A review by lackritzj
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

5.0

Another masterpiece by George Eliot, which I liked as well as Middlemarch, her most celebrated book.
The central character, Gwendolyn, is a fascination, who attracts the readers in spite of her total self-centeredness. She did not find solutions for her life through a man, though she did attempt to do so.
Her attraction to Daniel seems to have been a reflection of her own sense of good. Yet what she felt for him was really a false image. More than Mirah perhaps she would always see him as an image rather than a real human. I did not agree with the writer of introduction of my book that she made the Jews all good and the Gentile all bad. It was just that the female character had many personal weaknesses and Daniel was a man. Eliot tended to fill out the famale characters more than the male.
My favorate part of the book was the one in which the old impoverished men are gathered in the tavern to discuss their philosophies. "I said, let my body dwell in poverty and my hands be the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope." Mordichai, p. 155