The Growth of Silas Marner
...of is how he can recover his treasure. When Eppie appears on his hearth in gold colored clothes, Silas imagined that his gold was returned to him. “Gold!-his own gold-brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few moments he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure,” (111). As Silas raises Eppie, he realizes that there is more to life than just looking after himself, and adopting Eppie replaces his love for money with his love for his daughter. As Silas goes through conflicts throughout his life, he starts off in a tightly knitted community to being a social outcast. After he raises Eppie, he gets accepted back into society again. Silas has problems facing many of these conflicts. He is not a very aggressive person, and many events in the novel show how he is manipulated. When Silas is framed for a robbery he did not try to prove his innocence, but instead, counts on God to help him. “I am sore stricken; I can say nothing. God will clear me,” (9). Silas suffered a great loss when his money got stolen, but he does not move on. Instead, he sits around in despair. “He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now and then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his thoughts had come around again to the sudden chasm-to the empty evening-time,” (76). Silas also does not take matters into his own hands when Godfrey and Nancy Cass try to adopt Eppie. He lets Eppie have all the say in what should happen, although he himself could not bear the thought of Eppie leaving him. “Eppie, my child, speak. I won’t stand in your way. Thank Mr. and Mrs. Cass,” (169). Eliot uses Silas’s intervening between social status to explore the relationship between the character and his society. Eliot portrays the Cass family as wealthy and selfish, especially Godfrey and Dunstan. Eliot is showing that the upper class seems to have more privileges, and that they do not deserve them. Throughout the entire novel, Dunstan and Godfrey both are characterized as rich, stubborn sons who will chase down any temporary high that satisfies them. They both have extremely big egos, and in their perspective, they are the best. The two even try to use one another to their personal advantage. “I might tell the Squire how his handsome son was married to that nice young woman, Molly Farren, and was very unhappy beca...