Father And Daughter Relationships In Silas Marner

According to the results of Freud’s study of “Dora”, fathers play a critical role in any girl’s development as they are protectors of their daughter’s self-esteem during a vulnerable period of life. In Silas Marner (1861) and The Book Thief(2005), both fathers prove to play an important role in their daughters’ lives. When comparing Eliot 's novel about a lonely weaver whose life was transformed by the love of his adopted daughter and Zusak 's novel about a nine year old German girl who was given up by her mother to live with her adoptive parents, I will focus on how the father and daughter relationships are viewed by contemporary readers and readers from the setting of both novels. Also I will look at the psychoanalytical readings of father

Both novels highlight the beginning of the father and daughter relationships as a remarkable moment in all of their lives. The beginning of fatherhood in Silas Marner is described as one that has changed Silas’ views and attitude towards life. Indeed, his heart beating ‘violently’ (p. 126) suggests his excitement at seeing the child. The adverb ‘violently’, emphasises the strength of his heart beating as though experiencing fear and anxiety upon seeing the baby girl, Eppie. It is as though the appearance of the child symbolises Silas being re-born as she has brought his emotions back out, which was very unlikely for Silas to display. This is because he is presented as one that has lost any motivation for anything he does apart from weaving and collecting gold and 'loved no man that he should offer him a share ' (p.18) . Silas’ re-birth affiliates with Eliot’s strong faith in Christianity when she was sent to boarding school, although at the time of writing Silas Marner, she

In Silas Marner, Silas sacrificed his bachelor life to having to take care of a child with ‘endless claims’ (p.143) of support and care on him. This shows how Silas had to change in order to adapt to fending for Eppie and for the choice of choosing to adopt her. Another matter in the theme of change for Silas is how his missing ‘gold had turned into the child’ (p.139). The gold turning into Eppie gives the connotations of the Christian belief of transubstantiation, in which bread is transformed into the body of Jesus. Transubstantiation is thought of to bring the community into a communion so when Silas’ gold transformed into Eppie, the same thing happens as the whole community of Raveloe comes together into viewing Silas as an ‘exceptional person’ (p.160). This is a great difference to how, in life before Eppie, they had ‘superstitions’ (p.160) about him. Moreover, in The Book Thief, the act of sacrifice is shown by Hans through his actions of sitting ‘sleepy-eyed’ (p.44) and would lie in a chair ‘crumpled, almost halved’ (p.44). Zusak uses the verbs ‘crumpled’ and ‘halved’ to create a strong image in the reader’s mind of what Hans looks like when Liesel wakes up to see him in the morning. To a certain degree, Hans’ sacrifice is somewhat a representation of the sacrifices that Liesel’s biological father had to make along with the decision of being a communist and going against