In the early 1800s, when spinning wheels were still popular in every household, solitary men traveled from village to village in the rural English countryside seeking work as weavers. Rural villagers, fearful of any change in their lives, often made negative assumptions about anything unusual, or even infrequent, such as the visit of a farrier or a weaver. Any special skill or intelligence was particularly frowned upon as evidence of one’s communion with evil forces, for how else was any unique ability to be gained?
One such rural weaver facing the suspicion and distrust of his neighbors is Silas Marner, a lonely figure who lives on the outskirts of Raveloe, in a cottage near the Stone Pits. The Raveloe villagers perceive Marner as strange, because of both his lonely occupation and his strange condition in which he periodically falls into a trance-like state, or fit. Marner’s isolation is due to his unfortunate youth in the distant town of Lantern Yard. In Lantern Yard, Marner was believed to be a young man of great promise among the local congregation who had once witnessed one of his fits during a service and believed it to be the mark of God’s intervention. However, Marner’s happiness is interrupted when his friend William Dane frames him as a thief. The congregation decides to draw lots to determine Marner’s fate. Marner is convinced that God will demonstrate his innocence only to find that the lots declare his guilt. Having lost his faith, Marner flees Lantern Yard.
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