Kinship Destruction as a Result of England’s Social Stratification Reflected on George Eliot’s Silas Marner

Abstract

Industrialization in England had a great impact on the life of the world. However, the emergence of stratification sometimes leads society to divisions where conflict is inevitable. The condition let the true human relation be fractured. George Eliot’s Silas Marner portrays the class stratification classes in Warwickshire, England. The aims of this study are to describe kinship destruction as the result of English’s social stratification in George Eliot’s Silas Marner and to explain the reflection of society’s world vision where the author lived on the novel. The method used is the qualitative study and analysed by using Lucien Goldmann’s theory of genetic structuralism. Silas Marner shows that kinship destruction occurred is rooted from differentiation in society. The upper class are described as the one who always benefits and vice versa. Eventually, this is evoked social jealousy and conflicts. Meanwhile, society’s world vision that described is the bad result of social stratification in Warwickshire especially between landed gentry and local farmer. Eliot seemed to convey that social stratification existed is a trigger to a kinship destruction since the differentiations tend to create a conflict among them