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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
I loved this book--but good God, I was unable to separate one fact from the story--and that is that the Holocaust and later the creation of Israel are the real-life epilogue to Daniel Deronda. The book really is a classic with great insights into human psychology and their motivation. From a plot perspective it has a great quest, the search for lost parents, even a romance. And for contemporaries it must have been a very thought-provoking work. Daniel Deronda is often cited as an influencer on the zionist movement which hit full stride about 20 years after publication in 1870. No doubt Eliot was picking up themes that were already circulating in conversations back then.
The prescience of the book makes a little bit of sense when I think about it. The story of the jews and their long time in the desert is a theme that goes back to Egypt up to the Twentieth Century. Mordecai’s dream is borne out of the treatment of the jews in the early 1800s, the spanish conversos of the 15th century, and echoes even back in ancient times. Unfortunately, that echo returned so loudly in the twentieth century that a reader today is deafened by the holocaust. At least I was. I think the way Eliot taps into historical undercurrents is what lends the novel it’s spooky prescience. But the holocaust also makes it hard to look back at what Daniel Deronda is supposed to be about--which is hope.
Daniel Deronda must take place during the mid 1860s. The only definite date I picked up on was a reference to the upcoming battle of Sadowa, which took place in 1866. This means that the children in this book--such as Jacob--and any subsequent children of Daniel Deronda would have been alive for the zionist movement, and if they had lived long enough they would have lived through both the Holocaust and the creation of Israel. This is another thought that I kept going back to during my reading.
Interestingly enough there has been criticism that the work should have been broken up into an english book and a jewish book--I guess many people have found the two themes incongruous. Not me--this very interplay between the english country folk and the jews is what I think makes Daniel Deronda so prophetic--because Eliot was such a natural psychologist that her characters end up giving us insights into what motivated the holocaust and the creation of Israel.
Some elements of the book are naive. Others are chilling. One passage that struck me in particular happened in Mordecai’s philosophy club. His friend Pash explains “... with us in Europe the sentiment of nationality is destined to die out. It will last a little longer in the quarters where oppression lasts, but nowhere else. The whole current of progress is against it.”
How naive that sounds today. Even now, nationalism is creeping back in Europe. But the idea that nationalism was dying must have been in the minds of many many people. It was their collective inability to anticipate a backlash against judaism that really is tragic. What must have been a common idea at the time is found in the comments of well-meaning but deeply prejudiced thinking in the Meyricks. Mrs. Meryick’s almost anticipates the holocaust:
“...If jews and jewesses went on changing their religion, and making no difference between themselves and Christians, there would come a time when there would be no Jews to be seen,” said Mrs Meyrick, taking that Consummation very cheerfully.”
The words to contemporaries must have been intended to evoke the same emotions we feel today, but they would have been in the context of the forced conversions of the spanish conversos. And no doubt, Mrs. Meyrick is picturing assimilation not genocide. But the callousness and ignorance of the comment shines a light on the odd delusions of people at that time. It was a bit of hypnosis by hubris. So good people like Mrs. Meyrick were not able to grant Jews the right to exist--and did not even recognize that this was a kind of evil. This is exactly the kind of self-reinforcing prejudice that led to the holocaust. Deronda is awakened in a way that Eliot was trying to do to her readers.
George Eliot would have had an interesting take on Martin Neimoller’s poem. In may ways that poem is written for the Mrs. Meyricks of the world,
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Another chilling passage is when George Eliot seems to anticipate in a very spooky way the Holocaust and World War II. “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 -- when 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 forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands.”
On a lighter note, the idea of two people in love with each other but separated by religion is given a happy ending. And there is a bit of Moses in Deronda too. Symbolically Deronda does everything but float down the river in a basket. And actually he might even do that if you think about his meeting with Myrah.
And Gwendolyn, while undergoing terrible tragedies, in the end is redeemed by an awakening that parallels Deronda’s.
