One of the strengths of George Eliot's novel Silas Marner is the way in which realism is mixed with morality. We believe in the characters and the setting because both are so well created in such careful detail. Yet the novel also carries a powerful sense of morality - what is right and wrong - so that after we read it, we feel that we know more about human nature and what is really important in life.
We can explore these twin themes in Chapter 19, the climax of the novel when Godfrey goes to Silas thinking that he will reclaim Eppie as his own daughter. The chapter opens with Eppie and Silas sitting in their cottage. The last time we have seen them in the novel was when Eppie had told her father that Aaron Winthrop wanted to marry her. This was a great shock for Silas: after all, we can understand how lonely he will feel without Eppie.
Eliot describes the scene realistically:
'She had drawn her own chair towards his knees, and leaned forward, holding both his hands, while she looked up at him.'
There is so much detail here that we can picture the scene for ourselves very vividly. We can see how they are sitting. If you were directing this scene in a play, you would know exactly how to position your actors.
Yet the details also suggest to us the emotion of the characters. The position shows the love that Eppie has for Silas. Eliot is a great novelist not just because she describes physical scenes realistically, but because she also captures the realism of people's emotions. She describes Silas as being in a state of 'transfiguration'. It is as if his power of thought and the depth of emotion that he is feeling has lifted him on to a higher, spiritual level. Having heard the news of Aaron's proposal of marriage to Eppie, 'The excitement has not passed away: it had only reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility makes external stimulus intolerable - when there is no sense of weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an impossibility.'
This is difficult language. Eliot is describing a state of mind. The excitement of the news is still occupying Silas' mind. His mind is so full of that news that he could not bear to have any further events going on around him, yet neither could he sleep: his brain is too active! In other words, Eliot applies realism to our emotional as well as our physical state.