Daniel Deronda (Eliot, 1876)

General

• criticism to read: Shuttleworth ✓, Said, Chase "Decomposition" ✓, Gallagher "Prostitution Question"
• if I were to teach this it might be good to do serially in its 8 parts -- short dips

Bk I

• 10 Gwendolen’s mother writes that their bank has failed— bank failure also in Cranford and in The Way We Live Now (I think)
• 13 self-love without self-satisfaction
• Ch 3 retrospective from the scene in the casino: back to how G and her mother came to their relatives at Offendene
• 30 GH frames her desire for marriage in genre terms reminiscent of Dorothea in Middlemarch (Eliot, 1872)
• 33 "For macbeth’s rhetoric about the impossibility of bring many opposite things in the same moment, referred to the clumsy necessities of action and not to the subtler possibilities of feeling.”
• 66 before Rex’s confrontation with GH she is in a bad mood because of "The hastening of her toilet...the quality of the shilling serial written for her...in short, social institutions generally, were all objectionable to her."
• 74 Rex and Anna appealing to run away to "the colonies" a slightly more grown up version of Maggie running away in Mill on the Floss (Eliot, 1861)
• 75 marriage equal parts pleasure and business when Mallinger and Grandcourt come to town— eat your heart out, Jane Austen
• 83ff the archery competition
• 89 GH is introduced to Grandcourt right at the end of the monthly number/book 1

Bk II

• 90 Grandcourt is the first bald love interest I remember in a Victorian novel...of course he turns out to be a villain.
• 107 conventional railway figure of "busy change" vs the stasis of farm country
• 112 wonderful free indirect discourse with GH contemplating "this subjection to a possible self" (and of course she’s wrong about being able to manage Grandcourt)
• 116 unlike Dorothea’s uncle, Gwendolen’s is more reasonable about reasoning with incomplete information in re the match
  • 118 "He wished that in her mind his advice should be taken in an infusion of sentiments proper to a girl"
• 131 back around chronologically to Grandcourt pursuing (slowly) GH to Leubronn and there finding his uncle and Deronda
• 138-9 elaborately fleshing our the genealogy of Deronda as well as Grandcourt: the relation between post-Darwinian interest in descent as well as DD’s "dull periods" of history to art in the list of famous portrait painters for whom his relatives had sat
• 143 "It is in such experiences of boy or girlhood, while elders are debating whether most education lies in science or literature, that the main lines of character are often drawn."
  • and 144: boy do I identify with young Daniel...
• 146 "He had been a bachelor until he was five and forty, had always been regarded as a fascinating man of elegant tastes; what could be more natural, even according to the index of language, than that he should have a beautiful boy like the little Deronda to take care of?”
• 166 I want to live at the Meyricks’ (Kate illustrates for publishers 164)
• 168 Mirah introduces herself
• 169 end of book ii marks end of 1st vol

Bk III

• 172 DD’s instinctive slight antisemitism (ignorance rather than malice)
• the forms in which people think— an interest Lewes shared
• 179 Mirah talking about the way she internalizes antisemitism
• 184 Colman St pulled down— urban change frustrating M’s ability to find her mother
• 189 again the narrative switchback: DD leaves M and the Meyricks to go with his uncle to Germany
• 194 parallels across plots: GH’s mother planning to take up needlework since the bank went bust, as do the Meyrick daughters
• 208-10 again the backfilling narrative structure in miniature: GH writes to Klesmer and everything he brings with him to their meeting is then filled in before they meet, playing with those ideas of "make believe of beginnings" and examining the way narrative convention belies development
• 210 "Among the heirs of art, as at the division of the promised land, each has to win his portion by hard fighting"— an analogy between art and Zionism (?)
• Gwendolen and Catherine Arrowpoint in different ways pushing at the boundaries of social restriction
• 214 Klesmer on the life of the artist— it can only come from "the inward vocation and the hard-won achievement: there is no honor in donning the life as a livery."
• 233 start of ch XXV repeats Grandcourt’s dismissal of Leubronn from Lush’s perspective— the repetition to resituate analogous to similar moves at the beginning of new serial parts [i.e. Esther recapitulating something Bucket has explained to her toward the end of Bleak House]
• 243 the narrator gets in some of her most extensive analysis of GH right before she receives Grandcourt’s letter
• 253 "The word of all work Love will no more express the myriad modes of mutual attraction, than the word Thought can inform you what is passing through your neighbor’s mind."

