Change Quotes - Silas Marner by George Eliot | Silas Marner by George Eliot - English, Class 12 PDF Download

At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things about Silas Marner as at the beginning: they did not say them quite so often, but they believed them much more strongly when they did say them. (1.1.4)

Here's a good example of how Eliot seems to be suggesting that country life is defined by its resistance to change. Instead of changing their opinions over time, the people of Raveloe just believe them even more firmly. By contrast, change defines both urban and modern life.

But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, and his daily habits had presented scarcely any visible change, Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned to solitude. (1.1.5)

Village opinion may not have changed, but Silas sure has. And it's not good. He's gone from a trusting young man into an embittered old miser. But the change isn't visible on the outside (except, we're guessing, that he's gotten a little old and ugly).

He began to think it was conscious of him, as his loom was, and he would on no account have exchanged those coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. (1.2.7)

"Change" and "exchange" are closely related words. The thing about money is that it's supposed to be changeable. That's what's important about moving from a barter system to a cash system—instead of trying to figure out how to get someone to give you a sack of grain for your goat, you can just sell your goat and buy whatever you want. But Silas doesn't see it that way. For him, money can't be changed into goods or even into other coins. So what's the point of working?

This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath. (1.2.10)

Silas's resistance to change makes him into something less than human. His monotonous life turns him into a spider in the middle of a "brownish web." Is change—like maybe growing up—what makes us human? If the people in Raveloe stick too closely to their traditions, do they also become dehumanized?

But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great change came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a singular manner with the life of his neighbours. (1.2.11)

In case we haven't figured it out by now, Eliot lays it out: the whole book is structured around two major changes in Silas's life. She's exploring the psychological effects of external changes—in other words, figuring out how the interior changes when the exterior does.

I'd a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard-cakes turned out better nor common, and I'd ha' asked you to accept some, if you'd thought well. I don't eat such things myself, for a bit o' bread's what I like from one year's end to the other; but men's stomichs are made so comical, they want a change—they do, I know, God help 'em. (1.10.23)

Dolly's odd little speech here associates men with change and women with stability. Men get restless, she suggests, and need to move about (we know some guys who would agree with that). This attitude jives with stereotypical ideas about Victorian gender roles: women stay at home and fix up the house while men go out and work in the world. But how seriously are we supposed to take Dolly here? After all, the village men are as stuffy and resistant to change as the women—possibly more so.

"I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr Godfrey," she answered, with the slightest discernible difference of tone, "but it 'ud be better if no change was wanted." (1.12.87)

Nancy tells Godfrey that she'd be glad if he improved his life but that she'd prefer it if he had been good from the start. This attitude calls up the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son. In the parable, a man has two sons: one good, one bad. The bad one leaves, gets into trouble, and then finally comes back repentant. The father welcomes him with a feast, and the good son is a little mad—he's never gotten a feast. The father explains that it's good to celebrate when a bad person is redeemed. The parable is supposed to explain why God loves repentant sinners so much. Here, Nancy counters that story by suggesting that she would have preferred the good son. But does Eliot? Silas isn't "bad," exactly, but Silas Marner is definitely a story of redemption.

Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and feeling were so confused within him, that if he had tried to give them utterance, he could only have said that the child was come instead of the gold—that the gold had turned into the child. (1.14.14)

You might say that the primary change in Silas Marner is the transformation of Silas's gold into Eppie. That change from one substance to another seems to match up with the Christian miracle of transubstantiation, in which bread is transformed into the body of Christ. Transubstantiation was (and is) a heated issue for Christians—different groups believe different versions of it. For many Protestants, Communion is just a memorial; for Roman Catholics, the miracle of transubstantiation really takes place. What's interesting is that transubstantiation brings the Christian community together in Communion. When Silas's gold transubstantiates, a similar communion takes place.

"I don't want any change," said Eppie. "I should like to go on a long, long while, just as we are. Only Aaron does want a change; and he made me cry a bit—only a bit—because he said I didn't care for him, for if I cared for him I should want us to be married, as he did." (2.16.17)

Like Nancy, Eppie is a woman resistant to change. She doesn't want any alteration; she's happy just as she is. It's Aaron who wants to change things by getting married. What's the relationship between change and gender? What is Eliot saying about women and men?

Silas, bewildered by the changes thirty years had brought over his native place, had stopped several persons in succession to ask them the name of this town, that he might be sure he was not under a mistake about it. (2.21.7)

In the thirty-one years since Silas left home, his town has become a huge manufacturing city—so big and so different that he's not even sure it's the same place. But is it? If something changes, is it still the same? (That's profound.) Aside from the warnings about industrialization, this passage raises questions about nature and substance. How much can something change before it's different?