The Manufacture Of The Sympathetic Identity For Silas Marner

Silas Marner is the central character in the novel Silas Marner, which has been acclaimed a'minor masterpiece'of George Eliot. Silas is a simple, trusting, self-doubting ordinary working man. George Eliot has chosen such a hero because she wants to make the reader feel sympathy for the ordinary human beings like Marner. And this thesis analyses how George Eliot manufactures a sympathetic identity for Silas Marner.The thesis analyses the manufacture of the sympathetic identity for Silas Marner in three parts. Part One analyses what point of view George Eliot chooses for the convenience of manufacturing Marner's sympathetic identity. George Eliot chooses the third-person omniscient point of view in this novel. On one hand, by this third-person omniscient point of view, George Eliot can move at will from time to time and place to place within Marner's story world. On the other hand, the all-knowing narrator, usually assumed to be the writer, can tell the reader not only the external events in the story but also the inner reality of any of the characters. Therefore, the writer can move flexibly according to her requirements of writing so as to manufacture the sympathy or control it for Silas at will. Part Two analyses how George Eliot characterises a sympathetic hero through the arrangement of plot and the choice of speech. A chain of moving and pathetic incidents arouse the reader's sympathy to the hero. And the absence of direct speech in several chapters provides a verbal analogue of solitude. Besides, George Eliot also manufactures a symbolic identity for Silas to evoke readers'sympathy. She identifies her hero with the insects that plod all the time but no reflection. Part Three analyses how George Eliot controls the reader's judgement. Silas is an unlikely hero in terms of personality, age and physique, and is fully and psychologically integrated in this novel. He is established in our minds and out hearts from the first chapter of the novel. So in this novel, Silas Marner does not automatically inspire a reader's sympathy. Reading of Silas Marner gives the impression that the novel sprang from the need to find a solution to the problem of how to create sympathy for an unlikeable hero. Moreover, George Eliot does create sympathy for her character Marner with such unlikeable faults. Therefore, there is an oscillation between closeness and distance so as to control the reader's judgment.