Religion and faith — Silas Marner — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Religion and faith
Themes
What you need to know
How Eliot explores faith lost and found, from Lantern Yard's narrow chapel and its drawing of lots to Raveloe's church and Dolly's simple trust across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'the church assembling in Lantern Yard', 'this trance looked more like a visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favour', 'they resolved on praying and drawing lots', 'that shaken trust in God and man, which is little short of madness to a loving nature', 'the sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable', 'there was no Unseen Love that cared for him', 'because he thought too much of it and never came to church', 'I went to chapel', 'The fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had not yet been unlocked', 'appeared for the first time within the church', 'there’s drawing o’ lots in the Bible, mind you', 'That drawing o’ the lots is dark; but the child was sent to me: there’s dealings with us', 'It’s dark to me, Mrs. Winthrop, that is; I doubt it’ll be dark to the last', 'I think I shall trusten till I die'.
Context: Dissenters and the Church of England, and drawing lots to learn God's will.
Eliot's own loss of faith, and her sympathy for religion as feeling, trust and fellowship rather than doctrine.
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.
