BETTING, SELF-TRANSFORMATION AND SINFUL RESPECTABILITY: PARADOXICAL RELIGIOUSNESS IN SILAS MARNER

Abstract

One of the leading authors of the Victorian era with her important novels well known for realistic depictions of the nineteenth-century English society and providing an insight into the psychology of her characters, George Eliot (1819-1880) focuses on social arena in the early decades of the era with Silas Marner (1861) that juxtaposes a lower-class protagonist with middle class norms and represents a highly controversial account of religious and social interaction. Eliot’s Silas Marner is preceded by Adam Bede (1860) and The Mill on the Floss (1860), both of which are masterpieces for Victorian novel, and it is one of the lesser works due to its popularity back in the day. However, the novel invites a critical analysis due to the representation of the dynamics between religious faith and devotion to ethics resulting from the infamous decision and the fate that befalls on the protagonist Silas. Silas Marner marks a controversial point in the understanding of Victorian religiousness due to the protagonist’s association of faith with the result of his betting. Therefore, the novel is analysed as an account of paradoxical middle-class values based on the dichotomy between the highly promoted religious understanding and the infamous fate of Silas following his adherence to social and religious teachings. Through social criticism, the aim of this study is to demonstrate that the notions of individuality and individual’s happiness traditionally represented in Victorian fiction have been deceptive and misleading from the beginning of the industrial era.