Silas Marner: Realism vs. Fairy Tale Composition Sid Ali Kercenna College

Silas Marner (1861) is George Eliot’s third and arguably most perfectly constructed novel. The book skillfully combines the conflicting aspects of Realism on the one hand, and fairy tale writing on the other by dwelling on the life of the eponymous character. Silas Marner represents the faction of hand-loom weavers as hard working men shaped by their labor, and at the same time as mythical creatures walking out of a folk tale.

The mythical aspect of Silas Marner is acknowledged by the author herself who had mentioned to her publisher, John Blackwood, that, “It came to me first of all, quite suddenly, as a sort of legendary tale, suggested by my recollection of having once, in early childhood, seen a linen weaver with a bag on his back; but as my mind dwelt on the subject, I became inclined to a more realistic treatment”. Accordingly, and in spite of this resolution to adopt a realistic approach in spinning and relating the events of her story, Eliot had given her narrative many of the properties of a fairy story. Some prominent examples of this include the drawing of lots to decide a man’s fate, the accumulation and the loss of the weaver’s gold, and the sudden apparition of the child in his humble abode. Marner is unjustly...