Finding a Life

In George Eliot’s novel Silas Marner (1862) the story is explicitly about forms of parenthood—in one case unexpected (and transformational for the parent). A foundling is found, and a single man takes her on. As a result of this unsought adoption, the solitary weaver Silas Marner is given a new life as a father. A second strand of the novel concerns the childlessness of the girl’s original father and his wife. His attempt, with her support and her own thwarted motherhood, to reclaim his daughter many years later occasions the clash of incommensurable claims to rightful fatherhood. At this point of crisis and culmination Eliot’s novel endorses the grown child Effie’s choice of her lower-class adoptive father over the wealthier natural father; the relationship is idealized as primary in both their lives.