The Limits of Human Knowledge Theme Analysis

While characters in Silas Marner may influence their own future through their choices and actions, certain key events depend upon inexplicable good or bad fortune appearing in characters’ lives. Such events may be attributed to chance or to the will of a divine being. Regardless of chosen explanations, these events are beyond the control and rational understanding of George Eliot’s characters.

While the reader is presented with the full account of Dunstan’s theft and Eppie’s appearance in Silas Marner’s cottage, to Marner both the loss and gain are of a magical, mysterious nature. Upon Eppie’s appearance on his heath, Marner assumes that her presence must be the result of a divine act because he cannot imagine an ordinary way by which this child might have appeared. Later, Marner can only explain this mysterious event in terms of an exchange from an unknown source: the money is gone to an unknown place and Eppie has arrived from an unknown place.

Similarly, Marner is never able to resolve the false accusations leveled against him in Lantern Yard because the town is completely replaced by new buildings and new townsfolk when he returns there thirty years later. When Marner recounts this story to Dolly Winthrop, she describes the reasons behind events as “dark” to human perception. Dolly Winthrop’s character presents the viewpoint that human knowledge is limited and omniscience belongs to higher powers. Mrs. Winthrop’s acceptance of the restricted scope of human knowledge is expressed as she discusses why Silas Marner was falsely accused in his youth at Lantern Yard. She believes that the true good behind all events is known only to some divine being. The country wisdom of the men at the Rainbow, the local pub, follows a similar pattern. While the local folks are strongly influenced by superstition, cringing from fears of ghosts or other unexplained phenomena, they don’t seek answers to their questions, but instead admit that there are explanations beyond human knowledge.