Winthrop, Mrs. Dolly

The wheelwright's good wife, who helps Silas Marner to care for the child Eppie. "She was in all respects a woman of scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet she had not the vixenish temper which is some times supposed to be a necessary condition of such habits; she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life, and pasture her mind upon them . . . She was a 'comfortable woman'—goodlooking, fresh - complexioned, having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present." When Silas Marner decides to keep the child Eppie, Dolly Winthrop is the one who helps him to bring her up. By encouraging him to talk of his early life and troubles, she helps him to get back his lost faith.

<em>Silas Marner</em>

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