| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Silas Marner | A simple, honest, and kindhearted weaver. After losing faith in both God and his fellow man, he lives for fifteen years as a solitary miser. After his money is stolen, his faith and trust are restored by his adopted daughter, Eppie, whom he lovingly raises. |
| Godfrey Cass | The eldest son of Squire Cass. He is good-natured but selfish and weak-willed. He knows what is right but is unwilling to pay the price for obeying his conscience. |
| Eppie | A girl whom Silas Marner eventually adopts. She is the biological child of Godfrey Cass and Molly Farren, Godfrey’s secret wife. She is pretty and spirited, and loves Silas unquestioningly. |
| Nancy Lammeter | The object of Godfrey’s affection and his eventual wife. She is pretty, caring, and stubborn, and she lives her life by a code of rules that sometimes seems arbitrary and uncompromising. |
| Dunstan Cass | Godfrey’s younger brother. He is cruel, lazy, and unscrupulous, and he loves gambling and drinking. |
| Squire Cass | The wealthiest man in Raveloe. He is lazy, self-satisfied, and short-tempered. |
| Dolly Winthrop | The wheelwright’s wife who helps Silas with Eppie. She later becomes Eppie’s godmother and mother-in-law. She is kind, patient, and devout. |
| Molly Farren | Godfrey’s secret wife and Eppie’s mother. Once pretty, She has been destroyed by her addictions to opium and alcohol. |
| William Dane | Silas’s proud and priggish best friend from his childhood in Lantern Yard. He frames Silas for theft in order to bring disgrace upon him, then marries Silas’s fiancée, Sarah. |
| Mr. Macey | Raveloe’s parish clerk. He is opinionated and smug but means well. |
| Aaron Winthrop | Dolly’s son and Eppie’s eventual husband. |
| Priscilla Lammeter | Nancy’s homely and plainspoken sister. She talks endlessly but is extremely competent at everything she does. |
| Sarah | Silas’s fiancée in Lantern Yard. She is put off by Silas’s strange fit and ends up marrying William Dane after Silas is disgraced. |
| Mr. Lammeter | Nancy’s and Priscilla’s father. He is a proud and morally uncompromising man. |
| Jem Rodney | A somewhat disreputable character and a poacher. He sees Silas in the midst of one of Silas’s fits. Silas later accuses him of stealing his gold. |
| Mr. Kimble | Godfrey’s uncle and Raveloe’s doctor. He is usually an animated conversationalist and joker, but becomes irritable when he plays cards. He has no medical degree and inherited the position of village physician from his father. |
| Mr. Dowlas | The town farrier, who shoes horses and tends to general livestock diseases. He is a fiercely contrarian person, much taken with his own opinions. |
| Mr. Snell | The landlord of the Rainbow, a local tavern. By nature a conciliatory person, he always tries to settle arguments. |
| the peddler | An anonymous person who comes through Raveloe some time before the theft of Silas’s gold. He is a suspect in the theft because of his gypsylike appearance—and for lack of a better candidate. |
| Bryce | A friend of both Godfrey and Dunsey. He arranges to buy Wildfire, Dunsey’s horse. |
| Miss Gunns | Sisters from a larger nearby town who come to the Squire’s New Year’s dance. They are disdainful of Raveloe’s rustic ways, but are nonetheless impressed by Nancy Lammeter’s beauty. |
| Sally Oates | Silas’s neighbor and the wheelwright’s wife. Silas eases the pain of her heart disease and dropsy with a concoction he makes out of foxglove. |
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