The prescience of the book makes a little bit of sense when I think about it. The story of the jews and their long time in the desert is a theme that goes back to Egypt up to the Twentieth Century. Mordecai’s dream is borne out of the treatment of the jews in the early 1800s, the spanish conversos of the 15th century, and echoes even back in ancient times. Unfortunately, that echo returned so loudly in the twentieth century that a reader today is deafened by the holocaust. At least I was. I think the way Eliot taps into historical undercurrents is what lends the novel it’s spooky prescience. But the holocaust also makes it hard to look back at what Daniel Deronda is supposed to be about--which is hope.
Daniel Deronda must take place during the mid 1860s. The only definite date I picked up on was a reference to the upcoming battle of Sadowa, which took place in 1866. This means that the children in this book--such as Jacob--and any subsequent children of Daniel Deronda would have been alive for the zionist movement, and if they had lived long enough they would have lived through both the Holocaust and the creation of Israel. This is another thought that I kept going back to during my reading.
Interestingly enough there has been criticism that the work should have been broken up into an english book and a jewish book--I guess many people have found the two themes incongruous. Not me--this very interplay between the english country folk and the jews is what I think makes Daniel Deronda so prophetic--because Eliot was such a natural psychologist that her characters end up giving us insights into what motivated the holocaust and the creation of Israel.
Some elements of the book are naive. Others are chilling. One passage that struck me in particular happened in Mordecai’s philosophy club. His friend Pash explains “... with us in Europe the sentiment of nationality is destined to die out. It will last a little longer in the quarters where oppression lasts, but nowhere else. The whole current of progress is against it.”
How naive that sounds today. Even now, nationalism is creeping back in Europe. But the idea that nationalism was dying must have been in the minds of many many people. It was their collective inability to anticipate a backlash against judaism that really is tragic. What must have been a common idea at the time is found in the comments of well-meaning but deeply prejudiced thinking in the Meyricks. Mrs. Meryick’s almost anticipates the holocaust:
“...If jews and jewesses went on changing their religion, and making no difference between themselves and Christians, there would come a time when there would be no Jews to be seen,” said Mrs Meyrick, taking that Consummation very cheerfully.”
The words to contemporaries must have been intended to evoke the same emotions we feel today, but they would have been in the context of the forced conversions of the spanish conversos. And no doubt, Mrs. Meyrick is picturing assimilation not genocide. But the callousness and ignorance of the comment shines a light on the odd delusions of people at that time. It was a bit of hypnosis by hubris. So good people like Mrs. Meyrick were not able to grant Jews the right to exist--and did not even recognize that this was a kind of evil. This is exactly the kind of self-reinforcing prejudice that led to the holocaust. Deronda is awakened in a way that Eliot was trying to do to her readers.
George Eliot would have had an interesting take on Martin Neimoller’s poem. In may ways that poem is written for the Mrs. Meyricks of the world,
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Another chilling passage is when George Eliot seems to anticipate in a very spooky way the Holocaust and World War II. “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 -- when 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 forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands.”
On a lighter note, the idea of two people in love with each other but separated by religion is given a happy ending. And there is a bit of Moses in Deronda too. Symbolically Deronda does everything but float down the river in a basket. And actually he might even do that if you think about his meeting with Myrah.
And Gwendolyn, while undergoing terrible tragedies, in the end is redeemed by an awakening that parallels Deronda’s.
Christmas was over but two teacher days and a snow day and a half meant I could wallow in yet another huge novel.
Is Gwendolen Harleth the most spoilt heroine of a novel, or does Emma Wodehouse keep that prize? I warmed to Emma in the end and only ever felt sorry for Gwendolen: in spite of her inevitable redemption I never really got to like her - or any of the other major characters. Apart from the despicable Grandcourt, his toady Lush and the pathetic mrs Glasher, Mirah and her adoptive family are too goody-goody, and Deronda's vacillation, willing blindness to the effects of his actions on Gwen, and his obsession with his found heritage, although explained and supported by his upbringing, don't make him a sympathetic hero. Then painting of Mordecai and his family as people like us with an undeserved load to bear now seems rather sentimental and overdone - although in some places horribly prophetic.
