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Daniel Deronda
A beautiful young woman stands poised over the gambling tables in an expensive hotel. She is aware of, and resents, the gaze of an unusual young man, a stranger, who seems to judge her, and find her wanting. The encounter will change her life.
The strange young man is Daniel Deronda, brought up with his own origins shrouded in mystery, searching for a compelling outlet for his singular talents and remarkable capacity for empathy. Deronda's destiny will change the lives of many.
The strange young man is Daniel Deronda, brought up with his own origins shrouded in mystery, searching for a compelling outlet for his singular talents and remarkable capacity for empathy. Deronda's destiny will change the lives of many.
796 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1876
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About the author
George Eliot
2,655 books4,662 followersMary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
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February 3, 2023Recently I watched a TV adaptation of Andrea Levy's Small Island, a book I had read when it first came out but which I'd more or less forgotten. The adaptation succeeded very well, and might even have been better than the book. The characters were credible and their motivations were clear. Their words and actions informed the viewer so well about the background to the story that the occasional narratorial voiceover seemed unnecessary.
Soon afterwards, I watched the first episode of a three-part adaptation of Daniel Deronda, and had the opposite reaction. Nothing made sense to me. I was convinced that a large part of Eliot's intentions for the story were missing, and while the actors were all fine in their way, the words they were given to say were simply not enough. I tried to fill in the missing bits myself but couldn't. It was impossible to imagine the history and motivations that lay behind those characters and their actions, as impossible as trying to imagine the layers of messages underlying the movie title Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri until you've viewed that extraordinary film for yourself—which I've just done. If there had been a book on which that film was based, I'm certain that it could never measure up to the movie. Every frame was a billboard in itself, and the message on each was astonishingly spare and incredibly eloquent.
George Eliot is very eloquent, but there is nothing spare about her writing. You cannot pare it down and fit it in movie frames yet it is very visual in spite of that. It belongs on the page—but offers the big screen experience to the mind's eye. But you have to read all the words to see the pictures properly. I was very glad I abandoned the TV adaptation after that first episode and picked up the book instead. Right from the first page I realised that without the support of the text I could never have succeeded in fully understanding the complexities of motivation that lay behind the surface story, or indeed the scope of Eliot's project in the first place. And when I reached the end of the book, I was certain that I didn't need to watch the rest of the TV adaptation—the book had been more vivid for me that any adaptation could be.
I posted an update the day I finished the book, regretting that the reading experience was over, and a curious conversation erupted in the comments section of that update. The conversation made me realise that there are readers who tackle books as if their task were to adapt them for the screen rather than simply read what is on the page. They would like to cut massive sections, delete certain characters, and make other characters act differently so that the story might move towards an ending they think is more fitting. You could say that such an approach is a very 'creative' way of reading but you could also wonder where the writer's intentions for her work fit in that scenario.
The writer's intentions are everything for me. I may probe them and question them but I would never disregard them. A writer's work is a sacred thing, a bit like other people's religious beliefs, not to be tampered with even when we don't revere them ourselves. I mention religion because it is a major theme in this book. George Eliot became more and more interested in Judaism during the course of her life, at first in an effort to overcome her own prejudices towards the increasing Jewish population in mid-nineteenth century Britain, and then later because she had become genuinely interested in the common origin of Judaism and Christianity. This book is essentially about that preoccupation, but because Eliot is very good at creating story lines, she has inserted the Jewish themed story into an intriguing frame story. Readers seem to differ about which story is the more worthwhile part of the book, and many favour the frame story. However, I found that the two strands overlapped and echoed each other so well that I never even thought of separating or comparing them. Characters from both sections mirrored each other even if they seemed completely opposite, and the central redeemer-like figure of Daniel Deronda linked them all together perfectly. The overall shape of the book worked very well for me and I'm left in awe of George Eliot's mind as well as her writing.
The result of this unplanned reading adventure is that Daniel Deronda now marks the beginning of my 2018 George Eliot season. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of her books, and I may possibly reread Middlemarch as a fitting endnote.
So much for the to-read stack I selected at the beginning of January. Abandoned indefinitely!
…………………………………………………
Because I've a keen interest in Henry James, and I know he admired George Eliot's writing, I was interested to spot what might have been the germ of his inspiration for The Portrait of a Lady. Eliot's frame story concerns a fiercely independent-minded young woman who, in spite of the general expectation, is in no hurry to marry anyone. Nevertheless, like HJ's Isabel Archer, Gwendolyn Harleth finds herself enslaved by a cold-hearted husband who is only interested in crushing her independent spirit. It seems to me that Henleigh Grandcourt and HJ's Gilbert Osmond have a lot in common.
Eliot's main story also reminded me of another Henry James plot line. I think Daniel Deronda could have been an inspiration for Hyacinth Robinson in Princess Casamassima. They are both orphans who desperately need to discover more about their parents, and they both become deeply involved in movements they had no previous associations with.
Slim connections, perhaps, but I love finding such links.
Soon afterwards, I watched the first episode of a three-part adaptation of Daniel Deronda, and had the opposite reaction. Nothing made sense to me. I was convinced that a large part of Eliot's intentions for the story were missing, and while the actors were all fine in their way, the words they were given to say were simply not enough. I tried to fill in the missing bits myself but couldn't. It was impossible to imagine the history and motivations that lay behind those characters and their actions, as impossible as trying to imagine the layers of messages underlying the movie title Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri until you've viewed that extraordinary film for yourself—which I've just done. If there had been a book on which that film was based, I'm certain that it could never measure up to the movie. Every frame was a billboard in itself, and the message on each was astonishingly spare and incredibly eloquent.
George Eliot is very eloquent, but there is nothing spare about her writing. You cannot pare it down and fit it in movie frames yet it is very visual in spite of that. It belongs on the page—but offers the big screen experience to the mind's eye. But you have to read all the words to see the pictures properly. I was very glad I abandoned the TV adaptation after that first episode and picked up the book instead. Right from the first page I realised that without the support of the text I could never have succeeded in fully understanding the complexities of motivation that lay behind the surface story, or indeed the scope of Eliot's project in the first place. And when I reached the end of the book, I was certain that I didn't need to watch the rest of the TV adaptation—the book had been more vivid for me that any adaptation could be.
I posted an update the day I finished the book, regretting that the reading experience was over, and a curious conversation erupted in the comments section of that update. The conversation made me realise that there are readers who tackle books as if their task were to adapt them for the screen rather than simply read what is on the page. They would like to cut massive sections, delete certain characters, and make other characters act differently so that the story might move towards an ending they think is more fitting. You could say that such an approach is a very 'creative' way of reading but you could also wonder where the writer's intentions for her work fit in that scenario.
The writer's intentions are everything for me. I may probe them and question them but I would never disregard them. A writer's work is a sacred thing, a bit like other people's religious beliefs, not to be tampered with even when we don't revere them ourselves. I mention religion because it is a major theme in this book. George Eliot became more and more interested in Judaism during the course of her life, at first in an effort to overcome her own prejudices towards the increasing Jewish population in mid-nineteenth century Britain, and then later because she had become genuinely interested in the common origin of Judaism and Christianity. This book is essentially about that preoccupation, but because Eliot is very good at creating story lines, she has inserted the Jewish themed story into an intriguing frame story. Readers seem to differ about which story is the more worthwhile part of the book, and many favour the frame story. However, I found that the two strands overlapped and echoed each other so well that I never even thought of separating or comparing them. Characters from both sections mirrored each other even if they seemed completely opposite, and the central redeemer-like figure of Daniel Deronda linked them all together perfectly. The overall shape of the book worked very well for me and I'm left in awe of George Eliot's mind as well as her writing.
The result of this unplanned reading adventure is that Daniel Deronda now marks the beginning of my 2018 George Eliot season. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of her books, and I may possibly reread Middlemarch as a fitting endnote.
So much for the to-read stack I selected at the beginning of January. Abandoned indefinitely!
…………………………………………………
Because I've a keen interest in Henry James, and I know he admired George Eliot's writing, I was interested to spot what might have been the germ of his inspiration for The Portrait of a Lady. Eliot's frame story concerns a fiercely independent-minded young woman who, in spite of the general expectation, is in no hurry to marry anyone. Nevertheless, like HJ's Isabel Archer, Gwendolyn Harleth finds herself enslaved by a cold-hearted husband who is only interested in crushing her independent spirit. It seems to me that Henleigh Grandcourt and HJ's Gilbert Osmond have a lot in common.
Eliot's main story also reminded me of another Henry James plot line. I think Daniel Deronda could have been an inspiration for Hyacinth Robinson in Princess Casamassima. They are both orphans who desperately need to discover more about their parents, and they both become deeply involved in movements they had no previous associations with.
Slim connections, perhaps, but I love finding such links.
October 7, 2015
THE DIPTYCH
This novel was renewed my interest on how George Eliot wrote. I am highly tempted to read more about her and approach literary evaluations of her writing, but before I do so I want to read Adam Bede and Silas Marner and may be reread The Mill on the Floss.
When I read Romola I considered GE’s cosmopolitanism and breath of knowledge. These elements are also present in Daniel Deronda but with an added edge. With Middlemarch it was the role of the narrator and the clear presence of the author that attracted me. In DD the voice of the writer is also clear but in less authorial fashion and, one suspects, speaking more often through her characters. What struck me most, and want to select for my review this time, is the structure of the novel.
It is clearly divided in two. Clearly a diptych. Already MM seemed to me to consist of two parallel stories joined somewhat seamlessly in the middle. The study of provincial evolved around two foci, the doctor Lydgate and the illuminated Dorothea. Both idealists. The twists and turnings of the plot, however, managed to link the two stories creating a middle path in Middlemarch were these two different versions of dreamers confronted each other and helped each other in correcting their reflections.
This double structure is again present in Daniel Deronda, GE’s last novel, but with a wider gap between the two panels. With almost separated frames the novel reads like a double portrait, or a diptych with two facing and complementary donors searching for an object of adoration that is however missing – for the Self is never in the other.
The two subjects pursue their mirroring images and transverse their separating frames by engaging in dialogs and verbal encounters. The twists and turns of the plot this time do not fuse their separated worlds. Only their minds bridge the gap.
Generally I do not discuss characters in my reviews, but I can't avoid it this time. In this novel, the two protagonists, the sitters in the double portrait, baffled me. Gwendolen (Gwen), potentially a highly irritating young woman, fascinated me because I thought she was such a modern character. I expected that young powerful women in today’s professional world, and who are not just capable and intelligent, but also beautiful—and I am thinking of top Wall street traders, or international lawyers of the type, of for example, Amal Aladdin--, must have a similar self-assurance and defiance and inner drive and independence and élan as Gwen. But even if these contemporary women have had a better chance to explore and exploit their abilities in their chosen fields of excellence than GE has allowed Gwen, she did not get on my nerves. I was enthralled by her modernity.
Daniel, in spite of having claimed the title of the novel, remained for me an equivocal figure. It is almost as if in my diptych Daniel—with his messianic role turned around, for he is the Christian leading onto the Jewish— is a donor who through a process of transubstantiation has become the object of adoration.
And in that transformation, the novel dims and blurs its cast of characters and becomes more and more an exploration of ideas, spirituality and politics, with a defence of Judaism and a daring proposal of Zionism.
In all this Daniel emerges as an ethereal saviour but poor Gwen succumbs and loses her leading edge.
And that is what made me wonder about how GE wrote her books and planned her work in her mind.
Did she spend half of her day doing intellectual research on the subjects that captivated her and did she then transcribe her reading into her novel in the afternoons? What was her true objective, to expand her erudition, or to mould it into something else?
I will have to put aside my curiosity for a while and continue reading her work, but with her intelligent writing and formidable abilities she certainly makes me ponder about the process of writing, that elusive act - creativity. How is it born and how does it live?
And how did Rothko paint the above diptych?
July 11, 2016
I finished this book about a month ago and have been letting my thoughts first simmer and then actually almost get pushed onto the back burner as our summer holidays began. Once I decided to look over my notes, I realized that a review might be quite overwhelming. Furthermore, the book did not necessarily endear itself to me more over time as many typically do when I prepare to write down my impressions. On the other hand, I most certainly acknowledge that this was an important book and quite a feat of writing on the part of George Eliot. I applaud her efforts at setting on paper her ideas regarding feminism, the British aristocracy, and racial identity, in particular that of Judaism. What I had the most trouble with was the often cumbersome reflections of the main characters which detracted from the flow of the narrative. The interactions between the characters were to me the most stimulating portions to absorb as a reader. The characterizations were well done – some characters being more interesting, even if not likable, than others.
"She had a naïve delight in her fortunate self, which any but the harshest saintliness will have some indulgence for in a girl who had every day seen a pleasant reflection of that self in her friends’ flattery as well as in the looking-glass." The spoiled and self-absorbed Gwendolen Harleth finds herself in a position she never expected to be – that of bad luck and sudden poverty. What is a girl to do in this situation? Degrade oneself by taking a position or, perhaps worse yet, accept an offer of marriage? "Her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state in which a woman could not do what she liked, had more children than were desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevocably immersed in humdrum." Saucy little turns of phrase such as this won me over and held my attention. Gwendolen was perhaps the most interesting and multi-layered character of this book.
When Gwendolen Harleth meets the saintlike figure of Daniel Deronda, their lives become connected as she attempts to better herself to become deserving of his friendship and esteem. But while Gwendolen fights her demons, Deronda struggles with his own identity crisis - one which stems from an unknown parentage as well as from a strong spiritual link to an impassioned Jewish nationalist, Mordecai. Deronda "had not the Jewish consciousness, but he had a yearning, grown the stronger for the denial which had been his grievance, after the obligation of avowed filial and social ties." Throughout this novel, Eliot illustrates the feelings of anti-Semitism which were prevalent during the 19th century. Through Deronda, however, these feelings are changed as he develops a relationship with both Mirah, to whom he is also a savior, as well as Mordecai. Deronda learns the true and principled nature of the Jewish people and their desire to achieve a national identity. "… let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West…"
Several more players are introduced into the plot, too many for me to delve into detail here. I will say that Mr. Grandcourt and Mr. Lush make my list for the most strikingly malodorous individuals – in a very amusing sort of way. They provided a nice counterbalance to the gushing wholesomeness of Deronda and Mirah. Gwendolen’s mother was a bit silly and spineless, especially in relation to her daughter.
This was my fourth George Eliot novel. While I did like it - once I plowed through the more laborious portions of it- I have to say that it is my least favorite so far. Both Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss were much more readable and engaging and I would recommend either of these – especially for a first time Eliot reader. I am glad that I read this one, and happy to add it to my list of more difficult tomes I have completed. 3.5 stars rounded down.
"She had a naïve delight in her fortunate self, which any but the harshest saintliness will have some indulgence for in a girl who had every day seen a pleasant reflection of that self in her friends’ flattery as well as in the looking-glass." The spoiled and self-absorbed Gwendolen Harleth finds herself in a position she never expected to be – that of bad luck and sudden poverty. What is a girl to do in this situation? Degrade oneself by taking a position or, perhaps worse yet, accept an offer of marriage? "Her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state in which a woman could not do what she liked, had more children than were desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevocably immersed in humdrum." Saucy little turns of phrase such as this won me over and held my attention. Gwendolen was perhaps the most interesting and multi-layered character of this book.
When Gwendolen Harleth meets the saintlike figure of Daniel Deronda, their lives become connected as she attempts to better herself to become deserving of his friendship and esteem. But while Gwendolen fights her demons, Deronda struggles with his own identity crisis - one which stems from an unknown parentage as well as from a strong spiritual link to an impassioned Jewish nationalist, Mordecai. Deronda "had not the Jewish consciousness, but he had a yearning, grown the stronger for the denial which had been his grievance, after the obligation of avowed filial and social ties." Throughout this novel, Eliot illustrates the feelings of anti-Semitism which were prevalent during the 19th century. Through Deronda, however, these feelings are changed as he develops a relationship with both Mirah, to whom he is also a savior, as well as Mordecai. Deronda learns the true and principled nature of the Jewish people and their desire to achieve a national identity. "… let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West…"
Several more players are introduced into the plot, too many for me to delve into detail here. I will say that Mr. Grandcourt and Mr. Lush make my list for the most strikingly malodorous individuals – in a very amusing sort of way. They provided a nice counterbalance to the gushing wholesomeness of Deronda and Mirah. Gwendolen’s mother was a bit silly and spineless, especially in relation to her daughter.
This was my fourth George Eliot novel. While I did like it - once I plowed through the more laborious portions of it- I have to say that it is my least favorite so far. Both Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss were much more readable and engaging and I would recommend either of these – especially for a first time Eliot reader. I am glad that I read this one, and happy to add it to my list of more difficult tomes I have completed. 3.5 stars rounded down.
July 25, 2022
George Eliot’s tome, Daniel Deronda, was her last novel and it is anything but an easy read. Quite frequently when the narrative began to move and become quite interesting, Eliot would veer off into another direction and leave me champing at the bit to get back to the story.
Having recently read Middlemarch, I couldn’t help feeling that these characters were all pale and colorless next to those I had just left behind. The character, Daniel Deronda, was a particular puzzle to me, with reactions that did not seem to be realistic and too much of an effort to make him a type instead of an individual. Perhaps I was just too worn out with his “goodness” to really like him. Gwendolen was understandable and flawed enough to make up for it. She was both interesting and represented the most growth and change through the course of the novel.
I started this novel with a pretty serious dislike of Gwendolen, the spoiled girl, but by the end of the novel my attitude toward her had softened. I saw her as a bit of a Hardy character, caught in the awareness of her faults, without any avenue for correcting them or atoning for her sins. Without giving anything of the plot away, I cannot help admiring her resistance of giving in to the basest reaction to her situation. At the last, I think she was much harder on herself than I would have been inclined to be.
Obviously, much of the purpose of this novel is to address the place of Jewish customs and society in 19th Century Europe. Eliot appears to have some very strong feelings about the maintenance of the Jewish people as a separate identity vs. the efforts to absorb them into the Christian society, with the loss of their own specific religion, customs and heritage. I could not help reading this novel with an eye toward what came later, the holocaust and the rise of the Jewish State. I was very interested in what I saw as the struggle to understand Jews and admit them to be on equal standing with their peers. I wonder what kind of reception this got at the time it was written.
Although I recognized Eliot’s purpose being to explain and perhaps endear us to the Jewish characters, they were the characters I could least understand. Mordecai’s almost paranormal recognition of Daniel as a like soul, Mirah’s perfection (along with Daniel’s), and the coldness of Daniel’s mother make them seem less accessible. And, she cannot resist bringing in some of the oldest and most cliched stereotypes when dealing with the Cohens...the typical Jewish family.
