Urban Boundaries in the Rural Setting of Silas Marner

In “A Tale of Two Cities,” Franco Moretti asks, “Given the over-complication of the nineteenth century urban setting—how did novels ‘read’ cities?” (79). His investigation of the answer brings readers through literary manifestations of both Paris and London and leads to the general observation that authors often simplified cities, separating them into the binary of rich areas vs. poor areas and focusing only on one of these areas.  Moretti is careful to note, however, that this was not simply author bias or laziness but that “Different spaces are not just different landscapes…they are different narrative matrixes.  Each space determines its own kind of actions, its plot—its genre” (84).  He further explores which types of stories are set in which spaces and what happens if these spaces every meet (apparently, more complexity and unpredictability) (86).  Basically, novelists can play with the boundaries of cities to determine the boundaries of their novel, to make its actions, themes, and characters more or less complex, as they choose.

But what happens when more-or-less clearly defined boundaries break down, when a novel is moved outside the city?  How might a novelist ‘read’ a more rural area? Although Moretti implies his investigations are most relevant to the “complex” city, a reading of George Eliot’s Silas Marner demonstrates that many of the same boundary issues are at play, if perhaps on a smaller scale. 

The novel is set in the fictionalized village of Raveloe.  Places mentioned in the novel include primarily Silas Marner’s house, the Stone Pits near his house, the church, the tavern, and the house of Squire Cass and his sons Godfrey and Dunsey.  Although the reader gets the impression there is really only one street in Raveloe, the village suffers from a self-imposed rich vs. poor binary.  Silas, a weaver, is poor.  Squire Cass “was only one among several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with the title Squire, for…[he actually] had a tenant or two, who complained to him quite as if he had been a lord” (20).  Their two families, not sharing a social status, share very few spaces.  The novel reflects this by running two parallel storylines, alternating chapters between events from Silas’s point-of-view and events from Godfrey’s point-of-view, demonstrating neatly Moretti’s assertion that different spaces yield “different narrative matrixes” (84).

At the very end of the novel, however, Godfrey attempts to merge the storylines, the spaces, the social statuses.  In his younger years, Godfrey had secretly married a poor woman and had a child (Eppie) with her.  On her way to confront him one winter, his wife died, and his young daughter wandered into Silas’s home.  Silas adopted and raised her; Godfrey never claimed her.  After a more socially appropriate, but barren marriage, Godfrey decides it is time to be a good father.  He goes to Silas and asks to adopt the now teenaged Eppie.

Godfrey, one of the few people of wealth in Raveloe, is personally been able to wander across boundaries throughout the novel (with his first marriage, when he collects rent from tenants, etc.), bolstering Richard Sennet’s claim (quoted in Moretti) that movement across urban spaces had a “class character” (87).  He assumes the same freedom can exist for others, but Eppie knows better, that “All spaces include some groups and exclude others; better, they include some groups because they exclude the others” (Moretti 113).  She tells Godfrey, “It ‘ud be poor work for me to put on things, and ride in a gig, and sit in a place at church, as ‘ud make them as I’m fond of think me unfitting company for ‘em” (174).  The spatial and the social elements of the boundaries are tightly linked; one element cannot substitute for the other.  Moving into Godfrey’s home can give Eppie status on a technical level, but the Raveloe people will know she is pretending to belong in a space where she does not.  Merging spaces and narratives is not as simple as Godfrey hopes; rather, it leads to the rise of entirely new complexities.

Moretti argues that nineteenth century novelists dealt with urban complexity by “reducing” it to a clear-cut binary—and often promptly ignoring one half of that binary (84).  Silas Marner demonstrates that novels featuring more rural settings can also feature such a binary.  However, since the novel is dealing with a smaller total space, it is able to depict the whole picture that Moretti seems to want: each half of the binary, the places where they touch, and what happens when they do.  When all can be viewed together then, author-imposed boundaries do not merely “simplify” subject matter, they help clarify it.

Works Cited

Eliot, George. Silas Marner. New York: Signet Classics, 2007. Print

Moretti, Franco. “A Tale of Two Cities.” Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900. New York: Verso, 1998. 79-140.