Bk IV

• 261 "Suitors must often be judged as words are, by their standing and the figure they make I'm polite society: it is difficult to know much else to make of them." (Mrs D persuaded by GH's faint praise of Grandcourt which belies her ambivalence)
• 281 Deronda’s practical ethics lesson: "...And, besides, there is something revolting to me in raking a heap of money together, and internally chuckling over it, when others are feeling the loss of it." "...We each of us think it would be better for the other to be good."
• which is then put into practice in the next chapter, with Gwendolen taking from Lydia Glasher through Grandcourt
• 295 GH’s wedding attended by Pennicote locals discussing stories of spousal abuse
• 296 wonderful about her internal state: knowing something isn’t quite right
• 300 GH receives the diamonds with a poison pen letter from Lydia
• 305 analyzing D: "A top reflective and diffudive sympathy was in danger of paralyzing in him that indignation against wrong and that selectness of fellowship which are the conditions of moral force”

Bk V/Vol III

• 339 epigram comparing money market "marauders" to murderers reminiscent of The Way We Live Now
• 346 "I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves" (DD)
• 351-2 DD's ethical theory of affection or interest
• 357 the change that's come over GH with experience and the inability to fall back on old behavior (Grandcourt's superior will and that she concealed Lydia's letter from him): "With the reading of that letter had begun her husband's empire of fear" (Haggard's She similar usage: "my empire is of the imagination")
• 366 Deronda drawing connections btwn his own parentage and Grandcourt's secret family: pretty open in working through the dynamics and fallout of extramarital sexual relationships
• 368: "...People who do anything finely always in spirit me to try."
• 371: DD - some might not have their. Eyes opened without the shock of seeing consequences (but can GH bear it?)
• 373 GH's marriage as a gambling loss
• 380 "I am punished, but I can't alter it." (Ff major ethical discussion with DD keyed in terms of a type of disinterestedness, self interest to get at social interest to get back to resolving problems arising from self interest)
• 386 DD talking to Hans abt his sculptures of Berenice and Titus -- Roman and Jewish history
• 394 Mirah saying Hans compared DD to Buddha in his inclination to self-sacrifice
• 399 Mordecai's "yearning for transmission" of his spiritual experiences

Bk VI

• 429 wonderful epigram for ch XLI with implications for realist representation: "This, too, is probable, according to that saying of Agathon: ‘It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.’” - Aristotle, Poetics
• 431 key to the didactic/epigrammatic quality of her writing is the shift to inclusive generalization from specific individual, "our"
• 433 the abstract analysis of mind the narrative voice is willing to push to
• 457 revelation that Mordecai is Mirah’s brother
• 475 GH: "But one May feel things and not be able to do anything better for all that" and following
• 479 DD distinguishing Mordecai as not "fanatical": "Mordecai is an enthusiast: I should like to keep that word for the highest order of minds— those who care supremely for grand and general benefits to mankind."
• 490 Mordecai and Mirah reunited
• 493 narrative now privileging Grandcourt and it rewinds back to their coming to town
• 500 narrator compares Grandcourt’s mastery of G to governing "a difficult colony"
• 517 revelation at the end of the section: Sir Hugo gives DD a letter from his mother

Bk VII/Vol IV

• 521 how compressed international travel is when DD goes to Genoa, as with characters going to Germany. Not filled with narrative content as Mirah’s from Prague was
• 522 the extent to which his obsession with Judaism takes the form of a national or racial-historical lens through which to view space, as in imagining Spanish Jewish refugees in Genoa
• then the analysis of his feelings about GH
• 525 "he has lived through so many ideal meetings with his mother, and they seemed more real than this!"
• 528 his relief at being a Jew vs his mother choosing the life of an English gentleman for him: "How could you choose my birthright for me?"
• 530 the important difference of gender and of being raised in a tradition vs turning to it. Also his mother’s fiercely independent "I wanted to live a large life" echoes Dorothea in Middlemarch
• 531 his mother speaks so much to Gh’s struggle: "You are not a woman. You may try— but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s force of genius on you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.” Again her feminism on 560, “Had I not a rightful claim to be something more than a mere daughter and mother?” Characterologically a minor character resisting her minorness
• 544 Hans’s letter, his "naive expansiveness," is nearly as pretentious and contains almost as little info as Claude’s in Amours des Voyages. Still it connects up some threads in the narrative scheme, Rex to GH to Sir Hugo, and deepens DD’s new sense of attachment to Mirah
• 550 contrast GH’s inability to concentrate on reading with Mirah’s extensive reading that "she never made emotionally her own," making her aloof
• 559 DD’s last conversation with his mother— her will vs something "stronger, with deeper spreading roots"
• 562 interesting little intertextual foreshadowing to the yachting chapter since the epigram is from Shelley and he drowned in the Gulf of Spezia
• 575 again the intertwining, returning threads of narrative: narrator says Deronda met GH And Grandcourt on his way to his second meeting with his mother
• 578 good riddance Grandcourt— Deronda is there
• 586 "I knew no way of killing him there, but I did, I did kill him in my thoughts"