I did find this passage from Daniel’s mother very interesting:
”Had I not a rightful claim to be something more than a mere daughter and mother? The voice and the genius matched the face. Whatever else was wrong, acknowledge that I had a right to be an artist, though my father’s will was against it. My nature gave me a charter.”
We are confronted with the idea that a career and motherhood cannot exist side-by-side. She is the bold woman who chooses the career. She hasn’t a speck of motherly feeling. She is painted throughout the entire episode as cold and unnatural. Superwoman had not yet been invented.
While I did find this a worthy read, it cannot live up to the precedents set by Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss to my mind. I had scheduled it to read in 2015 and had to push it over to 2016, so it feels like a personal accomplishment to have it behind me. I will be thinking about it for some time, I am sure and it may be one of those novels that grows in importance as it settles on my mind.
Having recently read Middlemarch, I couldn’t help feeling that these characters were all pale and colorless next to those I had just left behind. The character, Daniel Deronda, was a particular puzzle to me, with reactions that did not seem to be realistic and too much of an effort to make him a type instead of an individual. Perhaps I was just too worn out with his “goodness” to really like him. Gwendolen was understandable and flawed enough to make up for it. She was both interesting and represented the most growth and change through the course of the novel.
I started this novel with a pretty serious dislike of Gwendolen, the spoiled girl, but by the end of the novel my attitude toward her had softened. I saw her as a bit of a Hardy character, caught in the awareness of her faults, without any avenue for correcting them or atoning for her sins. Without giving anything of the plot away, I cannot help admiring her resistance of giving in to the basest reaction to her situation. At the last, I think she was much harder on herself than I would have been inclined to be.
Obviously, much of the purpose of this novel is to address the place of Jewish customs and society in 19th Century Europe. Eliot appears to have some very strong feelings about the maintenance of the Jewish people as a separate identity vs. the efforts to absorb them into the Christian society, with the loss of their own specific religion, customs and heritage. I could not help reading this novel with an eye toward what came later, the holocaust and the rise of the Jewish State. I was very interested in what I saw as the struggle to understand Jews and admit them to be on equal standing with their peers. I wonder what kind of reception this got at the time it was written.
Although I recognized Eliot’s purpose being to explain and perhaps endear us to the Jewish characters, they were the characters I could least understand. Mordecai’s almost paranormal recognition of Daniel as a like soul, Mirah’s perfection (along with Daniel’s), and the coldness of Daniel’s mother make them seem less accessible. And, she cannot resist bringing in some of the oldest and most cliched stereotypes when dealing with the Cohens...the typical Jewish family.
I did find this passage from Daniel’s mother very interesting:
”Had I not a rightful claim to be something more than a mere daughter and mother? The voice and the genius matched the face. Whatever else was wrong, acknowledge that I had a right to be an artist, though my father’s will was against it. My nature gave me a charter.”
We are confronted with the idea that a career and motherhood cannot exist side-by-side. She is the bold woman who chooses the career. She hasn’t a speck of motherly feeling. She is painted throughout the entire episode as cold and unnatural. Superwoman had not yet been invented.
While I did find this a worthy read, it cannot live up to the precedents set by Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss to my mind. I had scheduled it to read in 2015 and had to push it over to 2016, so it feels like a personal accomplishment to have it behind me. I will be thinking about it for some time, I am sure and it may be one of those novels that grows in importance as it settles on my mind.
March 5, 2013
(Re-read from June 07 to June 12, 2012)
I had forgotten what a hard work reading Daniel Deronda was. It has to be Eliot’s most challenging and overwhelming novel, yet such a great pleasure to read and re-read! It's enormously ambitious novel, broad in its scope, space, time and history. The setting itself is untypical of Eliot’s previous novels. It’s no longer the idyllic, provincial villages of Adam Bede or Middlemarch, but Daniel Deronda is set at the heart of cosmopolitan aristocracy of contemporary London. The politics are no longer local, but global as Eliot scrutinises the exploits of British Empire. The stakes are much higher; the individual identities are threatened and lost. The conflict is personal, yet also very social. Of all the Eliot’s novels, Daniel Deronda is the most related to our contemporary society as Eliot explores the themes of racial identity, prejudice, importance of tolerance, religion, the question of gender boundaries, imperialism and Zionism.
Gwendolen Harleth has to be Eliot's most remarkable and fascinating creation. In fact, I am in love with Gwendolen. The main reason I re-read this novel because I missed her. I missed being in her mind, to follow her cognitions, her mental anguish, her witty repartees, sheer snobbery, ambition and heedless narcissism. She is of course not the first vain or shallow female character ever created by Eliot. The ‘vain girl’ features in most of Eliot’s novels, often as a contrast to the heroine. She is there as Hetty in Adam Bede, Esther in Felix Holt, Rosamond in Middlemarch. But in Daniel Deronda, Gwendolen is put at the centre of the stage and her narcissism is taken to extremes, that there is a scene where she is moved to kiss her own reflection in the mirror. Like countless other women, she suffers from the restrictions Victorian society imposed on any respectable woman. She is a dreamer and sees marriage not as a loving union, but as a way to achieve status and power. She marries Grandcourt because she thinks she will be able to manage him and make him her “slave”. Yet contrary to her expectations, the marriage turns out to be an abusive one. Gwendolen fails to realise that Grandcourt also has an iron will of his own. The irony is that her decision to marry the incredibly wealthy Grandcourt was to some extent influenced by her selfless concern towards her bankrupt family. So, her partly selfless act becomes the bane of her life. Grandcourt is bent on to be “a master of a woman who would have liked to master him”. A painful psychological struggle for power ensues between them and Gwendolen is quickly crushed by him. His secret becomes her guilt, a yoke around her neck which continually gnaws at her conscience. He breaks her spirit and she becomes withered from inside, “a diseased soul”, but is forced to play a charade of a happy wife.
I liked Deronda even if I found him to be rigid and morally superior. He is Eliot’s most feminine hero. His ostensibly ‘feminine’ quality of abundant empathy and psychological perceptiveness is contrasted with Gwendolen’s ‘masculine’ desire for power. He is the only person who sees Gwendolen for what she is behind her mask of superficial pride and cheerfulness. Naturally, Gwendolen is drawn to Deronda to help her make her life more bearable. He becomes her redeemer, in the same way as he redeems her necklace which she pawns after gambling. Her letter to him contains the most moving and tear-inducing lines of the whole novel.
But, Deronda is the man with his own set of troubles. Unsure of his true identity, he struggles to find a stable niche in society. He is the medium which Eliot uses to explore the plight of London's scorned Jewish community and the emergence of Zionism, for which this novel is perhaps most famous for.
Daniel Deronda is highly symbolic novel. All those literary references to mythology, science, philosophy, religion and mysticism, which slightly irritated me at first reading, fit perfectly in the thematic framework of the novel. The characters themselves are symbols. Grandcourt symbolises the corruption and vulgarity of English aristocracy, given to reckless materialism and hedonism. His need to crush Gwendolen could be interpreted as the Empire’s colonial ambitions to conquer and enslave the population of the Third World. Deronda’s alienation is symbolically shared by the Jewish people to a broader extent, who are scattered around the world with no actual homeland and scorned by the native population of their home countries.
Overall, Daniel Deronda is a terribly exhausting but an equally rewarding read. If you are new to Eliot, I wouldn't recommend reading this first as it might put you off Eliot forever, but her earlier works such as The Mill on the Floss.
I had forgotten what a hard work reading Daniel Deronda was. It has to be Eliot’s most challenging and overwhelming novel, yet such a great pleasure to read and re-read! It's enormously ambitious novel, broad in its scope, space, time and history. The setting itself is untypical of Eliot’s previous novels. It’s no longer the idyllic, provincial villages of Adam Bede or Middlemarch, but Daniel Deronda is set at the heart of cosmopolitan aristocracy of contemporary London. The politics are no longer local, but global as Eliot scrutinises the exploits of British Empire. The stakes are much higher; the individual identities are threatened and lost. The conflict is personal, yet also very social. Of all the Eliot’s novels, Daniel Deronda is the most related to our contemporary society as Eliot explores the themes of racial identity, prejudice, importance of tolerance, religion, the question of gender boundaries, imperialism and Zionism.
Gwendolen Harleth has to be Eliot's most remarkable and fascinating creation. In fact, I am in love with Gwendolen. The main reason I re-read this novel because I missed her. I missed being in her mind, to follow her cognitions, her mental anguish, her witty repartees, sheer snobbery, ambition and heedless narcissism. She is of course not the first vain or shallow female character ever created by Eliot. The ‘vain girl’ features in most of Eliot’s novels, often as a contrast to the heroine. She is there as Hetty in Adam Bede, Esther in Felix Holt, Rosamond in Middlemarch. But in Daniel Deronda, Gwendolen is put at the centre of the stage and her narcissism is taken to extremes, that there is a scene where she is moved to kiss her own reflection in the mirror. Like countless other women, she suffers from the restrictions Victorian society imposed on any respectable woman. She is a dreamer and sees marriage not as a loving union, but as a way to achieve status and power. She marries Grandcourt because she thinks she will be able to manage him and make him her “slave”. Yet contrary to her expectations, the marriage turns out to be an abusive one. Gwendolen fails to realise that Grandcourt also has an iron will of his own. The irony is that her decision to marry the incredibly wealthy Grandcourt was to some extent influenced by her selfless concern towards her bankrupt family. So, her partly selfless act becomes the bane of her life. Grandcourt is bent on to be “a master of a woman who would have liked to master him”. A painful psychological struggle for power ensues between them and Gwendolen is quickly crushed by him. His secret becomes her guilt, a yoke around her neck which continually gnaws at her conscience. He breaks her spirit and she becomes withered from inside, “a diseased soul”, but is forced to play a charade of a happy wife.
I liked Deronda even if I found him to be rigid and morally superior. He is Eliot’s most feminine hero. His ostensibly ‘feminine’ quality of abundant empathy and psychological perceptiveness is contrasted with Gwendolen’s ‘masculine’ desire for power. He is the only person who sees Gwendolen for what she is behind her mask of superficial pride and cheerfulness. Naturally, Gwendolen is drawn to Deronda to help her make her life more bearable. He becomes her redeemer, in the same way as he redeems her necklace which she pawns after gambling. Her letter to him contains the most moving and tear-inducing lines of the whole novel.
But, Deronda is the man with his own set of troubles. Unsure of his true identity, he struggles to find a stable niche in society. He is the medium which Eliot uses to explore the plight of London's scorned Jewish community and the emergence of Zionism, for which this novel is perhaps most famous for.
Daniel Deronda is highly symbolic novel. All those literary references to mythology, science, philosophy, religion and mysticism, which slightly irritated me at first reading, fit perfectly in the thematic framework of the novel. The characters themselves are symbols. Grandcourt symbolises the corruption and vulgarity of English aristocracy, given to reckless materialism and hedonism. His need to crush Gwendolen could be interpreted as the Empire’s colonial ambitions to conquer and enslave the population of the Third World. Deronda’s alienation is symbolically shared by the Jewish people to a broader extent, who are scattered around the world with no actual homeland and scorned by the native population of their home countries.
Overall, Daniel Deronda is a terribly exhausting but an equally rewarding read. If you are new to Eliot, I wouldn't recommend reading this first as it might put you off Eliot forever, but her earlier works such as The Mill on the Floss.
July 10, 2016
Now here’s a book that combines two of my very favorite things: classic British romance with – YES! – Jewish themes. Marian Evans a/k/a George Eliot even went to Frankfurt am Main to do research for the book – in the times of no less than Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch! I think I’ve found a thesis topic if I ever get to graduate school. Till then, though, I’ll have to content myself with this review. No major spoilers, but it is a pretty detailed plot summary, so if you want to be 100% safe, skip to the last two paragraphs.
In the opening scene, we meet Gwendolen Harleth (as in, sounds like “harlot”) who is on a winning streak at a roulette table. Observing her is the title character, Daniel Deronda. She feels he is judging her negatively, which disconcerts her, so she begins to lose. Within the next few scenes, he takes a mysterious action which really unnerves her. And that is the last we see of him until Chapter 16.
The story then backtracks to Gwendolen’s family life, and this is the part that is most reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel (though Eliot’s prose is much denser). Gwendolen’s social position is similar to that of the Dashwood girls; she’s not rich, but she socializes in the upper class circle of a small country-town. As a character, though, she is more of an anti-heroine than heroine. Like Lydia Bennet, she’s out first and foremost for a good time, except she’s cleverer and more calculating. She wants admirers, especially male admirers, but then scorns them without caring about how many hearts she breaks. This section of the book is called “The Spoiled Child,” and George Eliot paints the hateful portrait in painstaking detail.
Enter Mr. Grandcourt. (Read grand + court = landed gentry.) He’s way too suave for Gwendolen to scorn, and her family watches their courtship with eagerness. After all, from a financial standpoint, he’s a Good Catch. But even when Gwendolen gets evidence of his rakishness, she finds she can’t resist him. They marry.
Then the novel shifts back to Daniel Deronda, a young gentleman with no clear direction. He was a serious scholar at Cambridge and proved himself to be exceptionally kind to his friends, but he lives in the shadow of not knowing who his parents are. Rumor has it that he is the illegitimate son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, the nobleman who raised him. Daniel also believes the rumors, but loves Sir Hugo too much to confront him about it. Meanwhile, Sir Hugo’s legal heir is none other than Gwendolen’s husband, Mr. Grandcourt.
In a scene I won’t dare spoil, Daniel encounters Mirah, a Jewess. She is literally a “tinok she nishbu,” a kidnapped child raised away from Judaism. When Daniel finds her, she is nineteen years old, has escaped her captors, and is in desperate search of her family. Daniel, like Harry Potter, has “a thing about saving people,” so he joins in the search, and this leads him into the Jewish communities of London and Frankfurt.
Jews, especially baalei teshuva, will appreciate if not love Chapter 32. It includes the descriptions of the Frankfurt synagogue – taken from Rav Hirsch; I just can’t get over it! – and Mirah’s passionate declaration to her Christian friends, “I will always cling to my people.” Mirah is a bit of a Mary Sue, but she gives voice to the pintele Yid that motivates all us BTs. How in the world did George Eliot know?
The rest of the novel alternates between scenes of Gwendolen in her souring marriage and scenes with the Jewish characters, which notably includes a visionary named Mordecai who is preaching religious Zionism. Daniel, the "knight errant," weaves his way through all of their lives. (Comic relief from Daniel's friend, Hans Meyrick.) Naturally, I am partial to the Jewish sections, but from a literary point of view, the portrayal of Gwendolen is the most masterful part of the novel. No character goes through as dramatic a transformation as she.
I must reiterate that George Eliot does not reach Jane Austen in terms of prose style. At times the text is so heavy and full of extraneous detail that I suspected that like Dickens, she was paid by the word. But while Dickens was making it big with Fagin, Eliot was taking on anti-Semitism, not just by creating positive Jewish characters, but by letting her Christian characters work through their prejudices in the course of the novel. That makes her a heroine in my eyes.
The scholarly introduction to my copy of the novel included some very interesting literary history. The British critics of the time panned the book for its Jewish themes. One suggested that Eliot should have left the Jews out and just called the book Gwendolen. An anonymous sequel by that title appeared a few years later, doing more or less that by killing off the Jewish characters and continuing the story of Gwendolen and Deronda. But the Jewish community’s reaction was a mirror image of the British critics'. The Jews loved the book, though some said that the romantic themes detracted from the main point of the novel, which was Zionism. And in parallel to the anonymous sequel, the German Jewish novelist Marcus Lehman adapted the book to include only the Jewish themes. I think the whole thing is pretty funny.
Personally, I loved both parts of the book – the British and the Jewish. If you’re a fan of either genre, this is a worthwhile read. And if, like me, you’re a fan of both, chances are that you’ll find in this book a lifetime favorite you’ll be happy to immerse yourself in over and over again.
In the opening scene, we meet Gwendolen Harleth (as in, sounds like “harlot”) who is on a winning streak at a roulette table. Observing her is the title character, Daniel Deronda. She feels he is judging her negatively, which disconcerts her, so she begins to lose. Within the next few scenes, he takes a mysterious action which really unnerves her. And that is the last we see of him until Chapter 16.
The story then backtracks to Gwendolen’s family life, and this is the part that is most reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel (though Eliot’s prose is much denser). Gwendolen’s social position is similar to that of the Dashwood girls; she’s not rich, but she socializes in the upper class circle of a small country-town. As a character, though, she is more of an anti-heroine than heroine. Like Lydia Bennet, she’s out first and foremost for a good time, except she’s cleverer and more calculating. She wants admirers, especially male admirers, but then scorns them without caring about how many hearts she breaks. This section of the book is called “The Spoiled Child,” and George Eliot paints the hateful portrait in painstaking detail.
Enter Mr. Grandcourt. (Read grand + court = landed gentry.) He’s way too suave for Gwendolen to scorn, and her family watches their courtship with eagerness. After all, from a financial standpoint, he’s a Good Catch. But even when Gwendolen gets evidence of his rakishness, she finds she can’t resist him. They marry.
Then the novel shifts back to Daniel Deronda, a young gentleman with no clear direction. He was a serious scholar at Cambridge and proved himself to be exceptionally kind to his friends, but he lives in the shadow of not knowing who his parents are. Rumor has it that he is the illegitimate son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, the nobleman who raised him. Daniel also believes the rumors, but loves Sir Hugo too much to confront him about it. Meanwhile, Sir Hugo’s legal heir is none other than Gwendolen’s husband, Mr. Grandcourt.
In a scene I won’t dare spoil, Daniel encounters Mirah, a Jewess. She is literally a “tinok she nishbu,” a kidnapped child raised away from Judaism. When Daniel finds her, she is nineteen years old, has escaped her captors, and is in desperate search of her family. Daniel, like Harry Potter, has “a thing about saving people,” so he joins in the search, and this leads him into the Jewish communities of London and Frankfurt.
Jews, especially baalei teshuva, will appreciate if not love Chapter 32. It includes the descriptions of the Frankfurt synagogue – taken from Rav Hirsch; I just can’t get over it! – and Mirah’s passionate declaration to her Christian friends, “I will always cling to my people.” Mirah is a bit of a Mary Sue, but she gives voice to the pintele Yid that motivates all us BTs. How in the world did George Eliot know?
The rest of the novel alternates between scenes of Gwendolen in her souring marriage and scenes with the Jewish characters, which notably includes a visionary named Mordecai who is preaching religious Zionism. Daniel, the "knight errant," weaves his way through all of their lives. (Comic relief from Daniel's friend, Hans Meyrick.) Naturally, I am partial to the Jewish sections, but from a literary point of view, the portrayal of Gwendolen is the most masterful part of the novel. No character goes through as dramatic a transformation as she.
