The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of <i>Silas Marner</i> by George Eliot

Maurice Gning

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11

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The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot

Maurice Gning

Published in International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 10, Issue 6)

Received: 8 September 2022 Accepted: 17 October 2022 Published: 4 November 2022

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Abstract

This paper is a reflexion on the morality of the Victorian society as reflected by the British Writer, George Eliot, in her novel Silas Marner (1861). Set in England in the early years of the 19^th century, Eliot’s novel offers a complex view of the ethical landscape of the UK in the era of Industrial Revolution. Using a Christian approach of ethics, the study examines how the advent of industrialization fosters a new mentality among Victorians, engendering therefore a crisis of ethics. The analysis concludes that the state of mind of most nineteenth-century British people is incompatible with the rigid Christian-based moral standards set by Queen Victoria (1837-1901) to maintain a high morality in a period where the UK is a world reference in nearly all domains of life. Though given much importance in the Victorian era, at least in appearance, religion is no longer reliable to be source of moral standards. This reality leads first to a crisis of faith that implies existential and social consequences as can be observed with the novel’s protagonist, Silas Marner. It also brings about a general moral crisis essentially illustrated by the immoral and or selfish attitudes of certain characters. Such a crisis, which paradoxically starts in the church, can be traced both in the family private space and in the public and broader space of the society. The crisis of morality also manifests itself through the multiplicity of personal, secular and relative ethical positions that are most of the time contradictory, making then living together quite a difficult matter. The foregrounding of the Victorian moral disaster in Silas Marner does not however overshadow Eliot’s successful attempt to suggest new ethical lines that would be more adequate in the secular and industrialized age.

Published in	International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 10, Issue 6)
DOI	10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11
Page(s)	335-343
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Ethics, Crisis, Victorian Society, Materialism, Christianity, George Eliot, Silas Marner

References

[1]	Deigh, J. & Audi, R. (ed). (1995). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: CUP.
[2]	Eliot, G. (1996). Silas Marner. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
[3]	Frame, J. M. (2008). The Doctrine of the Christian Life: A Theology of Lordship. Phillipsburg: NJ: P&R.
[4]	Gning, M. (2020). "The Ethical Void or the Parody of Western Modernity in Golding’s Lord of the Flies". Regalish, Numéro: 6, décembre, pp. 1-18.
[5]	Haight, G. (1954). George Eliot letters. New Haven: Yale University Press. 9 vols.
[6]	Jones, R. T. (1970). George Eliot. Cambridge: CUP.
[7]	Kurti, P. (2017). Reason, Repentance, and the Individual: Recovering the Religious Roots of Western Civilisation. CIS Occasional Paper 160, The Centre for Independent Studies.
[8]	Mazaheri, J. H. (2012). George Eliot’s Spiritual Quest in Silas Marner. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
[9]	Purkis, J. (1985). A Preface to George Eliot. London & New York: Longman.
[10]	Ratzinger J. C. (2022). "Europe in the Crisis of Cultures" https://www.theway.org.uk/endeanweb/ratzinger32-2.pdf, accessed 2 September.
[11]	Xiao, B. (2015). "Morality in Victorian Period, Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 5, No. 9, pp. 1815-1821.
[12]	Zhang, L. & Zeng, L. (2013). "A Moral World Without God", Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 445-451, March.
[13]	The English Standard Version Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha. (2009).
[14]	Robbins, W. (1959). The Ethical Idealism of Matthew Arnold. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
[15]	Viktória, K. L. "Close your Eyes and Think of England’ Ethics or Prudery: Moral Questions in Victorian England" http://www.uni-miskolc.hu/~microcad/publikaciok/2015/G4_Kopaszne_Lang_Viktoria.pdf, accessed 5 August 2022.
[16]	The Victorian Age & The Industrial Revolution.doc (ucm.es), accessed 05 July 2022.
[17]	Campbell, P. A. C. (1959). Middlemarch and Morality: A Study of the Development of George Eliot’s Ethical Creed. Master of Art Thesis, Department of English, the University of British Columbia, April.
[18]	Spinoza de B. (1981). Ethics, trans. George Eliot. Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universitiit Salzburg.
[19]	Hensen M. (2009). George Eliot’s Middlemrch as a Translation of Spinoza’s Ethics. The George Eliot Review. Department of English, University of Nebraska.

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Maurice Gning. (2022). The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 10(6), 335-343. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11

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Maurice Gning. The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2022, 10(6), 335-343. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11

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Maurice Gning. The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot. Int J Lit Arts. 2022;10(6):335-343. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11

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@article{10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11,
  author = {Maurice Gning},
  title = {The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot},
  journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
  volume = {10},
  number = {6},
  pages = {335-343},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20221006.11},
  abstract = {This paper is a reflexion on the morality of the Victorian society as reflected by the British Writer, George Eliot, in her novel Silas Marner (1861). Set in England in the early years of the 19th century, Eliot’s novel offers a complex view of the ethical landscape of the UK in the era of Industrial Revolution. Using a Christian approach of ethics, the study examines how the advent of industrialization fosters a new mentality among Victorians, engendering therefore a crisis of ethics. The analysis concludes that the state of mind of most nineteenth-century British people is incompatible with the rigid Christian-based moral standards set by Queen Victoria (1837-1901) to maintain a high morality in a period where the UK is a world reference in nearly all domains of life. Though given much importance in the Victorian era, at least in appearance, religion is no longer reliable to be source of moral standards. This reality leads first to a crisis of faith that implies existential and social consequences as can be observed with the novel’s protagonist, Silas Marner. It also brings about a general moral crisis essentially illustrated by the immoral and or selfish attitudes of certain characters. Such a crisis, which paradoxically starts in the church, can be traced both in the family private space and in the public and broader space of the society. The crisis of morality also manifests itself through the multiplicity of personal, secular and relative ethical positions that are most of the time contradictory, making then living together quite a difficult matter. The foregrounding of the Victorian moral disaster in Silas Marner does not however overshadow Eliot’s successful attempt to suggest new ethical lines that would be more adequate in the secular and industrialized age.},
 year = {2022}
}