So why a high rating? Because the tale drags one on through the philosphising and politicing and melodrama. I did want to find out what happened to these people - I cared about their fates and feelings, even if I didn't like them - so, were someone to ask me if it's worth reading, I would still say yes.
Is Gwendolen Harleth the most spoilt heroine of a novel, or does Emma Wodehouse keep that prize? I warmed to Emma in the end and only ever felt sorry for Gwendolen: in spite of her inevitable redemption I never really got to like her - or any of the other major characters. Apart from the despicable Grandcourt, his toady Lush and the pathetic mrs Glasher, Mirah and her adoptive family are too goody-goody, and Deronda's vacillation, willing blindness to the effects of his actions on Gwen, and his obsession with his found heritage, although explained and supported by his upbringing, don't make him a sympathetic hero. Then painting of Mordecai and his family as people like us with an undeserved load to bear now seems rather sentimental and overdone - although in some places horribly prophetic.
So why a high rating? Because the tale drags one on through the philosphising and politicing and melodrama. I did want to find out what happened to these people - I cared about their fates and feelings, even if I didn't like them - so, were someone to ask me if it's worth reading, I would still say yes.
Daniel Deronda is a book about a woman named Gwendolen Harleth.
Ok, that may not be entirely true, but Daniel Deronda almost feels like a secondary character compared to Gwendolen. Maybe that’s because I found Gwendolen far more interesting a character than Deronda. Since I read this book for pleasure and not as part of a literary course I don’t have the benefit of picking apart all the nuances of the novel. For me Gwendolen’s story is a commentary on the roles and expectations placed on women; where their free agency is very limited and how society can stifle even the most vibrant of personalities. Over the course of the novel Gwendolen is the most altered and for me she is the true star of Daniel Deronda.
In comparison our titular character is a bit of a dull fellow. I have to admit up front that I am not particularly fond of theological discussions and often find my mind wandering if an author lingers too long on religious matters. That is my failing, I know. While I appreciated the significance of Deronda’s personal and spiritual journey, and the refreshing (for the time period) way that Eliot wrote her Jewish characters, Deronda’s storyline always fell a bit flat for me. Intellectually I appreciated his storyline, but emotionally I wasn’t very interested.
At 850 pages this is not a short novel. Eliot has some great twists worked into the narrative and created a great villain in Grandcourt, but the story seemed to meander a bit. The ending felt lackluster, as if Eliot realized the book was getting too long and needed to wrap things up. It left me asking did we really need 850 pages to get to this point?
This being said, I love Eliot’s writing and her characters are always a delight, I never mind spending time with them. As her final novel it may not be Eliot’s best work but there is no denying her talent and I am glad I took the time to read it.
Ok, that may not be entirely true, but Daniel Deronda almost feels like a secondary character compared to Gwendolen. Maybe that’s because I found Gwendolen far more interesting a character than Deronda. Since I read this book for pleasure and not as part of a literary course I don’t have the benefit of picking apart all the nuances of the novel. For me Gwendolen’s story is a commentary on the roles and expectations placed on women; where their free agency is very limited and how society can stifle even the most vibrant of personalities. Over the course of the novel Gwendolen is the most altered and for me she is the true star of Daniel Deronda.
In comparison our titular character is a bit of a dull fellow. I have to admit up front that I am not particularly fond of theological discussions and often find my mind wandering if an author lingers too long on religious matters. That is my failing, I know. While I appreciated the significance of Deronda’s personal and spiritual journey, and the refreshing (for the time period) way that Eliot wrote her Jewish characters, Deronda’s storyline always fell a bit flat for me. Intellectually I appreciated his storyline, but emotionally I wasn’t very interested.