I must reiterate that George Eliot does not reach Jane Austen in terms of prose style. At times the text is so heavy and full of extraneous detail that I suspected that like Dickens, she was paid by the word. But while Dickens was making it big with Fagin, Eliot was taking on anti-Semitism, not just by creating positive Jewish characters, but by letting her Christian characters work through their prejudices in the course of the novel. That makes her a heroine in my eyes.
The scholarly introduction to my copy of the novel included some very interesting literary history. The British critics of the time panned the book for its Jewish themes. One suggested that Eliot should have left the Jews out and just called the book Gwendolen. An anonymous sequel by that title appeared a few years later, doing more or less that by killing off the Jewish characters and continuing the story of Gwendolen and Deronda. But the Jewish community’s reaction was a mirror image of the British critics'. The Jews loved the book, though some said that the romantic themes detracted from the main point of the novel, which was Zionism. And in parallel to the anonymous sequel, the German Jewish novelist Marcus Lehman adapted the book to include only the Jewish themes. I think the whole thing is pretty funny.
Personally, I loved both parts of the book – the British and the Jewish. If you’re a fan of either genre, this is a worthwhile read. And if, like me, you’re a fan of both, chances are that you’ll find in this book a lifetime favorite you’ll be happy to immerse yourself in over and over again.
December 31, 2017
This was one of those long stories that in the end were worth a read. I have previously read “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, but in many ways I find “Daniel Deronda” to be a different story that is interesting in many ways.
Our main character, Gwendolen, is quite a character. She’s selfish, attention-seeking and frivolous, and in many ways she actually reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind”. I liked reading about her a lot - especially because she does change throughout the narrative - but some people might find her too repulsive to take an interest in.
The other main character is Daniel Deronda who is, in many ways, the opposite of Gwendolen. It’s very interesting to see the way his life is parallelled to Gwendolen’s; especially because his life is in many ways different from hers. He’s considerate, caring, and he develops a fondness for Jews and wants to explore their religion and way of living in spite of them being anhorred by most white Christians in the current English society.
This is an epic tale that takes devotion to get through, but while it took me some effort to read it because of its many reflections on life (oftentimes directed directly to the reader which I wasn’t that fond of), all in all I find this work to be accomplished, entertaining and very interesting! It’s definitely worth a read, and I’m happy that I got to be acquainted with Gwendolen, Daniel and the magnificent set of characters.
Our main character, Gwendolen, is quite a character. She’s selfish, attention-seeking and frivolous, and in many ways she actually reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind”. I liked reading about her a lot - especially because she does change throughout the narrative - but some people might find her too repulsive to take an interest in.
The other main character is Daniel Deronda who is, in many ways, the opposite of Gwendolen. It’s very interesting to see the way his life is parallelled to Gwendolen’s; especially because his life is in many ways different from hers. He’s considerate, caring, and he develops a fondness for Jews and wants to explore their religion and way of living in spite of them being anhorred by most white Christians in the current English society.
This is an epic tale that takes devotion to get through, but while it took me some effort to read it because of its many reflections on life (oftentimes directed directly to the reader which I wasn’t that fond of), all in all I find this work to be accomplished, entertaining and very interesting! It’s definitely worth a read, and I’m happy that I got to be acquainted with Gwendolen, Daniel and the magnificent set of characters.
October 5, 2015
While ostensibly the story of one Daniel Deronda, a young man of (we learn) unknown parentage, raised to be an educated Englishman of worth and standing, this novel is also the tale of Gwendolen Harleth, and how their lives intersect. We are introduced to both early on and see them off and on over time as they face changes within their families, their sense of self, their future.
This is my third Eliot novel. While I found some truly wonderful prose here, as I have found in the others I have read, I was left with the impression that Eliot attempted more than she could comfortably accomplish. Her character descriptions are typically excellent, some quite amusing. She is able to skewer her people both lovingly --- and not.
As an example of the first (perhaps) there is this description of Gwendolen.
And happening to be seated sideways before the long
strip of mirror between her two windows she turned to
look at herself, leaning her elbow on the back of the
chair in an attitude that might have been chosen for
her portrait. It is possible to have a strong self-love
without self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent
which is the more intense because one's own little core
of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care; but
Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward strife. She had
a naive delight in her fortunate self... (loc 972)
As for another character, Grandcourt:
when he raised his hat he showed an extensive
baldness surrounded with a mere fringe of reddish-
blond hair...; the line of feature from brow to chin
undisguised by beard was decidedly handsome, with
only moderate departures from the perpendicular, and
the slight whisker too was perpendicular. It was not
possible for a human aspect to be freer from grimace
or solicitous wrigglings; also it was perhaps not
possible for a breathing man wide awake to look less
animated....his long narrow grey eyes expressed nothing
but indifference. (loc 2507)
But after these characterizations comes the plot and here comes also what, for me, was the problem. Here it felt as if Eliot's concern for the politics and history of her story overwhelmed the narrative. That never really gelled with the basic story of the characters. The polemics overshadowed several chapters and a few of the characters, seeming to reduce them to ciphers. But Eliot is still a powerful writer and, often, a clever and beautiful writer. I didn't find her writing about the "cause" too strident. Some of it I found very appealing. But as a whole I don't think it succeeded in bringing the story of Daniel Deronda fully to life.
This is my third Eliot novel. While I found some truly wonderful prose here, as I have found in the others I have read, I was left with the impression that Eliot attempted more than she could comfortably accomplish. Her character descriptions are typically excellent, some quite amusing. She is able to skewer her people both lovingly --- and not.
As an example of the first (perhaps) there is this description of Gwendolen.
And happening to be seated sideways before the long
strip of mirror between her two windows she turned to
look at herself, leaning her elbow on the back of the
chair in an attitude that might have been chosen for
her portrait. It is possible to have a strong self-love
without self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent
which is the more intense because one's own little core
of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care; but
Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward strife. She had
a naive delight in her fortunate self... (loc 972)
As for another character, Grandcourt:
when he raised his hat he showed an extensive
baldness surrounded with a mere fringe of reddish-
blond hair...; the line of feature from brow to chin
undisguised by beard was decidedly handsome, with
only moderate departures from the perpendicular, and
the slight whisker too was perpendicular. It was not
possible for a human aspect to be freer from grimace
or solicitous wrigglings; also it was perhaps not
possible for a breathing man wide awake to look less
animated....his long narrow grey eyes expressed nothing
but indifference. (loc 2507)
But after these characterizations comes the plot and here comes also what, for me, was the problem. Here it felt as if Eliot's concern for the politics and history of her story overwhelmed the narrative. That never really gelled with the basic story of the characters. The polemics overshadowed several chapters and a few of the characters, seeming to reduce them to ciphers. But Eliot is still a powerful writer and, often, a clever and beautiful writer. I didn't find her writing about the "cause" too strident. Some of it I found very appealing. But as a whole I don't think it succeeded in bringing the story of Daniel Deronda fully to life.
February 3, 2019
Oh dear, I was supposed to be rereading this over a couple of months with a book group... but it's so darn gripping even on a second read that I've ended up rushing ahead and finishing it due to the proverbial 'couldn't put it down'...
My original review is below but on this reread I was struck by the extent to which Eliot seems to be setting up sections that duplicate well-known literary scenarios: the section where Grandcourt leases the 'great house' and sets off marital expectations and plans in local families is so Pride & Prejudice, and there's a Sense & Sensibility feel a little later . But Eliot sets up these comparisons only to knock them down: a far harsher social reality is given rein in this book, and we have a portrait of one of the scariest marriages, surely, in literature.
Motifs of women singing and acting tie the two main stories together in interesting ways, inviting us to compare and contrast Gwen and Mirah (), and the ending is left somewhat open, albeit in a satisfying way.
I can get anxious rereading a beloved book in case it doesn't stand up so well a second time - no problem here, this is still both a wonderful read and a radical departure for the Victorian novel.
-------------------------------------------------------
Although academically Middlemarch is always regarded as Eliot's masterpiece, I've always thought this novel deserves the title. The characters are nuanced and it's important that Gwendolen starts off as being a conventional spoilt beauty because that makes her growth and change all the more compelling and significant.
As a woman writing in 19th century England, Eliot bravely highlights the impacts of poverty and the implications for women who are forced to prostitute themselves effectively in the marriage market, since a career is out of the question. This is the dark underside of Jane Austen and an important antidote to that sunny view of male/female relationships and the economic reality behind them.
The other brave element in this book is the theme of Jewishness which was glossed over in most of the literature of this period. It is the clash and interraction of the two related prejudices of gender and race/religion that give this book its resonance and importance and its relevance to today.
My original review is below but on this reread I was struck by the extent to which Eliot seems to be setting up sections that duplicate well-known literary scenarios: the section where Grandcourt leases the 'great house' and sets off marital expectations and plans in local families is so Pride & Prejudice, and there's a Sense & Sensibility feel a little later . But Eliot sets up these comparisons only to knock them down: a far harsher social reality is given rein in this book, and we have a portrait of one of the scariest marriages, surely, in literature.
Motifs of women singing and acting tie the two main stories together in interesting ways, inviting us to compare and contrast Gwen and Mirah (), and the ending is left somewhat open, albeit in a satisfying way.
I can get anxious rereading a beloved book in case it doesn't stand up so well a second time - no problem here, this is still both a wonderful read and a radical departure for the Victorian novel.
-------------------------------------------------------
Although academically Middlemarch is always regarded as Eliot's masterpiece, I've always thought this novel deserves the title. The characters are nuanced and it's important that Gwendolen starts off as being a conventional spoilt beauty because that makes her growth and change all the more compelling and significant.
As a woman writing in 19th century England, Eliot bravely highlights the impacts of poverty and the implications for women who are forced to prostitute themselves effectively in the marriage market, since a career is out of the question. This is the dark underside of Jane Austen and an important antidote to that sunny view of male/female relationships and the economic reality behind them.
The other brave element in this book is the theme of Jewishness which was glossed over in most of the literature of this period. It is the clash and interraction of the two related prejudices of gender and race/religion that give this book its resonance and importance and its relevance to today.
May 3, 2022
My favourite Eliot so far I think and her last novel. There are two strands to the novel. There is the attraction between Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth with all its vicissitudes. Then there is the depiction of the Jews and the Jewish question. Deronda discovers his Jewish origins and goes on a journey of discovery. Eliot even ponders the idea of a Jewish homeland as Deronda is drawn into early Zionist politics. Eliot’s approach here is in contrast with other Victorian novelists; especially Dickens and Trollope. Eliot does illustrate some of the tensions within society with the reaction of some of the other characters to Deronda as he explores his Jewish roots.
There have been attempts and proposals to amend the novel to maintain only one theme. Leavis felt the Jewish section was weak and should be removed to focus on Deronda and Harleth. Some Jewish commentators have felt that the Deronda/Harleth sections should be removed. The TV adaptation in 2002 focused on Deronda and Harleth and there was virtually no mention of the Lapidoths. Eliot certainly reflects the general attitudes towards the Jews in society at the time. The character of Mordecai is an interesting one and is based on Emanuel Deutsch. He reflects the mysticism and visionary nature of early Zionism. Of course Eliot is still a Victorian novelist and doesn’t mention circumcision, although maybe she does indirectly:
“If his father had been wicked – Daniel inwardly used strong words, for he was feeling the injury done him as a maimed boy feels the crushed limb which for others is merely reckoned in an average of accidents – if his father had done any wrong, he wished it might never be spoken of to him: it was already a cutting thought that such knowledge might be in other minds.”
Deronda does come across as being rather too good, perhaps with a bit of a saviour complex with messianic overtones:
“Persons attracted him, as Hans Meyrick had done, in proportion to the possibility of his defending them, rescuing them, telling upon their lives with some sort of redeeming influence; and he had to resist an inclination, easily accounted for, to withdraw coldly from the fortunate.”
Eliot also uses other tropes. The relationship between Gwendolen and her husband Grandcourt is a case in point, being a play on Ovid’s version of Diana and Actaeon (it has the archery, virginity and hunting) and the use of water at the end also fits, even if in an inverted way. The relationship is also an example of what would now be called Coercive Control:
“Of what use was the rebellion within her? She could say nothing that would not hurt her worse than submission. Turning slowing and covering herself again, she went to her dressing-room. As she reached out the diamonds it occurred to her that her unwillingness to wear them might have already raised a suspicion in Grandcourt that she had some knowledge about them which he had not given her. She fancied that his eyes showed a delight in torturing her. How could she be defiant? She had nothing to say that would touch him—nothing but what would give him a more painful grasp on her consciousness.”
And:
“He delights in making the dogs and horses quail: that is half his pleasure in calling them his,” she said to herself, as she opened the jewel-case with a shivering sensation.
“It will come to be so with me; and I shall quail. What else is there for me? I will not say to the world, ‘Pity me.'”
It is also worth remembering Said’s critique of this novel saying:
"Eliot uses the plight of the Jews to make a universal statement about the nineteenth century's need for a home"
Said finds Deronda’s departure for the East as:
“uncomfortably close to the imperial adventurism common among Englishmen of his time and class, who go off to the colonies to find a role and make a reputation”
It’s an interesting and complex discussion which doesn’t take away from the greatness of the novel. This has been a bit of a rambling tour round some of the issues. Despite a few flaws I really enjoyed this.
There have been attempts and proposals to amend the novel to maintain only one theme. Leavis felt the Jewish section was weak and should be removed to focus on Deronda and Harleth. Some Jewish commentators have felt that the Deronda/Harleth sections should be removed. The TV adaptation in 2002 focused on Deronda and Harleth and there was virtually no mention of the Lapidoths. Eliot certainly reflects the general attitudes towards the Jews in society at the time. The character of Mordecai is an interesting one and is based on Emanuel Deutsch. He reflects the mysticism and visionary nature of early Zionism. Of course Eliot is still a Victorian novelist and doesn’t mention circumcision, although maybe she does indirectly:
“If his father had been wicked – Daniel inwardly used strong words, for he was feeling the injury done him as a maimed boy feels the crushed limb which for others is merely reckoned in an average of accidents – if his father had done any wrong, he wished it might never be spoken of to him: it was already a cutting thought that such knowledge might be in other minds.”
Deronda does come across as being rather too good, perhaps with a bit of a saviour complex with messianic overtones:
“Persons attracted him, as Hans Meyrick had done, in proportion to the possibility of his defending them, rescuing them, telling upon their lives with some sort of redeeming influence; and he had to resist an inclination, easily accounted for, to withdraw coldly from the fortunate.”
Eliot also uses other tropes. The relationship between Gwendolen and her husband Grandcourt is a case in point, being a play on Ovid’s version of Diana and Actaeon (it has the archery, virginity and hunting) and the use of water at the end also fits, even if in an inverted way. The relationship is also an example of what would now be called Coercive Control:
“Of what use was the rebellion within her? She could say nothing that would not hurt her worse than submission. Turning slowing and covering herself again, she went to her dressing-room. As she reached out the diamonds it occurred to her that her unwillingness to wear them might have already raised a suspicion in Grandcourt that she had some knowledge about them which he had not given her. She fancied that his eyes showed a delight in torturing her. How could she be defiant? She had nothing to say that would touch him—nothing but what would give him a more painful grasp on her consciousness.”
And:
“He delights in making the dogs and horses quail: that is half his pleasure in calling them his,” she said to herself, as she opened the jewel-case with a shivering sensation.
“It will come to be so with me; and I shall quail. What else is there for me? I will not say to the world, ‘Pity me.'”
It is also worth remembering Said’s critique of this novel saying:
"Eliot uses the plight of the Jews to make a universal statement about the nineteenth century's need for a home"
Said finds Deronda’s departure for the East as:
“uncomfortably close to the imperial adventurism common among Englishmen of his time and class, who go off to the colonies to find a role and make a reputation”
It’s an interesting and complex discussion which doesn’t take away from the greatness of the novel. This has been a bit of a rambling tour round some of the issues. Despite a few flaws I really enjoyed this.
May 14, 2023
I read Middlemarch some time ago, not knowing it’s a masterpiece (I never heard about Eliot growing up), “the only English book for adults”, and liked it ok. Then I kept discovering it on the lists of readers’ favorite books. That made me wonder if I missed something and I decided to reread it. I bought a good copy so that nothing would hinder me from enjoying it. And I just couldn’t make myself move past the first page. But then I heard about this book, her last and “the most ambitious” one. Ok, I think to myself, this is my next Eliot.
This is a very very long novel of two very distinct parts. One of them is about a young woman disillusioned with her life and destroyed through her bad marriage. (And the badness of the marriage is mostly explained to us, not much shown). The other one is about the titular character's self-discovery and falling in love with the idea of proto-Zionism.
And they are both weak, preachy, moralizing and boring. Well, Gwendolen's part started out fantastic, the menacing atmosphere of her every scene of sparring for power with her future husband were beautifully crafted, the suspense, the psychological intricacies of every move, gesture. Unfortunately Eliot gave up and gave us the most unsatisfying resolution of that subplot, the only good subplot. The part about Judaism was so uninspired, filled by characters who were just avatars of the archetype: a beautiful young Jewish woman destined to be a good Jewish wife for a Jewish husband; a man who lives for his ideas; both of them are the most enlightened human beings to teach English characters around him that not all Jews are pawnbroker, and some have beautiful noses (the lowlier Jews didn't escape the profession or the nose). I am not criticizing her, she's a woman of her time and this book is full of empathy towards Jewish people. What I am trying to say is that I am not a woman of her time and I am not a scholar of Judaism in Victorian England.
And after reading The Mill on the Floss and this one, I'm positive the woman can’t finish her novel for the life of her.
And if I’m understanding correctly, Eliot sees every marriage as a power struggle where a woman must lose for it to be a happy one. Or more like to be a meek submissive doting one from the start. If you’re a strong woman, you’re doomed.
Will I ever reread Middlemarch? I don’t know. Was this book a waste of my reading time? Yes. The good was just too rare and the banal, moralistic aplenty.
This is a very very long novel of two very distinct parts. One of them is about a young woman disillusioned with her life and destroyed through her bad marriage. (And the badness of the marriage is mostly explained to us, not much shown). The other one is about the titular character's self-discovery and falling in love with the idea of proto-Zionism.
And they are both weak, preachy, moralizing and boring. Well, Gwendolen's part started out fantastic, the menacing atmosphere of her every scene of sparring for power with her future husband were beautifully crafted, the suspense, the psychological intricacies of every move, gesture. Unfortunately Eliot gave up and gave us the most unsatisfying resolution of that subplot, the only good subplot. The part about Judaism was so uninspired, filled by characters who were just avatars of the archetype: a beautiful young Jewish woman destined to be a good Jewish wife for a Jewish husband; a man who lives for his ideas; both of them are the most enlightened human beings to teach English characters around him that not all Jews are pawnbroker, and some have beautiful noses (the lowlier Jews didn't escape the profession or the nose). I am not criticizing her, she's a woman of her time and this book is full of empathy towards Jewish people. What I am trying to say is that I am not a woman of her time and I am not a scholar of Judaism in Victorian England.
