George Eliot: Silas Marner PART 2
The first quote that stood out to me from Part Two of Silas Marner by George Eliot stated, “‘I’m a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy,’ said Godfrey, rather tremulously. ‘Can you forgive me ever?’” At this part, I was sort of taken by surprise because in many other readings we have done, men have so much power over women and would never even think about admitting to a woman that they were wrong. In this, he was asking for forgiveness from Nancy, which was striking to me based on how men have acted in past readings and movies we have watched in class. In addition, Nancy was confrontational towards Godfrey, which was also something that we haven’t seen much of.
The second quote that I pulled from the reading I found in the last chapter; it stated, “‘To my old country—to the town where I was born—up Lantern Yard. I want to see Mr. Paston, the minister: something may ha’ come out to make ’em know I was innicent o’ the robbery. And Mr. Paston was a man with a deal o’ light—I want to speak to him about the drawing o’ the lots. And I should like to talk to him about the religion o’ this country-side, for I partly think he doesn’t know on it.’” This quote came from Silas when he was telling Eppie he wanted to go back to Lantern Yard. This quote stood out to me because it clearly showed the character development of Silas from the beginning of the book to the end. At the beginning, nobody in the town knew much about Silas and thought he was some sort of witch doctor. By the end, he had gone through so much and grown as an individual, both socially and personally, that he wanted to go back to his hometown and try to figure things out. I thought the author, George Eliot, did a great job with the character development of Silas throughout the book.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
The analysis of your first quote does a fantastic job of summarizing one of the more intriguing parts of the story of how Godfrey was essentially asking for forgiveness from Nancy. It did also take me by surprise when I read that part, but I completely agree with you on the point that in past reading and movies we have read and seen in this class, we typically have witnessed men act as more of these selfish, try to be tough all the time individuals. They are normally always afraid to admit when they are wrong or in pain, but we see a counter to that here with Godfrey which opens up a new way of interpreting this era in the past.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I love how you chose a quote in relation to the character development of Silas that we see in this story as that was the main gist of my blog for part 2 of Silas Marner. It is an important topic to conceptualize because as you said people did not really know the true Silas in the beginning of the book and thought he was this crazy person when in reality this was not the case. Oftentimes character development can feel forced in literature or films, but in this case Eliot does a profound job of accurately depicting a clear and precise character development of Silas which plays a huge role into shaping up the 2nd half of the story especially. Both of your quotes were featured in relevant portions of the text and the analysis you had for both was spot on. Tremendous job!