since 1911.
German-language editions
- Frequent editions, by different translators, e.g. B. for publishers: Bastion, Düsseldorf 1949; Manesse, Zurich 2nd edition 1994; International Classics 1960; dtv 1994, 1999; often shortened school editions with corresponding publishers
- Translator Julius Frese (also: Freese). Afterword Herta Elisabeth Killy. Series: Exempla Classica 51. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 1963
- Silas Marner. The linen weaver from Raveloe. Transferred to J. Augspurg (approx. 1880–1890). Afterword Günther Klotz. Reclams Universal Library 2214-17. Leipzig 1963
Web links
notes
- ↑ with different covers, also outside the series. Newly revised. Also as hardcover.