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Daniel Deronda (changes)

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A ponderous statement on the connected human network that yields us some nice quotes about the nature of realism

Folks

Daniel Deronda, young, handsome, and distinguished, but illegitimate. A victim of his depth of sympathy, interested in Universal History and a great candidate for the sociological studies not yet invented, he wanders aimlessly without anything to point his morals at until he gets involved with a young Jewess attempting self-slaughter. He learns of his own ancestry (mother = the great singer Alchirisi who married her cousin unwillingly), marries the Jewess, and becomes a fervent political Zionist.

Gwendolyn Harleth , a confident, spoiled brash beauty shallowly determined not to be like other women, whose family comes to financial ruin and thus begins her long slouch towards moral growth. Under Daniel’s tutelage, she learns to think beyond her narrow self and get beyond her sorrows by admitting her own fault, but only after she has nearly robbed a woman of her rightful husband, a son of his rightful heirship, and considering murdering her husband. (Mostly, she most recover from not being ~~able~~ (able to marry Daniel.)

Sir Hugo Mallinger, Daniel’s protector, kindly but not sympathetic to Daniel’s new mission. He will subtly take care of Gwen. (Also, a wife and daughters.)

Fanny Davilow, Gwen’s weak-willed mother who improvidently marries again (losing her fortune) and spoils Gwen. (Also, three other daughters and a governess.)

The Gascoignes, Mr. Gascoigne, the rector and Gwen’s uncle; Mrs. Gascoigne; daughter Anna (a quiet nice foil for Gwen); son Rex (heartbroken by Gwen)

Mrs. Arrowpoint, leader of society around Gwen’s little town; disapproving of the “knowing” Gwen; her daughter is quite intelligent and passionate and ends up running away with Klesmer

Klesmer, the vaguely Jewish music genius who rightly judges Gwen as untalented and Mirah as talented

Mallinger Grandcourt, Hugh’s nephew and heir, cruel and indifferent and addicted to controlling people—especially the fiery and brash, like Gwen—but dies in a boating accident to give Gwen a real moral boost

Mr. Lush, a disgusting man who acts as Mallinger’s steward; he introduces Gwen to Mallinger’s past (ie, the mistress of eight years with his three illegitimate children); his return to her life shows that Mallinger no longer cares for her opinion

The Meyricks, whom we know because Rex Gascoigne and Daniel Deronda know from Cambridge; the mother, a very patient and wise woman; three daughters, all industrious and lovely in their own ways; Hans, the improvident unlucky painter son who falls in love with Mirah (as an obstacle to Daniel)

Mirah Lapidoth, the sweet young Jewish songbird whose gambling-addict father kidnapped her from her mother and tried to force her into a terrible marriage (for money, of course), leading her to run away and nearly drown herself when she can’t find her mother again.

Ezra Lapideth, Mirah’s brother, whom Daniel meets when trying to track down Mirah’s family, who knows at sight that Daniel is a Jew; he is Dan’s spiritual advisor

The Cohens, a Jewish pawn-broker family Daniel meets on the search for Mirah’s family

Themes

Religious Tolerance
Race (the pull of heredity; the belonging to “a people”)
Women’s Freedom (Gwen is an incipient through selfish feminist)
East meets West (What happens to the Jewish sense in London?)
Romance (the improbable—chance meetings, fate, foreshadowing)
Knowledge (ideas are couched in us long before we recognize them)
Leisure: Casino at Leubronn (conspicuous consumption, class mixing, German baths; 161: a machine to have fun for you; the yacht)
Stuff (the pawning of Gwen’s necklace, returned by Daniel; Daniel was becoming the landscape as he sees Mirah for the first time 189)

Form

When Daniel first sees Gwen, we see through Daniel’s literal gaze but think through the author’s thoughts about what he sees (halfway from regular realism to James’ focalization)
When Gwen tries to seduce Mallinger, we hear in parenthesis what she’s thinking, though the speech occurs between quotes (she wants to give all of the info modernists do show you more naturally)
Each chapter has an epigraph, if not from a different literary work then one Eliot wrote herself (as if we need interpretation for us, a larger perspective for her universal gaze)

Quotes

Henry James’ review of it uses Klesmer’s phrase “sense of the universal” to describe Eliot’s far-reaching sense

“the threads of the narrative….are not of the usual commercial measurement, but long electric wires capable of transmitting messages from mysterious regions”

11

42

88

91

117

124

164

177

216

228

237

245

301

314

360

363

381

406

422

444

457

471

497

511

678

714

723

726

Eliot, an intrusive narrator, merely points out the problems that the modernists will later solve. She just states the problem, rather than allowing it to become a basis for an aesthetic or style.

