Fairy Tale and Faith in George Eliot's 'Silas Marner': an examination of the real and the unreal in Eliot's early fable.

Fairy tale and faith in Silas Marner. George Eliot abandoned work on her historical novel Romola in October 1860 to take up work instead on Silas Marner. She relates in letters how the 'merest millet-seed' of the story grew on her, and how 'It [the idea for the novel] came to me first of all, quite suddenly, as a sort of legendary tale, suggested by my recollection of having once, ... seen a linen-weaver with a bag …

…oism with its cowardice and moral irresolution and Silas' great sensitivity and emotional scarring bring the novel back from the brink of crude moral incontrovertibility. Whilst the message she communicates through her synthesis of faith and fairy tale in Silas Marner is clear, it is moderated by a psychological realism in characterisation that at once validates and restrains the simplistic purity that traditionally accompanies instructive fables to achieve a satisfying blend of real and mythic.