At 850 pages this is not a short novel. Eliot has some great twists worked into the narrative and created a great villain in Grandcourt, but the story seemed to meander a bit. The ending felt lackluster, as if Eliot realized the book was getting too long and needed to wrap things up. It left me asking did we really need 850 pages to get to this point?
This being said, I love Eliot’s writing and her characters are always a delight, I never mind spending time with them. As her final novel it may not be Eliot’s best work but there is no denying her talent and I am glad I took the time to read it.
This novel strikes too close to home for me to give it a proper review.
I was a bit disappointed by this book, having loved re-reading Middlemarch recently. I read this book too, years ago, but remembered nothing of it. In places I found it gripping, but once Mordecai entered the story it got less interesting for me, because I found almost everything he said incomprehensible. Some of the characters were likeable, eg Sir Hugo and the Rector, and Grandcourt was a good villain. On the other hand, Mirah had no real personality and both Deronda and Gwendolen were hard to love.
Discussion is being held at the Victorians group.
This is the story of Daniel Deronda and his search for his true identify.
In this book Eliot show her best of style of writing: in the first two chapters, in a flashback point of view, Deronda met Gwendolyn at a Casino but she is forced to go home due to financial duties with her family. Apparently, a romantic relationship is established between these characters.
However, as the plot develops, one learns the true story of Daniel Deronda and his search for his true identity. In the meantime, Gwen accepted the marriage proposal made by Lord Grandcourt thus avoiding her probably future as a simple Governess.
Then Eliot introduces a Jewish component into the plot: Daniel met Mirah who is trying to find her own mother and brother and then we have the feeling of Daniel's Jewish parentage. Eliot describes in a very sensitive way in which Jews were perceived during this Victorian period.
There is other turmoil into the story but I prefer to avoid spoilers here.
I haven't read all the books by George Eliot but it seems to be Daniel Deronda is her masterpiece work as a writer. Now, I must read Adam Bede, Silas Marner and Romola in order to get a true vision of her whole work.
This is the story of Daniel Deronda and his search for his true identify.
In this book Eliot show her best of style of writing: in the first two chapters, in a flashback point of view, Deronda met Gwendolyn at a Casino but she is forced to go home due to financial duties with her family. Apparently, a romantic relationship is established between these characters.
However, as the plot develops, one learns the true story of Daniel Deronda and his search for his true identity. In the meantime, Gwen accepted the marriage proposal made by Lord Grandcourt thus avoiding her probably future as a simple Governess.
Then Eliot introduces a Jewish component into the plot: Daniel met Mirah who is trying to find her own mother and brother and then we have the feeling of Daniel's Jewish parentage. Eliot describes in a very sensitive way in which Jews were perceived during this Victorian period.
There is other turmoil into the story but I prefer to avoid spoilers here.
I haven't read all the books by George Eliot but it seems to be Daniel Deronda is her masterpiece work as a writer. Now, I must read Adam Bede, Silas Marner and Romola in order to get a true vision of her whole work.
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Last year around this time, I read Adam Bede, George Eliot’s first novel. It’s fitting that when I was rummaging around my to-read box, I found Daniel Deronda, Eliot’s last novel. I wanted a meaty, socially-conscious novel with a diverse cast of well-realized characters. Eliot does not disappoint, and Daniel Deronda captivated me to the point that I began scribbling some notes in the margins of my lovely used copy.
I love George Eliot so much. Sooooo much. Let me make this clear: George Eliot is a god.
(A friend suggested I should use the word “goddess”, but if we don’t call women actors “actresses” or “murderesses” any more, I’m going to phase “goddess” out as well.)
Eliot’s ability to transport me to her contemporary Europe is nothing short of wizardry. It’s easy to complain that fiction from a hundred years ago is too difficult to read because of changes in style or too difficult to comprehend because of cultural shifts, but Eliot’s command of imagery and characterization transcends all such barriers. In the previous novels of hers that I’ve read, Eliot replicates the atmosphere of rural England as the echoes of the Industrial Revolution reverberated across its emptying fields. Now in her last novel she gives us a glimpse of the emerging middle class.
