In Silas Marner by George Eliot the moral themes are relative of the current social issues of the Victorian Era and play a crucial formitive role in the development of individual characters. Eliot's introduction of realism in literature, "an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity" creates the natural appeal of the characters in the novel. "Realism has been chiefly concerned with the commonplace of everyday life among the middle and lower classes where character is a product of social factors" (Realism). Published in 1861 during a time when social, political, and religious movements flourished, Silas Marner focuses on the issues of social class separation, working class conditions, respectable marriages, morals of gentlemen, sexual repression, industrialization, and the loss of faith. These social factors are the basis for each characters personal obtainment or awareness of knowledge which in turn creates a moralistic lesson for each individual.

             The characters of Dunstan and Godfrey Cass serve as a significant representation of the idea of the gentlemen in the Victorian Age. With the social classes of England newly reforming and redistributing, the hierarchical order was changing rapidly. The increase in wealth among more and more people and the attainability of rank seemed to change the standards that people imposed upon the Victorian "gentleman". "Originally, the gentleman was a moral as well as a social category. Embodied in the idea of a gentleman were also gentleness, sympathy, a fine disposition and a fine imagination. A true gentleman was a mirror of desirable moral and social values, a cultural goal" (Werenberg). Despite the Cass brothers' birth into a noble family they were at first paltry examples of "gentlemen". Dunstan is so absorbed in his own difficulties he does not consider the consequences of his rash actions. His theft of Silas Marner's gold is a speedy solution to his problems while requiring little or no effort at all.