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George Eliot wrote Silas Marner in 1861. It is probable that she was influenced by William Wordsworth who was one of the ‘Romantic Poets’ who wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Romantic poets put strong emphasis on the natural world and celebrated beauty and simplicity. It is for this reason that the child was a common theme in their poems. One of Wordsworth’s major ideas, radical at the time, was that human beings move at the moment of birth from a perfect idealized ‘other world’ to this imperfect world, characterized by injustice and corruption. Children, being closer to that other world can remember its beauty and purity, seeing its traces in the natural world around them. As they grow up they lose that connection and forget the knowledge they had as children. Eliot was quoted as believing that children and the memories of childhood they evoke in adults can still bring us close to that early idyllic state. In Silas Marner we can see that Eliot uses these ideas in her presentation of the children in the story and most particularly in her presentation of Eppie. Eppie is the first child we see in Silas Marner. Throughout the book she is associated with light, gold, innocence, nature, angels, beauty