The book is called Daniel Deronda, so readers are excused if they are confused by the fact that, for the first third of the book, Deronda appears in one chapter before Eliot turns all her attention on Gwendolen Harleth. The story is as much Gwendolen’s as it is Deronda’s, and it is only towards the very end of the book that Deronda’s narrative seems to take precedence. I understand why the back of my Wordsworth Classics edition claims “Eliot breaks new ground for the English novel with the unusual form and content”, for at first it seems like these two protagonists’ narratives are utterly unrelated. Yet each is enhanced by the other, and by the parallels one can draw between them.
Gwendolen is an interesting protagonist because she is unlikable—but sympathetic. She is spoiled (a fact that is not, itself, a spoiler, because the very first book is called “The Spoiled Child”) and sheltered and possibly Eliot’s way of digging at the shallow creations of fellow Regency and Victorian novelists who completely missed the point of Austen and the Brontë sisters. Gwendolen is in fact an excellent case study of how to write an unlikable character, because Eliot’s omniscient narrator explores the events that have shaped her as a young woman. When confronted with her mother and sisters’ penury (money matters and the loss of money being a favourite motif for Eliot), Gwendolen’s initial reaction is hilariously naive: she announces she will pursue a career as a famous actor or singer. Eliot, through the slightly stereotypical figure of Hans Klesmer—suffering German artiste—shuts Gwendolen down and hard! The schadenfreude as Gwendolen’s cognitive dissonance works overtime to process Klesmer’s complete and unrelenting criticism of her proposal is lovely, all the more so because, thanks to earlier scenes and interactions, we see it coming while Gwendolen remains her oblivious, egoistic self.
Ego is, of course, at the core of both of this novel’s stories. Gwendolen is not really used to anyone saying “no” to her. (Deronda is so enigmatic to her in part because he is probably the first person to do this when he aborts her ruinous gambling streak by returning her necklace.) She basically rules her mother through a combination of genuine affection and latent guilt on her mother’s part over her father’s desertion of the family. Gwendolen’s half-sisters are never fleshed out beyond being set pieces, to the point where I don’t remember their names. Eliot portrays her as far more self-possessed and self-determined than the typical young woman of her time. This is evident from her thoughts on marriage, illustrated by this, the first of many quotes I felt the need to underline:
(From there, Eliot goes on to explain that Gwendolen “desires to lead”, building her up as an ambitious and calculating woman who belies the somewhat foolish girl we see in the first chapter. Gwendolen is inexperienced but intelligent.) Eliot’s own complicated views on love and matrimony are on full display here, but even better is the biting critique of a patriarchal society that infantilizes women. She conjures even more powerful imagery to this effect slightly later in the novel, with Gwendolen’s riposte while verbally fencing with Grandcourt:
Wow. You go, girl.
It’s tempting, especially with a cursory knowledge of Eliot’s life, to conclude that the above sentiments are an all-in-all indictment of marriage. Eliot is short-circuiting the Romantic tropes that dictate that marriage is the inevitable destiny of the female lead. However, the critique here is a little more complicated, because Eliot isn’t railing against marriage so much as the more subtle fact that for women in Gwendolen’s position, marriage is essentially the only respectable option. Eliot gives us a look at several women who are content in marriages, like the redoubtable Mrs. Meyrick. What she opposes is the pressure to marry and the social cost to women who do not marry, or who marry the wrong person. Eliot further underscores this double standard through Grandcourt’s illegitimate children with Mrs. Glasher: even those few men, like Sir Hugo, who think he should probably have married Mrs. Glasher do not even bother censuring him. Women don’t have that option, and that makes Eliot furious. (I haven’t even gotten started on the number of times various men and women describe Gwendolen as being a “coquette” or “coquetting”—yeah, they gerunded that shit—during her interactions with Grandcourt. I just … seriously, if you’re at all interested in a feminist look at Victorian England, you need to read George Eliot.)