And after reading The Mill on the Floss and this one, I'm positive the woman can’t finish her novel for the life of her.
And if I’m understanding correctly, Eliot sees every marriage as a power struggle where a woman must lose for it to be a happy one. Or more like to be a meek submissive doting one from the start. If you’re a strong woman, you’re doomed.
Will I ever reread Middlemarch? I don’t know. Was this book a waste of my reading time? Yes. The good was just too rare and the banal, moralistic aplenty.
December 9, 2019
Once upon a time, I was on a long train journey, and one of my compartment's neighbors, watching me reading for a lengthy period in a frozen silence, asked me which word in human's vocabulary was the most valuable. My reply was spontaneously uttered, "Love". The man was surprised. He said he had expected me to answer "soul" or "God". I just laughed and replied, "Love is enough as Love is God." Well, it should be enough. But, maybe not anymore. Anyway, at that time I certainly felt that while raising on the ray of love, one can enter the enlightened kingdom of everything that God has created. In a way, but again depending on the key of interpretation, it is better to say that love is God than to say that truth is God, because the harmony, the beauty, the vitality, the joy and the bliss that are part of love are not part of truth. Truth is to be known, heard, voiced; love is to be felt, experienced, as well as known. The growth and perfection of love lead to the ultimate merger with God, whatever that means for each of us.
We like it or not, the greatest poverty of all is the absence of love. The man who has not developed the capacity to love lives in a private hell of his own. A man who is filled with love is in heaven – earthly or not, it doesn’t matter, it’s enough if it’s also mentally and physically, spiritually experienced. A human can be seen as a wonderful and unique plant, a plant that is capable of producing both nectar and poison. If a man lives by hate he reaps a harvest of poison; if he lives by love he gathers blossoms laden with nectar. I guess each one has a similar experience. Like it or not, one cannot avoid it. If I mould my life and live it with the well-being of everything in mind, that is love. But Love results from the awareness that you are not separate, not different from anything else in existence. I am in you; you are in me. This love is religious and it is the truest one.
I replied that love is God. That is to me the ultimate truth. But, love also exists within the family unit. This is the first step on the journey to love, and the ultimate can never happen if the beginning has been absent. Love is responsible for the existence of the family and when the family unit moves apart and its members spread out into society, love increases and grows. When a man's family has finally grown to incorporate all of mankind, his love becomes one with God.
Without love a human being is just an individual, an ego. He has no family; he has no link with other people. This is gradual death. Life, on the other hand, is interrelation. Love surpasses the duality of the ego. This alone is truth. The man who thirsts for truth must first develop his capacity to love—to the point where the difference between the lover and the beloved disappears and only love remains. When the light of love is freed from the duality of lover and the beloved, when it is freed from the haze of seer and seen, when only the light of pure love shines brightly, that is freedom and liberation. Or, better said, that’s supreme freedom.
I wondered what I could say about love!
Love is so difficult to describe. Love is just there. You could probably see it in my eyes if you came up and looked into them.
I wonder if you can feel it as my arms spread in an embrace.
Love.
What is love?
If love is not felt in my eyes, in my arms, in my silence, then it can never be realized from my words.
Quotes:
***
“My dear boy, you are too young to be taking momentous, decisive steps of that sort. This is a fancy which you have got into your head during an idle week or two: you must set to work at something and dismiss it. There is every reason against it. An engagement at your age would be totally rash and unjustifiable; and moreover, alliances between first cousins are undesirable. Make up your mind to a brief disappointment. Life is full of them. We have all got to be broken in; and this is a mild beginning for you.”
***
“In any case, she would have to submit; and he enjoyed thinking of her as his future wife, whose pride and spirit were suited to command everyone but himself. He had no taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, full of petitioning solicitude and willing obedience. He meant to be master of a woman who would have liked to master him, and who perhaps would have been capable of mastering another man.”
“he had wanted to marry Gwendolen, and he was not a man to repent. Why should a gentleman whose other relations in life are carried on without the luxury of sympathetic feeling, be supposed to require that kind of condiment in domestic life? What he chiefly felt was that a change had come over the conditions of his mastery, which, far from shaking it, might establish it the more thoroughly. And it was established. He judged that he had not married a simpleton unable to perceive the impossibility of escape, or to see alternative evils: he had married a girl who had spirit and pride enough not to make a fool of herself by forfeiting all the advantages of a position which had attracted her; and if she wanted pregnant hints to help her in making up her mind properly he would take care not to withhold them.”
“When you undertook to be Mrs. Grandcourt, you undertook not to make a fool of yourself. You have been making a fool of yourself this morning; and if you were to go on as you have begun, you might soon get yourself talked of at the clubs in a way you would not like. What do you know about the world? You have married me, and must be guided by my opinion.”
***
“Her griefs were feminine; but to her as a woman they were not the less hard to bear, and she felt an equal right to the Promethean tone. she had a confused state of emotion about Deronda—was it wounded pride and resentment, or a certain awe and exceptional trust?
“though it was her hunger to speak to him which had set her imagination on constructing this chance of finding him, and had made her hurry down, as birds hover near the water which they dare not drink. Always uneasily dubious about his opinion of her, she felt a peculiar anxiety to-day, lest he might think of her with contempt, as one triumphantly conscious of being Grandcourt's wife, the future lady of this domain. It was her habitual effort now to magnify the satisfactions of her pride, on which she nourished her strength; but somehow Deronda's being there disturbed them all. There was not the faintest touch of coquetry in the attitude of her mind toward him: he was unique to her among men, because he had impressed her as being not her admirer but her superior: in some mysterious way he was becoming a part of her conscience, as one woman whose nature is an object of reverential belief may become a new conscience to a man.”
“It did not signify that the other gentlemen took the opportunity of being near her: of what use in the world was their admiration while she had an uneasy sense that there was some standard in Deronda's mind which measured her into littleness?”
“Poor Gwendolen was conscious of an uneasy, transforming process—all the old nature shaken to its depths, its hopes spoiled, its pleasures perturbed, but still showing wholeness and strength in the will to reassert itself. After every new shock of humiliation she tried to adjust herself and seize her old supports—proud concealment, trust in new excitements that would make life go by without much thinking; trust in some deed of reparation to nullify her self-blame and shield her from a vague, ever-visiting dread of some horrible calamity; trust in the hardening effect of use and wont that would make her indifferent to her miseries.
Yes—miseries. This beautiful, healthy young creature, with her two-and-twenty years and her gratified ambition, no longer felt inclined to kiss her fortunate image in the glass. She looked at it with wonder that she could be so miserable”
“Gwendolen's appetite had sickened. Let her wander over the possibilities of her life as she would, an uncertain shadow dogged her. Her confidence in herself and her destiny had turned into remorse and dread; she trusted neither herself nor her future.”
“With all the sense of inferiority that had been forced upon her, it was inevitable that she should imagine a larger place for herself in his thoughts than she actually possessed. They must be rather old and wise persons who are not apt to see their own anxiety or elation about themselves reflected in other minds; and Gwendolen, with her youth and inward solitude, may be excused for dwelling on signs of special interest in her shown by the one person who had impressed her with the feeling of submission, and for mistaking the color and proportion of those signs in the mind of Deronda.”
“But, as always happens with a deep interest, the comparatively rare occasions on which she could exchange any words with Deronda had a diffusive effect in her consciousness, magnifying their communication with each other, and therefore enlarging the place she imagined it to have in his mind. How could Deronda help this? He certainly did not avoid her; rather he wished to convince her by every delicate indirect means that her confidence in him had not been indiscreet since it had not lowered his respect. Moreover, he liked being near her—how could it be otherwise?
She was something more than a problem: she was a lovely woman, for the turn of whose mind and fate he had a care which, however futile it might be, kept soliciting him as a responsibility, perhaps all the more that, when he dared to think of his own future, he saw it lying far away from this splendid sad-hearted creature, who, because he had once been impelled to arrest her attention momentarily, as he might have seized her arm with warning to hinder her from stepping where there was danger, had turned to him with a beseeching persistent need.”
***
“To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.”
***
“No," said the Princess, shaking her head and folding her arms with an air of decision. "You are not a woman. You may try—but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern cut out—'this is the Jewish woman; this is what you must be; this is what you are wanted for; a woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.' That was what my father wanted. He wished I had been a son; he cared for me as a make-shift link. His heart was set on his Judaism. He hated that Jewish women should be thought of by the Christian world as a sort of ware to make public singers and actresses of. As if we were not the more enviable for that! That is a chance of escaping from bondage.”
We like it or not, the greatest poverty of all is the absence of love. The man who has not developed the capacity to love lives in a private hell of his own. A man who is filled with love is in heaven – earthly or not, it doesn’t matter, it’s enough if it’s also mentally and physically, spiritually experienced. A human can be seen as a wonderful and unique plant, a plant that is capable of producing both nectar and poison. If a man lives by hate he reaps a harvest of poison; if he lives by love he gathers blossoms laden with nectar. I guess each one has a similar experience. Like it or not, one cannot avoid it. If I mould my life and live it with the well-being of everything in mind, that is love. But Love results from the awareness that you are not separate, not different from anything else in existence. I am in you; you are in me. This love is religious and it is the truest one.
I replied that love is God. That is to me the ultimate truth. But, love also exists within the family unit. This is the first step on the journey to love, and the ultimate can never happen if the beginning has been absent. Love is responsible for the existence of the family and when the family unit moves apart and its members spread out into society, love increases and grows. When a man's family has finally grown to incorporate all of mankind, his love becomes one with God.
Without love a human being is just an individual, an ego. He has no family; he has no link with other people. This is gradual death. Life, on the other hand, is interrelation. Love surpasses the duality of the ego. This alone is truth. The man who thirsts for truth must first develop his capacity to love—to the point where the difference between the lover and the beloved disappears and only love remains. When the light of love is freed from the duality of lover and the beloved, when it is freed from the haze of seer and seen, when only the light of pure love shines brightly, that is freedom and liberation. Or, better said, that’s supreme freedom.
I wondered what I could say about love!
Love is so difficult to describe. Love is just there. You could probably see it in my eyes if you came up and looked into them.
I wonder if you can feel it as my arms spread in an embrace.
Love.
What is love?
If love is not felt in my eyes, in my arms, in my silence, then it can never be realized from my words.
Quotes:
***
“My dear boy, you are too young to be taking momentous, decisive steps of that sort. This is a fancy which you have got into your head during an idle week or two: you must set to work at something and dismiss it. There is every reason against it. An engagement at your age would be totally rash and unjustifiable; and moreover, alliances between first cousins are undesirable. Make up your mind to a brief disappointment. Life is full of them. We have all got to be broken in; and this is a mild beginning for you.”
***
“In any case, she would have to submit; and he enjoyed thinking of her as his future wife, whose pride and spirit were suited to command everyone but himself. He had no taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, full of petitioning solicitude and willing obedience. He meant to be master of a woman who would have liked to master him, and who perhaps would have been capable of mastering another man.”
“he had wanted to marry Gwendolen, and he was not a man to repent. Why should a gentleman whose other relations in life are carried on without the luxury of sympathetic feeling, be supposed to require that kind of condiment in domestic life? What he chiefly felt was that a change had come over the conditions of his mastery, which, far from shaking it, might establish it the more thoroughly. And it was established. He judged that he had not married a simpleton unable to perceive the impossibility of escape, or to see alternative evils: he had married a girl who had spirit and pride enough not to make a fool of herself by forfeiting all the advantages of a position which had attracted her; and if she wanted pregnant hints to help her in making up her mind properly he would take care not to withhold them.”
“When you undertook to be Mrs. Grandcourt, you undertook not to make a fool of yourself. You have been making a fool of yourself this morning; and if you were to go on as you have begun, you might soon get yourself talked of at the clubs in a way you would not like. What do you know about the world? You have married me, and must be guided by my opinion.”
***
“Her griefs were feminine; but to her as a woman they were not the less hard to bear, and she felt an equal right to the Promethean tone. she had a confused state of emotion about Deronda—was it wounded pride and resentment, or a certain awe and exceptional trust?
“though it was her hunger to speak to him which had set her imagination on constructing this chance of finding him, and had made her hurry down, as birds hover near the water which they dare not drink. Always uneasily dubious about his opinion of her, she felt a peculiar anxiety to-day, lest he might think of her with contempt, as one triumphantly conscious of being Grandcourt's wife, the future lady of this domain. It was her habitual effort now to magnify the satisfactions of her pride, on which she nourished her strength; but somehow Deronda's being there disturbed them all. There was not the faintest touch of coquetry in the attitude of her mind toward him: he was unique to her among men, because he had impressed her as being not her admirer but her superior: in some mysterious way he was becoming a part of her conscience, as one woman whose nature is an object of reverential belief may become a new conscience to a man.”
“It did not signify that the other gentlemen took the opportunity of being near her: of what use in the world was their admiration while she had an uneasy sense that there was some standard in Deronda's mind which measured her into littleness?”
“Poor Gwendolen was conscious of an uneasy, transforming process—all the old nature shaken to its depths, its hopes spoiled, its pleasures perturbed, but still showing wholeness and strength in the will to reassert itself. After every new shock of humiliation she tried to adjust herself and seize her old supports—proud concealment, trust in new excitements that would make life go by without much thinking; trust in some deed of reparation to nullify her self-blame and shield her from a vague, ever-visiting dread of some horrible calamity; trust in the hardening effect of use and wont that would make her indifferent to her miseries.
Yes—miseries. This beautiful, healthy young creature, with her two-and-twenty years and her gratified ambition, no longer felt inclined to kiss her fortunate image in the glass. She looked at it with wonder that she could be so miserable”
“Gwendolen's appetite had sickened. Let her wander over the possibilities of her life as she would, an uncertain shadow dogged her. Her confidence in herself and her destiny had turned into remorse and dread; she trusted neither herself nor her future.”
“With all the sense of inferiority that had been forced upon her, it was inevitable that she should imagine a larger place for herself in his thoughts than she actually possessed. They must be rather old and wise persons who are not apt to see their own anxiety or elation about themselves reflected in other minds; and Gwendolen, with her youth and inward solitude, may be excused for dwelling on signs of special interest in her shown by the one person who had impressed her with the feeling of submission, and for mistaking the color and proportion of those signs in the mind of Deronda.”
“But, as always happens with a deep interest, the comparatively rare occasions on which she could exchange any words with Deronda had a diffusive effect in her consciousness, magnifying their communication with each other, and therefore enlarging the place she imagined it to have in his mind. How could Deronda help this? He certainly did not avoid her; rather he wished to convince her by every delicate indirect means that her confidence in him had not been indiscreet since it had not lowered his respect. Moreover, he liked being near her—how could it be otherwise?
She was something more than a problem: she was a lovely woman, for the turn of whose mind and fate he had a care which, however futile it might be, kept soliciting him as a responsibility, perhaps all the more that, when he dared to think of his own future, he saw it lying far away from this splendid sad-hearted creature, who, because he had once been impelled to arrest her attention momentarily, as he might have seized her arm with warning to hinder her from stepping where there was danger, had turned to him with a beseeching persistent need.”
***
“To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.”
***
“No," said the Princess, shaking her head and folding her arms with an air of decision. "You are not a woman. You may try—but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern cut out—'this is the Jewish woman; this is what you must be; this is what you are wanted for; a woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.' That was what my father wanted. He wished I had been a son; he cared for me as a make-shift link. His heart was set on his Judaism. He hated that Jewish women should be thought of by the Christian world as a sort of ware to make public singers and actresses of. As if we were not the more enviable for that! That is a chance of escaping from bondage.”
July 25, 2022
Eliot is a master of characterization and uses this gift well in exploring two important themes in English society. The first and most unique is that of antisemitism in late 19th Century English life, as well as the beginnings of Zionism. The second theme is altruism vs. egotism. Too verbose and tangential at times, but otherwise a hugely ambitious and successful social novel.
.
.
January 21, 2019
(Thursday) It may take me a while to review this - I am en route to Scotland for a walking weekend and in any case I'm not sure anything I say can do it justice.
(Sunday) Daniel Deronda is Eliot's last novel, and I have wanted to read it ever since reading Sophie and the Sybil by Patricia Duncker a couple of years ago. In that book Duncker reimagined the circumstances that led Eliot to create the book, and Sophie has much in common with the wilful and impulsive Gwendolen Harleth, one of Eliot's two major characters.
The book is big, complex and surprisingly modern at times, telling the parallel but ultimately separate stories of Gwendolen and Daniel. Daniel has been brought up as the ward of an English gentleman, and the story is largely about his rediscovery of his Jewish roots.
I don't want to say too much more at this stage because the book is the subject of a group discussion at Reading the Chunksters for the next couple of months, and I don't want to preempt that discussion.
(Sunday) Daniel Deronda is Eliot's last novel, and I have wanted to read it ever since reading Sophie and the Sybil by Patricia Duncker a couple of years ago. In that book Duncker reimagined the circumstances that led Eliot to create the book, and Sophie has much in common with the wilful and impulsive Gwendolen Harleth, one of Eliot's two major characters.
The book is big, complex and surprisingly modern at times, telling the parallel but ultimately separate stories of Gwendolen and Daniel. Daniel has been brought up as the ward of an English gentleman, and the story is largely about his rediscovery of his Jewish roots.
I don't want to say too much more at this stage because the book is the subject of a group discussion at Reading the Chunksters for the next couple of months, and I don't want to preempt that discussion.
February 27, 2019
I've learned two things:
1. Briefly, I am Gwendolyn
2. I can never listen to a George Eliot novel again. I love her writing. She's so eloquent, but she's so verbose that I just zone out.
I'm DNF at chapter 56. I've decided I do not care what happens to any of these characters. I probably should have read the book.
2017 Reading Challenge: a book mentioned in another book
2/22/19
Ebook reread
Nope it wasn't the audio version. This really is the worst Eliot novel I've read. So many pages for so little plot. So let down
1. Briefly, I am Gwendolyn
2. I can never listen to a George Eliot novel again. I love her writing. She's so eloquent, but she's so verbose that I just zone out.
I'm DNF at chapter 56. I've decided I do not care what happens to any of these characters. I probably should have read the book.
