So George Eliot wrote of Silas Marner, whose Wordsworthian theme is 'the remedial influence of pure, natural human relations'.

Long favourite among her novels and often regarded as a mere moral 'faery-tale', it contains, along with its genial humour and its mellow portraiture, many complex ironies and a great deal of pointed social criticism. Marner's spiritual dbath and his resurrection through the child Eppie and the neighbourliness of the village community have, as Mrs Leavis points out, 'a multiple typicality'; through his case are examined the dire effects of the Industrial Revolution and the rich human possibilities of a way of life that, even in George Eliot’s lifetime, was passing away.