Eliot and her politics

Silas Marner, by George Eliot.

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

Doesn't sound like a leftist, does she?

Have you heard of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa?

Her utter lack of sympathy with Molly, Godfrey's abandoned wife, speaks volumes.

Chapter 12, for example.

And why is Silas a miser, come to that?

For saving his money or for his anguish at its theft?

It is all he has to keep him from death from exposure or starvation.

But Eliot cannot see that, she cannot paint it into his character.

She sees him full of concern for his gold, but she, and so he, sees nothing of what it is for.

Or she sees it but gives it no weight, at all.