2017 Reading Challenge: a book mentioned in another book
2/22/19
Ebook reread
Nope it wasn't the audio version. This really is the worst Eliot novel I've read. So many pages for so little plot. So let down
February 23, 2018
This ambitious novel melds the stories of two very different characters, so perhaps it's appropriate that the novel itself seems a hybrid of a little bit of a lot of what we expect from 19th-century British novelists: the sensational melodrama of Wilkie Collins; the perfection of 'good' characters a la Dickens, along with his humor and irony (though Eliot's is more subtle); the satire of marriage customs and the problem of moneymaking for females who are trained to be helpless, reminiscent of the arguably-18th-century Austen; and the morality, compassion and authorial asides of Eliot herself. As only one example of the latter, Eliot literally excuses the faults of most of the characters (excepting the one true villain of the work) in sentences as superfluous as Gwendolen's younger half-sisters.
I was intrigued by Chapter 11 whereby we 'hear' the thoughts between the spoken words of Gwen and Grandcourt upon their first meeting. Since it's early on, I hoped for more such innovation in its prose. But it is ideas, more than any other element, that are much more in the forefront, especially in the case of its eponymous character, who is obviously a Jesus-figure. He's not the only one who is almost too perfect and it's a bit of a relief for the 21st-century reader when one of these characters suffers understandable jealousy, seemingly her only 'fault'.
Literary (as well as artistic and political) allusions abound and I enjoyed those that I caught -- classical mythology and The Divine Comedy stand out for me. Reading this novel is to know Eliot's brilliance and her genius.
I was intrigued by Chapter 11 whereby we 'hear' the thoughts between the spoken words of Gwen and Grandcourt upon their first meeting. Since it's early on, I hoped for more such innovation in its prose. But it is ideas, more than any other element, that are much more in the forefront, especially in the case of its eponymous character, who is obviously a Jesus-figure. He's not the only one who is almost too perfect and it's a bit of a relief for the 21st-century reader when one of these characters suffers understandable jealousy, seemingly her only 'fault'.
Literary (as well as artistic and political) allusions abound and I enjoyed those that I caught -- classical mythology and The Divine Comedy stand out for me. Reading this novel is to know Eliot's brilliance and her genius.
March 9, 2024
2024 Review: Still five stars! I wanted to add a couple more thoughts here on this re-read. I love Daniel Deronda as a character. He’s one of my top favorite characters in all literature. I am longing for more about the Meyrick family. I want a whole novel just about them! I’m also longing for more of Rex and Anna. Brilliant side characters whom I want to have center stage.
I listened to the Juliet Stevenson audio this time around. She is brilliant so this is in no way a criticism of her. I don’t think George Eliot, as a whole, is well suited for audio. The intricate mix in her novels of commentary and plot make reading her novels physically as the best bet. I feel like I was not able to engage in this re-read as well as if I had been reading it. There’s just something about her writing style that I engage with best if I see it on the page or screen. Adam Bede and Silas Marner may be the exceptions here.
I listened to the Juliet Stevenson audio this time around. She is brilliant so this is in no way a criticism of her. I don’t think George Eliot, as a whole, is well suited for audio. The intricate mix in her novels of commentary and plot make reading her novels physically as the best bet. I feel like I was not able to engage in this re-read as well as if I had been reading it. There’s just something about her writing style that I engage with best if I see it on the page or screen. Adam Bede and Silas Marner may be the exceptions here.
January 29, 2024
2023/109
Was he handsome or not? Perhaps his big, green eyes that usually lit up his features, or maybe his genuine, contagious smile—he used to smile even when his eyes showed the sadness in his soul—were the cause of my falling head over heels for him. I met him the first day in Greek class during my second year in college (2015); that day it never crossed my mind that he would become someone I used to care for. We were not even friends about one year after, but rather just two classmates whose passion for the Greek language and culture was beyond explanation, nor did I imagine he would be into guys as well. It was not until the end of our second semester when I bumped into him while going to the subway. He was going there too, apparently was late for a dentist appointment or something of that kind. He was carrying a book in his hands, I noticed. 'Stephen King?,' I said, after a long pause when neither he nor I were able to strike up a conversation. 'I have only read It, and it took me almost six months to finally finish it. A good book, don't you think?' 'Absolutely! Oswaldo,' he said, 'I never thought you would be into SK. I'm reading this, halfway through it, but taking my time.' As soon as he said that, he showed me a paperback edition of Cujo and I took it, then proceeded to read the blurb. 'I have noticed that you always have a book with you, M., I wish I could read as much as you do, you know, it seems like a nice hobby,' said I. Before we arrived at the subway station he had told me he had read 35-ish King's books, apparently his favorite author, and that he could recommend some of his novels to kick off my own journey having read It, 'see you later, Oswaldo, are you going into the station? I'm going this way.' Later that day, for some reason I couldn't explain back then I knew he would become someone special to me; I wasn't sure why or how, but I somehow knew it. I had started to feel something for him.
It was by the end of our fourth semester, and after what it seemed a genuine friendship between the two of us—not only had I asked for his number and talked to him via Facebook, iMessage, and whatnot, but we had also had some face-to-face conversations for the past ten months, sometimes randomly, and at times eating a snack before class, doing some homework in the library, and the like—that he told me he was Jewish. It was completely out of the blue; we hadn't been talking about anything that might've led us to that particular topic. He just said it while waiting outside of the building where we took class together. 'I must confess I'm such an ignorant person regarding Jewish people; the only thing I know is that they are super rich,' I laughed, thinking I had just told the perfect joke. 'That is... very stereotypical, Oswaldo, though it is true. I mean, my parents are rich, not me, but whatever,' M. said, smiling as he always did. 'The thing is that my mother can't bear the idea of my being gay, she has never been able to accept it, and our relationship has been very dry ever since I told her. She found out, actually, but in the end nothing changed.' 'So sorry to hear that. For what it's worth, my coming out to my parents was not all "color de rosa"[1] at the beginning, I mean, eventually they supported me through this, but my mother thought I might be confused as I was 15 when I told them. I guess it's always difficult for our parents somehow. But, does your mother not accepting your being gay have something to do with being Jewish?' He didn't respond at once, but after a moment he said 'yeah, I guess so. She cares about things that are too banal, for me at least. For instance, I couldn't eat pork growing up, then I didn't care, I tried it, my mother found out and was mad at me for weeks. She takes Jewish life too seriously, which is not how it works for me. I guess being Jewish and gay is not a good combination after all.' No sooner had he said that, chuckling, than our professor Anny, a cheerful woman from Πειραιάς who always greeted her students with a friendly grin on her face, suddenly arrived at the place we were and after saying 'γεια σας παιδιά!' went directly to our classroom. We followed her and said no word on the topic we were concerned about. We had no words to say.
Later in winter that year, one very cold day when living in Mexico City seemed the worst decision I could've ever made, we were in Greek class, when suddenly Anny said: 'Παιδιά, θα ήθελα να δούμε τον διάλογο στην σελίδα --- στο βιβλίο μας, πρέπει να το διαβάσετε με τον συμμαθητή σας δίπλα σας. Αρχίζουμε;'[2] Fortunately for me, I happened to be seated next to M. that day. In the middle of our activity, I asked him a stupid question, or it seemed to be a stupid one back then: 'so, you don't celebrate Christmas, do you?' I had said to M. that Christmas is for me the most special tradition and the best one ever created—no discussion allowed—and that singing carols was a thing at home, especially back in the day when I was a little child. Sometimes my mother and I would sing carols with other people in our block, carrying candles while roaming the streets of our little town. Only the moon and our candles to guide our path. Hardly had I asked my question when M. stared at me as if saying "what's wrong with this guy." 'My family doesn't celebrate it per se, as for me, I usually celebrate with friends and with my boyfriend, ex-boyfriend actually. I used to spend Christmas with him and his family, but now I'm just chilling at home, having dinner, and watching movies. Not that much. Are you going to ask me now if I had my own Bar mitzvah? If we celebrate Hanukkah? The Sabbath? The Jewish New Year? Seriously, what's wrong with you?'
I was speechless. I couldn't even give him a proper answer. What was I thinking? Asking random questions just because he is Jewish? I could tell why he was so angry, so upset that I might be asking this and that. I knew he didn't like the idea of being Jewish, not because he was ashamed of being who he was, but because of that he and his family were not that close. One day he told me about his father. 'He doesn't live with us,' he said, looking at the horizon one afternoon while we were in Las Islas, the beautiful, central gardens of our college. 'He left a long time ago when I was eight, probably nine. I see him only a few times during the year. Three, four times, maybe. He has another family, and it's none of my business.' That was the story, then. An estranged father and a mother who couldn't even look his son straight in the eye. I wanted to hug him so badly, but I couldn't. On the one hand, I was very much into him those days, I wanted us to be more than just friends, maybe not lovers, but I wanted him to see me as someone you can rely on; alas, it was not possible for any of us. On the other hand, I just hoped to forget that I had some feelings for him, not romantic ones, just feelings. I wanted to get rid of them before it was too late for me, for us; I was also broken, and I knew I couldn't help him, as much as I knew he couldn't help me either.
When reading Daniel Deronda I couldn't help but remember my friend M. as George Eliot introduces some characters who are dealing with the fact that they are Jewish. I saw how, in the story, people might be so judgmental about it, how they are so rude to people just because of the fact of being Jewish. 'That's why I never said to people that I'm Jewish,' M. told me the day after I asked that stupid question. 'Because either people look at me as though I were an outlandish piece of s**t, or they ask me questions, albeit amicably, as though I were an outlandish piece of s**t. I just don't like that. I'm not asking you questions about your Catholic life, am I?' 'Actually I'm not religious, but I get your point. I'm sorry. It must be difficult, and I promise I won't ask anything related to that again.' A promise I kept until the last time we talked.
Eliot is not only able to perfectly depict her characters and their storylines, but also she manages to create a very complex world in Daniel Deronda, where many plots converge in the same path, with not only one, but two main characters. Daniel Deronda, who is a young man trying to find out who he is and where he is at this point in life, and Gwendolen Harleth, a 'spoiled child'[3] who is so ahead of her time, but whose decisions might lead her life in the wrong direction. Reading—listening to[4]—their stories is one of the best experiences, literature-wise, I've had this year, and Daniel Deronda has definitely become my favorite George Eliot novel thus far. As far as Victorian books go, it is furthermore one of the most enjoyable readings, mainly because Eliot's narrative is at its finest. She definitely pulled it off.
In the summer of 2018, when we were about to take our final exam and conclude our Greek course after three years, M. told me there would be a bar mitzvah ceremony in two weeks, it would be his second cousin's. Our friendship had been fading away in the past months, perhaps in the past year, and we were not even as close as we used to be in the middle of our Greek adventure. He invited me, I guess just because he felt he owed me something after all these years of friendship. I thought it was that way because his invitation came out of the blue after many days of dead silence between us. I was also sure he knew about my feelings for him the previous year, but we never talked about it. Anyhow, I couldn't make it. I had to leave Mexico City and go to Buenos Aires within a month, and my life was upside down at that time. I wish I could go and see what this tradition is like by myself, but alas, it is not possible. That was, perhaps, one of the last times I saw M.—maybe the last one—that I can recollect; at least I didn't see him after taking our exam that day, our last day in that classroom that had been our 'Greek home' for the past three years, a starry night in June that I still remember so vividly and that reminds me of him—we don't have many starry nights in Mexico City, that's why they are so special. By the day I'm typing this review, I have neither seen nor heard from my dear friend, but I guess by now it would be too late to say 'γεια σου, τι κάνεις;' to him again. Clearly and unmistakably, he was handsome indeed.
----
[1] a Spanish saying that means, albeit not literally, 'sunshine and rainbows.'
[2] 'Guys, I'd like you to go to the dialogue on page ---- in our book, you must read it with your classmate who is next to you. Shall we start?'
[3] Whether she is a spoiled child or not is up to the reader. We had a very good discussion on this topic in our book club, where two people concluded she was indeed a spoiled child and two said she wasn't. Let's find it out.
[4] Audiobook recommendation: the one narrated by Jill Tanner. A hidden gem on Audible.
My rating on a scale of 1 to 5:
Quality of writing [5/5]
Pace [4/5]
Plot development [4.5/5]
Characters [5/5]
Enjoyability [5/5]
Insightfulness [5/5]
Easy of reading [4.5/5]
Photos/Illustrations [N/A]
Total [33/7] = 4.71
Was he handsome or not? Perhaps his big, green eyes that usually lit up his features, or maybe his genuine, contagious smile—he used to smile even when his eyes showed the sadness in his soul—were the cause of my falling head over heels for him. I met him the first day in Greek class during my second year in college (2015); that day it never crossed my mind that he would become someone I used to care for. We were not even friends about one year after, but rather just two classmates whose passion for the Greek language and culture was beyond explanation, nor did I imagine he would be into guys as well. It was not until the end of our second semester when I bumped into him while going to the subway. He was going there too, apparently was late for a dentist appointment or something of that kind. He was carrying a book in his hands, I noticed. 'Stephen King?,' I said, after a long pause when neither he nor I were able to strike up a conversation. 'I have only read It, and it took me almost six months to finally finish it. A good book, don't you think?' 'Absolutely! Oswaldo,' he said, 'I never thought you would be into SK. I'm reading this, halfway through it, but taking my time.' As soon as he said that, he showed me a paperback edition of Cujo and I took it, then proceeded to read the blurb. 'I have noticed that you always have a book with you, M., I wish I could read as much as you do, you know, it seems like a nice hobby,' said I. Before we arrived at the subway station he had told me he had read 35-ish King's books, apparently his favorite author, and that he could recommend some of his novels to kick off my own journey having read It, 'see you later, Oswaldo, are you going into the station? I'm going this way.' Later that day, for some reason I couldn't explain back then I knew he would become someone special to me; I wasn't sure why or how, but I somehow knew it. I had started to feel something for him.
It was by the end of our fourth semester, and after what it seemed a genuine friendship between the two of us—not only had I asked for his number and talked to him via Facebook, iMessage, and whatnot, but we had also had some face-to-face conversations for the past ten months, sometimes randomly, and at times eating a snack before class, doing some homework in the library, and the like—that he told me he was Jewish. It was completely out of the blue; we hadn't been talking about anything that might've led us to that particular topic. He just said it while waiting outside of the building where we took class together. 'I must confess I'm such an ignorant person regarding Jewish people; the only thing I know is that they are super rich,' I laughed, thinking I had just told the perfect joke. 'That is... very stereotypical, Oswaldo, though it is true. I mean, my parents are rich, not me, but whatever,' M. said, smiling as he always did. 'The thing is that my mother can't bear the idea of my being gay, she has never been able to accept it, and our relationship has been very dry ever since I told her. She found out, actually, but in the end nothing changed.' 'So sorry to hear that. For what it's worth, my coming out to my parents was not all "color de rosa"[1] at the beginning, I mean, eventually they supported me through this, but my mother thought I might be confused as I was 15 when I told them. I guess it's always difficult for our parents somehow. But, does your mother not accepting your being gay have something to do with being Jewish?' He didn't respond at once, but after a moment he said 'yeah, I guess so. She cares about things that are too banal, for me at least. For instance, I couldn't eat pork growing up, then I didn't care, I tried it, my mother found out and was mad at me for weeks. She takes Jewish life too seriously, which is not how it works for me. I guess being Jewish and gay is not a good combination after all.' No sooner had he said that, chuckling, than our professor Anny, a cheerful woman from Πειραιάς who always greeted her students with a friendly grin on her face, suddenly arrived at the place we were and after saying 'γεια σας παιδιά!' went directly to our classroom. We followed her and said no word on the topic we were concerned about. We had no words to say.
Later in winter that year, one very cold day when living in Mexico City seemed the worst decision I could've ever made, we were in Greek class, when suddenly Anny said: 'Παιδιά, θα ήθελα να δούμε τον διάλογο στην σελίδα --- στο βιβλίο μας, πρέπει να το διαβάσετε με τον συμμαθητή σας δίπλα σας. Αρχίζουμε;'[2] Fortunately for me, I happened to be seated next to M. that day. In the middle of our activity, I asked him a stupid question, or it seemed to be a stupid one back then: 'so, you don't celebrate Christmas, do you?' I had said to M. that Christmas is for me the most special tradition and the best one ever created—no discussion allowed—and that singing carols was a thing at home, especially back in the day when I was a little child. Sometimes my mother and I would sing carols with other people in our block, carrying candles while roaming the streets of our little town. Only the moon and our candles to guide our path. Hardly had I asked my question when M. stared at me as if saying "what's wrong with this guy." 'My family doesn't celebrate it per se, as for me, I usually celebrate with friends and with my boyfriend, ex-boyfriend actually. I used to spend Christmas with him and his family, but now I'm just chilling at home, having dinner, and watching movies. Not that much. Are you going to ask me now if I had my own Bar mitzvah? If we celebrate Hanukkah? The Sabbath? The Jewish New Year? Seriously, what's wrong with you?'
I was speechless. I couldn't even give him a proper answer. What was I thinking? Asking random questions just because he is Jewish? I could tell why he was so angry, so upset that I might be asking this and that. I knew he didn't like the idea of being Jewish, not because he was ashamed of being who he was, but because of that he and his family were not that close. One day he told me about his father. 'He doesn't live with us,' he said, looking at the horizon one afternoon while we were in Las Islas, the beautiful, central gardens of our college. 'He left a long time ago when I was eight, probably nine. I see him only a few times during the year. Three, four times, maybe. He has another family, and it's none of my business.' That was the story, then. An estranged father and a mother who couldn't even look his son straight in the eye. I wanted to hug him so badly, but I couldn't. On the one hand, I was very much into him those days, I wanted us to be more than just friends, maybe not lovers, but I wanted him to see me as someone you can rely on; alas, it was not possible for any of us. On the other hand, I just hoped to forget that I had some feelings for him, not romantic ones, just feelings. I wanted to get rid of them before it was too late for me, for us; I was also broken, and I knew I couldn't help him, as much as I knew he couldn't help me either.
When reading Daniel Deronda I couldn't help but remember my friend M. as George Eliot introduces some characters who are dealing with the fact that they are Jewish. I saw how, in the story, people might be so judgmental about it, how they are so rude to people just because of the fact of being Jewish. 'That's why I never said to people that I'm Jewish,' M. told me the day after I asked that stupid question. 'Because either people look at me as though I were an outlandish piece of s**t, or they ask me questions, albeit amicably, as though I were an outlandish piece of s**t. I just don't like that. I'm not asking you questions about your Catholic life, am I?' 'Actually I'm not religious, but I get your point. I'm sorry. It must be difficult, and I promise I won't ask anything related to that again.' A promise I kept until the last time we talked.
