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Silas Marner

the Weaver of Raveloe
Jun 23, 2020wyenotgo rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Way back during my high school years, this book was frequently selected for English Lit courses, probably Grade 10 or thereabouts; I missed out on it then and I'm glad I did, because I doubt very much if I would have appreciated it at the time. Eliot's moralizing, the extreme vernacular and the stilted sentence structure that modern day readers will find awkward would surely have rendered it hard going for students then. I wonder if it could be taught today. Now that I've got all that out of the way, I can declare: This is a beautiful book. When you come to the end, it's bound to leave you with a warm feeling of satisfaction. It was certain to appeal to me today because it features two of my most beloved themes: rebirth and redemption. And in Marner her protagonist, Eliot has created one of the most intriguing characters in literature. Along the way, she paints an astonishing picture of an agrarian village in pre-industrial England, complete with its cast of odd characters as they go about their lives in an early 19th century environment that had totally disappeared by the time Eliot set about depicting it; a remarkable feat. She even manages to sprinkle a good deal of humor into the story,taking full advantage of her characters' eccentricities. So, this is what it's supposed to be: a museum piece, frozen in its own time, expressed in difficult language, encumbered with dollops of Eliot's personal philosophy; and despite all of that, her characters and her message of love, empathy, self-respect and hope shines gloriously through.