Critical Reading- Silas Marner PDF

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Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (realism)...

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Critical Reading: Silas Marner (Realism) How to read a Novel like Silas Marner by George Eliot [1861]    

Complex sentence structures Uncompromising language Dense prose Requires concentration and attention (details emerge her understanding of her place and time and character psychology)

Advice: 1. Use a good edition (authoritative text) 2. Contextualise the novel: when was the novel written, what period it was set, where does it fall in the author's canon of work, which contexts are relevant. 3. Sense of authorship: little biography, understanding of their work, their place in literary history and how the scholarly community studies them now 4. Historical context of literary marketplace (publishing)  'Hungry 40's'  Shifting away from rural living into city living going into the industrialisation  Intellectual growth (origin of species) a deviance from biblical explanations of human existence  Highpoint of realist novels and sensationalist writings  SILAS MARNER SET BEGINNING OF 19TH CENT 5. Central elements of the novel itself (details of writing and publication, audience and reception, key themes and genre)  Eliot interested in the ideas of how rural communities are built  Psychological developments of a character

Realism:

Eliot's writing on realism:  The Natural History of German Life, Westminster Review (1856)  Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, Westminster Review (1856)  Scenes of Clerical Life, (1858)  Adam Bede (1859) 'to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness box, narrating my experience on oath'  Comment about what realism writing is as explained by Eliot in Adam Bede. Importance on the idea of the writers view on the world; influenced by the person, mediated and built by the writing. Defined within fiction.  Realism is an aesthetic choice for the writer. Less interested in the magic and 'cloudborne angels' and more concerned with the faithful representation of commonplace things. Defining Realism

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Realism aims to make us feel we inhabit the same world and the characters It is highly self-conscious as an art form: it is realism, not the real world; it is realist not realistic. Realism investigates the limits of representation

Key features of Realism  Free indirect discourse (prose style)  Works through visual and psychological details (landscapes, focus on what characters are thinking)  Omniscient narration (steps in and out of characters)  Linguistic variation (accents, dialect differences represented)  Thick description (anthropological description; a deep exploration of details)  Verisimilitude: likeness and resemblance to truth 

Mimesis: artistic imitation of social reality

Represents the world but with an understanding limits of that (mediates) Captures historic reality Defined by female writers and enabled their voice (great female writers realist George Eliot) Genre that offered emancipation Limitations:  Critiqued by modernist authors such as Virginia Wolf  Offers a false idea of the wholeness of the world and of individual psychology  Gives an objective, not subjective position  Often accused of being conservative A potential definition: ' realism is a mode of writing which gives the impression of presenting an actual, recognizable way of life. Realism is not, however, a simple reproduction of reality, but the representation and illusion of an apparently real world outside the text. Realism is usually constructed around an omniscient narrator who shows us a whole society at work. Realism concentrated to some extent on the features of language, since it is dominated by free indirect discourse but it is largely shaped by the impact of social, political and scientific advances of the day. There is emphasis on detailed description, on exact times and places and on full psychological characterization. This is known as verisimilitude. Realism opposes the romance and the gothic notes it is ordinary rather than ideal. It is common and everyday rather than fantastic.

Adam Bede: Chapter 17 So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one’s best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

Realism Lecture P2:

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Realism was the leading form of literature in the 19th Century Essential to many contemporary genres; crime fiction for example.

Early definitions of Realism: ' a picture of real life and manners' - Clara Reeve c.1785 'it [the novel] depend not on any of the common resources of novel writers, no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lap-dogs and parrots…nor rencontres and disguises. I really think us is the most probable I have ever read' Annabelle Milbanke 1813 (written about a jane Austen novel) ' a fictitious narrative where the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society (walter..)

>Realism is not one homogeneous form Examples   

Charles Dickens: urban, often caricaturist, social problem Elizabeth Gaskell: urban concerns, industrial realism George Eliot: rural realism, psychological depth, community and history

Eliot's Realism: 'a humble and faithful of nature'  Carol Levine's book (Secondary Reading available as e book) Close Reading Chapter 1:  Omniscient narrator  Grasp of the history  Individual Psychology  Detailed rendering of society  Sympathetic portrayal of others 

Ask yourself where you find these key things

SEMINAR PREP:

1. Extract One Chapter I, from “In the days when the spinning-wheels…” (p.3) to “Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.” (p.5) What does the narrator know of the past and present? Does the narrator seem connected to the characters or distanced from them? What role do the lengthy descriptions play? Do the inhabitants of Raveloe seem heroic or ordinary? Do the inhabitants seem perfect or flawed?

What does the narrator think of the superstitions of the Raveloe villagers? What is the reader supposed to think of those superstitions?

'In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely….' 'how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody that knew his father and mother?' 

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The people of Raveloe are presented as being participants to a different time. They come from a 'far-off time', not only historically but also socially. The ideas of unknown being inherently negative (distrust and fear being the primary responses to something unfamiliar) is both primitive in as a way of thinking but also very closed minded also. It alludes to a strong sense of community and a degree of importance being the idea of knowing about someone. The characters in that way are seen, by a modern reader, as limited and could arguably be seen as flawed. The narrator is sympathetic however, often coming away from his narration of the story to make more general contemplations to the reader, expressed through the use of the rhetorical questions. The narrator seems to understand the people of Raveloe as well as pre-empting the questions, doubts and opinions of a reader. It understands the way a reader might view their superstitions but begs the reader to understand their way of thinking. The narrator doesn’t seem to ask for sympathy or agreement, rather understanding.

Extract Two Chapter VI, in full, pp. 39-48. How is the tavern described? What is it that makes each character seem like a real person? What role does the direct speech play in giving you a sense of the real? How do the gathered drinkers in the tavern think about truth? What is the relevance of telling stories of the past? What does the narrator know about each character?

Lecture 4: Silas's Queer Family Family constitution: (working outside the heteronormative family norms- ie. mother, father and child) Defining 'queer':  Queer studies focuses on all aspects of non-normative gender relations and is useful in thinking about familial structures  A way of regarding the difference when moving away from life-script of opposite-sex marriage and the duty of reproductions. The queerness of Victorian sociality rather than of sexuality [Holly Furneaux, Victorian Sexualities]  Allows us a fresh perspective on gender and masculinity and femininity. 'Reading outside of heteronormativity'

Silas Marner's Religious family:  Silas joins a heteronormative society (a community which focuses on the normal family structure and social values[christian])  William Danes disrupts his heteronormative life- Eliot shows what that might look like in the form of solidarity, living alone, not marrying, and does not pursue and enjoy the masculine pursuits of tavern life. He falls away from society.  Silas develops his femininity and spirituality in parenthood to Eppie. He changes from monetary, capital and somewhat superficial delights into the more spiritual and complex love for his adopted daughter. This change in him is positive and changes him for the better which suggests Eliot's views on leaving heteronormality are not negative.  Eliot's Queer Family: her interest of queerness and queer family structure comes from her own experience with her family. Eliot lived with Lewis after the separation of his wife (due to her being condemned to being in a mental institution) and she became the 'step-mother' for his children. Blended family lifestyle.  'for the little child had come to link him once more with the whole world' -p118  The novel ends with the marriage Eppie and Aaron, suggestive to a return to a normal family however, Eppie rejects this by saying he is 'a son' to Silas. The community becomes an important part to the family and emphasises the idea of rural communal living and the idea of family....