George Eliot considers the dialect a living thing that she likes, works hard for, and appreciates expecting a public recognition and understanding of the value of dialect in literature, “Perhaps, unless a poet has a dialect ringing in his ears, so as to shape his metre and rhymes according to it at one jet, it is better to be content with a few suggestive touches; and I fear that the stupid public is not half grateful for studies in dialect beyond such suggestions” (Eliot, 2004, p. 658). The dialect in Silas Marner is particularly exceptional since Eliot goes back to her infant moments in the meadows of the Midlands; she revives her jolly innocent past and makes the reader appreciate such nostalgic references to nature and pastures in the rural areas of Warwickshire. “Hating the conditions of life in London, she remembered her childhood not only for its greenfields and her mother’s dairy but for the aesthetic aspects of Nature which shaped the lives of a people whose human achievement in creating a community she deeply respected; a people whose speech, an art of expression manifested in a dialect notable for its force, rhythm, and
subtlety, had a flavor quite absent from educated English” (Leavis in Eliot, 1985,
pp. 40-41).
The story is plotted in such a way that we admire every simple matter—the characters, the setting and the talk.
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