George Eliot was a prominent Victorian author who eventually rejected her Christian beliefs, so I’m not planning on covering her in this blog, but I liked this analaysis of the theme of adoptive fatherhood in one of her favourite works of mine, Silas Marner. It contains some plot spoilers, so you might want to read the novel first. I recommend this if you liked Heidi; Silas Marner also narrates the story of a grandfatherly-type looking after an orphan girl in a little hut. There’s definitely a redemptive story of new birth contained in the novel that I argue reflects Eliot’s Christian upbringing.