Silas Marner
Silas is the reclusive weaver who has moved to the village of Raveloe after being banished from Lantern Yard when he is wrongly accused of theft. He finds that the villagers are initially suspicious of him and a failed attempt at gelling with the community plunges Silas into fifteen years of money hoarding, but, after he adopts the young girl found after Molly’s death, he finds that the community grow to accept and respect him, with his new daughter bringing him out of his shell and into the light of a good and content father.
Quotes
‘A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones’
‘When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as take it in’
‘He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man’s work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of life’
‘He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him’
‘When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune’