Status Updates From Silas Marner

But in reality it had been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which fenced him in from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging life; and though the object round which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied the need for clinging.

I have been enjoying the hell out of this. Eliot's writing style is brilliantly readable, her dialogue is flowing, and her empathetic eye toward her characters is something a hobbyist writer could learn from. I'm looking forward to the big act 2 plot point that should be coming any page now so my heart can get melted.