Chapters 16 to 18: sixteen years later — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Chapters 16 to 18: sixteen years later
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Sixteen years on: Silas and Eppie at home, Aaron's offer to dig a garden, Silas telling Dolly about Lantern Yard, and Aaron's wish to marry Eppie;
Godfrey and Nancy's childless marriage and her refusal to adopt; the draining of the Stone-pit, which reveals Dunstan's skeleton and the gold; and Godfrey's confession to Nancy.
Key quotations: 'sixteen years after Silas Marner had found his new treasure on the hearth', 'I wish we had a little garden, father', 'your father was a lone man till you was sent to him', 'But you’ll never be lone again, father', 'things will change, whether we like it or no', 'the absence of children from their hearth', 'the water’s gone down since yesterday', 'Dunstan was the man that robbed Silas Marner.', 'Eppie is my child.', 'Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago, we could have done some of our duty by the child.'.
Structure: the sixteen-year gap, told through what has changed, and the draining of the pit that brings the buried past to light.
Setting: the cottage made a home, with its garden and animals, and the Red House's polished parlour under Nancy's care.
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
