Silas Marner (Legend Classics)

<b><i>&#147;Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.&#148;</i></b></p><p>Silas Marner is a simple weaver from Lantern Yard an impoverished area of Northern England. He is the main protagonist who is wrongly accused of being a robber. Silas loses his sweetheart reputation and as a result has to move out of the town. He dedicates the next fifteen years of his life to earning money. Despite developing an unhealthy obsession he is still the same just and honest person albeit rather stingy by this time as monetary enrichment became the sole purpose of his being. But when injustice strikes again Silas is about to change his perception of life forever. What he first considers to be the ultimate disaster of his existence turns into the thing that gives a new meaning to his life. This moral tale will set things in the right place presenting a picture of justice and love that rise above ignorance and greed.</p><p>The work is regarded as a pastoral novel and a moral tale with fairytale elements. A notable feature is Eliot's representation of the effects of industrialisation. Indeed upon Silas's return to his home town in his old age he can barely recognise the town where new buildings and factories have been erected. The author deploys her signature technique of setting the novel in a more distant past which gives her the advantage of scope and hindsight. Published a year before Hugo's world-famous <i>Les Mis&#233;rables</i> <i>Silas Marner</i> tackles many similar tropes as effectively and authentically but in a more condensed form &#150; in particular finding the meaning in life when there seems to be nothing left to hold on to.</p><hr><p>The <i>Legend Classics</i> series:<br />Around the World in Eighty Days<br />The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<br />The Importance of Being Earnest<br />Alice's Adventures in Wonderland<br />The Metamorphosis<br />The Railway Children<br />The Hound of the Baskervilles<br />Frankenstein<br />Wuthering Heights<br />Three Men in a Boat<br />The Time Machine<br />Little Women<br />Anne of Green Gables<br />The Jungle Book<br />The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories<br />Dracula<br />A Study in Scarlet<br />Leaves of Grass<br />The Secret Garden<br />The War of the Worlds<br />A Christmas Carol<br />Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde<br />Heart of Darkness<br />The Scarlet Letter<br />This Side of Paradise<br />Oliver Twist<br />The Picture of Dorian Gray<br />Treasure Island<br />The Turn of the Screw<br />The Adventures of Tom Sawyer<br />Emma<br />The Trial<br />A Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe<br />Grimm Fairy Tales<br />The Awakening<br />Mrs Dalloway<br />Gulliver&#146;s Travels<br />The Castle of Otranto<br />Silas Marner<br />Hard Times</p>