Oddly, Daniel Deronda both constructs its greatness and, at the same time, shows itself grievously flawed through a doubling or setting up of parallel narratives, loosely linked by the title character, which take way too long to barely touch. The critical stance on the flaw is longstanding: Eliot knew very much about the interior of young women's minds and the upper class marriages of her British peers, but, quite obviously, she knew a lot less about Europe's Jewish community and thus the marriage (or not) of these two worlds produces a sort of lopsided novel, full of insight and tragic beauty in the one narrative, and naive pseudo-racism in the other.

While this is quite evidently true, or at least my reading concurred with the critical consensus before I knew of it, the sheer audacity and ultimate beauty of the attempt here to find common ground between late nineteenth century Zionism and the marriage habits of the English Gentry, and the wonderful theme of human, societal, and kinship relationships--what we owe to others and they to us, both our co-nationals, parents, family and even friends--is rather astounding. Thus five stars for the sheer chutzpah to attempt such an ambitious project. It does, in fits and starts, actually work, even as it utterly fails occasionally. Yet its success and failure hinge so closely upon the same thing, the very core of what the narrative seeks to do, that there's no imaging another version or a correction, it just is what it is, a glorious near miss, missing only because it aims so much higher than 99% of the other novels ever written.

Some of the parallels are obvious: the woman who was forced by an evil parent to sing and act when she didn't want to and the woman who had to break the bonds of her evil parent in order to do the singing and acting that she longed to do, but also more subtle as all of the characters represent various types of parents, or friends, or relatives, or spouces. We see those who abandon relationships for personal realization, and those who renounce themselves to serve family or race, as well as the struggle of the major players to do both, perhaps even at the same time. Thus the theme of human responsibility to one another rings true and important in the novel. It's not didactic, but rather presented as a kind of spectrum, inviting us to measure our own engagement with others through the panorama of relationships that it presents. This greatness of this theme, then, makes the flaws of passages, the naiveté of certain portraits and scenes, seem rather unimportant at tale's end--yet they were annoying at times as I read.

Twenty-five years ago, I remember reading George Eliot’s Silas Marner and thinking how readable and enjoyable it was. Maybe it’s my time addled brain then that struggled so much with this Eliot novel because this was not that experience.

Initially I was confused as to why this book was titled as such seeing that apart from a momentary glimpse in the first chapter, Daniel himself doesn’t seem to appear for a good while. I was beginning to think the book should have been called Gwendolen, as I read page after page of this quite honestly irritating, vain, spoilt girl.

Eventually he arrives as do a couple of luscious villains in the form of Grandcourt and Mr. Lush. The chapters where there is witty conversation and shooting parties and balls are very readable and move quickly but then I’d get bogged down in pages of description of thoughts and philosophy which got worse when Mordecai came onto the scene, as well as the endless repetitive conversations between Daniel and Gwendolen –who does improve as the novel goes on.

I felt stupid, oh so many times, during some of these discourses, struggling to engage and was profoundly lost even with the quotes that begin each chapter, many of which aren’t in English. Clearly nineteenth century readers were far more educated than my sorry soul. The pages and pages of sophisticated, learned, writing made me think George Eliot was quite clearly of superior intellect but they made my brain hurt. I know when reading a classic novel that it will often challenge me and I’m ok with that but this was hard and I’m a lover of Henry James who apparently many consider a difficult writer.

Perhaps, I just didn’t engage with the novel as I do with an Austen, or a Dickens, it doesn’t have the narrative flow, the comedy or the odd, quirky characters that their books often do. The pages and pages on the Jewish religion and spirituality, despite the fact that Mordecai was a compelling character, made the book drag, and time and again there were instances where I felt what was being said could be condensed into a tenth of the space.

Eliot makes some interesting and poignant commentary and witticisms on the role of women writers and women in general, Deronda’s mother is a great example of the freedom women of the time craved, as well as class, racism and equality. She clearly has reverence for the Jewish religion and in her lifetime translated several theological and philosophical works. I think if I had studied this at college I would have a better opinion of it through a more detailed look –although heaven help the amount of footnotes there must be! There were chapters and chapters which I sped through engaged in the writing but as a good read, this was just too much of a book for me. I still have Middlemarch on my TBR and hear that is more readable, I’m not done with George Eliot yet.

I found this book to be a fascinating portrayal of the Industrial Age in England and the emergence of the Zionist movement. A thought-provoking novel that provides a clear insight into an unusual era.

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:

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 n  Middlemarchn or n  The Mill on the Flossn. 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.

n  n

A long read - not to be undetaken if you like modern prose that never goes off on a tangent or lets you in on the author's musings. But it drew me in; the characters are well drawn and you can't help sympathising with Gwendolen even though she's also a bit unlikeable. Mirah seems too good to be true on the other hand. The book shows the great contrasts in lifestyle, hopes and expectations between those with money and those without in Victorian England; and in particular, how hard it was for women to escape from the roles assigned to them by society - and men.

March of the Mammoths 2022 - CHECK. Well this was a shocker for me, I usually love George Eliot. I really enjoyed the exposition of the story and I thought Daniel Deronda was such a swoon-worthy MC. However, a good majority of this book was a slog for me, especially the chapters involving Mirah/Ezra. I’m glad I read it, but it’s definitely not a classic I can readily recommend.

