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    Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    Audiobook7 hours

    Silas Marner

    Written by George Eliot

    Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Silas Marner, which first appeared in 1861, is a tale about life, love, and the need to belong. Accused of a crime he didn't commit and unjustly forced from his home town, Silas the weaver lives a reclusive and godless life, finding love and companionship only in material objects. It takes the theft of his gold and the discovery of an abandoned infant to remind him of the importance of human relationships and faith.

    Author George Eliot carefully weaves the interaction of plot and character, and, in so doing, depicts Silas Marner's redemption and rebirth through his love and protection of the orphaned girl and the possibility of losing her. Throughout the book, Eliot also takes the opportunity to voice her feelings about industrialization, religion, and social class distinctions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 7, 2010
    ISBN9781400186082
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot’s best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.

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    Reviews for Silas Marner

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    • 5/5
      Silas Marner is a weaver who has cut himself off from the world because of a severe wrong done to him. He becomes a hermit and a miser who only cares about his gold. When his gold is stolen from him, he is devastated. However, losing the money actually wakes him up a bit because he has to converse with his neighbors about his loss, whereas before he would only talk "business".Soon a little girl comes into his life that opens up his heart and soul. Their love for each other as two "castaways" is truly heartwarming. Highly recommended classic.
    • 5/5
      A book that never registered in my brain beyond "I've heard of that" turned out to be one of the most amazing stories I have read in a long time. Beautiful, heart warming and richly written. I'm eager to read more of her work now. Some of the sentences in this book are so beautifully crafted that I had to read, then re-read, then read them to my wife. Amazing book
    • 3/5
      Read half. Just too laborious at the wrong time. Don't want to pick it back up now, nearly two years later.
    • 4/5
      One of the only books I read for school that I actually liked.
    • 2/5
      Simplistic.
    • 4/5
      Is the story about fate or the fairness of a god who sees what is hidden and rewards or punishes accordingly? Maybe it's just a comment on the human condition.
    • 5/5
      I read somewhere that no-one reads George Eliot these days. Well, her writing can be a bit dense at times, but Silas Marner is well worth reading. The plot is almost fairytale-like. Silas, a weaver, has been driven from his home in a northern industrial city after (false) accusations of stealing money from the chapel sect he belonged to – and the guy he knows did it, his best friend, then stole his girlfriend! He now lives by an old quarry outside the close-knit English village of Raveloe. Not surprisingly, he’s now bitter and twisted, his faith in god and humanity gone. He has nothing left in life except his work – and the gold he accumulates from it. He’s grudgingly tolerated but not welcomed in the village, and has turned into a sad lonely miserable miser, suffering occasional fits, truly an outsider. One day, his hoard of gold is stolen, and on a snowy day soon after, a golden-haired toddler wanders into the open door of his cottage, the girl’s presumed mother found dead nearby. Silas sees the girl as a gift from providence in exchange for his gold, adopts the baby girl and things develop from there... The girl grows up... Silas changes... The plot is credible and realistic, despite some improbable coincidences. It’s fascinating to see how superstitious views still flourished, how people weighed and interpreted evidence about unusual happenings, weighing up rational against superstitious interpretations, echoing lively controversies in theology and philosophy at the time about the nature of evidence that George Eliot was herself very deeply involved in.What’s really wonderful is that this is a story of ordinary village life among the poorer classes, with all its characters, prejudices and superstitions, church, pub, all pictured just as they would have been in the early 19th century. This no doubt comes from George Eliot’s childhood recollections. No-one else was writing this sort of stuff in English literature at the time. Farm hands, farriers and the like were supposed to be just forelock-tuggers and cap-doffers with walk-on parts. Novel readers were upper class (the only ones who could afford books) and expected upper class people doing upper-class things in their books; they didn’t see ‘the common people’ as suitable central figures in their literature. The antagonistic reviews of the time – even her own publisher’s views – show how dangerous this was seen. One contemporary review refers to “...these dull clowns... whose ideas and imagery seldom rise above the level of their native dunghills”, another says “We see the people amid all their grovelling cares, with all their coarseness, ignorance and prejudice – poor, paltry, stupid, wretched, well-nigh despicable.” Perhaps, but fascinating too.No well-bred woman at the time would have ventured into the public bar of a village pub, but George Eliot gives us an extraordinary chapter of the bar talk and banter between the farrier, the butcher, etc. at The Rainbow. In the closing chapters, (spoilers warning) when Eppie (the golden-haired baby girl) has grown into a beauty, and her higher class origins (daughter of the village squire from a shameful marriage he kept secret) made public, she gets the offer of being accepted by the squire and his new wife as their daughter... but she and Silas Marner turn it down. This must have seemed revolutionary, and in very bad taste at the time. It’s the complete opposite of the popular plot of the time, where the waif discovers his upper crust origins, his rightful inheritance, reveals the skulduggery involved to disinherit him, and takes his ‘proper’ place in society. What a girl George Eliot was!After Silas Marner was published, ordinary people started appearing in more books, and literature was all the better for it... A short, important, memorable and heart-warming book with a good story, albeit a little difficult to get through the dense writing style at times.
