Again and again, George Eliot reveals the figurative dimension in her characters' lives. All human beings live both really and figuratively, but it may take poems and fictions to reveal that dual truth. So Silas Marner often reminds us of other literary works, notably The Winter's Tale and Paulina's injunction: "It is required/ You do awake your faith."

Silas says: "Since the time the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die."

-Independent