Silas Marner

The door was open, and it walked in over the snow, like as if it had been a little starved robin. Didn't you say the door was open? Yes—the door was open. The money's gone I don't know where, and this is come from I don't know where.

Lantern Yard exile, hoarded gold, theft, and Eppie's arrival replace coin with child as plot engine; Godfrey's secret and the final adoption choice complete a compact redemption arc, so plot scores 86.

In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, certain pallid undersized men, who looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.

Silas the wounded isolate, Eppie the regenerating child, Godfrey/Nancy the respectable guilt, and Dolly the village conscience each externalize community versus secrecy, so cast scores 88.

And for the matter o' that, if the talk is to be o' the Lammeters, you know the most upo' that head, eh, Mr. Macey? You remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into these parts, and took the Warrens?

Part I lingers on village table-talk and custom before the child pivot; Part II accelerates through adoption and the Lantern Yard coda, so pace scores 82.

And to think of its being covered wi' them dirty rags—and the poor mother—froze to death; but there's Them as took care of it, and brought it to your door, Master Marner.

Eliot's measured realism fuses Wordsworthian epigraph with ironical village speech; moral psychology on the hearth renders without melodrama, so prose scores 90.

Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness.

Raveloe lanes, Stone Pits, the Rainbow, and Lantern Yard memory map English provincial life as moral theater where chapel and harvest frame character, so world scores 87.

There might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.

Ch.I classifies the weaver as a disinherited type beside brawny countryfolk — establishes mystery and social diagnosis before plot incident, so hook scores 84.

The little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow, the old grimy shawl in which it was wrapped trailing behind it, and the queer little bonnet dangling by its string.

Stolen gold replaced by a living child rewrites the miser fable as domestic theology; Eliot's provincial case study anticipates psychological realism, so innov scores 86.

I want to see Mr. Paston, the minister: something may ha' come out to make 'em know I was innicent o' the robbery. Eppie was very joyful, for there was the prospect not only of wonder and delight at seeing a strange country, but also of coming back to tell Aaron all about it.

Eppie's refusal to leave Silas for gentry comfort, coupled with clearing the Lantern Yard name, resolves adoption over blood without false uplift, so ending scores 89.