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Silas Marner

A pale, large-eyed linen-weaver who was falsely accused of theft by his best friend in the dissenting sect of Lantern Yard and fled to Raveloe, where he lived as a friendless outsider for fifteen years. He hoarded his earnings as gold coins hidden beneath his cottage floor, counting and handling them nightly, until the hoard was stolen. He suffers occasional cataleptic fits that leave him rigid and unresponsive for minutes at a time, which the villagers regard as evidence of sorcery or his soul leaving his body. After a foundling child wanders onto his hearth, he raises her as his own daughter, naming her Hephzibah (Eppie) after his mother and sister.

William Dane

Silas Marner's closest friend among the Lantern Yard brethren, nicknamed with Silas as 'David and Jonathan.' Outwardly pious and confident of his own salvation, he secretly framed Silas for the theft of chapel funds by planting the money-bag in Silas's own room while Silas was in one of his trance-like fits. He later married Sarah, Silas's former fiancée, after the accusation destroyed Silas's standing in the congregation.

Sarah

Silas Marner's fiancée in Lantern Yard before his disgrace. After he was accused of theft, she broke off their engagement on the advice of the church elders and married William Dane within a month, prompting Silas to leave the town entirely.

Godfrey Cass

The handsome, good-natured eldest son of Squire Cass, torn between his affection for Nancy Lammeter and a secret first marriage to an opium-addicted woman he is ashamed of. He pays his brother Dunstan to keep the marriage hidden, and after his first wife dies in the snow near Silas Marner's cottage, he allows Marner to raise their daughter Eppie without acknowledging her as his own. Years later, once his hoard-thief brother's skeleton is found, he confesses everything to his second wife Nancy and attempts, too late, to reclaim Eppie as his daughter.

Dunstan 'Dunsey' Cass

The dissolute, spiteful second son of Squire Cass, given to gambling, drinking, and cruelty for its own amusement. He blackmails his brother Godfrey over the secret marriage and, sent to sell Godfrey's horse Wildfire, kills the animal in a hunting accident. Left without money, he breaks into Silas Marner's cottage, steals his entire hoard of gold, and then vanishes; his skeleton and Marner's money are found together at the bottom of the drained Stone-pits many years later.

Squire Cass

The proud but financially careless leading landowner of Raveloe, widowed and presiding over a household without a mistress, the Red House. He farms badly but lives well on wartime profits, keeps lavish holiday feasts, and is embarrassed by both his idle sons, especially Dunstan's gambling and Godfrey's evasiveness.

Nancy Lammeter

A precise, morally scrupulous young woman of a well-regarded farming family, admired throughout Raveloe for her beauty and orderly habits. She eventually marries Godfrey Cass despite his troubled past, remains childless, and near the book's end refuses to let a nurse-child be adopted in place of a true daughter, a decision revisited when Eppie's parentage comes to light.

Priscilla Lammeter

Nancy's plain-spoken, cheerful elder sister, unmarried by choice and devoted to running her father's dairy and household affairs. She appears at the Squire's New Year's dance helping Nancy dress and offering blunt opinions on gowns and men alike.

Mr. Lammeter

Nancy and Priscilla's father, a grave, upright, high-featured farmer known for the saying that 'breed was stronger than pasture.' He is respected across Raveloe for probity and the memory of his late wife, and withholds full approval of a match with the Cass family until he sees genuine improvement in Godfrey.

Eppie

A golden-haired toddler who wanders through the snow into Silas Marner's cottage the night her opium-addicted mother dies near the Stone-pits; Marner adopts and raises her as his own. She grows up cheerful, affectionate, and unspoiled by village gossip, eventually marries Aaron Winthrop, and chooses to remain with her adoptive father at the Stone-pits cottage rather than be claimed by her biological father Godfrey Cass.

Dolly Winthrop

A kind, endlessly dutiful Raveloe wife known for nursing the sick and dying across the parish. She befriends Silas Marner after Eppie's arrival, teaches him how to dress and care for the child, gives him her son Aaron's old clothes, and gently urges him to attend church, becoming Eppie's godmother.

Ben Winthrop

Dolly Winthrop's jovial, ale-loving husband, fond of jokes at the Rainbow, whose good humor contrasts with his wife's solemnity. Their son Aaron eventually grows up to marry Eppie.

Aaron Winthrop

Dolly and Ben Winthrop's son, first shown as a small boy wary of Silas Marner but tempted by his lard-cake, who later grows into a respectable young man in a fustian suit and marries Eppie.

Mr. Macey

The elderly parish clerk of Raveloe, fond of retelling old stories at the Rainbow, including how a slip of the tongue during Mr. Lammeter's wedding service was excused by the officiating parson as immaterial to the marriage register. He claims special knowledge of the law and church lore, and is the first to suggest that Silas Marner's soul 'goes loose' from his body during his fits.