Eliot is not only able to perfectly depict her characters and their storylines, but also she manages to create a very complex world in Daniel Deronda, where many plots converge in the same path, with not only one, but two main characters. Daniel Deronda, who is a young man trying to find out who he is and where he is at this point in life, and Gwendolen Harleth, a 'spoiled child'[3] who is so ahead of her time, but whose decisions might lead her life in the wrong direction. Reading—listening to[4]—their stories is one of the best experiences, literature-wise, I've had this year, and Daniel Deronda has definitely become my favorite George Eliot novel thus far. As far as Victorian books go, it is furthermore one of the most enjoyable readings, mainly because Eliot's narrative is at its finest. She definitely pulled it off.
In the summer of 2018, when we were about to take our final exam and conclude our Greek course after three years, M. told me there would be a bar mitzvah ceremony in two weeks, it would be his second cousin's. Our friendship had been fading away in the past months, perhaps in the past year, and we were not even as close as we used to be in the middle of our Greek adventure. He invited me, I guess just because he felt he owed me something after all these years of friendship. I thought it was that way because his invitation came out of the blue after many days of dead silence between us. I was also sure he knew about my feelings for him the previous year, but we never talked about it. Anyhow, I couldn't make it. I had to leave Mexico City and go to Buenos Aires within a month, and my life was upside down at that time. I wish I could go and see what this tradition is like by myself, but alas, it is not possible. That was, perhaps, one of the last times I saw M.—maybe the last one—that I can recollect; at least I didn't see him after taking our exam that day, our last day in that classroom that had been our 'Greek home' for the past three years, a starry night in June that I still remember so vividly and that reminds me of him—we don't have many starry nights in Mexico City, that's why they are so special. By the day I'm typing this review, I have neither seen nor heard from my dear friend, but I guess by now it would be too late to say 'γεια σου, τι κάνεις;' to him again. Clearly and unmistakably, he was handsome indeed.
----
[1] a Spanish saying that means, albeit not literally, 'sunshine and rainbows.'
[2] 'Guys, I'd like you to go to the dialogue on page ---- in our book, you must read it with your classmate who is next to you. Shall we start?'
[3] Whether she is a spoiled child or not is up to the reader. We had a very good discussion on this topic in our book club, where two people concluded she was indeed a spoiled child and two said she wasn't. Let's find it out.
[4] Audiobook recommendation: the one narrated by Jill Tanner. A hidden gem on Audible.
My rating on a scale of 1 to 5:
Quality of writing [5/5]
Pace [4/5]
Plot development [4.5/5]
Characters [5/5]
Enjoyability [5/5]
Insightfulness [5/5]
Easy of reading [4.5/5]
Photos/Illustrations [N/A]
Total [33/7] = 4.71
Read
March 29, 2024I considered giving this book 4 stars (also 3, also 5, also 2) but it seems all wrong. 4 stars is “good” or “great, but…” and this book is more “brilliant, BUT…” that but being quite a loaded one. I will say that I was not bored.
If you’re reading this, you probably know the general idea: a two-pronged, occasionally-intersecting story following Gwendolen Harleth, who marries for money and lives to regret it, and Daniel Deronda, a young English gentleman who rescues a Jewish woman from drowning and becomes drawn into an intense interest with Jewish culture and identity.
I am by far not the first person to think these stories make odd bedfellows; practically everyone has said so. I spent long swathes of the book wondering why for God’s sake, Eliot chose to do it this way. Somehow, in the final pages, this element finally came together and worked for me. I understand why it had to be this way, and I feel, actually, it’s such a revolutionary thing she’s done structurally. The novel, finally, seems to undermine the Victorian novel itself, which seems a fitting thing for the final work of a woman who is more or less synonymous with the Victorian novel.
That still leaves quite a few execution fumbles throughout the book. And it’s maddening, because for everything done poorly, there’s an example elsewhere of the same thing done well, and if she had just stayed the course this would be an absolutely brilliant book, no buts.
The biggest problem is characterization. Gwendolen is far and away the most rounded character in the book’s first half. She is part flighty socialite, not quite the most beautiful woman in the room, but the one who melds beauty, energy and supreme self-confidence. She isn’t rich, but she believes she was made for great things. There are some darker strands hidden among this display: she hates the thought of getting married, is physically repelled by it, at one point bursting out that she cannot stand to be made love to. Combined with her frequent stated dislike for her dead stepfather, this made me suspect she had been abused as a child (this is speculation, but I think it’s supported by the text). Overall, Gwendolen feels very modern, but she is trapped in a 19th century novel, and after the family loses their money, not marrying is a luxury she can’t afford.
She marries Grandcourt, a wealthy aristocrat who on the surface seems to repel her less than other men, but she marries him knowing that by doing so she disinherits other people with a prior claim – and the reader knows that Grandcourt is an ice-cold sadist and manipulator. Early scenes between Grandcourt and his manservant Lush are delightfully menacing, and give a taste of what poor Gwendolen can expect.
And Gwendolen suffers accordingly, but the book goes off the rails here and Eliot commits the classic creative writing class sin of telling rather than showing (I am no fan of these “rules” of creative writing, but it was indisputably less fun to read about how Gwendolen hated life because her husband was a beast, rather than seeing his particular form of beastliness in action as in the earlier scenes with Lush).
Meanwhile, Deronda, a young man of unknown parentage, rescues a young Jewish woman, Mirah, from drowning and goes in search of her missing relatives, throwing him into a previously unknown world of Jewish culture in London. Deronda is a decent-enough character, with early chapters describing both his talents and his general rootlessness, his inability to find a cause to anchor his life to, beyond the general cause of listening to young ladies tell him their sorrows. We meet Mordecai, a dying Jewish scholar who has been waiting for a young man to carry on his work – but Deronda is not Jewish. Nonetheless, he appears to Mordecai rowing up the Thames out of the sunset like a vision in a dream.
Fine. BUT. The Jewish characters are dreadfully boring. There’s a strong whiff of Eliot writing against the prevailing prejudices of the day, to show Jews as moral, as upright, as educated, as demure. Unfortunately she has failed to make them human. It is quite a bit like reading about Black people written by a white author who doesn’t really know many Black people, but who wants to make statements about racism.
Deronda and Gwendolen interact – good! But Gwendolen, consumed by guilt, wants Deronda to help make her over as a good and moral person. Sadly, the “better” Gwendolen becomes, the less she seems alive on the page.
Deronda decides to dedicate his life to Zionism. This is not a topic I can muster much enthusiasm for, which is one reason I haven’t read this book until now (and in fact currently my sympathy for Mordecai’s way of thinking is at an all-time low).
And yet, throughout, there continue to be some absolutely masterful scenes, interspersed with some decidedly less masterful scenes. There are some excellent character sketches mounted in very few pages which recall the expansive humanism of Middlemarch. There is a family of girls who love yet bicker with their brother in a way that feels instantly familiar. There is a mother who rages against the constraints of motherhood and of marriage, who has resolutely cut ties to chart her own path (and who has ended up trapped anyway, yet unrepentant). There are satirical portraits and some very dark undercurrents. There is water, drowning, there is European history in all of Eliot’s characteristic detail.
It's a fascinating book. It’s no Middlemarch though.
If you’re reading this, you probably know the general idea: a two-pronged, occasionally-intersecting story following Gwendolen Harleth, who marries for money and lives to regret it, and Daniel Deronda, a young English gentleman who rescues a Jewish woman from drowning and becomes drawn into an intense interest with Jewish culture and identity.
I am by far not the first person to think these stories make odd bedfellows; practically everyone has said so. I spent long swathes of the book wondering why for God’s sake, Eliot chose to do it this way. Somehow, in the final pages, this element finally came together and worked for me. I understand why it had to be this way, and I feel, actually, it’s such a revolutionary thing she’s done structurally. The novel, finally, seems to undermine the Victorian novel itself, which seems a fitting thing for the final work of a woman who is more or less synonymous with the Victorian novel.
That still leaves quite a few execution fumbles throughout the book. And it’s maddening, because for everything done poorly, there’s an example elsewhere of the same thing done well, and if she had just stayed the course this would be an absolutely brilliant book, no buts.
The biggest problem is characterization. Gwendolen is far and away the most rounded character in the book’s first half. She is part flighty socialite, not quite the most beautiful woman in the room, but the one who melds beauty, energy and supreme self-confidence. She isn’t rich, but she believes she was made for great things. There are some darker strands hidden among this display: she hates the thought of getting married, is physically repelled by it, at one point bursting out that she cannot stand to be made love to. Combined with her frequent stated dislike for her dead stepfather, this made me suspect she had been abused as a child (this is speculation, but I think it’s supported by the text). Overall, Gwendolen feels very modern, but she is trapped in a 19th century novel, and after the family loses their money, not marrying is a luxury she can’t afford.
She marries Grandcourt, a wealthy aristocrat who on the surface seems to repel her less than other men, but she marries him knowing that by doing so she disinherits other people with a prior claim – and the reader knows that Grandcourt is an ice-cold sadist and manipulator. Early scenes between Grandcourt and his manservant Lush are delightfully menacing, and give a taste of what poor Gwendolen can expect.
And Gwendolen suffers accordingly, but the book goes off the rails here and Eliot commits the classic creative writing class sin of telling rather than showing (I am no fan of these “rules” of creative writing, but it was indisputably less fun to read about how Gwendolen hated life because her husband was a beast, rather than seeing his particular form of beastliness in action as in the earlier scenes with Lush).
Meanwhile, Deronda, a young man of unknown parentage, rescues a young Jewish woman, Mirah, from drowning and goes in search of her missing relatives, throwing him into a previously unknown world of Jewish culture in London. Deronda is a decent-enough character, with early chapters describing both his talents and his general rootlessness, his inability to find a cause to anchor his life to, beyond the general cause of listening to young ladies tell him their sorrows. We meet Mordecai, a dying Jewish scholar who has been waiting for a young man to carry on his work – but Deronda is not Jewish. Nonetheless, he appears to Mordecai rowing up the Thames out of the sunset like a vision in a dream.
Fine. BUT. The Jewish characters are dreadfully boring. There’s a strong whiff of Eliot writing against the prevailing prejudices of the day, to show Jews as moral, as upright, as educated, as demure. Unfortunately she has failed to make them human. It is quite a bit like reading about Black people written by a white author who doesn’t really know many Black people, but who wants to make statements about racism.
Deronda and Gwendolen interact – good! But Gwendolen, consumed by guilt, wants Deronda to help make her over as a good and moral person. Sadly, the “better” Gwendolen becomes, the less she seems alive on the page.
Deronda decides to dedicate his life to Zionism. This is not a topic I can muster much enthusiasm for, which is one reason I haven’t read this book until now (and in fact currently my sympathy for Mordecai’s way of thinking is at an all-time low).
And yet, throughout, there continue to be some absolutely masterful scenes, interspersed with some decidedly less masterful scenes. There are some excellent character sketches mounted in very few pages which recall the expansive humanism of Middlemarch. There is a family of girls who love yet bicker with their brother in a way that feels instantly familiar. There is a mother who rages against the constraints of motherhood and of marriage, who has resolutely cut ties to chart her own path (and who has ended up trapped anyway, yet unrepentant). There are satirical portraits and some very dark undercurrents. There is water, drowning, there is European history in all of Eliot’s characteristic detail.
It's a fascinating book. It’s no Middlemarch though.
June 19, 2023
It was a struggle finishing Daniel Deronda, because it was the first book I terminated after a week or more of reading slump and also because, as other reviewers had noticed, it's not an easy read.
It's long, sometimes very verbose, but I'm proud of myself for having got through it, because it's a beautiful story and it worths while.
At the beginning Daniel Deronda, after whom the book was named, makes only a brief appearence and all the narration is focused on the character of Gwendolen Harleth. Gwendolen is a selfish and bold girl that lives with her mother and her stepsisters, and that is suited by Mr Grandcourt.
She doesn't love him, but sees in him a chance to escape from poverty and to make a better life, and when her family is ruined she decides eventually to marry him, but will regret soon her choice.
She meets Daniel Deronda and sees in him a superior moral person and looks for his support in her wretchedness.
Daniel Deronda has been raised by Sir Hugo, Grandcourt's uncle, and is unaware of his origins.
He saves a Jewess girl from drowning and gets in touch with the Jews community. Prejudice against Jews is an important topic of this novel.
I read it with interest, though I admit that I skipped some pages in the middle because they were dragging too much, but I really appreciated it.
Gwendolen was my favourite character.
It's long, sometimes very verbose, but I'm proud of myself for having got through it, because it's a beautiful story and it worths while.
At the beginning Daniel Deronda, after whom the book was named, makes only a brief appearence and all the narration is focused on the character of Gwendolen Harleth. Gwendolen is a selfish and bold girl that lives with her mother and her stepsisters, and that is suited by Mr Grandcourt.
She doesn't love him, but sees in him a chance to escape from poverty and to make a better life, and when her family is ruined she decides eventually to marry him, but will regret soon her choice.
She meets Daniel Deronda and sees in him a superior moral person and looks for his support in her wretchedness.
Daniel Deronda has been raised by Sir Hugo, Grandcourt's uncle, and is unaware of his origins.
He saves a Jewess girl from drowning and gets in touch with the Jews community. Prejudice against Jews is an important topic of this novel.
I read it with interest, though I admit that I skipped some pages in the middle because they were dragging too much, but I really appreciated it.
Gwendolen was my favourite character.
January 18, 2022
This is a dense and difficult book, but it contains several powerful and inspiring stories. George Eliot has a fierce control over plot; truly she is a master of the genre. Its only flaw - one that will put a damper on many a reader’s enjoyment - is that it is excessively verbose and filled with extemporaneous reflections that, though relevant, lead nowhere.
Still, I am in awe of Eliot’s mastery of the novel. This tightly plotted and impeccably paced novel is populated with fascinating characters that feel like flesh and bone. It also has a brilliant sense of time and place; I could at all times imagine myself standing in the described locations and being able to picture exactly where each character was and what they were doing.
The variety of opinions, classes and viewpoints reflected in the novel make for one of the most nuanced and comprehensive pictures of Victorian England I have read so far, far from the myopic portrayals of the life aristocratic that characterise so much of the age’s literature. Special mention must be made of the Jewish subplot; it is fascinating, refreshing and mind-boggling in equal measure to read such a sympathetic portrayal of Jews and Zionism coming from the same time that produced characters like Fagin.
At first I hated Gwendolyn Harleth. By the end of the book, she had become one of my all-time favourite characters. Starting out as a spoiled coquette, the events in the novel take her on a psychological journey that will drastically change her. But what Eliot nails is that Gwendolyn doesn’t change at her core; what changes is her understanding of right and wrong, and her will to be a better person. It’s much more subtle and believable than a character arc that has her become a different person entirely.
The eponymous Daniel Deronda, the moral compass of the novel, is an incredibly difficult character to write without him coming across as holier-than-thou. However, he is superbly pulled off, to the point I found myself admiring his actions and hoping to be able to emulate them in life one day.
Another thing Eliot does very well is foreshadowing. Both the first time we meet Gwendolyn and Lord Grandcourt we see them carrying out actions that will reverberate in our memory as we see their stories unfold.
The eventual coming together of the two main characters (Gwendolyn and Deronda), well past the halfway mark, is one of the best moments of character psychology I have ever seen. Our two protagonists are so radically different from one another, had any circumstance in their lives been slightly different, they would never have clicked the way they do. Watching them observe each other, figure each other out and work against their own prejudices is priceless.
Even the ending, though cathartic as was typical in the day, does not necessarily tie everything up with a nice bow. The characters’ feelings are messy and far from neatly tied up. I’d go as far as to say all are left open enough to let our imaginations explore the many possible turns their lives could take forthwith.
Still, I am in awe of Eliot’s mastery of the novel. This tightly plotted and impeccably paced novel is populated with fascinating characters that feel like flesh and bone. It also has a brilliant sense of time and place; I could at all times imagine myself standing in the described locations and being able to picture exactly where each character was and what they were doing.
The variety of opinions, classes and viewpoints reflected in the novel make for one of the most nuanced and comprehensive pictures of Victorian England I have read so far, far from the myopic portrayals of the life aristocratic that characterise so much of the age’s literature. Special mention must be made of the Jewish subplot; it is fascinating, refreshing and mind-boggling in equal measure to read such a sympathetic portrayal of Jews and Zionism coming from the same time that produced characters like Fagin.
At first I hated Gwendolyn Harleth. By the end of the book, she had become one of my all-time favourite characters. Starting out as a spoiled coquette, the events in the novel take her on a psychological journey that will drastically change her. But what Eliot nails is that Gwendolyn doesn’t change at her core; what changes is her understanding of right and wrong, and her will to be a better person. It’s much more subtle and believable than a character arc that has her become a different person entirely.
The eponymous Daniel Deronda, the moral compass of the novel, is an incredibly difficult character to write without him coming across as holier-than-thou. However, he is superbly pulled off, to the point I found myself admiring his actions and hoping to be able to emulate them in life one day.
Another thing Eliot does very well is foreshadowing. Both the first time we meet Gwendolyn and Lord Grandcourt we see them carrying out actions that will reverberate in our memory as we see their stories unfold.
The eventual coming together of the two main characters (Gwendolyn and Deronda), well past the halfway mark, is one of the best moments of character psychology I have ever seen. Our two protagonists are so radically different from one another, had any circumstance in their lives been slightly different, they would never have clicked the way they do. Watching them observe each other, figure each other out and work against their own prejudices is priceless.
Even the ending, though cathartic as was typical in the day, does not necessarily tie everything up with a nice bow. The characters’ feelings are messy and far from neatly tied up. I’d go as far as to say all are left open enough to let our imaginations explore the many possible turns their lives could take forthwith.
February 28, 2024
Destined to live in the shadow of Middlemarch for all eternity, Daniel Deronda has been cursed with the unfortunate problem of having to forge a path of its own while locked in the sphere of Jupiter’s gravity. Don’t be fooled by its obscurity, however; it is, by any definition, still an absolutely formidable novel — one that is, at the very least, Saturn scaled. It may, in fact, be the more ambitious of Eliot’s two late-period masterpieces.
As is the case with Middlemarch, each and every one of Deronda’s paragraphs is a work of art: a miniature essay of rigorous thinking, structured with beginning, middle and end. It is a book with sentences that feel as though they were carved from marble and polished into a sculpted high-renaissance masterpiece. The writing astounds me. Eliot was from a different planet. All the superlatives. Honestly, if I had given her a pound every time I mumbled “f**king hell” in amazement to myself while reading this book she’d have quickly become financially stable enough to sack off her whole novel-writing lark and then been at comfortable liberty to spend the rest of her life driving gold-plated convertible Lamborghinis really slowly up and down the seafront in Dubai while decorating her living room in the tasteful styles of Mar-a-Lago. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about from Chapter 69:
Brain explode, right? This is madness. The whole 850-page book is like this.
