Silas Marner

Abstract

On July 1, 1860, the Leweses brought their eldest son from school, to live with them for the first time, and, on August 28, George Eliot wrote Blackwood that she wanted to write another English story (L, III:339). The story, which came across her plans to write Romola (L, III:371, 392; J, 87), when she was probably contemplating her new role as stepmother, was Silas Marner, a story in which her own feminist view of parenting is opposed to the patriarchal view. Desiring to let go of Mill on the Floss, based on her sad past, and looking forward to using material gathered in her happier present (L, III:279), she writes, for the first time, a story of an idealist’s successful rebellion to secure self- fulfillment—a story as autobiographical, in its way, as The Mill.