Daniel Deronda (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

George Eliot (Author), Graham Handley (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2009 | Series: Oxford World's Classics

Daniel Deronda, the last of Eliot's novels, is the most complete expression of her idealism. Its main concerns are those of personal morality, of dedication to tradition and roots, and of spiritual identification and sympathy--all set in an era of considerable national and international awareness. The text is that of the Clarendon Edition.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Graham Handley is a Lecturer in the Department of Extramural Studies at the University of London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199538484
• ISBN-13: 978-0199538485
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.3 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born Mary Ann Evans, Victorian novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) is the author of a number of remarkable works, including the masterpiece Middlemarch.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I think he is not like young men in general April 24, 2009

By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"Daniel Deronda" was the last novel George Eliot wrote, and it's an appropriate finale to her career -- a lushly-written, heartfelt story about a young man searching for his past (and clues to his future), as well as a vibrant strong-willed young lady who discovers that life doesn't always go your way. Even better, Eliot deftly avoided the cliches and caricatures of the Jewish people, portraying them with love and respect.

Daniel Deronda is the ward (and rumored illegitimate son) of a nobleman, who is unsure of his past (particularly of his mother) catching a glimpse of pretty, reckless, arrogant Gwendolyn Harleth at a casino. Gwendolyn (who boasts that she gets everything she wants) is interested in Daniel, but when her family loses all their money, she marries a rich suitor, a relative of Daniel's -- knowing that his mistress and illegitimate children will be disinherited. But she soon finds that her new husband is a sadistic brute, and sees Daniel as her only help.

Meanwhile, Daniel rescues the despairing Mirah Lapidoth from a suicide attempt in the river, and he helps the young Jewish singer find a home and friends to care for her. As he helps her find her family, he becomes passionately attached to the Jewish population and their plight, embodied by a dying young visionary and a kindly shopkeeping family. Then he receives an important message -- one that will illuminate his roots, and give him a course for the future.

When Eliot published her final novel, it caused a massive stir -- not many novelists tackled the plight of the Jewish population, or how it compared to the gilded upper classes. In a way, "Daniel Deronda" is both a love triangle and an allegory -- Daniel must choose between the pretty, shallow English life (Gwendolyn) or a rich Jewish heritage (Mirah) with a background of tragedy.

The biggest problem with Eliot's writing is that it becomes a little too lush and dense at times, and the narrative moves a bit slowly (in the Victorian manner). But that flaw doesn't rob her writing of its power or beauty -- she describes every feeling, gesture and emotion in detail, as well as the sumptuous balls, exquisitely gilded mansions, and every shadowy tree or rich expanse of land ("a grassy court enclosed on three sides by a gothic cloister").

Yet the greatest power is in the stories that twine like ivy over the main plot -- a young Jewish girl's search for her family, a sadistic man's search for a wild lovely girl he can break, and especially of the composer Herr Klesmer and his sweet, atypical love story with Miss Arrowpoint. And the last quarter of the book is wrapped in Daniel's search for his own family, culminating in a quietly tense encounter with someone from his long-ago past.

Daniel almost seems like a character too good to be true -- unselfish, kind, universally kindly and very intelligent, though possessed of a vaguely searching quality. Gwendolyn is his complete opposite: she has been raised to be selfish, disdainful and immature, but as the book goes on she learns that selfishness doesn't pay -- marriage to the despicable Grandcourt changes her from a selfish little girl into a scarred but stronger woman.

The third leg of the triangle is Mirah, who is not given the loving attention that Gwendolyn is, but who is still a compelling figure -- her father tried to sell her, and now she wanders through England searching for her family. And the book is littered with many other striking characters: the sadistic Grandcourt and his creepy servant Lush, the crotchety but kindly Klesmer, the spirited artist Hans, the kindly Sir Hugo and the doomed, strong-willed Mordecai.