Gwendolen isn’t the only facet through which Eliot explores the restrictions on women. After cousin Gwendolen spurns him, Rex resolves to move to Canada and “build a hut, and work hard at clearing, and have everything wild about me, and a great wide quiet.” (I love this scene all the more because when Rex mentions Canada, Eliot’s narrator parenthetically remarks, “Rex had not studied the character of our colonial possessions.”) Anyway, what’s interesting is that while Rex is imagining this brave frontier life in Canada, his sister Anna is all gung-ho about joining him as his housekeeper. Initially this just seems like an attempt to show how Anna is devoted to Rex as a sister. However, Gwendolen’s later remark about how women are restricted from having adventures casts Anna’s eagerness in a different light: maybe she secretly yearns for adventures herself, and this is the only way she can think of having them.
Much like the book itself, I’m well into this review before returning to the character of Daniel Deronda. I was just so captivated and moved by Gwendolen’s story, the arc of the tragedy of her compromise with Grandcourt, that I needed to express all of the above. My feelings about Daniel are less complicated, and they tie in with some misgivings about the structure of his plot.
I enjoyed how Eliot provides a sympathetic portrayal of Jews and Jewish culture even while the majority of her Christian characters are thumping bigots. She deftly shows her Jewish characters to belie the stereotypes at every turn: the pawnbroker Ezra Cohen proves to be an upstanding citizen; Ezra Mordecai has a heart far too big for his weakened body. At the same time, otherwise nice and intelligent people like Hans and his mother, or the Mallingers, make the type of offhand comments that exemplify the institutionalized anti-Semitism so endemic to English life.
Deronda takes the revelation that his Jewish surprisingly well. This has something to do with his growing love for Mirah, of course. Perhaps, also, he appreciates that his Jewish identity equips him with a rich heritage and, thanks to Mordecai’s Zionist influences, a sense of purpose and importance. Instead of merely being Sir Hugo’s foster son and protege, Deronda is now a Jew hoping to reclaim his heritage, both figuratively and literally by travelling to Jerusalem.
Towards the end of the novel, Eliot allows the Zionist elements of Deronda’s story to become expansive, devoting page upon page for Mordecai to explain his vision. I think this might be somewhat a case of wanting to show her work (TVTropes) and just getting a little carried away. As a result, Daniel Deronda’s philosophical elements are more overt than they are in some of Eliot’s earlier novels. She has a lot of ideas and differing perspectives that she tries to reconcile, and she isn’t always successful. (I have similar misgivings about the oddly convenient appearance of Deronda’s mother at the end of the book.)
At first, I thought that this meant I should give the book four stars. I did love it, but not nearly as much as Middlemarch or The Mill on the Floss. It’s far from perfect. If I reserved five stars for perfect books, however, that would be miserly indeed. Daniel Deronda an impressive work; its flaws are merely the signatures of Eliot’s ambitious scope for storytelling. This novel’s portrayal of late–nineteenth-century England from the perspective of impoverished middle class women and a rich but heritage-less man trying to find a purpose. It is another fine example of Eliot’s talent for creating memorable and amusing characters of varying degrees of depth, and for her truly stunning command of language in encouraging the reader’s empathy.
I love George Eliot so much. Sooooo much. Let me make this clear: George Eliot is a god.
(A friend suggested I should use the word “goddess”, but if we don’t call women actors “actresses” or “murderesses” any more, I’m going to phase “goddess” out as well.)
Eliot’s ability to transport me to her contemporary Europe is nothing short of wizardry. It’s easy to complain that fiction from a hundred years ago is too difficult to read because of changes in style or too difficult to comprehend because of cultural shifts, but Eliot’s command of imagery and characterization transcends all such barriers. In the previous novels of hers that I’ve read, Eliot replicates the atmosphere of rural England as the echoes of the Industrial Revolution reverberated across its emptying fields. Now in her last novel she gives us a glimpse of the emerging middle class.