    • 3/5
      Digital audiobook read by Nadia MaySilas Marner is a weaver who was banished from his small religious community on a false charge of theft. He moves to the village of Ravensloe, where he leads a reclusive, miserly life as the town’s weaver. His gold is stolen from him, however, reinforcing his belief that everything is against him. Until … returning home on a snowy evening he finds a baby girl asleep at his hearth. Her mother has died in the snow, and Silas adopts the child, believing that his gold has somehow been symbolically returned in the form of this delightful little girl.A classic tale of the redemptive power of love, first published in 1861. As is typical of the novels of the era, the plot includes numerous coincidences that stretch this reader’s tolerance. There is much misery, but Eliot does give us a few moments of joy, and an ending full of hope. I did think Eliot was somewhat heavy-handed in relaying her message, however. I know this was assigned reading when I was in high school, and I’m sure I relied on the Cliff’s Notes. Reading now, I’m reminded of the writing style of Charles Dickens. Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans and converted to Evangelicalism while still in school. She later disavowed it, but those roots are clear in this tale. In private, however, she became estranged from her family when she moved to London as a single woman. There she met George Henry Lewes, and lived with him for some twenty years, despite the fact that he was already married. He encouraged her to write and publish. She was somewhat notorious for this open relationship and felt no one would read her novels, so adopted the pseudonym of George Eliot. Nadia May does a fine job performing the audiobook. However, I did have trouble staying focused. That isn’t her fault, it’s simply the prevalent style of writing of the mid-19th century.
    • 5/5
      In Silas Marner, George Eliot has crafted a heartwarming fable woven with incisive commentary on religion, community and the true meaning of wealth. The title character starts out as a faithful member of a religious commune, poised to marry the love of his life. He soon finds himself framed for theft and is exiled from the community. Betrayed, disillusioned and heartbroken, Marner settles on the edge of a faraway village. He becomes a hermit, finding solace in counting his precious stash of gold coins each night. He interacts with the outside world only as required to sell the cloth he weaves and accumulate more gold. But fate intervenes in Marner's life once (well, twice) more. He is forced to engage with the village community, and the rest of the story follows his resulting growth and redemption.Though the material is more simple than that of her larger works, Silas Marner still showcases Eliot's masterful (but admittedly dense) literary style, signature social commentary and humanist beliefs. Her keen observation of human nature helps her writing speak to readers hundreds of years and thousands of miles distant. I heartily recommend Silas Marner to all lovers of literature. Due to the book's modest length, it is especially suited to someone looking for a taste of Eliot's work but who may not have the time or patience to take on Middlemarch. Or the world-weary intellectual looking for an uplifting, fairytale-like story to restore their faith in humanity.
    • 3/5
      A story of redemption. Eliot teaches a simple lesson: When we let go of the goods we get the gold. Simplistic but real. Love is the answer.