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AB  - This paper is a reflexion on the morality of the Victorian society as reflected by the British Writer, George Eliot, in her novel Silas Marner (1861). Set in England in the early years of the 19th century, Eliot’s novel offers a complex view of the ethical landscape of the UK in the era of Industrial Revolution. Using a Christian approach of ethics, the study examines how the advent of industrialization fosters a new mentality among Victorians, engendering therefore a crisis of ethics. The analysis concludes that the state of mind of most nineteenth-century British people is incompatible with the rigid Christian-based moral standards set by Queen Victoria (1837-1901) to maintain a high morality in a period where the UK is a world reference in nearly all domains of life. Though given much importance in the Victorian era, at least in appearance, religion is no longer reliable to be source of moral standards. This reality leads first to a crisis of faith that implies existential and social consequences as can be observed with the novel’s protagonist, Silas Marner. It also brings about a general moral crisis essentially illustrated by the immoral and or selfish attitudes of certain characters. Such a crisis, which paradoxically starts in the church, can be traced both in the family private space and in the public and broader space of the society. The crisis of morality also manifests itself through the multiplicity of personal, secular and relative ethical positions that are most of the time contradictory, making then living together quite a difficult matter. The foregrounding of the Victorian moral disaster in Silas Marner does not however overshadow Eliot’s successful attempt to suggest new ethical lines that would be more adequate in the secular and industrialized age.
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Maurice Gning

Department of English, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Gaston Berger University, Saint-Louis, Senegal

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Maurice Gning. (2022). The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 10(6), 335-343. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11

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Maurice Gning. The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2022, 10(6), 335-343. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11

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AMA Style

Maurice Gning. The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot. Int J Lit Arts. 2022;10(6):335-343. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11

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@article{10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11,
  author = {Maurice Gning},
  title = {The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot},
  journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
  volume = {10},
  number = {6},
  pages = {335-343},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20221006.11},
  abstract = {This paper is a reflexion on the morality of the Victorian society as reflected by the British Writer, George Eliot, in her novel Silas Marner (1861). Set in England in the early years of the 19th century, Eliot’s novel offers a complex view of the ethical landscape of the UK in the era of Industrial Revolution. Using a Christian approach of ethics, the study examines how the advent of industrialization fosters a new mentality among Victorians, engendering therefore a crisis of ethics. The analysis concludes that the state of mind of most nineteenth-century British people is incompatible with the rigid Christian-based moral standards set by Queen Victoria (1837-1901) to maintain a high morality in a period where the UK is a world reference in nearly all domains of life. Though given much importance in the Victorian era, at least in appearance, religion is no longer reliable to be source of moral standards. This reality leads first to a crisis of faith that implies existential and social consequences as can be observed with the novel’s protagonist, Silas Marner. It also brings about a general moral crisis essentially illustrated by the immoral and or selfish attitudes of certain characters. Such a crisis, which paradoxically starts in the church, can be traced both in the family private space and in the public and broader space of the society. The crisis of morality also manifests itself through the multiplicity of personal, secular and relative ethical positions that are most of the time contradictory, making then living together quite a difficult matter. The foregrounding of the Victorian moral disaster in Silas Marner does not however overshadow Eliot’s successful attempt to suggest new ethical lines that would be more adequate in the secular and industrialized age.},
 year = {2022}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - The Crisis of Ethics in Victorian Britain: A Critical Analysis of Silas Marner by George Eliot
AU  - Maurice Gning
Y1  - 2022/11/04
PY  - 2022
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11
T2  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
JF  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
JO  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
SP  - 335
EP  - 343
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2331-057X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221006.11
AB  - This paper is a reflexion on the morality of the Victorian society as reflected by the British Writer, George Eliot, in her novel Silas Marner (1861). Set in England in the early years of the 19th century, Eliot’s novel offers a complex view of the ethical landscape of the UK in the era of Industrial Revolution. Using a Christian approach of ethics, the study examines how the advent of industrialization fosters a new mentality among Victorians, engendering therefore a crisis of ethics. The analysis concludes that the state of mind of most nineteenth-century British people is incompatible with the rigid Christian-based moral standards set by Queen Victoria (1837-1901) to maintain a high morality in a period where the UK is a world reference in nearly all domains of life. Though given much importance in the Victorian era, at least in appearance, religion is no longer reliable to be source of moral standards. This reality leads first to a crisis of faith that implies existential and social consequences as can be observed with the novel’s protagonist, Silas Marner. It also brings about a general moral crisis essentially illustrated by the immoral and or selfish attitudes of certain characters. Such a crisis, which paradoxically starts in the church, can be traced both in the family private space and in the public and broader space of the society. The crisis of morality also manifests itself through the multiplicity of personal, secular and relative ethical positions that are most of the time contradictory, making then living together quite a difficult matter. The foregrounding of the Victorian moral disaster in Silas Marner does not however overshadow Eliot’s successful attempt to suggest new ethical lines that would be more adequate in the secular and industrialized age.
VL  - 10
IS  - 6
ER  -

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