The book is called Daniel Deronda, so readers are excused if they are confused by the fact that, for the first third of the book, Deronda appears in one chapter before Eliot turns all her attention on Gwendolen Harleth. The story is as much Gwendolen’s as it is Deronda’s, and it is only towards the very end of the book that Deronda’s narrative seems to take precedence. I understand why the back of my Wordsworth Classics edition claims “Eliot breaks new ground for the English novel with the unusual form and content”, for at first it seems like these two protagonists’ narratives are utterly unrelated. Yet each is enhanced by the other, and by the parallels one can draw between them.
Gwendolen is an interesting protagonist because she is unlikable—but sympathetic. She is spoiled (a fact that is not, itself, a spoiler, because the very first book is called “The Spoiled Child”) and sheltered and possibly Eliot’s way of digging at the shallow creations of fellow Regency and Victorian novelists who completely missed the point of Austen and the Brontë sisters. Gwendolen is in fact an excellent case study of how to write an unlikable character, because Eliot’s omniscient narrator explores the events that have shaped her as a young woman. When confronted with her mother and sisters’ penury (money matters and the loss of money being a favourite motif for Eliot), Gwendolen’s initial reaction is hilariously naive: she announces she will pursue a career as a famous actor or singer. Eliot, through the slightly stereotypical figure of Hans Klesmer—suffering German artiste—shuts Gwendolen down and hard! The schadenfreude as Gwendolen’s cognitive dissonance works overtime to process Klesmer’s complete and unrelenting criticism of her proposal is lovely, all the more so because, thanks to earlier scenes and interactions, we see it coming while Gwendolen remains her oblivious, egoistic self.
Ego is, of course, at the core of both of this novel’s stories. Gwendolen is not really used to anyone saying “no” to her. (Deronda is so enigmatic to her in part because he is probably the first person to do this when he aborts her ruinous gambling streak by returning her necklace.) She basically rules her mother through a combination of genuine affection and latent guilt on her mother’s part over her father’s desertion of the family. Gwendolen’s half-sisters are never fleshed out beyond being set pieces, to the point where I don’t remember their names. Eliot portrays her as far more self-possessed and self-determined than the typical young woman of her time. This is evident from her thoughts on marriage, illustrated by this, the first of many quotes I felt the need to underline:
Her observations 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 was desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevocably immersed in humdrum.
(From there, Eliot goes on to explain that Gwendolen “desires to lead”, building her up as an ambitious and calculating woman who belies the somewhat foolish girl we see in the first chapter. Gwendolen is inexperienced but intelligent.) Eliot’s own complicated views on love and matrimony are on full display here, but even better is the biting critique of a patriarchal society that infantilizes women. She conjures even more powerful imagery to this effect slightly later in the novel, with Gwendolen’s riposte while verbally fencing with Grandcourt:
We women can’t go in search of adventures—to find out the North-West Passage or the source of the Nile, or to hunt tigers in the East. We must stay where we go, or where the gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers, to look as pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining.
Wow. You go, girl.
It’s tempting, especially with a cursory knowledge of Eliot’s life, to conclude that the above sentiments are an all-in-all indictment of marriage. Eliot is short-circuiting the Romantic tropes that dictate that marriage is the inevitable destiny of the female lead. However, the critique here is a little more complicated, because Eliot isn’t railing against marriage so much as the more subtle fact that for women in Gwendolen’s position, marriage is essentially the only respectable option. Eliot gives us a look at several women who are content in marriages, like the redoubtable Mrs. Meyrick. What she opposes is the pressure to marry and the social cost to women who do not marry, or who marry the wrong person. Eliot further underscores this double standard through Grandcourt’s illegitimate children with Mrs. Glasher: even those few men, like Sir Hugo, who think he should probably have married Mrs. Glasher do not even bother censuring him. Women don’t have that option, and that makes Eliot furious. (I haven’t even gotten started on the number of times various men and women describe Gwendolen as being a “coquette” or “coquetting”—yeah, they gerunded that shit—during her interactions with Grandcourt. I just … seriously, if you’re at all interested in a feminist look at Victorian England, you need to read George Eliot.)
