Silas Marner

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Silas Marner

By: George Eliot

Narrated by: Andrew Sachs

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About this listen

Exclusively from Audible

For 15 years the weaver Silas Marner has plied his loom near the village of Raveloe, alone and unjustly in exile, cut off from faith and human love, he cares only for his hoard of golden guineas. But two events occur that will change his life forever; his gold disappears and a golden-haired baby girl appears. But where did she come from and who really stole the gold? This moving tale sees Silas eventually redeemed and restored to life by the unlikely means of his love for the orphan child Eppie.

One of Eliot's most admired and loved works, Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of betrayal, greed, loss, and redemption, with a finely drawn picture of early 19th-century England before the loss of the simple rural way of life. This moral tale shows the importance of valuing what really matters in life and that the hand we are dealt may ultimately lead to our happiness. Though it is Eliot's shortest book it still retains all the elements which are most recognisable and admirable about her work.

George Eliot was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological insight.

Narrator Biography

Beginning his career in repertory theatre, Andrew Sachs made his screen debut in 1959 in the film The Night We Dropped a Clanger. After numerous television appearances, he finally made his name in the 1970s with his role as Spanish waiter Manuel in Fawlty Towers, for which he was BAFTA nominated. A long career in acting and voiceover work followed, including narrating all five series of the BBC's BAFTA award winning series Troubleshooter (1990-1993), ITV's ...from Hell series (1997-2010) and the spoof documentary series That Peter Kay Thing (2000).

Andrew Sachs radio work includes playing Dr John Watson in four series of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (2002-2010) for BBC Radio 4 as well as appearing in their adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency in 2007. In 2009 he starred as Norris' brother, Ramsay Clegg, in Coronation Street. Andrew Sachs audiobook career is extensive and includes many children's titles, such as Judith Kerr's Mog series.

Public Domain (P)2008 Audible, Ltd

Classics

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

Psychological

Fiction

England

Village

Emotionally Gripping

Feel-Good

Heartfelt

Thought-Provoking

Career

British Literature

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Unjustly accused of theft, Silas Marner, his faith in God and man shattered, flees his home and church and sets himself up in a new place where he knows no one and no one knows him. Raveloe is a small rural village with a strong sense of community among the working class, who, as tradition demands, show deference to the local Squire and his feckless sons. Here Silas lives alone, plying his trade as a linen weaver and accumulating a store of gold which he carefully hides and takes out each night to lovingly count. And so his life may have continued, but that one night his hoard of gold is stolen. He is still reeling and depressed from this disaster when, a short time later, a little girl walks through his door one snowy day. Silas discovers the body of the child’s mother nearby, and decides to adopt the girl, whom he calls Hephzibah, or Eppie for short.

Being one of the small minority who didn’t love Middlemarch, I began this one with a lot of hesitation – a book I felt should read rather than one I wanted to. So the pleasure of discovering that I loved it was all the greater for being unexpected. This one has what, for me, Middlemarch lacked – a strong plot. Its brevity is undoubtedly another point in its favour!

It gets off to a bit of a rocky start, as Eliot pontificates for a while about “the poor”, in that supercilious way that suggests they are one homogenous mass, easy to categorise, define and condescend to. “The poor”, apparently, are rather stupid, highly superstitious, easily led, and would fall somewhere not far above beasts of the field in a zoological league table. Whenever one of these 19th century writers talks about “the poor”, I feel I get a better understanding of why people invented guillotines. Happily, however, once she has staked her claim to social and intellectual superiority, she moves on quite quickly, and her depiction of individual members of “the poor” is much more nuanced and insightful than this opening monologue had led me to fear.

I also feared that Eppie might be one of these saccharin, perfect angels that infest Victorian fiction, usually shortly before they die tragically. Happily not! Eppie is wilful, naughty and refreshingly normal, and won past even my pretty strong anti-child defences. Silas’ reaction to her arrival is very well portrayed, as he sees her as a kind of redeeming gift from the God whom he felt had deserted him. Since she’s a very young child on her arrival, Silas, a man with no experience of children, has to reach out for help, forcing him to become part of the village life he had until then shunned. Perhaps he never quite regains his lost trust in man or God to the same level of naivety of his youth, but he learns to love again, and to appreciate neighbourliness and kindness and the value of community.

The other side of the story is darker, and gives it a weight that prevents Silas’ story from being too sweet. The reader knows the identity of the dead woman, although the villagers do not, and we know why she was there that night, in a snow storm. “The poor” may get Eliot’s condescension, but she is stern on the fecklessness of those who live off the labour of others – the Squire class. Squire Cass himself is a man of pride and temper, and his sons have grown up with weak characters and a sense of entitlement that leads them into vice, each of a different kind. Eliot allows the possibility of redemption, but she intends to make her characters work for it.

I particularly enjoyed the occasional intervals where we eavesdrop on the men of the village, gathered of an evening in the local tavern to swap stories and exchange gossip. There’s a lot of humour in these passages, but they also give a great depiction of the social hierarchy of village life, based not so much on wealth as on age and experience, with a sense of earned wisdom being passed down through the generations. Eliot also shows how the women of the village try to ensure that motherless Eppie is given the guidance on womanly matters that Silas can’t provide.

Having been rather rude about Andrew Sachs’ narration of The Power and the Glory recently, I was delighted to find him excellent in this one. Without the distraction of “foreign” accents to contend with, he gives a full range of very good characterisations, each well suited to the social class of the character in question.

In the end, the various strands all come together satisfyingly, managing to be sweet without a surfeit of sugar. An excellent listening experience, and I’m now keen to explore more of Eliot’s work.

The importance of community…