The Women Of Silas Marner

2 Pages 389 Words

Silas Marner

In George Elliot’s novel, Silas Marner, the author illustrates three different types

of women through her characters. There is Nancy Lameter-Cass, who concentrates on her

role as a dutiful wife and on her husband’s happiness, her sister Priscilla, unmarried and

managing her father’s farm she has the unconventional role and is an outcast in Ravloe,

and Dolly Winthrop, who plays a good mother figure not only in her own family and to

Eppie but in the community as well.



Nancy Lameter concentrated on Godfrey Cass even before they were married.

Although Nancy tells Priscilla that she never means to be married, she thinks of being the

Squire’s wife, and treasures the dried flowers Godfrey gave her. Now that they are

married she occupies herself with thoughts of Godfrey and his state of mind. Nancy had

one child, but after the infant died, she decided that having no children was harder on

Godfrey than her, "It was very different-it was much harder for a man to be disappointed

in that way: a woman could always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but

a man wanted something that would make him look forward more-and sitting by the fire

was so much duller to him than to a woman"(158). In this novel the character of Nancy

depicts the dependent and dutiful wife.








Priscilla is the opposite of her sister Nancy. Priscilla Lameter remains unmarried

and runs her fathers farm, being as independent as a woman could be in the time period.

Priscilla "likes to see the men mastered"(98), and is often referred to as an Old Maid.

Priscilla’s being unmarried makes her the outcast in Ravloe. She never regrets her choices

in life, only her sister’s.



Dolly Winthrop is not only a mother figure in her own family but throughout the

town; after Silas found Molly Dr. Kimble addresses Godfrey "…Let somebody run to

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