How Eliot presents Eppie, and how the character develops across the text: the child who walks into Silas's cottage and grows into a loving, spirited young woman who chooses Silas over her wealthy birth father.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head', 'Eppie was a creature of endless claims and ever-growing desires', 'stirring the human kindness in all eyes that looked on her', 'Eppie called him away from his weaving', 'a blonde dimpled girl of eighteen', 'She does not like to be blameworthy even in small things', 'I always think the flowers can see us', 'My little old daddy!', 'I don’t want any change', 'If it hadn’t been for you, they’d have taken me to the workhouse, and there’d have been nobody to love me', 'I can’t think o’ no happiness without him', 'I’ll cleave to him as long as he lives', 'I can’t feel as I’ve got any father but one', 'I like the working-folks, and their victuals, and their ways'.
Eppie as a symbol of renewal, her golden hair recalling the lost gold, and as a character with a will of her own.
Her choice between the father who raised her and the father by blood who offers her a lady's life.
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.
