Registration has concluded. A Newberry Library Adult Education Class. Four sessions (via Zoom), Thursdays, 2:00-4:00pm (CDT), June 6 to June 27, 2024. Register here.

Come for the deceptively simple fairy-tale premise, stay for the astonishingly modern exploration of morality, desire, historical change, and redemption.

This class invites participants to read and discuss George Eliot’s third novel in short progressive parts, with sessions designed to bring a wide array of narrative, cultural, and biographical elements into focus. In weaving together the fable of a miser seeking meaning in life with a story of betrayal and deception, Silas Marner concisely reflects Eliot’s signature erudition, sensitivity, and narrative mastery. Our sessions will feature critical analysis, historical and biographical references, relevant art works, scenes from film adaptations, and lively discussion.

Materials List

Silas Marner, by George Eliot. Penguin Classics Edition. ISBN: 978-0141439754.
Other materials will be made available online and brought to the class sessions.
For the first session, please read only chapters 1-2. Please do not read the book’s introduction or preface.

Class Description
To hear it described, you would think it was a simple fairy tale. But to read it—and discuss it—is to experience Silas Marner (1861) as a deeply accomplished and profound examination of love, belonging, community, and xenophobia. The critic George Levine noted that while Silas Marner may seem simple and is significantly shorter than Middlemarch and Eliot’s other novels, “no book of Eliot’s gives more immediate access to the mysteries of her art . . . to the central preoccupations, formal and thematic, that determine the shape and style of her novels.”

This class invites participants to read and discuss the novel in progressive parts, stopping to appreciate and discuss details of the text. Participants will read approximately fifty pages (or fewer) each week, while sessions will include extensive close reading and a running series of lecture points and slides examining the novel’s historical, cultural, and biographical elements.

Each class session features discussion of the thematic and formal dimensions of the installment at hand. I have always found that, compared to traditional book discussions, serial reading prompts a deeper and increasingly evolving commentary on specific issues, as well as a heightened sense of recurring images, a reader’s own opinions, and even a reader’s favorite lines.

All good novels actually teach readers how to read them, and serial assignments allow readers to progressively benefit from the novel’s own lessons early, identifying aspects of technique and form that significantly contribute to a a full appreciation of the rest of the novel. And while readers rarely find alternatives to the traditional method of reading a novel once and retroactively discussing “what it’s all about,” the Newberry Adult Education format gives readers the chance to understand what it means to really experience a novel, and to discuss that experience while reading.

Sessions also include spoiler-free excerpts from critical materials and tips on what to look for in subsequent installments. These tips include suggestions for noting particular plot points, character changes, and specific “must-read” sections, among other hints for active reading. PowerPoint slides will highlight many of the historical, artistic, and literary references in the novel, offering a kind of annotated intertextual experience that nevertheless stays focused on the art of Silas Marner itself. This virtual class will also feature images and discussion of the Newberry’s copy of an 1861 first edition of Silas Marner, held in the Special Collections.

Schedule
To be read ahead of time: Only chapters 1-2. Please do not read the introduction or the preface.

Session 1 (6/6/24): Chapters 1-2

Session 2 (6/13/24): Chapters 3-10

Session 3 (6/20/24) : Chapters 11-15

Session 4 (6/27/24): Chapters 16-21 and Conclusion

Image: Hugh Thomson, cover for Eliot’s Silas Marner (1907). Scan by Simon Cooke, Victorian Web.