Write a note on the life of weavers as mentioned in novel
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The villagers are a provincial people, "honest folk", but "mostly not overwise or clever". Isolated from advances in the major cities of the time, they arsuspicious of things they do not understand. The linen weavers, "emigrants from the town into the country", appear to be "pallid and undersized", in contrast to "the brawny country-folk", and they "rarely stirred abroad without (a) mysteious burden...a heavy bag". Even though the people of Ravenloe suspect that the bags contain nothing more threatening than flax or perhaps linen already woven, they do not know this for sure; "superstition cling(s) easily round every person or thing that (is) at all (unusual)" for these simple folk.
In the village of Raveloe lives a weaver named Silas Marner. He is viewed with distrust by the local people because he comes from a distant part of the country. In addition, he lives completely alone, and he has been known to have strange fits. For fifteen years he has lived like this.
Fifteen years earlier, Silas was a respected member of a church at Lantern Yard in a city to the north. His fits were regarded there as a mark of special closeness to the Holy Spirit. He had a close friend named William Dane, and he was engaged to marry a serving girl named Sarah. But one day the elder deacon fell ill and had to be tended day and night by members of the congregation, as he was a childless widower. During Silas' watch, a bag of money disappears from a drawer by the deacon's bed. Silas' knife is found in the drawer, but Silas swears he is innocent and asks that his room be searched. The empty bag is found there by William Dane. Then Silas remembers that he last used the knife to cut a strap for William, but he says nothing to the others.
In order to find out the truth, the church members resort to prayer and drawing of lots, and the lots declare Silas guilty. Silas, betrayed by his friend and now by his God, declares that there is no just God. He is sure that Sarah will desert him too, and he takes refuge in his work. He soon receives word from Sarah that their engagement is ended, and a month later she marries William Dane. Soon afterward Silas leaves Lantern Yard.
He settles in Raveloe, where he feels hidden even from God. His work is at first his only solace, but soon he begins to receive gold for his cloth; the gold gives him a kind of companionship. He works harder and harder to earn more of it and stores it in a bag beneath his floor. His contacts with humanity wither. Once he gives help to a woman who is ill by treating her with herbs as his mother taught him, but this action gives him a reputation as a maker of charms. People come for miles to ask his help, and he cannot give any. As a result, he is believed to cause other misfortunes and be in league with the devil. After that, Silas is more alone than ever.
The greatest man of Raveloe is Squire Cass. His wife is dead, and his sons are left to their own devices. Some trouble results from this: the eldest son, Godfrey, has made a hasty marriage with a woman of poor reputation, and the second son, Dunstan, is blackmailing Godfrey to keep their father from knowing. Godfrey has given Dunstan some rent money from one of his father's tenants; now the Squire wants the money, so Godfrey gives Dunstan his horse to sell to raise the cash.
On the way to the hunt where he hopes to sell the horse, Dunstan passes the weaver's cottage. This sight gives him the idea of borrowing the money from Marner, but he rather likes the idea of vexing his brother, so he continues to the hunt and makes the sale. However, instead of turning over the horse at once, he rides in the chase and kills the animal on a stake.
Dunstan begins to walk home. It becomes dark and foggy before he can reach there, and in the darkness he comes to Marner's cottage. Dunstan goes there to borrow a lantern and to try to get some money out of the weaver. He finds no one there. Searching around the floor, he soon finds where the money is hidden. He replaces the bricks that had covered it and carries the money away.
Silas has poor eyesight, and on his return he finds nothing wrong until he goes to take out his money to count it. When he cannot find it, he feels that once again he has been robbed by an unseen power. However, he clings to the hope that there was a human thief, and he goes off to the village inn to find the constable.
At the inn, the conversation has been of ghosts, and when Silas bursts in he himself is momentarily taken for a ghost. But Silas is so worked up that it is apparent he is no ghost, and when he tells of the robbery, there is immediately sympathy for him. His helplessness removes any feeling that he is connected with the devil. Some of the men set out after the constable.
The news of the robbery spreads quickly, and there is soon general agreement that the thief must have been an itinerant peddler who had been in the neighborhood: no other stranger has been noticed, and no local person could be suspected. Dunstan's disappearance is not thought strange because that has happened before. Godfrey is not surprised either, for he soon learns that Dunstan has killed his horse. Now he decides to tell his father of his marriage. He leads up to this by telling of his horse and of the rent money that he had given Dunstan; but he gets no farther, for his father explodes with anger, which leaves Godfrey in a worse position than ever.