Oct 5, 2020
In the early parts of the novel, Godfrey Cass and his feckless younger brother Dunstan are unusual in apparently having no work to do. Their idleness condemns them to vice and folly. In pre-Victorian English fiction there was no obvious stigma attached to being without employment. A ‘gentleman’ was usually, indeed, someone who did not have to work for a living. By contrast, few Victorian novels are without instances of the ennobling influence of work.
An introduction to Silas Marner: fairytale, realism and labour", John Mullan, 2014.