Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

 

Daniel Deronda is really two books joined at the fingertip.  Gwendolen and Daniel could easily have been separated and two books quite long enough on their own would have resulted.  The Gwen book would have been the better one and the Daniel a much weaker  portrait of that one sided moral figure, the paragon.  That book of Daniel is riddled with maundering reflections about Judaism and has a slew of coincidences that would have embarrassed Dickens.

Miss Harleth is first introduced to us at the gaming tables losing what she previously won.  Deronda is an onlooker and clearly disapproves which she feels chidden by.  His moral high ground is gained easily and ought perhaps have been more established by Eliot.  But there it is, we are expected to take his ascendency as the fulcrum of their interaction.  The beauty of the young woman is constantly being emphasised along with her wilfulness  and domineering ways who is catered to in every way.  My uncharitable thought was, could this be the revenge of the exceedingly plain George Eliot.  She does lay on the beauty’s moral deficiencies and I could feel an ‘Emma’ book emerging.  No that did not happen, Eliot being clever but somewhat humourless and inclined to tell and tell and not show.

The confusing thing is that the first chapter at the casino, and her letter from home telling of the financial ruin of the family and her return  home is really a flash forward.  Then you get the growing up background resplendently prosperous, the cynosure of every eye etc and a fine archer, a perfect Diana and not quite a maiden for all her days.   She marries the cad Grandcourt for his money and to save her from being a governess, quite a horrible idea. Why intelligent as she is she won’t help her younger sisters with their lessons.  With Grandcourt lying back and thinking of England doesn’t help much.

There’s lots of good scenes in the book  and if the Daniel, Mirah, Mordecai/Ezra section could have been misplaced there would have been an excellent novel left.  I believe that when it was translated into Hebrew they kept that and dropped the other.