ENGL 510: The City in the 19th Century

            The loneliness of Eliot's weaver, Silas Marner, is attributed less to the rise of capitalism and more to personal relationships.  The story begins with Silas’ loss of his membership in his original community of Lantern Yard.  As a result of this expulsion, he becomes like an animal until Eppie becomes a part of his life.  His hoarding of gold only comes as a side-effect of his lack of a loved one on whom he might spend his earnings.  He enslaves himself to his loom even without any oppressive capitalist exploitation.  Even though the industrial revolution doesn't feature prominently in the book, Silas Marner still has a lot to say about the industrial revolution, considering that readers in Eliot's time would have understood the effects of industrial revolution that are only hinted at in the book.

            The simplicity of the people of Raveloe illustrates their potential vulnerability to the apparently progressive forces of the industrial revolution.  The class structure of Raveloe echoes Engels' introduction in The Condition of the Working Class in England, in which he asserts that pre-industrial people “were, in their unquestioning humility, exceedingly well-disposed towards the 'superior' classes.  But intellectually they were dead” (Engels 17).  Engels goes on to explain that such people are entirely absorbed in “their petty, private interest”, making them unable to consider the forces at work beyond their small town.  Of course, Eliot is not so bleak about this condition.  In fact, the force of Eppie in saving Silas from his self-enslavement to his loom suggests that these people are able to remain in a satisfied state only through their communal relationships.  Early in the story, having been exiled from his original community, Silas is depicted as a machine or an animal: “He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection.  Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself” (Eliot 11).  For Eliot, the “unquestioning humility” described by Engels is not so negative so long as a person has a reason for living outside of him or herself.  Still, the two agree on the vulnerability of the common people to alienation.  The alienation of labor that Engels understands through an economic perspective is understood by Eliot to be a process that a laborer can undergo without any external influence.  In fact, it is because Silas has no external influence on his life that he becomes spider-like in his work.  Still, however romantic Silas' salvation from this unthinking state may seem, Eppie serves as only an incredibly tenuous thread that holds him from falling back into isolation.  Without her, Silas would have no hope of venturing into the world in any way beyond his weaving.

            As such, the alienation of labor is understood in Eliot to be made possible by an alienation from other people.  Of course, this does not undermine Engels' argument.  It is still easy to see how workers can fall prey to the forces of capitalism and devolve to an almost subhuman state.  Still, this tendency is reliant on the tendency for capitalism to remove from laborers the means by which they can have hopes and dreams in the world beyond their individualistic needs.  Engels talks about the intellectual development of the individual in an industrial society; as they are stripped of independence, they are “[forced] to think, and demand a position worthy of men” (17).  However, this is not necessarily a purely positive development.  Georg Simmel has a similar interest in intellectual development in “The Metropolis and Mental Life.”  However, he understands it is a force that further isolates people from one another.  According to Simmel, “All emotional relationships between persons rest on their individuality, whereas intellectual relationships deal with persons as with numbers, that is, as with elements which, in themselves, are indifferent, but which are of interest only insofar as they offer something objectively perceivable” (12).  This trend to avoid personal relationships is the true threat that workers like Silas Marner face in the process of industrialization.  Nowhere in the text is this more apparent than in the final chapter of the book when Silas returns to his hometown.  The town has been replaced by factories and no personal relationship can be established between the townspeople and Silas and Eppie.  Indeed, the people of the manufacturing town are all nameless and faceless men and women.  The most developed character in the town is hardly a character at all.  He has no dialogue and is only identified as a “brush-maker”, stripped of any identity beyond his occupation (148).  Of course, within Silas Marner, the characters are protected from this depersonalizing force by the distance of Raveloe from industrial centers.  The story can still end with a wedding, and Dolly can still insist on speaking to Mr Macey on their way to the wedding for fear of hurting his feelings (150).  Such interpersonal relationships place community on a pedestal to which people can aspire.  Still, the contrast between Lantern Yard and Raveloe at the end of the novel reflects a deep concern for what has been lost to the 'progress' of industrial revolution and the hopelessness of regaining it in a highly mobile, intellectual, and money-centered society.