    • 3/5
      I don't like my chances of being able to say anything new about something that has been around since 1861. The story is a simple one, and the themes are both eternal and easily discerned : redemption, the emptiness of money compared to love and the hypocrisy of those vested with wealth, prestige and power. For me, the novel sagged after the first few chapters, but picked up again, and then some, shortly after the half way mark. Even in a more leisurely age, Eliot must have had a purpose in introducing villagers that seem to spend a lot of time sitting around looking jolly, and taking many pages to do so. A couple of prominent characters, the pristine Eppie and her consort Aaron are less than interesting, but Silas and the tortured Godfrey Cass more than make up for it. The last couple of chapters really tugged at the heart, but it was honestly a bit of a slog to get there.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've ever read. Eliot has a great insight into the human mind. Very touching.
    • 4/5
      A book you haven’t read since high school is on the list for the 2016 Reading Challenge.Synopsis: A young weaver, Silas Marner, is betrayed by his best friend and subsequently leaves his home to find a place to live near a small village. Although he is prosperous, he exists as a poverty stricken hermit with no real friends. One night he is robbed and although this puts him in a more sympathetic light with the townspeople, he goes into a deep depression. During one of catatonic episodes, a two year old girl toddles into his home and changes his life for the better. The mystery of her parentage and of the disappearance on Marner's money are eventually solved.Review: There are huge portions of this story that I'd forgotten since the days in Betty Swyers's classroom. Although the language of the 1800s tends toward verbosity, Silas Marner is much less dense that Middlemarch, one of Eliot's other books. The 'truth will out' and the relentless progression of time are two of the main themes of the story, although unlike many writers in this same time period, the happy ending adds a touch of pleasant finality to Eliot's tale.
    • 4/5
      I've been going through the classics lately and don't have much good to say from them. This is the first so far that I can say that I liked. I think it's my modern perspective looking at it to think this, but I think it could have been much shorter. The first half, at least, of the book seemed to be too drawn out and didn't seem to connect things till much later in the story. I see all the connections now but I don't see that it was needed to put so much detail in it. I also like the fact that Eppie didn't want to have money. Most of the characters I have run into so far in older books, namely (and clichely) Pride and Prejudice, have wanted almost nothing but money and material wealth. But Eppie loved Silas and her way of life and didn't want to change. That made me appreciate the book much more.
    • 2/5
      I love this book. Why give it 2stars? The recording would often cut off mid sentence and advance to the next chapter. Poor editing would be my guess.
    • 5/5
      Set in the early 19th century, Eliot's narrative accurately features the lifestyle, values and traditions of the period. Ethics, religion and the industrial revolution all play a part in this beautiful story. I realize it is not to everyone's taste but I find the old-fashioned language is a delight, describing the actions and feelings of the characters so beautifully.
    • 4/5
      It took me a little bit of time - and concentration - to settle into the story. I found Eliot's writing style to be a wordy and probably better suited for reading than listening to (especially if you are like me and tend to multi-task while listening to an audiobook!) Silas Marner is one of those classic tales that runs the gamit of tangible loss, disenfranchisement with society and seclusion of sorts until fate one day gently opens the door and presents a possible path towards a new beginning: A life of redemption and the re-discovery of what it means to love (and we don't mean a continuation of love of worldly possessions!) Eliot does a fantastic job playing sociologist, presenting 19th century England with its class structure (via the squire), rural/ small village life and the ever present role of religion and 'village values' in guiding the population through life. For me, the first 1/3 of the book was pretty much 'ho-hum'. The story started to make its mark on me during the Christmas festivities and that was when I settled in and really was able to enjoy this story for the tale it is.
    • 4/5
      This is a story about a man who likes money very much.One day ,all of his money was stolen,but he got a girl instead of his money.I Iike this story in two points.Firstly this story told me the importance of family.And secondly I found more important thing than money.
    • 5/5
      Heart-warming, touching story of how a little girl redeems the sad life of her adoptive father.
