I first came across Daniel Deronda when I was researching novels for my Classics Club list. I wanted a selection of Victorian books on there, and this one popped up while I was Googling. I had read three other novels by George Eliot up to that point - Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, and Middlemarch. I enjoyed each of those quite a bit, so I figured that Daniel Deronda would be a pretty safe inclusion. I was excited to give it a shot, but its length (700 pages of tiny print in my edition) made me put off actually reading it for years. Now here we are, in the final year of my challenge, and I'm running out of time. Happily, this novel matched up perfectly with the Back to the Classics prompt to "read a classic by a female author," so I could kill two birds with one stone by reading it now. Hoping that this book wouldn't feel 700 pages long, I started in on it at the end of last month.
The novel is set in England in the 1860s and shifts between two characters whose stories only touch a small handful of times. The first, Gwendolen Harleth, is an beautiful, spirited young woman who is determined to have fun, exciting life. The idea of marriage doesn't interest her, as she believes it would curtail her freedom, but she isn't opposed the marrying the right sort of man one day (i.e. one with money that she can control). Her hopes for freedom come to an abrupt end, however, when her family loses their fortune. She decides to marry Henleigh Grandcourt, a wealthy suitor, in order to save herself from having to work as a governess or teacher. Henleigh is a cruel man with a dubious grasp on morality; Gwendolen knows some of these details, but decides to marry him anyway for the financial benefits. Predictably, their marriage is a bad one and Gwendolen must come to terms with both the new realities of her life as a wife and her guilt over knowing that her own selfish decisions put her in this situation.
The other character is, of course, Daniel Deronda. Daniel is a kind, upstanding young man with a penchant for taking the side of the underdog in any given situation. He enjoys a good reputation; everyone who meets him loves him. He has been raised since he was a small child by Sir Hugo Mallinger, a wealthy noble. Daniel's exact parentage has never been explained to him, but he has always assumed that he is Sir Hugo's illegitimate son and avoided asking any questions that might cast a shadow over the morals of his beloved father figure. In either case, he has no property or fortune to inherit, so he is studying to be a lawyer in order to provide for himself. One evening, however, an event occurs that sets him down a very different path. While rowing down a river, he witnesses a young woman about to drown herself. He rescues her and is immediately struck by her beauty and her sadness. He learns that her name is Mirah Lapidoth and that she has recently traveled to England to try and reconnect with her mother and brother, whom she was separated from when she was a child. She has no money or friends to help support her and decided to end her life when she was unable to find her family. Daniel introduces her to a friend who agrees to take her in, and takes on the responsibility of helping her restart her life. He also learns from Mirah's story that she is Jewish, and his tendency to help support the persecuted makes him very interested both in her backstory and her religion in general. He sets out to learn more about the Jewish people, and his explorations lead him to make several discoveries about himself.
Gwendolen and Daniel meet each other a few times throughout the story. They live in the same general area and Sir Hugo is Henleigh Grandcourt's uncle, so there is a family connection as well. Gwendolen is immediately drawn to Daniel's innate goodness, and looks to him as a guide and mentor as she struggles against some of her own selfish tendencies. She wants to reform herself and become a better person; she sees him as a kind of teacher. They also feel a bit of a romantic inclination towards each other, although both know that such a relationship is not meant to be. Each time they see each other, Daniel is empathetic and helpful to Gwendolen. She tries to improve herself through his example.
I wish I could say that I drawn into this story and that the 700 pages just flew by. Unfortunately, I cannot. I had a terrible time with this novel, for several reasons, and this was very surprising to me. I know that I like George Eliot and I know that I like Victorian classics. I've read my share of long classics and have had no problems making my way through ones that I found to be engaging. On paper, I should have had a decent time with this read. In reality, however, there was a lot about Daniel Deronda that I didn't enjoy.
I don't want this to turn into a long, ranting review. I am fully aware that it is not impressive to bash George Eliot for being boring, so I'm going to try and be concise about what I didn't like. Essentially, I thought that this story was an overlong, disjointed slog. Eliot spends an exhausting amount of time detailing her characters' every inner thought, and this slowed the action down tremendously. Throughout the entire novel, you would read two or three pages of normal dialogue and action, and then have to make your way through three or four pages of the characters' thought processes and feelings, often presented in extremely long blocks of text with few paragraph breaks. It was excessive and it took over the story.
