Recently I’ve been reading books recommended by Chris Scalia in his guide Novels for Conservatives. George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda stood out immediately. Since Middlemarch is one of my favorites, I was eager to read Eliot’s final novel.
The Characters
As with all of Eliot’s work, character building and contrast take center stage. Four fascinating personalities orbit around Daniel Deronda, who serves as the linchpin connecting them all.
Daniel Deronda is a young man who has grown up as the unacknowledged son—he suspects—of an English aristocrat. He stands apart: patient with people’s idiosyncrasies, thoughtful, and devoted to others. His main foil is Gwendolen Harleth, a character to whom much has been given and who has received it all in great self-devotion. Eliot spends considerable energy convincing us that Gwendolen is shallow and conceited:
Other people allowed themselves to be made slaves of, and to have their lives blown hither and thither like empty ships in which no will was present. It was not to be so with her; she would no longer be sacrificed to creatures worth less than herself, but would make the very best of the chances that life offered her, and conquer circumstances by her exceptional cleverness.
Gwendolen clearly sees herself as “the main character”—as our young people might say about our modern royalty of self-centeredness—with everyone else mere supporting players in her drama.
Two Intersecting Stories
Deronda meets Gwendolen at the peak of her social success, just before she loses her fortune overnight. That brief encounter stays with her through the ups and downs that follow, including a miserable marriage of convenience to a weak but manipulative British aristocrat. Watching Deronda’s visible kindness and encouragement—qualities she utterly lacks—she begins to recognize virtue outside herself. This recognition is perhaps the best thing we can say about Gwendolen.
But the novel’s other pillar tells a strikingly different story. The jarring contrast between Gwendolen’s self-absorption and the selflessness on this second side seems intentional. This strand involves Jewish people—folks segregated from polite British society.
Deronda saves the life of Mirah, a beautiful and talented young Jewish woman who despairs over her lost family. A singer exploited by her scoundrel father across Europe, she escapes to Britain where Deronda rescues her and provides a new family. Though Christian, they are kind, and Eliot uses them to explore the nature of Jewishness in British society.
While searching for Mirah’s missing mother and brother, Deronda meets Mordecai—a deathly-ill but vividly alive Jewish mystic and Kabbalah student. Daniel finds him remarkable, though he’s puzzled by Mordecai’s disappointment that he speaks no Hebrew. Increasingly, Deronda’s thoughts shift from his aristocratic life toward this unusual man and his urgent vision.
Transformation and Vision
Mirah flourishes in the home of Deronda’s college friend, where his mother and sisters adore her. She becomes a blessing, teaching singing to wealthy students. Gwendolen is drawn to her—perhaps due to Mirah’s character, but likely because of her connection to Deronda.
In one pivotal exchange, Gwendolen reveals her understanding that Deronda admires Mirah’s blamelessness while surely despising her own mercenary marriage. But Deronda sees deeper—that Gwendolen’s real problem is her extreme self-centeredness:
“Then tell me what better I can do,” said Gwendolen, insistently.
“Many things. Look on other lives besides your own. See what their troubles are, and how they are borne. Try to care about something in this vast world besides the gratification of small selfish desires. Try to care for what is best in thought and action—something that is good apart from the accidents of your own lot.”
This exchange gives her food for thought for years.
Meanwhile, Mordecai reveals that he’s seen Deronda in visions as a kindred spirit who will continue his work for the Jewish people after his death. Though puzzled, Deronda feels an inexplicable empathy for the plight of British Jews. In a powerful pub discussion with Mordecai and his philosopher friends, Deronda is stirred by Mordecai’s fervent dream of a Jewish homeland:
Let the torch of visible community be lit! Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, but who still have a national hearth and a tribunal of national opinion.
After further plot twists, Deronda realizes his calling is now intertwined with Mordecai’s vision. The novel makes an abrupt decision to sunset Gwendolen’s story, which dissipates predictably.
Historical Impact
I’m deliberately avoiding plot spoilers—read it yourself for those details. What fascinates me is this book’s influence on world events. Written in 1876, Daniel Deronda was one of the first exposures polite society had to Jewish suffering and the dream of returning to a homeland.
Many readers actually hated the Jewish plotline, preferring Gwendolen’s aristocratic drama instead. Her recklessness and pride fascinate like a car wreck. But Eliot revolutionized the portrayal of Jewish people in English literature and set events in motion that—regardless of how one views them—have shaped much of world history since.
Fifty-one years after publication, the British issued their support for establishing a Jewish state in the Middle East. Historian Paul Johnson noted in History of the Jews that Daniel Deronda was “probably the most influential novel of the 19th century” and that “to hundreds of thousands of assimilated Jews the story presented for the first time the possibility of a return to Zion.”
A Word on Reading This Novel
This is an important work that should be read. But readers need to know it will challenge our iPhone-depleted attention spans. The writing bears no resemblance to the staccato dialogue patterns of modern novels. Paragraphs stretch on. Dialogue is rich in detail and insight but long in words. Occasionally Eliot dives into reveries the reader struggles to follow. As a writer and student of the classics, I understand her efforts to communicate deeply, though I generally (sadly?) choose to edit such episodes from my own work in response to modern reading fashions.
I hope potential readers are challenged by this but not dissuaded. I’ll say it again: this is an important book. And it also makes the case that people aren’t always completely reducible to groups. A woman from a Caucasian British background was able to communicate the thoughts and desires of an underprivileged minority group with a very lasting effect. In this sense, Daniel Deronda fulfills the highest goals of a novelist—carefully and graciously stepping into another’s life and earning the right to tell someone else’s story.