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rebeccaasavage 's review for:
Daniel Deronda
by George Eliot
My stars. I am astonished at this. Thoughts below, in no particular order:
1. The way this woman writes women means passing comments, asides, fundamental motivations, and personal hopes in her characters all make me feel seen in a way I have hardly ever felt.
2. I am fascinated by the fact that this is the first book of hers where I can remember there being a character who could even halfway be described as a villain—their defining characteristic being a commitment to self-pleasure and domination of others is telling.
3. George Eliot has one of the most interesting relationships with faith I have ever come across, and it inspires a sort of holy envy in me. She is consistently impressed by the way religion—any religion—can elevate its most sincere followers. The fact that she wrote this massive, complex, incredibly constructed novel to refute anti-Semistism is the obvious part (yes, it could be termed Uncle Tom’s Cabin for a different minority with all the associated issues, but there is so much more depth of writing than Harriet Beecher Stowe could have even attempted, let alone executed in her emotional sledgehammer (which was itself incredibly affective and effective)), but she has also written similarly lauded Methodists, Christians, etc. plus she loves Charles Lamb who loves Quakers. It feels like she admires commitment to faith and its transformative power in a way few religious people do. (Shoutout the the cameo the Book of Mormon got from this book published in 1876).
4. The only times I have read 800+ page novels and never felt like a single word was wasted were when I read this and Middlemarch. Truly impressive, that.
5. Thanks to a passing comment from Claudia Bushman when I saw her in Relief Society a couple weeks ago, I’m reading through all of George Eliot’s works, and I am utterly converted to a new favorite author. I actually quite regret that I read Daniel Deronda, her last novel, before the remaining two. This is the perfect end to her career, and going back to Felix Holt (written ten years earlier) and Scenes from a Clerical Life (her first collection of work, usually referenced as early materials she expounded on for later books) will be a major downshift.
1. The way this woman writes women means passing comments, asides, fundamental motivations, and personal hopes in her characters all make me feel seen in a way I have hardly ever felt.
2. I am fascinated by the fact that this is the first book of hers where I can remember there being a character who could even halfway be described as a villain—their defining characteristic being a commitment to self-pleasure and domination of others is telling.
3. George Eliot has one of the most interesting relationships with faith I have ever come across, and it inspires a sort of holy envy in me. She is consistently impressed by the way religion—any religion—can elevate its most sincere followers. The fact that she wrote this massive, complex, incredibly constructed novel to refute anti-Semistism is the obvious part (yes, it could be termed Uncle Tom’s Cabin for a different minority with all the associated issues, but there is so much more depth of writing than Harriet Beecher Stowe could have even attempted, let alone executed in her emotional sledgehammer (which was itself incredibly affective and effective)), but she has also written similarly lauded Methodists, Christians, etc. plus she loves Charles Lamb who loves Quakers. It feels like she admires commitment to faith and its transformative power in a way few religious people do. (Shoutout the the cameo the Book of Mormon got from this book published in 1876).
4. The only times I have read 800+ page novels and never felt like a single word was wasted were when I read this and Middlemarch. Truly impressive, that.
5. Thanks to a passing comment from Claudia Bushman when I saw her in Relief Society a couple weeks ago, I’m reading through all of George Eliot’s works, and I am utterly converted to a new favorite author. I actually quite regret that I read Daniel Deronda, her last novel, before the remaining two. This is the perfect end to her career, and going back to Felix Holt (written ten years earlier) and Scenes from a Clerical Life (her first collection of work, usually referenced as early materials she expounded on for later books) will be a major downshift.