Silas Money Final Paper

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Lindsay Glaser

March 18, 2012

British Women Writers

Money Talks: The Curse of Money in Silas Marner

The love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very

beginning of their hoard showed them no purpose beyond it (Eliot, 19).

In George Eliots Silas Marner, each main character crosses a path with money that

plays a major role in their fate. Currency is something that we as a capitalistic society deal

with every day and it has little effect on us, so we think. However, in Victorian Literature

money plays a large role. In fact, Kristen Guest author of The Subject of Money: Late

Victorian Melodramas Crisis of Masculinity describes nineteenth century literature as

a genre that makes visible the struggles of the powerless against the pressures of

Capitalism (635). George Eliot used Silas Marnerto make a statement on the growing

changes in Victorian society by creating a story about the outcomes of people who value

money and capitalism over human and godly relationships by making the currency in this

novel a cursed possession.

The Victorian Era was a time of changes in Great Britain. People were moving

from the countryside into the cities and systems of exchanging goods were relying mostly

on capitalism rather than exchange of goods and labor. Because of this shift in economy,

Victorian literature introduced a new type of victim: the list of melodramatic victims

expanded to include exemplars of traditional male power [Such as] a squire rather than a

laborer or a businessman betrayed by his partners the heros vulnerability was both

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economic and physical (Guest 635). We see example of this male victim in Silas himself,

Dunstan Cass and Godfrey Cass. By placing a privileged male in the role of a victim,

Victorian authors were shedding light on the issues that were affecting all people and not

just helpless ones.

Eliots use of a male victim and her use of money as a symbol for evil and

cursedness show a common opinion of the changes that were happening at the time this

book was written. Guest goes on to explain that:

Unlike young, poor, or female victims, whose moral status evokes nostalgia for a

deferential social order in which weakness demanded protection, the privileged

males victimhood does not point back to a pre-capitalist golden age. Instead, it

indicates an emerging crisis in which middle-class male subjects are expected to

participate in an increasingly aggressive and competitive capitalist economy (Guest,

636).

The economy was changing and people were threatened by a new way of life. We see

examples of these moral changes in the way that Silas tries so hard to create a niche for

himself in the marketplace of Raveloe by working so hard at his loom. Eliot chose to

showcase the consequences of a character that takes the love of capitalism too far and the

punishments that ensue from a love of money over a love of human compassion.

Though one could argue that Silas does not fit into this category because he is not

quite a privileged man, we must remember that before he came to Raveloe he was an

educated, professional engaged man who falls to a lower class of living because of the lure

of money to a friend of his. His exile that ensues from this fall is what ultimately leads to

Silas worship of money: The light of his faith quite put out and his affections made

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desolate, he had clung with all the force of nature to his work and his money (Eliot, 42).

At this point Silas becomes a victim and rather than putting his faith in God and Man he

puts his faith in monetary value and the capitalistic value of hard work.

Silass hard and constant work leads to an increase in his income which becomes an

obsession and a game. He has no purpose for this accumulation of money except to count it

and accumulate more. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into

a larger square; and every added guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new

desire (Eliot, 19). The currency and Silas love of accumulation turns into a type of

addiction which rules his life and Silas is cursed with the inability to live any sort of

normal life. Here Eliot is drawing attention to the kind of behavior that a capitalistic society

creates in men who have lived a life previously based on trading and bartering. She is

showing the behaviors of an addict into the context of currency.

We truly see what a curse this money is to Marner when he loses it. He is unable to

function at first and life has no meaning. He put his trembling hands to his head, and gave

a wild ringing scream, the cry of desolation (Eliot, 44). Marners life at this time is

completely defined by his relationship to his gold. Guest explains that Victorian authors of

the time acknowledged the problem of social identity being defined by money, only to

subordinate it to demonstrations of the heros merit, effectiveness, and respectability

(636). Elliot writes Silas Marner on the cusp of this theory because though he is defined by

his relationship to currency in the first half of the novel, Marners shortcomings as a hero

are overcome by his merits in the second half of the novel when he meets Eppie.

Elliot uses Eppie as a replacement for Marners treasure. When Marner first sees

her in the cottage it seemed as if there were gold on the floorhis own gold brought back

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to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away (Eliot, 110). However it is only because

his money is taken that Marner is able to find a new treasure in Eppie and the curse is

lifted. When we see the life Marner lives without money ruling over his decisions we are

able to see how truly unhappy he was as compared to his life with Eppie. Eppie is a

representation of all that there is to love in life when one is not in love with their profession

and wealth. Marner finally sees the light of human nature and begins to devote his time and

worship to his fellow man and eventually back to his community and God. Once Marner

begins to raise Eppie they are able to live happily and simply off of a weavers salary. He

gets help from his community and Godfrey and is never in need of anything monetarily.

At the same time that Marner is excused from his monetary curse, Eliot transfers

his curse to the Casss. First of all Dunstan is killed when he steals the gold from Marners

cottage. He is drawn to Marners money when he doesnt even know it is there, he lusts

after the gold not just as a means of survival or payback but for personal betterment. Guest

explains that concerns about the marketplace indicate the growing inability of the

individual to govern himself-within an increasingly abstract system (637). Dunstans

concerns about his own comfort within the capitalistic economy leads him to an inability to

govern and control himself. He loses his moral compass and steals as a means of

functioning in an abstract system. However the moment he leaves Silass cottage with the

stolen money he trips into the stone pit and drowns from the weight of the gold which

holds him down. He is literally killed by his lust for gold.

Next we see Godfrey Cass who chose his social status over human relationships.

Though Godfrey may not have been called rich at this time he was certainly the best-off

citizen of the town. Godfrey could not manage money well and valued his high station

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within the community; so much so that he disowned his lower class wife and child. This

desire for the finer things in life ultimately curses Godfrey and his new wife with the

inability to have children. Then when Godfrey changes his mind about Eppie and decides

to take her as his own he is turned down because not only can she not leave her father but

she has no desire to live as a lady or give up the folks [Shed] been used to (Eliot, 169).

With the Casss Eliot truly shows that there is punishment for those who honor money and

class over people.

The only instance in Silas Marner where money does not seem to be a curse is in

the ending when Silas money is returned to him. Silas heroic merit, respectability and

effectiveness finally come into play and he is able to keep his status as a hero rather than a

victim. Silas describes how he was afraid while Eppie was growing up that the money

would return and she would be taken from him. He was aware that Eppie was a

replacement for his money and he feared that his desire for the gold would curse him again

by stealing his new (and more desirable) treasure from him. However then he relates that

The money was taken from me in time; and you see its been kept kept till it was wanted

for you (166). Therefore because he is able to part with the money as a wedding gift, the

money is no longer his obsession and his desire. Silas then values his relationship with God

and Man before the money and he is not cursed.

During a time of tumultuous changes it is not uncommon for the characters and

types of literature to change as well. The victims of Victorian Literature and Silas Marner

in particular have a lot to say about the issues that Victorian society was in anxiety about at

the time. When Silas Marner was written, the people were nervous about the capitalistic

economy and the effect it would have on trade, village life and people who valued currency

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too much. By creating a story about the effects of capitalism on a middle class village man,

Elliot was able to capture the anxieties of a society while putting them at ease with a story

of ethics at the core.

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Works Cited

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Guest, Kristen. "The Subject of Money: Late-Victorian Melodrama's Crisis of

Masculinity. Victorian Studies49.4 (2007): 635-57. Print.

Eliot, George. Silas Marner. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1948. Print

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