Study Questions &
Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. What is the
significance of Silas Marner's nearsightedness?
2. Compare Silas
Marner's love of his money to his religious faith.
3. What does Silas
Marner's cottage represent?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. Is there a difference between
superstition and religion in the novel? If so, what is the difference?
2. Discuss the importance of
labor in the novel.
3. How does social class function
in the novel?
4. Why does Silas wish to visit
Lantern Yard again? What does his visit accomplish?
5. Compare Nancy's and Dolly's
systems of belief.
6. Eliot sets her novel in the
recent, but nonetheless irretrievable, past. In what ways does she
foreshadow the end of the world she describes?
7. The novel is set up as two
parallel narratives that intersect three times. How do these meetings
show a progression in Silas's status as a member of the community?
8. Discuss the significance of
the novel's epigraph.
