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In the lack of a guiding principle and a cementing force, the
inhabitants of the Red House are living scattered lives. There is a
lack of communication and understanding in the family. The
Squire allows the evils to grow due to his own heedlessness and
then comes down heavily on his sons. Godfrey's habitual
irresolution prevents him from communicating the truth to his
father. In the absence of effective control, Dunstan has turned out
to be an unscrupulous fellow. The character of the Squire comes
out very strongly through his conversation with his son and the
author's comments. He seems to oscillate between too much
leniency and unrelenting hardness. Godfrey's judgment about his
father is very accurate. He has "a sense that his father's indulgence
had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for some
discipline that would have checked his own errant weakness and
helped his better will."
In the novel, George Eliot has offered different manifestations of
religious beliefs. To Silas, religion is a belief in an unseen power, a
mystic communion with the divine. To the simple folks of
Raveloe, religion is all about Christian rituals and charms to ward
off evil. Godfrey's religion is chance or fate. Godfrey relies on
chance to solve his problems but dreads one thing about it, "the
orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop of its own
kind."
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