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Silas Marner and the Ecology of Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2020

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Abstract

This article explores the ecology of form presented in George Eliot's novel Silas Marner. Though many have read the novel as a tight-knit account of an organic society, this author reads a more disorienting, emergent, and conflicted study of the coproduction of lives and environment. George Henry Lewes's account of physiology, particularly his discussion of epigenesis, is foundational to this disorganizing turn in Eliot's fiction. Finally, the author explores how the contingent relation between Eppie and Silas Marner underlines the recent convergence between discussions of queer futurity and the agential turn in ecocriticism.

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Microbiome
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Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 48 , Special Issue 1: Open Ecologies , Spring 2020 , pp. 299 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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