Solomon Macey

An old fiddler with long white hair who plays at the Squire's Christmas dance in the White Parlour, leading the company into dances such as 'Over the hills and far away' and 'Sir Roger de Coverley.'

Mr. Snell

The even-tempered landlord of the Rainbow Inn, who maintains careful neutrality in the pub's endless arguments and takes charge of organizing the search for evidence after Silas Marner's robbery is reported.

Mr. Kimble

The village doctor, summoned whenever there is illness or death in Raveloe, including the night the unknown woman is found dead in the snow near the Stone-pits; he is also Godfrey Cass's uncle by marriage.

Raveloe

A prosperous, insular farming village set in a snug wooded hollow an hour's ride from any turnpike road, far from the reach of coach-horns or outside opinion. It has a fine old church and large churchyard, several well-off farming families living in rollicking ease on wartime profits, and a strong communal suspicion of outsiders, cleverness, and unfamiliar trades like weaving.

Lantern Yard

A narrow city street and the dissenting chapel congregation to which Silas Marner once belonged, marked by close brotherly ties, intense talk of religious 'Assurance of salvation,' and a rigid system of communal judgment that condemned Silas on circumstantial evidence of theft. Decades later the street and chapel have been demolished and replaced by a factory, leaving no trace for Silas to find when he returns seeking vindication.

Silas Marner's cottage and the Stone-pits

A stone cottage among nutty hedgerows on the edge of a deserted, eventually mostly-drained stone quarry (the Stone-pits) near Raveloe. Here Silas keeps his loom, hides his hoard of gold beneath the floor, and later finds Eppie asleep on his hearth; years afterward the drained pit yields both his stolen gold and Dunstan Cass's skeleton.

Red House

Squire Cass's home in Raveloe, run without a mistress since his wife's death, known for profuse but poorly finished holiday feasts and a general laxity that let his sons Godfrey and Dunstan grow up idle. It hosts the New Year's dance in the White Parlour where Godfrey and Nancy's courtship advances.

The Rainbow Inn

Raveloe's public house, presided over by landlord Mr. Snell, and the village's true center of gossip, debate, and local justice, where farmers, the parish clerk, the farrier, and the wheelwright-choirmaster argue over everything from pronunciation to the supernatural. It becomes the informal headquarters for investigating Silas Marner's robbery and, years later, the site where his recovered skeleton evidence and stolen gold are laid out.

Lantern Yard Chapel Congregation

A tight-knit dissenting religious brotherhood in an unnamed industrial town, whose members address one another as brethren and prize personal testimonies of religious assurance. Their communal system of judging guilt by drawing lots and searching a suspect's home led directly to Silas Marner's wrongful expulsion after William Dane framed him for theft.

Silas Marner's hoard of gold

Silas's life savings from years of weaving, kept as coins hidden in two leather bags beneath a brick in his cottage floor, which he counts and fondles nightly as his sole emotional comfort. Stolen by Dunstan Cass, the loss plunges Silas into desolation until the money is finally recovered years later at the bottom of the drained Stone-pits alongside Dunstan's remains.

Wildfire

Godfrey Cass's horse, sent with Dunstan to be sold to cover a debt to their father. Dunstan rides it recklessly in a hunt and it is killed, an accident that removes Dunstan's planned solution to the brothers' money troubles and sets him toward robbing Silas Marner instead.

Wedding ring in a lacquered shoe-box

The plain wedding ring taken from the finger of the dead woman found in the snow, kept by Silas Marner in a small lacquered box shaped like a shoe and later given into Eppie's keeping as she grows up, serving as her only tangible link to her unknown parentage.

Superstition surrounding itinerant weavers

In this rural setting, wandering linen-weavers who migrate from towns into the countryside are viewed by settled farming communities as a 'disinherited race,' pale and undersized compared to brawny country-folk, and are regarded with suspicion bordering on belief in sorcery. Any skill, cleverness, or unexplained trade is treated as faintly diabolical, and villagers alternately fear and seek out such men for charms against illness, as happened to Silas Marner when Raveloe folk asked him to cure rheumatism and whooping-cough.

The robbery and disappearance of Dunstan Cass

After Silas Marner's hoard of gold vanishes on the same night Dunstan Cass disappears, Raveloe divides into two camps: those who blame a mysterious pedlar seen carrying a tinder-box near Marner's cottage, and those who believe the theft is an unsolvable mystery. The truth is not discovered for years, until the Stone-pits are drained and Dunstan's skeleton is found at the bottom together with Silas's stolen money, finally exonerating the pedlar and revealing what really happened that night.