ABSTRACT
Collectors appear very frequently in George Eliot’s fiction. No doubt, Silas Marner with his hoard of gold is the most well-known; as he collects the gold, his heart is as hard and cold as the gold itself, and he lives in selfish isolation. But when his collection is stolen, he reaches out to others, and he begins to grow more mature morally, according to George Eliot’s ethical standards. This moral growth is indicated by his increased capacity for sympathetic understanding and his deepening appreciation of the impact of the past on the present. The numerous collectors in George Eliot’s fiction convey her moral message in a variety of ways. A number of those collectors – like Silas Marner – use their collections as a kind of barrier between themselves and the people around them because they have been hurt by the selfishness of their loved ones or by misguided attempts to practice an artificial and self-serving religious doctrine. Throughout her fiction, George Eliot collects various types of characters such as clerics. She judges the effectiveness of her clerics by the standards of her own unorthodox system of morality which is based on her belief that it is the common characteristic of humanity in any time and the nature of men of any race to need sympathy, pity, and love. She believes that these inherent demands of human nature are stronger and wider than any religious system and that developing dogma and ascribing to creeds only narrow man’s vision, stultify his growth, and lead to spiritual isolation.
