NAME______

British LiteratureMrs. Pokalo

Silas Marner : The following tasks should be done as you read through the novel. Everything can be submitted at once, the tasks can be submitted as you complete them. Tasks must be completed and submitted no later than your class period Tuesday, June 10, 2014. (The total will appear in Pinnacle as Silas Marner, 125 points, 6/10.)

  1. If you were stuck in an elevator with any of the characters, who would you choose and why?
  2. Briefly describe your understanding of Silas’ world.
  3. Draw a map of Raveloe based on the descriptions in the novel.
  4. Briefly discuss similarities in the holiday celebrations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Silas Marner.
  5. Locate a quotation that is appropriate only to each of the following characters: Dunstan, Godfrey, Molly, Silas Marner, Dolly Winthrop, Nancy Lammeter
  6. Explain the allusions—worksheet.
  7. Explain the quotations (different from 5 above)—worksheet.
  8. For the review, read it, explain the reviewer’s opinion of the novel, explain whether you agree or disagree based on your own reading and give three examples.

Tasks 1-5—10 points each; tasks 6-8—25 points each

Submit paper copies of the tasks.

Reading and work days are built into the calendar, but you will also need to complete reading and tasks outside of class.

NAME______British Literature

Silas Marner

Directions: choose five of the passages below. Locate the reference in the Bible. Locate the reference in the novel. Explain the allusion; what does Eliot assume the reader knows?

Carroll, David. “Notes.” Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. By George Eliot. New York: Penguin, 1996. N. pag. Google e-books. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

Chapter 1

David and JonathanI Samuel 18:1-4

calling and electII Peter 1:10

drawing lotsJoshua 7:14; Jonah 1:7

no just godJob 9:16-24

an angel who records. . .Revelation 1, 2

Chapter 7

watch for the morningPsalm 130:6

Chapter 10

comforterJob 9

Chapter 14

night and the harvest (Dolly’s speech)Genesis 8:22

HephzibahIsaiah 62:4

Chapter 19

“we eat o’ the same bit. . .”II Samuel 12;3

NAME______British Literature
Silas Marner
Directions: Choose four quotations from the list below. Give the context, who or what is being discussed, its relevance to the overall story.
1) "...the past 11) "...like the weaving and satisfaction of hunger, subsisting quite aloof from the life of belief and love from which he had been cut off."-- chapter 1
2) "The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; and the good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass, was fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished home."-- chapter 3
3) "This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe neighbors, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own, and feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest promise of help, had doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of his passionate preoccupation with his loss. Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud."-- chapter 7
4) "The loom was there, and the weaving, and the growing pattern in the cloth; but the bright treasure in the hole under his feet was gone; the prospect of handling and counting it was gone: the evening had no phantasm of delight to still the poor soul’s craving."—chapter 10
5) "This journey on New Year’s Eve was a premeditated act of vengeance which she had kept in her heart ever since Godfrey, in a fit of passion, had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge her as his wife."-- chapter 12
6) "...but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls."-- chapter 12
7) "Godfrey felt a great throb: there was one terror in his mind at that moment: it was, that the woman might not be dead. That was an evil terror."-- chapter 13
8) "The money’s gone I don’t know where, and this is come from I don’t know where."-- chapter 14
9) "As the child’s mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full consciousness."-- chapter 14

Title:Review of 'Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe

Publication Details: The Athenaeum .1745 (Apr. 6, 1861): p464-465.

Source:Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Joann Cerrito. Vol. 41. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. From LiteratureResourceCenter.

Document Type:Book review, Critical essay

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1993 Gale Research, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

[In the following review, the critic evaluates characterization and setting in SilasMarner.]

