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A review by akhuseby
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
3.0
Once again, as with Middlemarch, Eliot's taken what could be two novels and combined them so that two protagonists (or the argument could be made more than that even) are all spinning in arcs around each other, tangentially touching and sometimes profoundly so but still on their own arcs. The novel begins with spoiled, self-centered, arrogant Gwendolyn Harleth, who everyone has pinned hopes on for making a brilliant marriage. She's mean to her mother and high and mighty to everyone else. She's got a bit of a gambling issue and is the 19th-c. equivalent of a Paris Hilton, with the difference being that Harleth returns from a gambling spree to find out her family is now broke. Having rejected the advances of the ridiculously named Henleigh Malinger Grandcourt, Gwendolyn returns home to harsh choices: she must either enter into service as a governess for a wealthy family (or choice she views as only slightly worse than death) or she must marry, and quickly. Going with the easy (and obvious) option, she quickly makes it clear to Grandcourt that she's had a change of heart. She makes this rapid decision, she claims, because she feels badly for her mother's poverty (yeah right). She also makes this decision despite knowing that Grandcourt has another family under the rose. This unacknowledged un-wife makes several appearances, like a phantom, and even writes Gwen a wicked, imprecatory letter on her wedding day, sending along some cursed diamonds just for good measure. This of course sends Gwen into fits of guilt, which are disingenuous histrionics at best.
Cut to the side story of Daniel Deronda, who is tangentially related by adoption to Grandcourt and had a glancing interaction with Gwen while she was gambling and pawning jewelry. His story is more boring, IMHO. He doesn't know who is parents are, but suspects Sir Hugo Malinger fathered him (he did not). He goes around rescuing people, essentially. First, he rescues Gwen by repurchasing her pawned necklace after she gambles herself into a hole. Then he literally rescues Mirah, the Jewess with whom he'll eventually fall in love, as she's attempting to commit suicide by drowning in the river. He then rescues Mirah's brother Ezra by entering into a relationship reminiscent of that between Ruth and Naomi in the Hebrew Bible. That, for me, was the most interesting part of Deronda's story. The passages where Deronda and Ezra are pledging themselves to each other sound very much like wedding vows, and the entire text ends with a quote from Ruth. So there would seem to be some deeper spelunking to be had there. Also, at first, Deronda and Mirah both don't know where their parents are. So there's an interesting subtext of abandoned and ill-used children here that might be worth investigating as well.
Predictably, Gwendolyn thinks she's fallen in love with Deronda, when really all she needs is to have her ego stroked and have someone tell her what to do with her life. The woman doesn't think for herself though she claims to repeatedly. Deronda, more reasonably, falls for "one of his own kind," Mirah, though he doesn't allow himself to admit his feelings until after a meeting with his long lost mother (a princess no less), who reveals that, yes, he is, indeed a Jew. To our 21st-century minds, the emphasis on whether he's a Jew or not might feel anachronistic, until we place it in context: pre-WWII, when anti-semitism was still rife. Gwendolyn's somewhat humorous, somewhat pathetic reaction to Deronda's revelation that he is Jewish demonstrates this: she tells him that she doesn't care about all of that, much in the way that some would say, "Oh, but I have black friends, so I CAN'T be racist." Uh huh. She's not a character that thinks very deeply about anything but herself. When she is released from her marital slavery to Grandcourt, it's a ridiculous toss away scene. I honestly put the book down and said, "Really, George Eliot, after 700 pages, THIS is what you come up with - he drowns? Come on." And of course, Gwen uses this as a reason to feel increasingly sorry for herself and try to lure Deronda in even more, but he's not biting.
Though it took me a month of picking this novel up and putting it down and picking it up again, interspersed with vacations and other shorter novels, to get through it, I stuck with it, and I feel it was worth it. While not one of my favorite Eliot novels, as her last complete novel, I felt it was important to read it. Overall, the relationships are odd and not tidy and uncomfortable and contrived. Still, Eliot knew her craft and the book is worth a read if you are a devotee.
Cut to the side story of Daniel Deronda, who is tangentially related by adoption to Grandcourt and had a glancing interaction with Gwen while she was gambling and pawning jewelry. His story is more boring, IMHO. He doesn't know who is parents are, but suspects Sir Hugo Malinger fathered him (he did not). He goes around rescuing people, essentially. First, he rescues Gwen by repurchasing her pawned necklace after she gambles herself into a hole. Then he literally rescues Mirah, the Jewess with whom he'll eventually fall in love, as she's attempting to commit suicide by drowning in the river. He then rescues Mirah's brother Ezra by entering into a relationship reminiscent of that between Ruth and Naomi in the Hebrew Bible. That, for me, was the most interesting part of Deronda's story. The passages where Deronda and Ezra are pledging themselves to each other sound very much like wedding vows, and the entire text ends with a quote from Ruth. So there would seem to be some deeper spelunking to be had there. Also, at first, Deronda and Mirah both don't know where their parents are. So there's an interesting subtext of abandoned and ill-used children here that might be worth investigating as well.
Predictably, Gwendolyn thinks she's fallen in love with Deronda, when really all she needs is to have her ego stroked and have someone tell her what to do with her life. The woman doesn't think for herself though she claims to repeatedly. Deronda, more reasonably, falls for "one of his own kind," Mirah, though he doesn't allow himself to admit his feelings until after a meeting with his long lost mother (a princess no less), who reveals that, yes, he is, indeed a Jew. To our 21st-century minds, the emphasis on whether he's a Jew or not might feel anachronistic, until we place it in context: pre-WWII, when anti-semitism was still rife. Gwendolyn's somewhat humorous, somewhat pathetic reaction to Deronda's revelation that he is Jewish demonstrates this: she tells him that she doesn't care about all of that, much in the way that some would say, "Oh, but I have black friends, so I CAN'T be racist." Uh huh. She's not a character that thinks very deeply about anything but herself. When she is released from her marital slavery to Grandcourt, it's a ridiculous toss away scene. I honestly put the book down and said, "Really, George Eliot, after 700 pages, THIS is what you come up with - he drowns? Come on." And of course, Gwen uses this as a reason to feel increasingly sorry for herself and try to lure Deronda in even more, but he's not biting.
Though it took me a month of picking this novel up and putting it down and picking it up again, interspersed with vacations and other shorter novels, to get through it, I stuck with it, and I feel it was worth it. While not one of my favorite Eliot novels, as her last complete novel, I felt it was important to read it. Overall, the relationships are odd and not tidy and uncomfortable and contrived. Still, Eliot knew her craft and the book is worth a read if you are a devotee.