"Daniel Deronda" is a beautiful portrait of a young man's search for his past, and a young woman's struggle with the fruits of her own selfishness. What's more, George Eliot's last novel is a loving, powerful portrait of the Jewish people, in a time when they were caricatured at best.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "Visions are the creators and feeders of the world. I see. I measure the world as it is, which the vision will create anew." March 11, 2009

By Mary Whipple HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

In what may be her most exciting and original novel, George Eliot weaves two completely different plots, one of which is a uniquely sympathetic and fully developed story with Jewish protagonists. Presenting no Jewish stereotypes, as we see in Dickens (in Oliver Twist and other novels) and even Trollope (with The Way We Live Now (Barnes & Noble Classics)), she depicts characters who have, in one case, tried to avoid their heritage and in another have been drawn irrevocably to a religion and culture with which they have had no previous contact.

Daniel Deronda, a young man who has been brought up as an English gentleman by Sir Hugo Mallinger, has never known his real parents, secretly fearing that he is illegitimate. As time passes, he longs to understand the circumstances of his birth, especially after Sir Hugo marries and produces heirs of his own. Beautiful Gwendolen Harleth, selfish and manipulative, is romantically attracted to Daniel, but a sudden change in her family's financial status leads her into a precipitous but financially advantageous marriage to the arrogant Henleigh Grandcourt. Meanwhile, Daniel saves a young woman from drowning herself, a singer named Mirah Lapidoth who is in despair. Mirah, a Jew, has been stolen from her family by her father, whom she suspects planned to sell her into white slavery, and she desperately misses her mother and brother, whom she can no longer find. As she progresses with her singing career, she never forgets her heritage, of which she is inordinately proud.

As Eliot develops the various social settings of this fascinating novel, written in 1876, a full picture of British society evolves. To protect Mirah from her father and her own despair, Daniel places her in the home of friends and resolves to try to find her family. When Daniel discovers her brother Mordecai, a Jewish mystic and seer, Mordecai is convinced, against all odds, that Daniel is Jewish--and is the person who will carry his visions for a Jewish nation to fruition. As the novel develops further, Eliot explores Jewish mysticism, religious traditions, and cultural heritage, even as she also uses the shallow, aristocratic life of Gwendolen Harleth Grandcourt as a contrast to that of Mirah.

The novel is unique in its favorable and lengthy depiction of Judaism and in its illustration of Judaism's cultural superiority to superficial, aristocratic British life. Mirah and her family take center stage in terms of sympathy, despite the fact the Gwendolen, who in other novels might have been the heroine, suffers terribly in her miserable marriage to Grandcourt. Daring to do something completely different with this complex novel, which was her last, Eliot's vision and seriousness of purpose here created enormous controversy in its time and presaged a new direction for the novel. n Mary Whipple

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Failure May 24, 2011

By Giordano Bruno

Format:Paperback

Daniel Deronda is a shambles, a 700-page novel that would have made two excellent 200-page novellas. It was George Eliot's last novel, written after Middlemarch, and it has never been as popular as her earlier books, yet it is well worth reading despite its glaring faults in story-telling and its sententious preaching. Henry James, who should have been more overtly grateful to Eliot as a formative influence on his own works, lambasted her for her inability to let a story speak for itself, that is, to be indirect and implicit. Then, as we all know, James took his own recommended indirection to preposterous lengths.

I labored long and hard over Daniel Deronda, a novel probably too ambitious for its time and its writer's idiom, one of the most fascinating failures I'v ever read. It 'collapses' two novel plots into one in a manner that a 20th C novelist would have had a better template to work with. It's fabulously dramatic in its Jamesian misogynistic half -- the most intelligent woman novelist of the 19th C was decidedly not an admirer of womanhood -- and in many ways a preview of James's Portrait of a Lady. But then it's tediously interesting (!) in its visionary half, in which the title character discovers his Jewish identity and formulates Zionism a decade before anyone else in real history. The two tales are awkwardly and implausibly coupled, and Deronda is a kind of pre-Freudian spiritual paper saint. Meanwhile, Eliot's discursive perambulations are either too profound for casual reading ... or else utter blather.

Middlemarch is still, in my mind, Eliot's only Grrreat Novel, but Deronda is worth reading as a preview of all modern novel-making.