Gwendolen isn’t the only facet through which Eliot explores the restrictions on women. After cousin Gwendolen spurns him, Rex resolves to move to Canada and “build a hut, and work hard at clearing, and have everything wild about me, and a great wide quiet.” (I love this scene all the more because when Rex mentions Canada, Eliot’s narrator parenthetically remarks, “Rex had not studied the character of our colonial possessions.”) Anyway, what’s interesting is that while Rex is imagining this brave frontier life in Canada, his sister Anna is all gung-ho about joining him as his housekeeper. Initially this just seems like an attempt to show how Anna is devoted to Rex as a sister. However, Gwendolen’s later remark about how women are restricted from having adventures casts Anna’s eagerness in a different light: maybe she secretly yearns for adventures herself, and this is the only way she can think of having them.
Much like the book itself, I’m well into this review before returning to the character of Daniel Deronda. I was just so captivated and moved by Gwendolen’s story, the arc of the tragedy of her compromise with Grandcourt, that I needed to express all of the above. My feelings about Daniel are less complicated, and they tie in with some misgivings about the structure of his plot.
I enjoyed how Eliot provides a sympathetic portrayal of Jews and Jewish culture even while the majority of her Christian characters are thumping bigots. She deftly shows her Jewish characters to belie the stereotypes at every turn: the pawnbroker Ezra Cohen proves to be an upstanding citizen; Ezra Mordecai has a heart far too big for his weakened body. At the same time, otherwise nice and intelligent people like Hans and his mother, or the Mallingers, make the type of offhand comments that exemplify the institutionalized anti-Semitism so endemic to English life.
Deronda takes the revelation that his Jewish surprisingly well. This has something to do with his growing love for Mirah, of course. Perhaps, also, he appreciates that his Jewish identity equips him with a rich heritage and, thanks to Mordecai’s Zionist influences, a sense of purpose and importance. Instead of merely being Sir Hugo’s foster son and protege, Deronda is now a Jew hoping to reclaim his heritage, both figuratively and literally by travelling to Jerusalem.
Towards the end of the novel, Eliot allows the Zionist elements of Deronda’s story to become expansive, devoting page upon page for Mordecai to explain his vision. I think this might be somewhat a case of wanting to show her work (TVTropes) and just getting a little carried away. As a result, Daniel Deronda’s philosophical elements are more overt than they are in some of Eliot’s earlier novels. She has a lot of ideas and differing perspectives that she tries to reconcile, and she isn’t always successful. (I have similar misgivings about the oddly convenient appearance of Deronda’s mother at the end of the book.)
At first, I thought that this meant I should give the book four stars. I did love it, but not nearly as much as Middlemarch or The Mill on the Floss. It’s far from perfect. If I reserved five stars for perfect books, however, that would be miserly indeed. Daniel Deronda an impressive work; its flaws are merely the signatures of Eliot’s ambitious scope for storytelling. This novel’s portrayal of late–nineteenth-century England from the perspective of impoverished middle class women and a rich but heritage-less man trying to find a purpose. It is another fine example of Eliot’s talent for creating memorable and amusing characters of varying degrees of depth, and for her truly stunning command of language in encouraging the reader’s empathy.
I couldn't read past 600. Unless you're a middle-of-the-way antisemite looking for someone to convince you that maybe Jews aren't as bad as you thought, and you happen to love female writers, this book won't do much for you. I couldn't slog through all the rational-for-the-time negative opinions of Judaism. Read 'Middlemarch' instead.
An absolutely fascinating novel, engrossing, interesting and sometimes disturbing. Partly it charts the unhappy marriage of a difficult to like heroine, Gwendolen, to one of literature's most vile creations, the awful Grandcourt. Partly it consists of one young man's journey of discovery into his Jewish roots. Both sides of the story are equally compelling, making this one of the most thought-provoking and absorbing novels I've ever read.