Emily M's Reviews> Daniel Deronda

I considered giving this book 4 stars (also 3, also 5, also 2) but it seems all wrong. 4 stars is “good” or “great, but…” and this book is more “brilliant, BUT…” that but being quite a loaded one. I will say that I was not bored.

If you’re reading this, you probably know the general idea: a two-pronged, occasionally-intersecting story following Gwendolen Harleth, who marries for money and lives to regret it, and Daniel Deronda, a young English gentleman who rescues a Jewish woman from drowning and becomes drawn into an intense interest with Jewish culture and identity.

I am by far not the first person to think these stories make odd bedfellows; practically everyone has said so. I spent long swathes of the book wonderingwhyfor God’s sake, Eliot chose to do it this way. Somehow, in the final pages, this element finally came together and worked for me. I understand why it had to be this way, and I feel, actually, it’s such a revolutionary thing she’s done structurally. The novel, finally, seems to undermine the Victorian novel itself, which seems a fitting thing for the final work of a woman who is more or less synonymous with the Victorian novel.

That still leaves quite a few execution fumbles throughout the book. And it’s maddening, because for everything done poorly, there’s an example elsewhere of the same thing done well, and if she had just stayed the course this would be an absolutely brilliant book, no buts.

The biggest problem is characterization. Gwendolen is far and away the most rounded character in the book’s first half. She is part flighty socialite, not quite the most beautiful woman in the room, but the one who melds beauty, energy and supreme self-confidence. She isn’t rich, but she believes she was made for great things. There are some darker strands hidden among this display: she hates the thought of getting married, is physically repelled by it, at one point bursting out that she cannot stand to be made love to. Combined with her frequent stated dislike for her dead stepfather, this made me suspect she had been abused as a child (this is speculation, but I think it’s supported by the text). Overall, Gwendolen feels very modern, but she is trapped in a 19th century novel, and after the family loses their money, not marrying is a luxury she can’t afford.

She marries Grandcourt, a wealthy aristocrat who on the surface seems to repel her less than other men, but she marries him knowing that by doing so she disinherits other people with a prior claim – and the reader knows that Grandcourt is an ice-cold sadist and manipulator. Early scenes between Grandcourt and his manservant Lush are delightfully menacing, and give a taste of what poor Gwendolen can expect.

And Gwendolen suffers accordingly, but the book goes off the rails here and Eliot commits the classic creative writing class sin of telling rather than showing (I am no fan of these “rules” of creative writing, but it was indisputably less fun to read about how Gwendolen hated life because her husband was a beast, rather than seeing his particular form of beastliness in action as in the earlier scenes with Lush).

Meanwhile, Deronda, a young man of unknown parentage, rescues a young Jewish woman, Mirah, from drowning and goes in search of her missing relatives, throwing him into a previously unknown world of Jewish culture in London. Deronda is a decent-enough character, with early chapters describing both his talents and his general rootlessness, his inability to find a cause to anchor his life to, beyond the general cause of listening to young ladies tell him their sorrows. We meet Mordecai, a dying Jewish scholar who has been waiting for a young man to carry on his work – but Deronda is not Jewish. Nonetheless, he appears to Mordecai rowing up the Thames out of the sunset like a vision in a dream.

Fine. BUT. The Jewish characters are dreadfully boring. There’s a strong whiff of Eliot writing against the prevailing prejudices of the day, to show Jews as moral, as upright, as educated, as demure. Unfortunately she has failed to make them human. It is quite a bit like reading about Black people written by a white author who doesn’t really know many Black people, but who wants to make statements about racism.

Deronda and Gwendolen interact – good! But Gwendolen, consumed by guilt, wants Deronda to help make her over as a good and moral person. Sadly, the “better” Gwendolen becomes, the less she seems alive on the page.

Deronda decides to dedicate his life to Zionism. This is not a topic I can muster much enthusiasm for, which is one reason I haven’t read this book until now (and in fact currently my sympathy for Mordecai’s way of thinking is at an all-time low).

And yet, throughout, there continue to be some absolutely masterful scenes, interspersed with some decidedly less masterful scenes. There are some excellent character sketches mounted in very few pages which recall the expansive humanism ofMiddlemarch.There is a family of girls who love yet bicker with their brother in a way that feels instantly familiar. There is a mother who rages against the constraints of motherhood and of marriage, who has resolutely cut ties to chart her own path (and who has ended up trapped anyway, yet unrepentant). There are satirical portraits and some very dark undercurrents. There is water, drowning, there is European history in all of Eliot’s characteristic detail.

It's a fascinating book. It’s no Middlemarch though.