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

The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement, like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, not excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw, not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an apparition[.] (1.7.1)

This funny image of the smokers at the Rainbow Inn compares the villagers to a colony of insects all moving as one. Eliot, who never met a metaphor she didn't like, does a lot with this one. Insects represent both Silas's isolation and the collectivism of Raveloe.

This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe neighbours, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his own, and feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest promise of help, had doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of his passionate preoccupation with his loss. (1.7.19)

This is the first time Silas has ever gone to his neighbors for anything. Even the simple act of reporting a theft starts to open the community's arms; it doesn't hurt that it's a lot easier to sympathize with someone who's just been robbed than it is to feel sorry for a rich, cranky miser.

In fact, there was a general feeling in the village, that for the clearing-up of this robbery there must be a great deal done at the Rainbow, and that no man need offer his wife an excuse for going there while it was the scene of severe public duties. (1.8.9)

The men figure they have to go down to the bar to help Silas solve the robbery. Individual misfortune brings the whole village together—at least, the male portion of it; no word on what the women are doing—and the togetherness happens at the pub. They don't call alcohol a social lubricant for nothing. Communal acts of smoking and drinking together are a kind of communion, just like eating together.

Neighbours, who had nothing but verbal consolation to give, showed a disposition not only to greet Silas, and discuss his misfortune at some length when they encountered him in the village, but also to take the trouble of calling at his cottage, and getting him to repeat all the details on the very spot[.] (1.10.5)

It's a lot easier to be nice to someone who's down on his luck. Because Silas never needed anything from his neighbors before, they never approached him. But now the community rallies around him. And, yeah, a little schadenfreude never hurts, either.

Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill. (1.10.22)

Silas has to be robbed before he can open himself up to receiving the goodwill of his neighbors. More importantly, help has to come from "without." That's a very Calvinist idea: you can't save yourself through good deeds ("works"), because only God can save you through forcible intervention ("grace"). It's also a very communist/socialist idea. Hmm, sounds like someone's been reading Marx.

But now Silas met with open smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions and difficulties could be understood. Everywhere he must sit a little and talk about the child, and words of interest were always ready for him: "Ah, Master Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon and easy!"—or, "Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to take up with a little un like that: but I reckon the weaving makes you handier than men as do out-door work—you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning." (1.14.48)

Silas is just a little bit less masculine than his community, because his weaving is "women's work." Little differences like this mean that Silas can't ever be totally a part of Raveloe. Side note: if the Raveloe way of life is going extinct, are all the jobs of the Industrial Revolution somehow women's work?

There was love between him and the child that blent them into one, and there was love between the child and the world—from men and women with parental looks and tones, to the red lady-birds and the round pebbles. (1.14.48)

Love is like a magic penny: if you give it away, you end up having more. Because Silas loves Eppie, he ends up loving everyone more. This idealistic vision of community hints at the novel's sentimental, allegorical side.

She does not like to be blameworthy even in small things: you see how neatly her prayer-book is folded in her spotted handkerchief. (2.16.4)

Eppie's major concern is to blend into her community, which makes sense for the child of a loner like Silas—kids always rebel. Wanting to be part of a community makes her reject Godfrey and Nancy's offer of adoption. She's belonging to her group, even if they're just poor villagers.

Silas did not highly enjoy smoking, and often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth. (2.16.30)

Silas smokes because his neighbors urge him to, even though he doesn't like it very much. Peer pressure: alive and well since the early 1800s. Only, peer pressure here is a force for good (even if smoking turned out to be not all that great for your health).

How'll she feel just the same for me as she does now, when we eat o' the same bit, and drink o' the same cup, and think o' the same things from one day's end to another? Just the same? that's idle talk. You'd cut us i' two. (2.19.29)

Proximity here seems to be the main thing that holds a group together. Geography is important to Eliot; she suggests that living near each other is a primary qualification for a community. There's no such thing as an internet community yet—although, in the 1860s when Silas Marner was written, telegraphs had brought the first communication system to England.