Unfortunately, in Daniel Deronda these incredible writing efforts are sometimes directed just slightly off target, like a shiny new skyscraper constructed just in time to rise out of the city and meet the economic stagnation of the great recession. And, as is generally agreed, not all of this book works. It is glacially paced, for one thing: in the time it took me to read it the Elizabethan era came to an end, three Prime Ministers have come and gone, I’ve been to Mordor and back, and the seasons have blended from high Summer into the stirrings of winter. Likewise, I wouldn’t say that the representation of Jewish people is offensive given that it is intended to flatter (it’s certainly a world away from Fagin and other 19th-century fare), but even so, Eliot’s portrayal still feels slightly reductive and somewhat basic to someone of my North London roots. I’d also argue that when a book is this purist in its ambitions to represent detailed realism it must be held to a higher standard when it comes to narrative coincidences and it does bother me that every time a character travels outside Britain, they immediately run into someone from their immediate social group by pure chance.
Daniel Deronda is weakened by flaws like these, but it isn’t ruined by them, and these slight misjudgements are a small price to pay for what is, in truth, a book with some amazing and unique qualities. Come the ending, I felt quite moved by the whole thing — there is an unignorable emotional force to Eliot’s lone voice of calm and reason, speaking resolutely and independently against the seas of 19th-century antisemitism. Perhaps, had more books like this been written while we had the chance the horrors of what would later come to pass might not have been.
As it happens, I recently read about how, while writing Deronda, Eliot took some inspiration from Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman, in which The Dutchman is a sailor made homeless by a curse that prevents him from setting foot on dry land (save for one short trip once every seven years). In the Dutchman’s metaphorical curse Eliot saw the destabilising, lonely plight of the eternally stateless Jewish people; the Jewish characters in Deronda come and go in a similar manner to Wagner’s Dutchman, doomed to eternal wandering. Eliot was fascinated by Wagner’s art and even met him in 1877 (a year after Deronda was published). Despite earning his place as quite possibly the most important artist of the 19th century, Wagner was, of course, one of the most notable antisemites in history (among so many other things). I like to think that with Deronda Eliot was playing him at his own games; I take her book as a gentle but firm correction to his ideology. It’s a work directly influenced by his style but also a rebuff against his racist flaws. It ingeniously uses his own miraculous art against him. I wonder if he ever read it? — I like to imagine so, but I doubt it.
It saddens me that Deronda only has 24,685 Goodreads ratings where Middlemarch has 150,590. Middlemarch truly is a masterpiece, and even though I believe both these figures should be higher I think it is particularly unfair that Deronda should be saddled with the fate of becoming the neglected book we see today. Eliot leaves writers like Jane Austen in the dust every single time without fail; yet, Pride & Prejudice still sits there on its pedestal chilling out with 3,746,957 votes…
As is the case with Middlemarch, each and every one of Deronda’s paragraphs is a work of art: a miniature essay of rigorous thinking, structured with beginning, middle and end. It is a book with sentences that feel as though they were carved from marble and polished into a sculpted high-renaissance masterpiece. The writing astounds me. Eliot was from a different planet. All the superlatives. Honestly, if I had given her a pound every time I mumbled “f**king hell” in amazement to myself while reading this book she’d have quickly become financially stable enough to sack off her whole novel-writing lark and then been at comfortable liberty to spend the rest of her life driving gold-plated convertible Lamborghinis really slowly up and down the seafront in Dubai while decorating her living room in the tasteful styles of Mar-a-Lago. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about from Chapter 69:
“There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives — where the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forgot all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the imagery of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the rolling fiery visitation. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under the thunder of unrelenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die, and no angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm branch. Then it is that the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even in the eyes of frivolity life looks out from the scene of human struggle with the awful face of duty, and a religion shows itself which is something else than a private consolation.”
Brain explode, right? This is madness. The whole 850-page book is like this.
Unfortunately, in Daniel Deronda these incredible writing efforts are sometimes directed just slightly off target, like a shiny new skyscraper constructed just in time to rise out of the city and meet the economic stagnation of the great recession. And, as is generally agreed, not all of this book works. It is glacially paced, for one thing: in the time it took me to read it the Elizabethan era came to an end, three Prime Ministers have come and gone, I’ve been to Mordor and back, and the seasons have blended from high Summer into the stirrings of winter. Likewise, I wouldn’t say that the representation of Jewish people is offensive given that it is intended to flatter (it’s certainly a world away from Fagin and other 19th-century fare), but even so, Eliot’s portrayal still feels slightly reductive and somewhat basic to someone of my North London roots. I’d also argue that when a book is this purist in its ambitions to represent detailed realism it must be held to a higher standard when it comes to narrative coincidences and it does bother me that every time a character travels outside Britain, they immediately run into someone from their immediate social group by pure chance.
Daniel Deronda is weakened by flaws like these, but it isn’t ruined by them, and these slight misjudgements are a small price to pay for what is, in truth, a book with some amazing and unique qualities. Come the ending, I felt quite moved by the whole thing — there is an unignorable emotional force to Eliot’s lone voice of calm and reason, speaking resolutely and independently against the seas of 19th-century antisemitism. Perhaps, had more books like this been written while we had the chance the horrors of what would later come to pass might not have been.
As it happens, I recently read about how, while writing Deronda, Eliot took some inspiration from Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman, in which The Dutchman is a sailor made homeless by a curse that prevents him from setting foot on dry land (save for one short trip once every seven years). In the Dutchman’s metaphorical curse Eliot saw the destabilising, lonely plight of the eternally stateless Jewish people; the Jewish characters in Deronda come and go in a similar manner to Wagner’s Dutchman, doomed to eternal wandering. Eliot was fascinated by Wagner’s art and even met him in 1877 (a year after Deronda was published). Despite earning his place as quite possibly the most important artist of the 19th century, Wagner was, of course, one of the most notable antisemites in history (among so many other things). I like to think that with Deronda Eliot was playing him at his own games; I take her book as a gentle but firm correction to his ideology. It’s a work directly influenced by his style but also a rebuff against his racist flaws. It ingeniously uses his own miraculous art against him. I wonder if he ever read it? — I like to imagine so, but I doubt it.
It saddens me that Deronda only has 24,685 Goodreads ratings where Middlemarch has 150,590. Middlemarch truly is a masterpiece, and even though I believe both these figures should be higher I think it is particularly unfair that Deronda should be saddled with the fate of becoming the neglected book we see today. Eliot leaves writers like Jane Austen in the dust every single time without fail; yet, Pride & Prejudice still sits there on its pedestal chilling out with 3,746,957 votes…
March 26, 2023
Thanks to getting my book study group to read this book, I read and studied it.
People are very intimidated by length. So one person who typically reads everything didn't read this one. Others read but criticized, e.g., "needed an editor," "repetitive," or excessively wordy. One person, though, completed it in record time, and another has become an Eliot fan and has taken up Middlemarch.
The fiction I've read lately has tended to been written for the lowest common denominator, been of limited accessibility, or been such that I can see the puppet master working the strings behind the scenes. In contrast, I thought Daniel Deronda was wonderful. Not one word too many. Wise. Nourishing.
I was motivated by being a Jew to read this one. I had some faint idea of the thrust of the book, and that's why I read it (with a Jewish book study group) and not, say, Middlemarch. And I loved it. But, as I said, other group members didn't necessarily feel the same.
It took me about two months.
Now the book first focuses on the character of Gwendolyn, a spoiled rich girl. And focuses and focuses and focuses. We meet her when she's just had a gambling loss and, on the heels of that, finds out her family has lost its fortune. She's no longer a rich girl. Then we have her back story. That's the part that seemed to go on and on.
When were we going to meet the presumably Jewish guy, the title character, Daniel Deronda?
I didn't go to Wikipedia until just a day or two ago, after I had finished. I found out that Gwendolyn has been critically hailed as a key character in all of English lit. Deronda, though, has been considered "flat."
I think the critic's -- or reader's -- interests have to be considered here. The typical reader is just not that interested in the guy who is going to turn out to be the Jew.
He has been described as "too good." Well, he does have a moral compass, that's for sure. What's interesting to me is that he (or the omniscient author) thinks everything through. He lives the examined life. But when we meet him, he lacks a purpose. He's something of a dilettante. He's also something of a seducer, albeit one who seduces by being caring or sympathetic, but still! He's rather brilliant. He's overly attached and loyal to his guardian, Sir Hugo Malinger, perhaps occupying a position relative to Sir Hugo that's similar to Mr. Lush's (ugh!) position with regard to Henleigh Grandcourt (double ugh!). Is some of Deronda "flatness" that he simply doesn't conform to readers' expectations for a Jew? Or, more likely, that the critic doesn't understand or care that much about Deronda's journey?
I get it. He's a minority, so often awarded the consolation prize of "goodness" or "spirituality," etc. by the hegemonic class. Like Indians in England, or Native Americans and African Americans in America. Or women, for that matter. But is that particular consolation prize often awarded to a Jew? Hmm. If so in this case, George Eliot certainly goes to a lot of trouble over him.
I initially had something akin to the attitude that Deronda was too good, but less so as I read on. Hey! He works for me. The connection between Deronda and Gwendolyn: that's the thing. It works!
Take Gwendolyn: she is just a child. She's barely 21 when the action starts. And subsequent events don't go her way. She fails an ethical test. She is out-"crueled" by Grandcourt. She suffers and experiences temptation. She ends up having had a trauma. She resolves to do better. But, is she a tragic heroine? Would her role work without Deronda?
Maybe the critic has it backwards. Maybe it's the other way around. Consider that Gwendolyn may have been put in to hold the interest of readers who don't much care about the Jew, Jewish things, or, much less, the Jewish people. They don't know what Mordecai is waxing eloquent about and aren't that interested in finding out, if they even think anything is really there. For them we have a beautiful but selfish young English lady who gets her comeuppance and has her heart broken so maybe the light can shine in. In this viewpoint, she's there to keep readers hooked who don't comprehend George Eliot's major theme.
Who knows? Maybe Rex will show up again in Gwendolyn's future.
Deronda's love interest, the beautiful "Jewess" Mirah Lapidoth, is closer to meeting that criticism of too much goodness. She's well nigh perfect, even though abuse doesn't usually turn people into saints. Well, she does eventually exhibit a fault: jealousy.
By the way, this review may not spoil the book for you. I know somebody who (had the nerve to) first read Cliffsnotes to handle his intimidation by the book. And he said that didn't spoil the book for him. The villainy of Grandcourt, for instance, couldn't even be hinted at by Cliffsnotes, yet jumps off the page in the real thing.
I wouldn't recommend the Cliffsnotes thing, though.
Stop reading if you're worried about spoilers.
The book is a reservoir of wisdom. In fact I thought the book was a mixture of old (1876 vintage) and new, since some of the opinions and explanations the author inserts apply in the present and recent times (well, in my life) as well. For instance, like the young who can't be influenced for the better by their elders, but who find counsel (not to mention chemistry) with a member of their own generation. Like the expectation of another, older relative that you (the reader) will be obliged to carry on their uncompleted life task. Like the romantic delusions of a young woman as to her power and influence once bound by matrimony. It's surprising that these tidbits and musings hold water today; they do so through the power of literature.
This is the only book the author wrote about her own (Victorian) times. So it's not a historical novel in the usual sense. To us it's history, but it was her present.
Some of the stuff that may seem unrealistic to the average reader is real. For example, the hatred of being a Jew by Daniel's mother. I have seen this before, in the person of Rahel Varnhagan von Ense, née Levin, who, earlier in the same century, held a major Enlightenment salon in Vienna. These women were caught between a rock and a hard place: being emancipated yet not acceptable to society. If George Eliot knew about such things, it's because she'd done her homework.
Or the role of Jewish women in the theater. That too is real. "Rachel," referenced early in Daniel Deronda is Elisa-Rachel Félix (1820-1858). And there's "the divine Sarah" (Sarah Bernhardt). These were stars who attracted both love and loathing. Apparently there was a preHollywood connection between Jews and the stage.
And Herr Klesmer! So, a Jew could be allowed in society if he were a genius or a prodigy.
The antisemitic ideas sprinkled throughout this book prevent a version of what we'd call color-blindness if we were talking about Black people. Despite how uncomfortable the expression of these ideas might be for the average reader, to leave them out would constitute a genteel erasure.
For those who are fond of calling out antisemitism, here's a chance to see that not all who voice it are "evil." There can be good people who haven't had occasion to think otherwise. This book could be such an occasion.
Why I included this book on my "bibliotherapeutic" shelf:
The dominant message to Jews from Western civilization is not a pleasant one, and sometimes that's all one hears. It's woven throughout literature and art.
Depressing.
It's widely believed that with victimhood comes power.
But power thus derived is a poison pill. If you can help it, don't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Daniel Deronda lets us hear another message emanating from society.
These days, it's derided, associated with crazy Dispensationalist fundamentalists, and made fun of by my peers (sometimes including Jews whom I think don't know any better). That's the way it's swept under the rug.
It's good to hear there's a secondary message. Even if it's not dominant, it's there.
Thank you, George Eliot.
This book is an addition to two of my sub-genres. First, the category of Jews who were raised not knowing they were Jews. I have read four or five of those, but if I'm not mistaken, this is the first one that isn't post-Holocaust. It may also be my first such account that's a fiction. Second, the category of a young protagonist impacted and changed by the influence of someone in their own generation -- important to me since I myself had that experience.
I need a sixth star to rate this one.
People are very intimidated by length. So one person who typically reads everything didn't read this one. Others read but criticized, e.g., "needed an editor," "repetitive," or excessively wordy. One person, though, completed it in record time, and another has become an Eliot fan and has taken up Middlemarch.
The fiction I've read lately has tended to been written for the lowest common denominator, been of limited accessibility, or been such that I can see the puppet master working the strings behind the scenes. In contrast, I thought Daniel Deronda was wonderful. Not one word too many. Wise. Nourishing.
I was motivated by being a Jew to read this one. I had some faint idea of the thrust of the book, and that's why I read it (with a Jewish book study group) and not, say, Middlemarch. And I loved it. But, as I said, other group members didn't necessarily feel the same.
It took me about two months.
Now the book first focuses on the character of Gwendolyn, a spoiled rich girl. And focuses and focuses and focuses. We meet her when she's just had a gambling loss and, on the heels of that, finds out her family has lost its fortune. She's no longer a rich girl. Then we have her back story. That's the part that seemed to go on and on.
When were we going to meet the presumably Jewish guy, the title character, Daniel Deronda?
I didn't go to Wikipedia until just a day or two ago, after I had finished. I found out that Gwendolyn has been critically hailed as a key character in all of English lit. Deronda, though, has been considered "flat."
I think the critic's -- or reader's -- interests have to be considered here. The typical reader is just not that interested in the guy who is going to turn out to be the Jew.
He has been described as "too good." Well, he does have a moral compass, that's for sure. What's interesting to me is that he (or the omniscient author) thinks everything through. He lives the examined life. But when we meet him, he lacks a purpose. He's something of a dilettante. He's also something of a seducer, albeit one who seduces by being caring or sympathetic, but still! He's rather brilliant. He's overly attached and loyal to his guardian, Sir Hugo Malinger, perhaps occupying a position relative to Sir Hugo that's similar to Mr. Lush's (ugh!) position with regard to Henleigh Grandcourt (double ugh!). Is some of Deronda "flatness" that he simply doesn't conform to readers' expectations for a Jew? Or, more likely, that the critic doesn't understand or care that much about Deronda's journey?
I get it. He's a minority, so often awarded the consolation prize of "goodness" or "spirituality," etc. by the hegemonic class. Like Indians in England, or Native Americans and African Americans in America. Or women, for that matter. But is that particular consolation prize often awarded to a Jew? Hmm. If so in this case, George Eliot certainly goes to a lot of trouble over him.
I initially had something akin to the attitude that Deronda was too good, but less so as I read on. Hey! He works for me. The connection between Deronda and Gwendolyn: that's the thing. It works!
Take Gwendolyn: she is just a child. She's barely 21 when the action starts. And subsequent events don't go her way. She fails an ethical test. She is out-"crueled" by Grandcourt. She suffers and experiences temptation. She ends up having had a trauma. She resolves to do better. But, is she a tragic heroine? Would her role work without Deronda?
Maybe the critic has it backwards. Maybe it's the other way around. Consider that Gwendolyn may have been put in to hold the interest of readers who don't much care about the Jew, Jewish things, or, much less, the Jewish people. They don't know what Mordecai is waxing eloquent about and aren't that interested in finding out, if they even think anything is really there. For them we have a beautiful but selfish young English lady who gets her comeuppance and has her heart broken so maybe the light can shine in. In this viewpoint, she's there to keep readers hooked who don't comprehend George Eliot's major theme.
Who knows? Maybe Rex will show up again in Gwendolyn's future.
Deronda's love interest, the beautiful "Jewess" Mirah Lapidoth, is closer to meeting that criticism of too much goodness. She's well nigh perfect, even though abuse doesn't usually turn people into saints. Well, she does eventually exhibit a fault: jealousy.
By the way, this review may not spoil the book for you. I know somebody who (had the nerve to) first read Cliffsnotes to handle his intimidation by the book. And he said that didn't spoil the book for him. The villainy of Grandcourt, for instance, couldn't even be hinted at by Cliffsnotes, yet jumps off the page in the real thing.
I wouldn't recommend the Cliffsnotes thing, though.
Stop reading if you're worried about spoilers.
The book is a reservoir of wisdom. In fact I thought the book was a mixture of old (1876 vintage) and new, since some of the opinions and explanations the author inserts apply in the present and recent times (well, in my life) as well. For instance, like the young who can't be influenced for the better by their elders, but who find counsel (not to mention chemistry) with a member of their own generation. Like the expectation of another, older relative that you (the reader) will be obliged to carry on their uncompleted life task. Like the romantic delusions of a young woman as to her power and influence once bound by matrimony. It's surprising that these tidbits and musings hold water today; they do so through the power of literature.
This is the only book the author wrote about her own (Victorian) times. So it's not a historical novel in the usual sense. To us it's history, but it was her present.
Some of the stuff that may seem unrealistic to the average reader is real. For example, the hatred of being a Jew by Daniel's mother. I have seen this before, in the person of Rahel Varnhagan von Ense, née Levin, who, earlier in the same century, held a major Enlightenment salon in Vienna. These women were caught between a rock and a hard place: being emancipated yet not acceptable to society. If George Eliot knew about such things, it's because she'd done her homework.
Or the role of Jewish women in the theater. That too is real. "Rachel," referenced early in Daniel Deronda is Elisa-Rachel Félix (1820-1858). And there's "the divine Sarah" (Sarah Bernhardt). These were stars who attracted both love and loathing. Apparently there was a preHollywood connection between Jews and the stage.
And Herr Klesmer! So, a Jew could be allowed in society if he were a genius or a prodigy.
