Role and Characterisation of Silas Marner

Silas Marner is a solitary weaver who is generally portrayed as an introvert character throughout the first four chapters of the novel. In the beginning, it is hard to analyze and understand his thoughts and reasons as to why he does certain things due to his odd nature but as things fall into place better, we are better able to link certain situations and ideals to the way in which he reacts to.
He is portrayed as an extremely isolated and reclusive man. He casts himself away from the rest and hardly makes contact with the rest of the people. This is clearly evident when he ‘invited no corner to step across his door-sill’ or ‘never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow’. This shows the clear divide that Silas had with the rest as there was hardly any interaction with anyone. He is held captive by his own loneliness and seeks solace in non-living objects like weaving gold. As quoted, ‘he seems to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection’, which shows that he does not do it for the sake of making a living but however, to occupy his time and sees this as the only reason for surviving. Eliot presents his isolation as having dehumanised him through the use of the symbol of the spider. By comparing him to a spider, she conveys the way in which Silas engages in his work in a solitary and mechanical manner, reducing his life to ‘the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect’. The absence of companionship in his life reaches the extent that he merely exists to accomplish meaningless and self-fulfilling tasks to replace the joy that human interaction can bring him, depicting that he is deprived of human companionship and relationships.
Silas is identified as a good-hearted person too. Despite how the villagers in Raveloe ‘regarded him as an alien’ due to his eccentrically odd vocation as perceived by the society in Raveloe with speculations and having a distant relationship with them, he still went to cure Sally Oates well to