Henry James’ review of it uses Klesmer’s phrase “sense of the universal” to describe Eliot’s far-reaching sense
- “the threads of the narrative….are not of the usual commercial measurement, but long electric wires capable of transmitting messages from mysterious regions”(xiii)
On Time and Representation
- “development and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier than the moment-hand” (11)
On the Complexities of Character
- “the subtler possibilities of feeling” make it so that people can feel in contradictions (42)
  - Grandcourt interprets his wife Gwen’s feelings: “interpreting them with the narrow correctness that leaves a world of unknown feeling behind” (678)
  - “Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history.” (164)
- “Contemptible details these, to make a part of a history; yet the turn of most lives is hardly to be accounted for without them. They are continually entering with cumulative force into a mood until it gets the mass and momentum of a theory or motive.” (228)
  - (an unimportant character is) “an industrious gleaner of personal details” (406)
- “It is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence, and keep pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid earth and are liable to heavy dining.” (245)
On Method
- Holistic Realism: “I like to mark the time, and connect the course of individual lives with the historic stream, for all classes of thinkers.” (88)
- Painting versus Writing: “Sir Joshua [Reynolds]...would not have had to represent the truth of change—only to give stability to one beautiful moment” (117)
On Knowledge
- Sir Hugo to Deronda about his education: “What I wish for you to get is a passport for life… we want a little disinterested culture to to make head against cotton and capital.” (177)
  - The two are not opposed, but a part of the same (progressive) system.
On Art and Life
- Mirah: “Is this world and all the life upon it only a farce or vaudeville, where you find no great meanings?” (216)
- Daniel asks about an alphabet carved in stone, an “L” made out of leaves, “I wonder whether one oftener learns to love real objects through their representations or representations through the real objects.” (422)
  - He implies that representation makes you love the real.
  - For Eliot, the answer is no—of course.
On the Limits of Language
- “the subtly-varied drama between man and woman is often such as can hardly be rendered in words and put together like dominoes, according to obvious fixed marks.” (301)
- “Suitors must often be judged as words are, by their standing and the figure they make in polite society: it is difficult to know much else of them.” (314)
- Notice how these quotes all talk about romance to talk about language.
Why Love and Marriage?
- Why should writers care about silly beautiful girls like Gwen? “In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections.” (124)
- Not all love stops at two people, for some love has “its scale set to the grander orbits of what hath been and shall be.” (360)
- Eliot excepts her novels from the Marriage Ones: Mrs. Meyrick “was a great reader of news, from the widest-reaching politics to the list of marriages; the latter, she said, giving her the pleasant sense of finishing the fashionable novels without having read them.” (726)
Aesthetics
- “Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: in the force of the imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.” (381)
- The proto-dandy artist Hans about his esoteric subject matter for his painting: “It will make them feel their ignorance then—an excellent aesthetic effect.” (457)
On Second Sight
- She believes in it: “Sometimes it may be that their natures have manifold openings, the like hundred-gated Thebes, where there may naturally be a greater and more miscellaneous inrush than through a narrow beadle-watched portal.” (471)
- “Visions are the creators and feeders of the world,” says our prophet (Ezra) Mordecai. (497)
Model of Fellowship and Brotherhood
- “Separate yet combined,” from Daniel’s grandfather, occurring simultaneously and silently in folks separated in time and space (quoted in many places)

Comps Questions

Relation of capitalism and culture
Can art reveal great meaning?
What’s the track between realist the and the modernist novel?
The extent of the novel’s purchase on the universal

Revised on August 13, 2008 11:53:51 by Shawna? (71.58.78.59)