Daniel Deronda By George Eliot

In what may be her most exciting and original novel, George Eliot weaves two completely different plots, one of which is a uniquely sympathetic and fully developed story with Jewish protagonists. Presenting no Jewish stereotypes, as we see in Dickens (in Oliver Twist and other novels) and even Trollope (with The Way We Live Now (Barnes & Noble Classics)), she depicts characters who have, in one case, tried to avoid their heritage and in another have been drawn irrevocably to a religion and culture with which they have had no previous contact.

Daniel Deronda, a young man who has been brought up as an English gentleman by Sir Hugo Mallinger, has never known his real parents, secretly fearing that he is illegitimate. As time passes, he longs to understand the circumstances of his birth, especially after Sir Hugo marries and produces heirs of his own. Beautiful Gwendolen Harleth, selfish and manipulative, is romantically attracted to Daniel, but a sudden change in her family’s financial status leads her into a precipitous but financially advantageous marriage to the arrogant Henleigh Grandcourt. Meanwhile, Daniel saves a young woman from drowning herself, a singer named Mirah Lapidoth who is in despair. Mirah, a Jew, has been stolen from her family by her father, whom she suspects planned to sell her into white slavery, and she desperately misses her mother and brother, whom she can no longer find. As she progresses with her singing career, she never forgets her heritage, of which she is inordinately proud.

As Eliot develops the various social settings of this fascinating novel, written in 1876, a full picture of British society evolves. To protect Mirah from her father and her own despair, Daniel places her in the home of friends and resolves to try to find her family. When Daniel discovers her brother Mordecai, a Jewish mystic and seer, Mordecai is convinced, against all odds, that Daniel is Jewish–and is the person who will carry his visions for a Jewish nation to fruition. As the novel develops further, Eliot explores Jewish mysticism, religious traditions, and cultural heritage, even as she also uses the shallow, aristocratic life of Gwendolen Harleth Grandcourt as a contrast to that of Mirah.

The novel is unique in its favorable and lengthy depiction of Judaism and in its illustration of Judaism’s cultural superiority to superficial, aristocratic British life. Mirah and her family take center stage in terms of sympathy, despite the fact the Gwendolen, who in other novels might have been the heroine, suffers terribly in her miserable marriage to Grandcourt. Daring to do something completely different with this complex novel, which was her last, Eliot’s vision and seriousness of purpose here created enormous controversy in its time and presaged a new direction for the novel. n Mary Whipple

Middlemarch (Signet Classics)
The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Popular Classics)
Adam Bede (Penguin Classics)
George Eliot: The Last Victorian

AOK

These 710 pages are really two books in one. Don’t read it for a deadline. It’s the sort of book you keep by your bed for about a year and read a few pages every night before going to sleep. I had to read it for a deadline and dreaded about half of it.

One book concerns an attractive, selfish girl-woman with not too clean scruples. I’ll bet Scarlett O’Hara is based on Gwendolen Harleth. Having been careless about her education and talents, she has the bad judgment to marry a rich, sadistic man with nobility prospects. Eliot elucidates the psychological sadism, but as a true Victorian, omits the probable sexual sadism. Daniel Deronda is an embodiment of her conscience and tries to help her through her eventually overwhelming feelings of guilt.
Daniel is also the connection to the so-called other book, which describes the Lapidoth/Cohen family,their hardships in a Gentile world, and their Zionism as a hope for their unity with God. There are mysteries concerning Daniel’s heritage, but the reader can pretty well guess what it is long before it is revealed.

I had mixed feelings about this book. Some of it is delightful, witty in its description of the British gentry and their prejudices of religion and rank. Other parts are ponderous, with 80-word sentences embodying lofty and vague ideals. The Jewish parts are written with good will, but some of the things are wrong and actually a bit patronizing. Example: A boy is named after his living grandfather. Naming is actually done in honor of a person who has died, to further their memory. Victorianly, circumcision is omitted. Nevertheless, the writing is terrific and evoked genuine emotion in me.

This long and at times complicated book is quite remarkable for its subject matter, as it deals with the identity and prejudices about the Jewish people in London in the 1800’s. George Eliot is masterful as usual in creating characters, even hateful ones such as Grandcourt and Gwendolyn, and creates a lovely sympathetic character in a young Jewish brother and sister. Well worth making the effort to read… This edition had no footnotes which is a shame, as there are so many quotes and references that I wish were annotated.