Silas Marner

The number three, common in fairy tales, is often associated with the figure of the fool or dwarf who tells his lord three truths or pays him three compliments (Tietze-Conrat 13). Moreover, the tale could be linked with the three fates, or three spinners, that Freud discusses in his essay The Theme of the Three Caskets. Freud notes that the choice between three ineluctably ends with the third element—death lead (the third casket of The Merchant of Venice), or here, Rumpelstiltskin s name or the girl s spinning. Silas Marner is also organized around threes. I have already invoked Kofman s compelling discussion of the apparent choice in Shakespeare s comedy as masking the fact that metals are, materially, ambivalent—that is, they are all subject to potential reverse transformation. 

In the genealogy of capitalist production, Marx notes that the spinning wheel and the loom (standing as signs of the alchemical in the present context and central to Rumpelstiltskin and Silas Marner) were not invented by capitalism, but capitalism appropriated them. Marx ridicules the idea that the capitalist stored up raw materials, necessities, and tools, and then offered them to the worker so that he might produce for the capitalist. Rather, nature, raw materials, and tools develop alongside of capitalism, and in a complex relationship with labor. 

Labor power initially determines value. Early on, Marx may have accepted the Ricardian notion that gold and silver receive their value from supply and demand, but he later decided that the values of gold and silver conformed to the law of value and were determined by costs of production, or more exactly by the socially necessary labour-time involved in their production (Nelson 69). So the introduction of industrial machinery to weaving devalues a laborer like Silas Marner, who stays at home and continues to use his handloom. From here, Marx extends the analogy. If we could succeed at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks (Marx 1867, 40). Like alchemy, this hypothetical conversion is simply a natural process, sped up. But whereas in alchemy the successful conversion of... 

Eliot, George. Silas Marner. London Dent, 1949. 

Wiesenfarth, Joseph. Demythologizing Silas Marner. ELHjj, no. 2 (June 1970) 226-44. 

Throughout Silas Marner, George Eliot uses vocabulary, sentence structure, and philosophical commentary to teach her reader a moral. 

The Rise of Silas Lapham Robinson Crusoe Roman Classics Romeo and Juliet The Scarlet Letter A Separate Peace Shakespeare s Comedies Shakespeare s Histories Shakespeare s Minor Plays Shakespeare s Sonnets Shakespeare s Tragedies Shaw s Pygmalion Arms... Silas Marner... 

George Eliot s Silas Marner. Edited by G. A. Wauchpoe, Professor in the University of South Carolina. Cloth. 288 pages. Illustrated. 35 cents. 

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