George Eliot writes with such beautiful language and memorable characters. Her books must be read languishingly and with frequent reflection. The constraints of women in the 19th century, along with her razor edged observations of personalities allows for much contemplation of the dual story lines. I really wasn't prepared for the prejudice and heavy antisemitism theme in a Victorian novel. Presenting her social views from 127 years ago, well before the Holocaust, our world still is not much different. How very heartbreaking. The abusive, emotionally manipulative husband with characters which could be egotistical one minute and redemptive the next, had me put it down more than once. More reflection and then trudging along. Daniel Deronda plants a foot in both the English gentleman's universe and the Jewish discovered heritage. Finding your place in the world is the ultimate lesson I am left with.

Now here’s a book that combines two of my very favorite things: classic British romance with – YES! – Jewish themes. Marian Evans a/k/a George Eliot even went to Frankfurt am Main to do research for the book – in the times of no less than Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch! I think I’ve found a thesis topic if I ever get to graduate school. Till then, though, I’ll have to content myself with this review. No major spoilers, but it is a pretty detailed plot summary, so if you want to be 100% safe, skip to the last two paragraphs.

In the opening scene, we meet Gwendolen Harleth (as in, sounds like “harlot”) who is on a winning streak at a roulette table. Observing her is the title character, Daniel Deronda. She feels he is judging her negatively, which disconcerts her, so she begins to lose. Within the next few scenes, he takes a mysterious action which really unnerves her. And that is the last we see of him until Chapter 16.

The story then backtracks to Gwendolen’s family life, and this is the part that is most reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel (though Eliot’s prose is much denser). Gwendolen’s social position is similar to that of the Dashwood girls; she’s not rich, but she socializes in the upper class circle of a small country-town. As a character, though, she is more of an anti-heroine than heroine. Like Lydia Bennet, she’s out first and foremost for a good time, except she’s cleverer and more calculating. She wants admirers, especially male admirers, but then scorns them without caring about how many hearts she breaks. This section of the book is called “The Spoiled Child,” and George Eliot paints the hateful portrait in painstaking detail.

Enter Mr. Grandcourt. (Read grand + court = landed gentry.) He’s way too suave for Gwendolen to scorn, and her family watches their courtship with eagerness. After all, from a financial standpoint, he’s a Good Catch. But even when Gwendolen gets evidence of his rakishness, she finds she can’t resist him. They marry.

Then the novel shifts back to Daniel Deronda, a young gentleman with no clear direction. He was a serious scholar at Cambridge and proved himself to be exceptionally kind to his friends, but he lives in the shadow of not knowing who his parents are. Rumor has it that he is the illegitimate son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, the nobleman who raised him. Daniel also believes the rumors, but loves Sir Hugo too much to confront him about it. Meanwhile, Sir Hugo’s legal heir is none other than Gwendolen’s husband, Mr. Grandcourt.

In a scene I won’t dare spoil, Daniel encounters Mirah, a Jewess. She is literally a “tinok she nishbu,” a kidnapped child raised away from Judaism. When Daniel finds her, she is nineteen years old, has escaped her captors, and is in desperate search of her family. Daniel, like Harry Potter, has “a thing about saving people,” so he joins in the search, and this leads him into the Jewish communities of London and Frankfurt.

Jews, especially baalei teshuva, will appreciate if not love Chapter 32. It includes the descriptions of the Frankfurt synagogue – taken from Rav Hirsch; I just can’t get over it! – and Mirah’s passionate declaration to her Christian friends, “I will always cling to my people.” Mirah is a bit of a Mary Sue, but she gives voice to the pintele Yid that motivates all us BTs. How in the world did George Eliot know?

The rest of the novel alternates between scenes of Gwendolen in her souring marriage and scenes with the Jewish characters, which notably includes a visionary named Mordecai who is preaching religious Zionism. Daniel, the "knight errant," weaves his way through all of their lives. (Comic relief from Daniel's friend, Hans Meyrick.) Naturally, I am partial to the Jewish sections, but from a literary point of view, the portrayal of Gwendolen is the most masterful part of the novel. No character goes through as dramatic a transformation as she.

I must reiterate that George Eliot does not reach Jane Austen in terms of prose style. At times the text is so heavy and full of extraneous detail that I suspected that like Dickens, she was paid by the word. But while Dickens was making it big with Fagin, Eliot was taking on anti-Semitism, not just by creating positive Jewish characters, but by letting her Christian characters work through their prejudices in the course of the novel. That makes her a heroine in my eyes.

The scholarly introduction to my copy of the novel included some very interesting literary history. The British critics of the time panned the book for its Jewish themes. One suggested that Eliot should have left the Jews out and just called the book Gwendolen. An anonymous sequel by that title appeared a few years later, doing more or less that by killing off the Jewish characters and continuing the story of Gwendolen and Deronda. But the Jewish community’s reaction was a mirror image of the British critics'. The Jews loved the book, though some said that the romantic themes detracted from the main point of the novel, which was Zionism. And in parallel to the anonymous sequel, the German Jewish novelist Marcus Lehman adapted the book to include only the Jewish themes. I think the whole thing is pretty funny.