SilasMarner, the Weaver of Raveloe, is not unworthy of the reputation already acquired by the Author of Adam Bede. It has no scenes of exciting and painful interest, but the characters are all well and firmly drawn, worked up from within, instead of the mere outward semblance being given. They are not described, but the leading idea, the key-note to their nature, is given, and the human actions that follow impress the reader with all the truth of reality. If we wished to be very critical, we might say that the leading ideas of the character of the men and women round us are rarely clearly defined, or rendered distinctly articulate, as they are in this novel; they exist, although we may not have the power to tell their secret;—by so much the more is real human nature richer than any book. The story of SilasMarner is very interesting; the interest is true and wholesome, not in the least morbid or questionable. The peculiarity of the tale is, that its action is chiefly sustained by men; the female characters are only accessories. Of heroines, there are, properly speaking, none at all,—the agency of women is felt as powerfully affecting the welfare and destinies of the men who are engaged in the story, but they appear seldom and say little; still their, influence is at work, and is felt for good or ill from the first page to the last. The three good angels are very natural human maidens, who in real life might be considered good sort of women, but nothing out of the common run. Miss Nancy Lammeter is our favourite, with her pretty prim ways and her rules of conduct for her own guidance, “which,” says the author, “she carried within her in the most unobtrusive way; they rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there quietly, like grass.” At any cost to herself “she would do what was right,” and though there was some narrowness in her powers of measurement, and some gentle prejudices, yet there was no flaw in the purity of her intentions, or in the unselfishness of her actions. She is a charming womanly character, and her influence for good upon her vacillating husband is both true to life and is very artistically managed. Dolly Winthrop, who was the nurse, counsellor and comforter of all the village, whose good thoughts came into her head always “when she was sorry for folk and striving to help them,” is an excellent and racy sketch of a good woman, not exaggerated into a caricature;—some of her sayings deserve to be printed in golden letters. The characters are not the same lay figures as have figured in former stories; they are fresh embodiments of human nature, who live and more in this history and in no other. SilasMarner, the weaver, who may be considered the central character of the book, is very good. Out of apparently common materials, a beauty and pathos are evoked which sink deep into the reader's heart. SilasMarner's career, before the action of the tale commences, is well and briefly told. He was a member of “the little religious world known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard”; believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith. The sketch of this small, obscure sectarian community is as carefully finished and skilfully drawn as if it were to be a leading feature of the book, and yet it is not dwelt upon too much in detail, nor at too great length. It is in excellent proportion, and it is true to the life and spirit. One of the merits of this tale is, the truth of all the details and local colouring; there is nothing left slovenly. The world of Raveloe is given with an understanding spirit, which has all the effect of humour. The character of the public opinion in Raveloe is thus given:—

In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar and knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old time the world outside their direct experience was a world of vagueness and mystery; to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime, especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other act unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious, * * and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind was acquired partook of the mystery of conjuring.

It was amongst this class of people, in a central county village, that SilasMarner came to live, a lonely man, from the mysterious region called “the North'ard.” He had more reason to be misanthropic than most people: a victim to the treachery of a friend,—a victim also to false appearances which he was powerless to contradict,—declared guilty by the primitive ordeal of “casting lots by the Bible,” and driven ignominiously from the congregation,—disowned by the young woman, with whom he was on the point of marriage,—with his faith in religion and his trust in every human being completely shattered,—his whole life dead down to the root,—with no hope or object left in life,—SilasMarner, the weaver, comes before the reader at the commencement of the story. There is no over-colouring nor striving after effects. SilasMarner is a weaver, and neither says nor does anything beyond what is strictly probable and natural, yet he takes a hold on the reader's sympathy, by the truth with which the inward working of his life is laid bare. The author touches and treats all the characters from their own point of view, and with something of the tender love with which everybody regards himself. No character, however insignificant, or thing, however trivial, but is drawn with the feeling of its own personality strong within it; the author judges nothing, but understands everything. The scene in the village alehouse is finished like a Dutch picture—so is the scene where the ladies are dressing for the New-Year's-Eve merry-making. But Eppie, the foundling and adopted child, is the bright light of the book: her golden curls and bright glancing ways are charming; she has little to say or do beyond being the blessing of SilasMarner's life, which the reader feels and knows she must have been; but she is left bright and undefined, as sunshine ought to be. We shall not spoil the reader's interest by giving any indication of the story,—it abounds with subtle thoughts and felicitous expressions. Being only in one volume, the story does not grow weak nor its interest drag—by reason of the length of way. Readers who desire only to meet with high society and good company in their novels, and who consider it impossible to feel an interest in the fortunes of weavers and farmers, may leave SilasMarner alone, for they will meet with nothing higher than the Squire;—those who can feel sympathy with human nature, however humbly embodied it may be, will find SilasMarner comfortable reading. (pp. 464-65)

Source Citation

"Review of 'Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe." The Athenaeum 1745 (6 Apr. 1861): 464-465. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Joann Cerrito. Vol. 41. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. LiteratureResourceCenter. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

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