Silas Marner Part IV

Silas tells Godfrey wtih some anger that if he wanted Eppie to be his child, why did he not claim her when she was little, before he got attached to her? Godfrey is taken aback at this working man speaking up to him and tries to tell Eppie that she is his child and he has a claim on her. Silas says that he wont stand in her way if she wants to go, but Eppie says firmly that she likes being a working class girl and is engaged to a working man who will make her happy. Godfrey realises that he can't make Eppie change her mind, and that she has spent 18 years living like this and is not going to change to another class. He and Nancy assure the Marners that they will still help them but they leave. Godfrey tells his wife that he did wrong when he half hoped for his wife to die, and when he let Eppie go to Marner because he did not want to admit that she was his. Now he will be childless for life, and its a sadness to him. Silas and Eppie decide to go back to the town where Silas used to live, to see if the chapel folk there have found out that he did not steal the money all those years ago. However the town has changed, the chapel is gone and so are all the people he used to know, and there are now factories where the people work. He realises that he will never get justice for what happened to him there, that he must live with that, for life, but he has his more pleasant home in the country and he has Eppie, so they return to Raveloe and go on with thier lives. Silas has his reward.