Personally, I loved both parts of the book – the British and the Jewish. If you’re a fan of either genre, this is a worthwhile read. And if, like me, you’re a fan of both, chances are that you’ll find in this book a lifetime favorite you’ll be happy to immerse yourself in over and over again.

Recently I watched a TV adaptation of Andrea Levy's Small Island, a book I had read when it first came out but which I'd more or less forgotten. The adaptation succeeded very well, and might even have been better than the book. The characters were credible and their motivations were clear. Their words and actions informed the viewer so well about the background to the story that the occasional narratorial voiceover seemed unnecessary.

Soon afterwards, I watched the first episode of a three-part adaptation of Daniel Deronda, and had the opposite reaction. Nothing made sense to me. I was convinced that a large part of Eliot's intentions for the story were missing, and while the actors were all fine in their way, the words they were given to say were simply not enough. I tried to fill in the missing bits myself but couldn't. It was impossible to imagine the history and motivations that lay behind those characters and their actions, as impossible as trying to imagine the layers of messages underlying the movie title Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri until you've viewed that extraordinary film for yourself—which I've just done. If there had been a book on which that film was based, I'm certain that it could never measure up to the movie. Every frame was a billboard in itself, and the message on each was astonishingly spare and incredibly eloquent.

George Eliot is very eloquent, but there is nothing spare about her writing. You cannot pare it down and fit it in movie frames yet it is very visual in spite of that. It belongs on the page—but offers the big screen experience to the mind's eye. But you have to read all the words to see the pictures properly. I was very glad I abandoned the TV adaptation after that first episode and picked up the book instead. Right from the first page I realised that without the support of the text I could never have succeeded in fully understanding the complexities of motivation that lay behind the surface story, or indeed the scope of Eliot's project in the first place. And when I reached the end of the book, I was certain that I didn't need to watch the rest of the TV adaptation—the book had been more vivid for me that any adaptation could be.

I posted an update the day I finished the book, regretting that the reading experience was over, and a curious conversation erupted in the comments section of that update. The conversation made me realise that there are readers who tackle books as if their task were to adapt them for the screen rather than simply read what is on the page. They would like to cut massive sections, delete certain characters, and make other characters act differently so that the story might move towards an ending they think is more fitting. You could say that such an approach is a very 'creative' way of reading but you could also wonder where the writer's intentions for her work fit in that scenario.

The writer's intentions are everything for me. I may probe them and question them but I would never disregard them. A writer's work is a sacred thing, a bit like other people's religious beliefs, not to be tampered with even when we don't revere them ourselves. I mention religion because it is a major theme in this book. George Eliot became more and more interested in Judaism during the course of her life, at first in an effort to overcome her own prejudices towards the increasing Jewish population in mid-nineteenth century Britain, and then later because she had become genuinely interested in the common origin of Judaism and Christianity. This book is essentially about that preoccupation, but because Eliot is very good at creating story lines, she has inserted the Jewish themed story into an intriguing frame story. Readers seem to differ about which story is the more worthwhile part of the book, and many favour the frame story. However, I found that the two strands overlapped and echoed each other so well that I never even thought of separating or comparing them. Characters from both sections mirrored each other even if they seemed completely opposite, and the central redeemer-like figure of Daniel Deronda linked them all together perfectly. The overall shape of the book worked very well for me and I'm left in awe of George Eliot's mind as well as her writing.

The result of this unplanned reading adventure is that Daniel Deronda now marks the beginning of my 2018 George Eliot season. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of her books, and I may possibly reread Middlemarch as a fitting endnote.
So much for the to-read stack I selected at the beginning of January. Abandoned indefinitely!

…………………………………………………

Because I've a keen interest in Henry James, and I know he admired George Eliot's writing, I was interested to spot what might have been the germ of his inspiration for The Portrait of a Lady. Eliot's frame story concerns a fiercely independent-minded young woman who, in spite of the general expectation, is in no hurry to marry anyone. Nevertheless, like HJ's Isabel Archer, Gwendolyn Harleth finds herself enslaved by a cold-hearted husband who is only interested in crushing her independent spirit. It seems to me that Henleigh Grandcourt and HJ's Gilbert Osmond have a lot in common.
Eliot's main story also reminded me of another Henry James plot line. I think Daniel Deronda could have been an inspiration for Hyacinth Robinson in Princess Casamassima. They are both orphans who desperately need to discover more about their parents, and they both become deeply involved in movements they had no previous associations with.
Slim connections, perhaps, but I love finding such links.

Middlemarch except more religion.

If you are a passionate, adventuresome woman in an Eliot novel, you will probably get married to some control freak idiot but don't worry your husband will die at about the middle of the book.

I listened to this 800+ book when I was in Mazatlan after Xmas & loved it! I just finished "Middlemarch" which is even better and have determined to reread "Silas Marner" which I had to read in Miss Fenner's AP English in H.S.(I liked it then but seem to remember few of my classmates did.) I so enjoy 19th century English literature. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is one of my favorite authors.

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.