It pains me to admit... a bit of a slog. More than a bit, actually, especially since I've read Middlemarch at least four times and will always believe it to be one of the greatest of all novels in English. Perhaps Eliot reached that point in some artists' work where they move beyond themselves, into something darker, more opaque, less digestible (I'm thinking Beethoven's late quartets), and leave us mortals behind.

But Deronda... I just never warmed to the man. He's too saintly, too perfect. Eliot can be so fine with complex characters, and here expends pages upon pages upon pages on describing their every thought, feeling, heartbeat... but they never quite come alive here. Gwendolen Harleth, the spoiled, utterly self-absorbed young beauty is more interesting because she is so flawed and contradictory. Then - for reasons mostly mercenary - she accepts a nightmare marriage with the villainous, controlling, heartless aristo Grandcourt (even his name is heavy-handed). In Middlemarch, the cold-hearted, narrow-minded scholar Casaubon inspires some sympathy in his loneliness; Grandcourt inspires only loathing. Humbled by his cruelty, Gwendolen in her anguish seeks to reform herself, acknowledge the weakness that got her into this mess, and become better by hooking into Deronda's faultless goodness... and here, to Eliot's credit, she does not upend Gwendolen's basic character as she pleads and implores (there's a lot of imploring in this novel) and begs and cries to keep Deronda at her beck and call to tend to herself, while it never once occurs to her to even ask about his own crisis of identity, spirit, and anxious love.

Eliot clearly was closely examining the role of Jewish people in this late 19th century English society, with a great deal of sympathy and interest, sometimes idealization, and sometimes some ineradicable stereotypes of pawnbrokers, traders, and swindlers. Deronda's unknown mother turns out to be a gifted singer who has rebelled furiously against her tyrannical father's strictures about who she is expected to be and how she is forced to behave, including giving up her infant son in order to live her life as she feels she has a right to. Eliot seems torn about how she sees this woman: both sympathetic to her plight under her father's coercive demands, and yet blaming her for becoming an emotional cripple. The dreadful father is later held up as a revered intellectual and spiritual leader in whom Daniel takes some pride. It's odd. And frankly, the brother Mordecai (aka Ezra), who is also revered as a sage by his family and friends comes across as a morose, humorless, tedious zealot - whose mantle the pious Deronda can't wait to take up.

If you've not read Eliot, I wouldn't recommend starting here. If you love her, you have to work awfully hard to pry out any humor, life, or warm-blooded, messy humanity from the long pages of explication, polemics, and all that imploring in this one. Three stars because it's George Eliot (and for the passages involving tormenting sensitive dogs and the reassurance provided by a cat); otherwise... meh. ( )

If I were George Eliot, I would have had Mirah's father take the ring he stole from Daniel Deronda to Ezra Cohen's pawn shop, where Ezra would have recognized it and detained him, so the police could take him to jail and Daniel could get his father's ring back. That was the only thing wrong with the ending. ( )

George Eliot’s tome, Daniel Deronda, was her last novel and it is anything but an easy read. Quite frequently when the narrative began to move and become quite interesting, Eliot would veer off into another direction and leave me champing at the bit to get back to the story.

Having recently read Middlemarch, I couldn’t help feeling that these characters were all pale and colorless next to those I had just left behind. The character, Daniel Deronda, was a particular puzzle to me, with reactions that did not seem to be realistic and too much of an effort to make him a type instead of an individual. Perhaps I was just too worn out with his “goodness” to really like him. Gwendolen was understandable and flawed enough to make up for it. She was both interesting and represented the most growth and change through the course of the novel.

I started this novel with a pretty serious dislike of Gwendolen, the spoiled girl, but by the end of the novel my attitude toward her had softened. I saw her as a bit of a Hardy character, caught in the awareness of her faults, without any avenue for correcting them or atoning for her sins. Without giving anything of the plot away, I cannot help admiring her resistance of giving in to the basest reaction to her situation. At the last, I think she was much harder on herself than I would have been inclined to be.

Obviously, much of the purpose of this novel is to address the place of Jewish customs and society in 19th Century Europe. Eliot appears to have some very strong feelings about the maintenance of the Jewish people as a separate identity vs. the efforts to absorb them into the Christian society, with the loss of their own specific religion, customs and heritage. I could not help reading this novel with an eye toward what came later, the holocaust and the rise of the Jewish State. I was very interested in what I saw as the struggle to understand Jews and admit them to be on equal standing with their peers. I wonder what kind of reception this got at the time it was written.

Although I recognized Eliot’s purpose being to explain and perhaps endear us to the Jewish characters, they were the characters I could least understand. Mordecai’s almost paranormal recognition of Daniel as a like soul, Mirah’s perfection (along with Daniel’s), and the coldness of Daniel’s mother make them seem less accessible. And, she cannot resist bringing in some of the oldest and most cliched stereotypes when dealing with the Cohens...the typical Jewish family.

I did find this passage from Daniel’s mother very interesting:

”Had I not a rightful claim to be something more than a mere daughter and mother? The voice and the genius matched the face. Whatever else was wrong, acknowledge that I had a right to be an artist, though my father’s will was against it. My nature gave me a charter.”

We are confronted with the idea that a career and motherhood cannot exist side-by-side. She is the bold woman who chooses the career. She hasn’t a speck of motherly feeling. She is painted throughout the entire episode as cold and unnatural. Superwoman had not yet been invented.

While I did find this a worthy read, it cannot live up to the precedents set by Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss to my mind. I had scheduled it to read in 2015 and had to push it over to 2016, so it feels like a personal accomplishment to have it behind me. I will be thinking about it for some time, I am sure and it may be one of those novels that grows in importance as it settles on my mind. ( )

[2021-11-19]

I blame BBC's adaption of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South for my obsession with this book. You know that gorgeous green striped dress that Margaret wears at the train station? Well I was putting movies away at work and I saw that dress on the back of a cover. It was Romola Garai on the back of BBC's Daniel Deronda. Given the fact that the cover also contained Hugh Dancy (someone I have loved since my Ella Enchanted days), I took it home and was hooked.

Middlemarch had been on my list for a while but this Eliot novel rose in priority. I loved it. I loved Mirah and her fierce devotion to her country, culture and belief system. I loved Daniel and his staunch commitment to behaving in alignment with his beliefs. I felt for Gwendolyn in her naivety and, well, fear. Because isn't it fear that motivates her?

Eliot is a master of creating living, breathing, growing characters. I'm excited to read more of her work. ( )