Speaking of the story, it was not strong either. Very little actually happens in this book. About half is told from Gwendolen's point of view and the other half focuses on Daniel. The chapters flip back and forth between the pair. Unfortunately, I did not think both parts were equally interesting. I was much more engaged in Gwendolen's story and found my attention majorly drifting when I was in a Daniel section. I would not say that any of the characters in this story are particularly fun to read about, but Gwendolen at least felt multi-dimensional. She had different sides to her personality and her tendency to behave poorly at times made for a more compelling story. The saint-like Daniel, whom all the characters treat with a reverence bordering on mania, was very boring. Most of his story revolved around him learning about Judaism and finding out information about his heritage, and as he's already a perfect person, his journey of self discovery fell flat for me.
As I mentioned before, the two halves of the story do not fit together well. Daniel and Gwendolen had very little to do with each other throughout the plot, and their relationship to each other in the times where they did meet felt strange and forced. It didn't make much sense for Gwendolen to develop the obsession with Daniel's opinions that she did. They barely knew each other and only spoke a few times in person before she decided that the entirety of her future behavior rested on what he would tell her to do. By the end of the story she is completely consumed by thoughts of Daniel, a person to whom she is not really connected in any concrete way. I found the whole relationship between them bizarre and unnatural. This is really two separate books combined into one. Daniel's story has nothing to do with Gwendolen's and vice versa. I suppose you could make an argument that Daniel goes on an exterior journey to learn about himself while Gwendolen goes on an interior journey, but this connection between the halves is tenuous at best and does not really come across in the reading.
Perhaps the worst element of all, however, was Eliot's depiction of the Jewish people. It's clear that Eliot meant well, did her research, and was very accepting, especially considering the time period she lived in. The heroes of the story are Jewish and are portrayed in a very favorable light. These points don't change the fact that this novel does not feel remotely authentic when it comes to Judaism. It is overflowing with stereotypes, and is very specific in delineating "good Jews" from "bad Jews." It is filled with paragraphs that regurgitate information about Judaism like an encyclopedia. It is not a natural depiction of the religion or the people.
Again, I'm not going to blame Eliot for not having modern views on race, but it's not so easy to brush off this stuff as "a product of its time" when you are faced with it over and over across hundreds of pages. It is a dominant feature of the book and it has aged very poorly. It reminded me of what Harriet Beecher Stowe was doing in Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was another author writing about a people she didn't really know, trying to get others to take pity on them. Both of their hearts were in the right place, but their work is tough to get through now.
To be fair, some aspects of Daniel Deronda are thought provoking. Gwendolen's character in particular raised interesting questions about a woman's role and options in Victorian society. She consistently broke social norms and envisioned a future for herself free from the encumbrance of a husband. Ultimately, she is forced to succumb to what the world expects of her, but her struggle was an interesting exploration of what some more independent-minded women probably felt during this time. As I mentioned before, I was disappointed that her character becomes so deferential to Daniel, but the beginning part of her story was still engaging. There are a few other female characters that defy expectations, with varying levels of success. I don't think Eliot's treatment of them was very even, but at least their stories kept my attention. The writing, of course, was well crafted throughout. Some parts of the ending were surprising. Overall though, I didn't have a very good time with this one.
Usually when I reflect on a classic I didn't like that much, I can find some redeeming value in it. Either I will appreciate its historical importance or acknowledge that it expanded my literary knowledge. In this case, however, I can't truly say that reading Daniel Deronda improved my life in any appreciable way. It was okay, but disjointed and entirely too long. It hasn't aged in a way that is pleasurable to read. I would not recommend this to anyone except those who are die-hard George Eliot fans and are on a mission to read all of her works. Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner are better choices by far for anyone interested in trying her out. I suppose at the very least I can say that in reading this, I was able to complete part of my reading challenges. Hopefully my next classic will be a better match for me!
Challenge Tally
Back to the Classics 2021 (A Classic by a woman author): 7/12
Classics Club (#58 on my list): 89/100 books completed
Total Books Read in 2021: 18
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