The antisemitic ideas sprinkled throughout this book prevent a version of what we'd call color-blindness if we were talking about Black people. Despite how uncomfortable the expression of these ideas might be for the average reader, to leave them out would constitute a genteel erasure.
For those who are fond of calling out antisemitism, here's a chance to see that not all who voice it are "evil." There can be good people who haven't had occasion to think otherwise. This book could be such an occasion.
Why I included this book on my "bibliotherapeutic" shelf:
The dominant message to Jews from Western civilization is not a pleasant one, and sometimes that's all one hears. It's woven throughout literature and art.
Depressing.
It's widely believed that with victimhood comes power.
But power thus derived is a poison pill. If you can help it, don't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Daniel Deronda lets us hear another message emanating from society.
These days, it's derided, associated with crazy Dispensationalist fundamentalists, and made fun of by my peers (sometimes including Jews whom I think don't know any better). That's the way it's swept under the rug.
It's good to hear there's a secondary message. Even if it's not dominant, it's there.
Thank you, George Eliot.
This book is an addition to two of my sub-genres. First, the category of Jews who were raised not knowing they were Jews. I have read four or five of those, but if I'm not mistaken, this is the first one that isn't post-Holocaust. It may also be my first such account that's a fiction. Second, the category of a young protagonist impacted and changed by the influence of someone in their own generation -- important to me since I myself had that experience.
I need a sixth star to rate this one.
February 7, 2024
This behemoth of a novel has two main strands which can be identified by the names of the two main female characters and their corresponding social environments; (1) Gwendolen Harleth and the world of English aristocracy, and (2) Mirah Lapidoth and the world of English Jewry. The title character Daniel Deronda who connected these two strands was raised among the English aristocracy, but he is adopted and of unknown birth origin. Thus Daniel Deronda is free of inherited aristocratic expectations (a.k.a. "of no consequence”). This freedom combined which Daniel’s natural ability to be empathetic and understanding leads him into filling a Moses/Savior role for the two women Gwendolen and Mirah.
As the story advances it slowly becomes apparent to the reader that both of Daniel’s relationships with these two women has romantic potential. But Gwendolyn is trapped in an unhappy marriage and Mirah is a loyal Jewess, so it would appear that romantic potential is walled off from either of these two women. But then as the two plot lines finally creep to their conclusions certain events happen which open up romantic possibilities with both women. As the book nears its end the reader is led to wonder which woman will get the man.
So what was George Eliot trying to say by combining these two plot narratives into the same novel? One very obvious message is that the Jews are worthy of acceptance and respect. The story includes a variety of examples of Jewish individuals, some are good and some not so honorable, some are comfortable being identified as Jewish and some wish to loose that identity, and there are examples of individuals scattered within these extremes. Daniel becomes increasingly interested in things Jewish as the story culminates to a point when he learns that his biological birth origin is Jewish.
Another apparent message contained in the other plot strand is that English aristocracy and wealth do not necessarily lead to good and desirable ends. Gwendolyn marries for money and ends up in a nuptial relationship from hell. I think George Eliot combined the two plots because it increased the impact of both when intertwined. The Jewish community is more easily seen as acceptably human when contrasted with highly regarded English social customs that are less than perfect.
The following link goes to eight excellent lectures by professor Ruth Wisse about this novel.
https://tikvahfund.org/course/daniel-...
As the story advances it slowly becomes apparent to the reader that both of Daniel’s relationships with these two women has romantic potential. But Gwendolyn is trapped in an unhappy marriage and Mirah is a loyal Jewess, so it would appear that romantic potential is walled off from either of these two women. But then as the two plot lines finally creep to their conclusions certain events happen which open up romantic possibilities with both women. As the book nears its end the reader is led to wonder which woman will get the man.
So what was George Eliot trying to say by combining these two plot narratives into the same novel? One very obvious message is that the Jews are worthy of acceptance and respect. The story includes a variety of examples of Jewish individuals, some are good and some not so honorable, some are comfortable being identified as Jewish and some wish to loose that identity, and there are examples of individuals scattered within these extremes. Daniel becomes increasingly interested in things Jewish as the story culminates to a point when he learns that his biological birth origin is Jewish.
Another apparent message contained in the other plot strand is that English aristocracy and wealth do not necessarily lead to good and desirable ends. Gwendolyn marries for money and ends up in a nuptial relationship from hell. I think George Eliot combined the two plots because it increased the impact of both when intertwined. The Jewish community is more easily seen as acceptably human when contrasted with highly regarded English social customs that are less than perfect.
The following link goes to eight excellent lectures by professor Ruth Wisse about this novel.
https://tikvahfund.org/course/daniel-...
May 30, 2024
(4.5/5)
Reseña completa:
https://youtu.be/f2OYlhDqKOc
A pesar de la sencillez de la trama, y los pocos personajes que intervienen, la autora crea un mundo complejo en el que se mueven, desarrollan, y crecen estos personajes. Puede que no conectes con los personajes a primera vista, que no te caiga bien alguno de ellos por como actúan, piensan, pero es muy interesante descubrir hacia donde van sus vidas.
Como siempre George Eliot en sus novelas deja perlas de sabiduría, y además es una mujer muy adelantada a su época y lo refleja con reflexiones muy feministas en voz de los personajes femeninos de la novela, sobre el trabajo, el matrimonio, la independencia económica, el divorcio, la fuerza interior de la que hay que servirse para seguir adelante, habla mucho de la religión, el mundo del arte, de la música pero lo hace de una manera que no esperas, del éxito en la vida, del sentido moral y ético, de la justica de lo que es bueno o no, de la doble moral victoriana.
Es una gran novela, larga pero muy gratificante terminarla, a ratos es densa, exigente, son muy interesante los temas que trata, el gran corazón que tiene Daniel Deronda, muy emocional, sensible y libre, no tiene nada a lo que esté atado y esa libertad le hace ser fiel a sus sentimientos, la asombrosa evolución de Gwendolyn, y como se apoyan y buscan consejo el uno en el otro. Es un libro para releer porque en una primera lectura no le vas a sacar todo el provecho que tiene, es triste, melancólico, existe dolor pero también es poético, esperanzador, es un libro que se queda conmigo para siempre y pasa a formar parte de mis libros favoritos de George Eliot.
Reseña completa:
https://youtu.be/f2OYlhDqKOc
A pesar de la sencillez de la trama, y los pocos personajes que intervienen, la autora crea un mundo complejo en el que se mueven, desarrollan, y crecen estos personajes. Puede que no conectes con los personajes a primera vista, que no te caiga bien alguno de ellos por como actúan, piensan, pero es muy interesante descubrir hacia donde van sus vidas.
Como siempre George Eliot en sus novelas deja perlas de sabiduría, y además es una mujer muy adelantada a su época y lo refleja con reflexiones muy feministas en voz de los personajes femeninos de la novela, sobre el trabajo, el matrimonio, la independencia económica, el divorcio, la fuerza interior de la que hay que servirse para seguir adelante, habla mucho de la religión, el mundo del arte, de la música pero lo hace de una manera que no esperas, del éxito en la vida, del sentido moral y ético, de la justica de lo que es bueno o no, de la doble moral victoriana.
Es una gran novela, larga pero muy gratificante terminarla, a ratos es densa, exigente, son muy interesante los temas que trata, el gran corazón que tiene Daniel Deronda, muy emocional, sensible y libre, no tiene nada a lo que esté atado y esa libertad le hace ser fiel a sus sentimientos, la asombrosa evolución de Gwendolyn, y como se apoyan y buscan consejo el uno en el otro. Es un libro para releer porque en una primera lectura no le vas a sacar todo el provecho que tiene, es triste, melancólico, existe dolor pero también es poético, esperanzador, es un libro que se queda conmigo para siempre y pasa a formar parte de mis libros favoritos de George Eliot.
July 13, 2017
Daniel Deronda centres around several characters. It relates to an intersection of Jewish and Gentile society in 19th century England. With references to Kaballah, Jewish identity and the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel. Gwendolen Harleth a spoiled but poised and spirited of a family of recently impoverished English gentry enters into a loveless marriage for money, with the cold Mr Grandcourt., but soon sickens of his emotional sadism. The novel centres around Gwendolen as much as it does around Daniel Deronda. It takes us through the lives of both major character's pasts ., before joining the two narratives into the present so to speak.
Daniel Deronda is the adopted son of an English aristocrat, with who Gwendolyn falls in love. Deronda rescues the beautiful Jewish actress and singer Mirah Lapidoth from suicide by drowning, introducing us to another interesting and endearing character. He then becomes intimately involved with the society of English Jewry.
Deronda later discovers his Jewish birth from his dying mother who was the daughter of a prominent Rabbi, who married her cousin. Deronda's story therefore as that of a Jew brought up as a Gentile aristocrat before discovering his identity and committing himself to the national welfare of his people is partly based on that of Moses.
The book puts some focus, mainly through conversation on the yearning of the Jewish people to return to the Holy Land to rebuild the Jewish Commonwealth. Deronda and Mirah later leave
England to help rebuild the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. This component of the novel has lead some prejudiced bigots, such as the loathsome Edward Said to condemn this 1876 classic as `Zionist propaganda'-an Orwellian charge indeed.
People like Said cannot abide the anything that relates to the right of the Jews to live in and return to their ancient homeland.
At the time of this novel's writing progressives saw the revival of nations and national self-determination as a positive thing. It was only nearly a century later that the nihilistic New Left in a sick and bizarre twist began to label the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland as an act of `colonialism'.
Daniel Deronda is the adopted son of an English aristocrat, with who Gwendolyn falls in love. Deronda rescues the beautiful Jewish actress and singer Mirah Lapidoth from suicide by drowning, introducing us to another interesting and endearing character. He then becomes intimately involved with the society of English Jewry.
Deronda later discovers his Jewish birth from his dying mother who was the daughter of a prominent Rabbi, who married her cousin. Deronda's story therefore as that of a Jew brought up as a Gentile aristocrat before discovering his identity and committing himself to the national welfare of his people is partly based on that of Moses.
The book puts some focus, mainly through conversation on the yearning of the Jewish people to return to the Holy Land to rebuild the Jewish Commonwealth. Deronda and Mirah later leave
England to help rebuild the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. This component of the novel has lead some prejudiced bigots, such as the loathsome Edward Said to condemn this 1876 classic as `Zionist propaganda'-an Orwellian charge indeed.
People like Said cannot abide the anything that relates to the right of the Jews to live in and return to their ancient homeland.
At the time of this novel's writing progressives saw the revival of nations and national self-determination as a positive thing. It was only nearly a century later that the nihilistic New Left in a sick and bizarre twist began to label the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland as an act of `colonialism'.
October 21, 2008
This is one of my favorite books. George Eliot probably has to be one of the best authors that I have ever read. Her psychological insight into each character is so amazing and her analysis of human nature is quite profound. Gwendolen Harleth, much as you despise her, is very vividly portrayed and there is an interesting reality in all of her words and actions. She is a revealing character and, though most people do not have her outright selfishness, yet I think most could relate to some of her characteristics to a greater or lesser degree. Daniel Deronda, on the other hand, though he is sometimes considered "too perfect" is actually another very well done character. His compassion and kindness are balanced hand by his indecisive, rather vacillating nature throughout the book. The plot is interesting and has several twists to it. I love this book and was sorry to be finished with it and look forward to reading it again.
August 17, 2024
I have just finished a leisurely eight-week group-read of George Eliot's last completed novel, Daniel Deronda, with my 'Anglophiles Anonymous' group on Shelfari.com. I very much enjoyed the experience of reading and discussing the book, section by section, each week. I am convinced that I got so much more out of it this way than if I'd read it by myself. Without the incentive of the group-read, I am also quite sure that this is a novel that I probably would not have even acquired, much less read.
The novel, first published in 1876, is quasi-Tolstoyan in scope and complexity. It has a whole raft of fairly interesting characters that border on being 'Dickensian.' While written in her characteristic style of 'social realism,' Eliot uses some quite elegant and sophisticated literary and plot devices too. For example, she is adept at using flashbacks to bounce characters and events back and forth in time. She also runs dual storylines through much of the novel, that are quite divergent at the beginning, but close in a relatively satisfying convergence near the end. Her use of allusion, allegory, and metaphor is deft and appropriate. Eliot, in writing this novel, is clearly didactic, without being overtly 'preachy' or academic like Tolstoy (e.g., Anna Karenina) or Victor Hugo (Les Miserables).
In some respects, for much of the first half of the novel I found myself more interested in the character and plot-threads associated with Gwendolen Harleth versus that of the eponymous Daniel Deronda. Gwendolen reminded me, at various times, of Jane Austen's 'Emma' or even Eliot's own 'Dorothea Brooke' (Middlemarch). With the convergence of Gwendolen's storyline with that of Daniel's, I did find that Daniel's story and character became much more compelling and interesting.
All in all, this is a novel about double-standards, redemption and balance. Eliot provides a fascinating portrait of the situation and lives of English and European Jews during the Victorian period, and particularly the nascent proto-Zionist movement and her interpretation of the Kaballistic philosophy. Eliot balances this portrait with a similar examination of the ways and social mores of the well-established English upper class. Eliot pulls off this balancing act superbly through having the novel's primary male protagonist, Daniel Deronda, having a foot in the both worlds. I was also completely taken with the intelligent young Jewish woman, Mirah Lapidoth. From her introduction, early on in the novel, I eagerly looked forward to her each of her appearances. The Meyrick family, especially Mrs. "Little Mother" Meyrick and her vivacious daughters, are splendidly wonderful characters. The novel also contains some characters that you simply love to hate, and others that you hate to love. Ambiguity and shades of gray abound.
In conclusion, I enjoyed reading George Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda, very much. I can say, however, that it did not affect me in the same visceral and emotional sort of way that her earlier books have; specifically, The Mill on the Floss, or Silas Marner. I could also tell that writing Daniel Deronda and telling this story was somehow quite important to George Eliot, and for that reason alone I am glad that I read it. While perhaps not as monumental as her Middlemarch masterpiece, this is a big and meaty novel and well worth reading. Four out of five stars for me.
***
[My review is based upon the 2003 Penguin Classics edition of Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, 850 pages.:]
The novel, first published in 1876, is quasi-Tolstoyan in scope and complexity. It has a whole raft of fairly interesting characters that border on being 'Dickensian.' While written in her characteristic style of 'social realism,' Eliot uses some quite elegant and sophisticated literary and plot devices too. For example, she is adept at using flashbacks to bounce characters and events back and forth in time. She also runs dual storylines through much of the novel, that are quite divergent at the beginning, but close in a relatively satisfying convergence near the end. Her use of allusion, allegory, and metaphor is deft and appropriate. Eliot, in writing this novel, is clearly didactic, without being overtly 'preachy' or academic like Tolstoy (e.g., Anna Karenina) or Victor Hugo (Les Miserables).
In some respects, for much of the first half of the novel I found myself more interested in the character and plot-threads associated with Gwendolen Harleth versus that of the eponymous Daniel Deronda. Gwendolen reminded me, at various times, of Jane Austen's 'Emma' or even Eliot's own 'Dorothea Brooke' (Middlemarch). With the convergence of Gwendolen's storyline with that of Daniel's, I did find that Daniel's story and character became much more compelling and interesting.
All in all, this is a novel about double-standards, redemption and balance. Eliot provides a fascinating portrait of the situation and lives of English and European Jews during the Victorian period, and particularly the nascent proto-Zionist movement and her interpretation of the Kaballistic philosophy. Eliot balances this portrait with a similar examination of the ways and social mores of the well-established English upper class. Eliot pulls off this balancing act superbly through having the novel's primary male protagonist, Daniel Deronda, having a foot in the both worlds. I was also completely taken with the intelligent young Jewish woman, Mirah Lapidoth. From her introduction, early on in the novel, I eagerly looked forward to her each of her appearances. The Meyrick family, especially Mrs. "Little Mother" Meyrick and her vivacious daughters, are splendidly wonderful characters. The novel also contains some characters that you simply love to hate, and others that you hate to love. Ambiguity and shades of gray abound.
In conclusion, I enjoyed reading George Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda, very much. I can say, however, that it did not affect me in the same visceral and emotional sort of way that her earlier books have; specifically, The Mill on the Floss, or Silas Marner. I could also tell that writing Daniel Deronda and telling this story was somehow quite important to George Eliot, and for that reason alone I am glad that I read it. While perhaps not as monumental as her Middlemarch masterpiece, this is a big and meaty novel and well worth reading. Four out of five stars for me.
***
[My review is based upon the 2003 Penguin Classics edition of Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, 850 pages.:]
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February 7, 2022As I said in an update, I'm very much of the same opinion as the critics who stated that this book ought to have been titled Gwendolen Harleth and done without Daniel's personal part of the story. Gwendolen was an incredibly well-written character and her development over the course of the story was super compelling, as was Eliot's depiction of an emotionally abusive relationship. Her relationship with Daniel was also really interesting as she built up his influence in her head and came to rely so much on the scant conversations they had.
This opinion might just be because I found a lot of the religious and philosophical musings in the Daniel/Mordecai part of the book to be extremely difficult to understand and wade through. Eliot's language was also more convoluted than I'm used to, even having read a lot of Victorians, and sometimes I frankly just did not understand what she was saying. I am sure that smarter people have a lot to say about the book's Zionism, but readers should definitely note that it is present.
Mirah and the Meyricks were excessively saccharine in the way that only female characters in Victorian lit can be - this was even more annoying than usual because of its contrast to how real and complex Gwendolen was. Daniel's mother was also extremely interesting.
I'm glad I read this but parts of it were a huge struggle. Maybe I'm just not as smart as I used to be.
This opinion might just be because I found a lot of the religious and philosophical musings in the Daniel/Mordecai part of the book to be extremely difficult to understand and wade through. Eliot's language was also more convoluted than I'm used to, even having read a lot of Victorians, and sometimes I frankly just did not understand what she was saying. I am sure that smarter people have a lot to say about the book's Zionism, but readers should definitely note that it is present.
Mirah and the Meyricks were excessively saccharine in the way that only female characters in Victorian lit can be - this was even more annoying than usual because of its contrast to how real and complex Gwendolen was. Daniel's mother was also extremely interesting.
I'm glad I read this but parts of it were a huge struggle. Maybe I'm just not as smart as I used to be.
April 21, 2023
This took me a while to get through! There were parts of it I really enjoyed, and I made it to the end because it has so many ideas that I’m sure were ahead of their time. One of the two main themes is marriage and how women are treated both as wives and lovers, and the reasons women marry, rarely for love it seems. The other major theme is antisemitism. But oh is Eliot longwinded about it all! I found the main characters interesting and enjoyed the plot, just it could’ve been much shorter and then it would’ve been a better reading experience for me.
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