    • 4/5
      I would have great difficulty justifying to my seventeen-year-old grandson why he should read George Eliot’s Victorian novel “Silas Marner,” a part of which he might be assigned to read in a summer high school English class. Elliot’s verbosity and frequent ultra complex sentence structure were not meant for today’s broad-based reading public and certainly not for most high school juniors.Example: “A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.”However, Eliot provides a heart-tugging story, compelling characters, and insightful commentaries about people true 200 years ago as they are today.At times Eliot is both perceptive and eloquent. Examples:“The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature …”“I suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that life never can be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dulness of the gray hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good.”“Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.”The story is about the loss of trust in man and God and its rebirth. Silas Marner, a young man totally immersed in the beliefs of an unspecified strict religious sect burrowed away in a large 18th Century industrial city, is accused by sect leaders of stealing chapel money. They ex-communicate him. Silas’s love-interest rejects him and marries, instead, his closest friend, the actual thief. Silas leaves the religious community and settles far away in the “rich central plain” of England near the community of Raveloe, “never reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion.” He begins a bleak life weaving fabric to be used for dress-making. The community views him with suspicion. He is an outsider. He is a near-sighted, peculiar-looking man given occasionally to cataleptic fits. Disillusioned by his former peers’ cruelty and God’s refusal to protect him, he shuns human contact.Silas’s life becomes one of incessant weaving and hoarding of gold coins. 15 years pass. One stormy winter night, while he is away delivering dress fabric to a client, Silas’s hoard of coins is stolen. Members of the community cannot determine who is the thief. On New Year’s Eve a two-year-old child crawls into Silas’s cottage to escape a freezing mist. Her mother lies dying unseen just off the path to his opened door. Silas, suffering a cataleptic fit, does not see her enter and notices her lying near the warming hearth only after he recovers. Because nobody in the village claims her, he takes ownership of her and proceeds to raise her. She changes his life.“The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web: but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.”Other characters have varying importance. The author displays here especially her acute perception of human strengths and weaknesses. Godfrey Cass, eldest son of the Squire of the community, is a significant character. Cass is a weak-willed man with a strong conscience. He has made a major mistake in his life and strives to conceal it in order to win the hand of a desirable, respectable young woman. His subsequent aspirations ultimately interfere with Silas’s rebirth. I enjoyed additionally the theme of the novel, expressed inarticulately by the selfless, illiterate community do-giver, Dolly Winthrop, who has become Silas’s advisor and confidant. “’… there’s trouble i’ the world, and there’s things as we can never make out the rights on. And all as we’ve got to do is to trusten, Master Marner—to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o’ good and rights, we may be sure as there’s a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know—I feel it i’ my own inside as it must be so.’”
    • 4/5
      Being horribly wronged is compensated by the creation of new lives as father and child. A wonderful story that stays with you.
    • 2/5
      A hundred years later, still an assigned reading in many high schools. This copy has the names of students of "M. H. S." in 1923 and 1925.: Mary Elizabeth Blew and Surer Colson, who were juniors in 1925 and 1923, respectively.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've ever read. Eliot has a great insight into the human mind. Very touching.
    • 3/5
      Dickenesque plot, lots of sentiment and melodrama. It contained a lot of social commentary that made it preachy and outdated. More relevant as a historical document; though I would think that the author's class background would make her "insights" into working class values and mores less valid.
    • 4/5
      This short classic novel reads almost like a fairy tale. Silas Marner is a miser who weaves during the day and counts his gold every night. He is a bitter recluse and lives alone in the world. All this changes when his gold and stolen. What seems at first to be misfortune, changes Marner's life when he finds a young orphan child in his home, who he adopts and loves. Beautiful story about love, fate, and redemption.
    • 4/5
      Silas Marner is a strong and lovely little tale, with a blessed departure from all the tedious and repetitive society conversationsand obsessions which overruled the intriguing characters and stories of both MIDDLEMARCH and The Mill on the Floss.A happy ending was totally unexpected and welcome.
    • 2/5
      Combines wordiness with sappiness.
    • 2/5
      I enjoyed this book. I believe it was the first e-book I had ever read—and maybe the first book that might be considered one of the classics (read all the way through, anyway).Anyway, it's about this lonely weaver and this girl that he raises or some such. There's some mystery behind the girl, and maybe even Silas himself. There are relationship issues.
    • 5/5
      This is a great story and a good introduction to George Eliot. She really captures the characters of the English countryside. She can capture their accent on the written page.
    • 4/5
      What a lovely book that I put off reading for far too long. Eliot weaves important themes through her tale of Silas and Eppie. We see human and earthly values put into perspective and we see humanity in its frailty and in its strength. It may have a bit of a saccharine element by twentieth century standards, but sometimes a little sugar is nice.