Godfrey goes on his customary Sunday afternoon walk around his
grounds and leaves Nancy with her thoughts. Nancy muses, as she
often does, on their lack of children and the disappointment it has
caused Godfrey. They did have one daughter, but she died at birth.
Nancy wonders whether she was right to resist Godfrey’s suggestion
that they adopt. She has been adamant in her resistance, insisting
that it is not right to seek something that Providence had withheld
and predicting that an adopted child would inevitably turn out poorly.
Like her insistence years before that she and Priscilla wear the
same dress, Nancy’s unyielding opposition to adoption is not based
on any particular reasoning, but simply because she feels it important
to have “her unalterable little code.” Godfrey’s argument—that the
adopted Eppie has turned out well—is of no use. Never considering
that Silas might object, Godfrey has all along specified that if
he and Nancy were to adopt, they should adopt Eppie. Considering
his childless home a retribution for failing to claim Eppie, Godfrey
sees adopting her as a way to make up for his earlier fault.
Summary: Chapter 18
I can’t say what I should have done about
that, Godfrey. I should never have married anybody else. But I wasn’t worth
doing wrong for—nothing is in this world. Nothing is so good as
it seems beforehand—not even our marrying wasn’t, you see.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Godfrey returns from his walk, trembling, and tells Nancy
to sit down. He tells her that the skeleton of his brother Dunsey
has been found in the newly drained stone-pit behind Silas’s cottage.
The body has been there for sixteen years, and it is clear that
it was Dunsey who robbed Silas. Dunsey fell into the pit as he made
his escape, and the money has been found with his remains. Godfrey
is greatly shaken by the discovery, and it convinces him that all
hidden things eventually come to light. Thus, Godfrey goes on to
make his own confession, telling Nancy of his secret marriage to
Molly and of Eppie’s true lineage. Nancy responds not angrily but
instead with regret, saying that had she known the truth about Eppie,
she would have consented to adopt her six years before. Nancy and
Godfrey resolve to do their duty now and make plans to visit Silas
Marner’s cottage that evening.
Analysis: Part II, Chapters 16–18
Silas’s transition into the community is complete by this
point in the novel. Now he is not only a full member of the Raveloe
community, but is universally considered its most exemplary citizen.
Even the most fractious town gossips look upon Silas with respect.
Importantly, much as the town has gotten to know Silas better, so
have we. In his interactions with Eppie in this section, Silas speaks
more than he has anywhere else in the book and even displays a bit
of a sense of humor. Additionally, as he opens up to pipe smoking
and other town customs and beliefs, he also begins to explore his
past. Silas attempts to attain new self-knowledge and to reconcile
his old religious beliefs with his new ones.
The device of the fifteen-year time lapse serves to balance
the novel and matches the earlier fifteen-year lapse between Silas’s arrival
in Raveloe and the events that form the heart of the novel. The
events that follow this second jump in time are thus much like an
epilogue. The characters are all older, and times are changing:
the profession of the weaver is even becoming obsolete. While these final
chapters do contain action and plot development, they represent
the logical continuation of events already set in motion and thus,
to a certain extent, already determined. Even Godfrey’s confession,
which seems a striking departure from his lifetime of prevarication,
is drawn out of him by the shock of the discovery of Dunsey’s death,
an event that occurred years before. Importantly, because the narrative
time lapse implies that we have passed a point of no return, we
are left suspicious of Godfrey’s chances of getting Eppie back.
Here, Eppie also emerges for the first time as a real
character, and Eliot uses her character to return to the topic of
social class. The child of nobility raised in poverty is a staple
narrative device in literature, from Elizabethan comedy to Victorian
melodrama. Here, Eliot uses Eppie to play with the conventions of
this narrative device. With her “touch of refinement and fervour,”
Eppie is not quite a “common village maiden.” However, instead of
attributing Eppie’s refinement to her genteel lineage, Eliot ascribes
it to the “tender and peculiar love” with which Silas has raised
her. The implication is that Eppie’s upbringing has been far more
important than her heredity, and that she is a better person than
she would have been if Silas had not raised her.
The discovery of Dunsey’s remains underlines the small,
closed nature of Eliot’s narrative universe. Far from having left
the country or joined the army, as the townspeople have speculated,
it turns out that Dunsey has been in Raveloe all along. In fact,
ironically, Silas is the only major character we have seen enter
or leave Raveloe in the entire novel. Eliot emphasizes this hermetic
quality of existence in Raveloe partly to portray the inertia of
English rural life. However, Eliot also wishes this insularity to
evoke a world where one can never escape the repercussions of the
past or the effects of one’s actions. In Raveloe, things do not
simply go away.
