Uncle Silas · Chapter
XVII: The Picture of a Wolf explained
Uncle Silas informs Maud of impending financial ruin and plans to send her to France with Milly, while urging her to write to Lady Knollys.
What happens
Uncle Silas informs Maud of impending financial ruin and plans to send her to France with Milly, while urging her to write to Lady Knollys. Maud, relieved that Dudley is married and leaving, reflects on her escape from his importunities and feels a mix of pity and fear toward her uncle. She offers to help him financially, but he declines. Later, while looking at a print of a girl fleeing wolves, she draws a parallel to her own situation.
Themes in this chapter
Deception and Appearance
Uncle Silas presents a kind and gentle facade, but Maud senses a hidden, sinister nature beneath, comparing him to a 'profoundly reticent Mephistopheles.'
Isolation and Imprisonment
Maud feels trapped by her uncle's influence and the threat of Dudley, and the plan to send her to France underscores her lack of agency.
Wealth and Inheritance
The chapter revolves around Uncle Silas's financial ruin and Maud's offer to use her inheritance to help him, highlighting the power and peril of wealth.
Characters to notice
- Maud Ruthyn
Narrator; feels relief at Dudley's departure and offers to help Uncle Silas financially.
- Uncle Silas
Reveals his financial ruin and plans to send Maud to France; displays a mysterious and intimidating nature.
- Dudley Ruthyn
Found weeping in the sitting-room; leaves by train after being disowned by his father.
- Mary Quince
Attends Maud and reports Dudley's departure.
- Milly Ruthyn
Mentioned as being sent to France with Maud.
- Lady Knollys
Maud writes to her as instructed by Uncle Silas.
Key passages
“I had been on the point of writing to Lady Knollys on this odious subject, when, happily, it was set at rest by the disclosure of yesterday; and being so, I could have no difficulty in acceding to my uncle's request.”
Maud was about to write to Lady Knollys about Dudley's unwanted advances, but the revelation of his secret marriage made it unnecessary, so she agreed to her uncle's request.
Maud's relief at Dudley's marriage allows her to comply with Uncle Silas's wishes.
“Of Dudley I had a perfect horror; and yet had that system of solicitation, that dreadful and direct appeal to my compassion, that placing of my feeble girlhood in the seat of the arbiter of my aged uncle's hope or despair, been long persisted in, my resistance might have been worn out—who can tell?—and I self-sacrificed!”
Maud was horrified by Dudley, but she admits that if his relentless pleas and emotional manipulation had continued, she might have eventually given in and sacrificed herself.
Maud reflects on the psychological pressure she was under and her vulnerability.
“If fiend he was, he was yet something higher than the garrulous, and withal feeble, demon of Goethe. He assumed the limbs and features of our mortal nature. He shrouded his own, and was a profoundly reticent Mephistopheles.”
Maud compares Uncle Silas to a demon more subtle and dangerous than Goethe's Mephistopheles, one who hides his true nature behind a human appearance.
Maud's growing suspicion that Uncle Silas is not what he seems.
“The narrative told, that on her return homeward with her marketing, she had been chased by wolves, and barely escaped by flying at her utmost speed, from time to time retarding, as she did so, the pursuit, by throwing, piece by piece, the contents of her basket, in her wake, to be devoured and fought for by the famished beasts of prey.”
The story in the print describes a girl who escapes wolves by throwing pieces of meat from her basket to distract them as she runs.
The print serves as a metaphor for Maud's own situation, where she may have to sacrifice parts of her inheritance to appease those who threaten her.
