After reading Karl Marx, I was reminded of the literary work of George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” This story is embedded with Marxism. The themes carry a complete materialistic undertone. The lives of each character in the book surround the obsession with monetary value. Within the life of Silas it is mistrust and abandonment that leads him into material mania, with the other characters it’s within the social class system that they lose themselves.
In the story, Silas, a weaver, is banished from his home town for being accused of stealing. He feels so betrayed when he arrives in the new town of Raveloe, he becomes obsessed with his work which provides his earnings. This becomes his only will to live. He loses all social ties and constantly works on his loom. As his faith in his old community fades, he replaces it with his fixation with money.
Eliot’s description of the way Silas looms his weave is reminiscent to Marx’s description of man becoming nothing more than a machine in the labor force. She writes “Strangely Marner’s face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart” (20).
In Marx’s “Wage and Labor Capital,” he states “the exercise of labor power, labor, is the worker’s own activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life-activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labor as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life” (660).
Marner’s earning’s then become the only value he can identify with. These earnings become a replication of his lost community and his will to exist.
Eliot also indicates Marx’s writings in the relationship carried out by one of the families in the story. This bourgeoisie family is the hierarchy of Raveloe. Marx describes this type of family in “The Manifesto of the Communist Party,” when he states “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (256).
Since Marx’s writings came right before Eliot’s his theories may have inspired her while writing Silas Marner. There is definite indication of that in the book.
Works Cited
Eliot, George. Silas Marner. New York: Penguin, 1996
Marx, Karl. “Wage Labor and Capital.” Literary Theory: An Anthology Second Edition. Ed. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, 1998. p. 660
Marx, Karl. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” Literary Theory: An Anthology Ed. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, 1998. p. 256
In the story, Silas, a weaver, is banished from his home town for being accused of stealing. He feels so betrayed when he arrives in the new town of Raveloe, he becomes obsessed with his work which provides his earnings. This becomes his only will to live. He loses all social ties and constantly works on his loom. As his faith in his old community fades, he replaces it with his fixation with money.
Eliot’s description of the way Silas looms his weave is reminiscent to Marx’s description of man becoming nothing more than a machine in the labor force. She writes “Strangely Marner’s face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart” (20).
In Marx’s “Wage and Labor Capital,” he states “the exercise of labor power, labor, is the worker’s own activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life-activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labor as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life” (660).
Marner’s earning’s then become the only value he can identify with. These earnings become a replication of his lost community and his will to exist.
Eliot also indicates Marx’s writings in the relationship carried out by one of the families in the story. This bourgeoisie family is the hierarchy of Raveloe. Marx describes this type of family in “The Manifesto of the Communist Party,” when he states “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (256).
Since Marx’s writings came right before Eliot’s his theories may have inspired her while writing Silas Marner. There is definite indication of that in the book.
Works Cited
Eliot, George. Silas Marner. New York: Penguin, 1996
Marx, Karl. “Wage Labor and Capital.” Literary Theory: An Anthology Second Edition. Ed. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, 1998. p. 660
Marx, Karl. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” Literary Theory: An Anthology Ed. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, 1998. p. 256
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