Chapters 11 to 15: Eppie comes to Silas — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Chapters 11 to 15: Eppie comes to Silas
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The New Year's Eve dance at the Red House, with Nancy Lammeter and her sister Priscilla; Molly's journey through the snow with her child and her death;
the child toddling to Silas's hearth; Godfrey's silence; and Silas's choice to keep the child, whom he names Eppie and brings up with Dolly's help.
Key quotations: 'a premeditated act of vengeance', 'the demon Opium to whom she was enslaved, body and soul', 'toddled on to the open door of Silas Marner’s cottage', 'Gold!—his own gold—brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!', 'his fingers encountered soft warm curls', 'dead in the snow at the Stone-pits', 'I can’t part with it, I can’t let it go', 'Is she dead?', 'the child was come instead of the gold—that the gold had turned into the child', 'Eppie in de toal-hole!', 'the hand may be a little child’s', 'That was a father’s duty.'.
Structure: two scenes on the same night, the warm, bright dance at the Red House and Molly's lonely death in the snow, joined when Silas carries the child into the party.
Symbol: the child's golden hair, which Silas first takes for his lost gold.
Eduqas's essay on this novel marks context as much as response and analysis: weave context into the argument, and treat the printed extract as a starting point, ranging across the beginning, middle and end of the novel.
