Silas Marner

Silas Marner

Silas lives at the edge of Raveloe's social world, a suspected miser whose trance-like fits and rootless past make him an outsider even to kindly neighbors like Mr. Macey. His life contracts to the rhythm of his loom and the counted coins beneath his floor—until theft strips away his one comfort and forces him to reckon with the community he has refused. His slow thaw matters because the novel's moral center lies in whether a man can be reclaimed from isolation by love rather than gold.

Godfrey Cass

Godfrey moves through Raveloe as the presumed heir to the Red House, courting Nancy Lammeter while hiding a wife and child he cannot acknowledge. His fatal flaw is the habit of deferral—he hopes time will solve what only honesty can, and Dunsey exploits that hesitation mercilessly. His struggle between respectability and conscience drives the novel's central question of whether a man can outrun his own past.

Nancy Lammeter

Nancy rides to the Squire's party on a pillion behind her father, bewitching in drab, and carries herself with the quiet authority of a woman who knows her own worth. She loves Godfrey but will not bend her moral code—even when compassion might serve better than correctness. Her firmness shapes the novel's later reckonings, as she becomes both Godfrey's refuge and the conscience he cannot escape.

Eppie

Eppie knows no home but the stone-pit cottage, where she calls Silas father and dreams chiefly of a garden. Her warmth draws the weaver back into Raveloe's human web, and her unpretentious joy stands in quiet rebuke to the genteel world that later claims her by blood. She matters because her choice—when it comes—tests whether love or birth defines a life.

Dunstan Cass

Dunsey lives by his wits and his brother's secrets, enjoying the self-important swagger of a man who believes himself lucky. He holds Godfrey's hidden marriage over him like a lever, and his casual cruelty—toward the horse, the weaver, anyone weaker—marks him as the novel's most active agent of harm. His path past Silas's cottage sets the plot's central loss in motion.

Dolly Winthrop

Dolly embodies Raveloe's best self: unlettered but deeply decent, she treats the weaver's strange household with patience rather than suspicion. She teaches Silas to dress and christen the child, offering the rituals of community he has long refused. Her steady kindness is the human bridge that turns a miser's cottage into a home.