He's not just "Silas": he's a weaver (he has a function in the village) and he belongs to a specific group of people. The subtitle takes away from the focus on the individual by locating Silas in a community and giving him a role. This tension between the individual (Silas) and the community (Raveloe) gets at exactly one of the novel's main interests: what is the relationship between an individual and his neighbors?Īnd (second) that's where the subtitle comes in. The narrator spends a lot of time on Godfrey's story, and quite a bit of time on the village and villagers. But there are two rather more interesting things to note about Silas Marner.įirst, a lot of the book isn't really about Silas Marner at all. Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe By titling her novel Silas Marner, Eliot is participating in a long tradition of naming books after their protagonist: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Jane Austen's Emma, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and so on.
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