Bk VIII

• 593 the steadiness of the Rector and Rex, wonderful on "peaceful authorship" and Rex’s sense of calling
• 596 rewinding again: establishing the scene in Pennicote as just when news about Grandcourt comes
• 601 Grandcourt’s will switches Lydia and Gwendolen’s positions
• 608 a metaphorical key from Dd’s grandfather after the literal one: "What he used to insist on was that the strength and wealth of mankind depended on the balance of separateness and communication, and he was butterfly against our people losing themselves among the Gentiles"
• 611 again returning to the Meyricks as they get the news of Grandcourt’s death
• 627 "It was as if he had fotbd an added soul in finding his ancestry"— like the cabbalistic language Mordecai used earlier
• 635 rewind to GH in Genoa immediately after her mother’s arrival
• 641 Gh’s change in thinking about offendene, no longer a place to be escaped
• 645 GH consulting DD on whether she should take any of Grandcourt’s money
• 648 "let it be a preparation" for your life— gorgeous
• 662 Hans, flippant but useful in telling DD of Mirah’s anxiety about "the Duchess"
• 677 DD’s Zionism
• the last scene between Gwendolen and Daniel is quite moving

Themes

Form

• 30 Moliere epigram for ch 4 about novel form
• 90 “attempts at description are stupid"
• then immediately the wonderful parenthetical dialogue between Gwendelen and Grandcourt
• 307-8 the way the various forms of the Jewish prayer service blend together in DD’s experience, "all were blent for him as one expression of a binding history, tragic and yet glorious."
• 400-1 the blending epiphany of the senses Mordecai has on Blackfriars Bridge parallel to the experience DD had in synagogue
• 405 again the narrative turn back, filling in Mordecai trying to teach little Jacob before seeing Deronda in the shop
• 410 interesting -- repetition of the Goethe poem that was the chapter epigram in dialogue btwn Mirah and Klesmer
• 420-1 Mordecai "...Let my body dwell in poverty...but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope"
• even more than this the conceptual link between M’s cabbalistic notion of an extended soul and the aesthetic goal of the novel, nicely articulated on 431 in a deterministic way: believe my beliefs, hope my hopes, etc.
• 551 [when Anna G explains her relationship to GH] "Oh, this finding out relationships is delightful!" said Mab. "It is like a Chinese puzzle that one has to fit together. I feel sure something wonderful may be made of it but I can’t tell what." "Dear me, Mab!" said Amy, "relationships must branch out. The only difference is, that we happen to know some of the people concerned. Such things are going on every day."
• 592 paragraph about extension as an imperfect measure and the “variable intensity” of human experience — feels v important

Reading/Writing

• 124 GH receives an anonymous letter st the archery party warning her off Grandcourt (from the woman Lush brought back, Lydia Glasher)
• 125 archery party in the woods "Playing an extemporized As You Like It " Shakespeare
• 129 GH’s "uncontrolled reading" had NOT prepared her for Lydia’s revelation about Grandcourt: but reading this might prepare someone else?
• 148 Sir Hugo: "I don’t go against our university system; we want a little disinterested culture to make head against cotton and capital, especially in the House"
• 177 Mirah’s bookish childhood
• 303 "The Meyricks, whose various knowledge had been acquired by the irregular foraging to which clever girls have usually been reduced" (in talking about how Mirah makes them and Deronda realize how little they know about Judaism)
• 323 DD visits a secondhand bookshop near Ezra Cohen’s store, with "the literature of the ages...represented in judicious mixture, from the immortal verse of Homer to the mortal prose of the railway novel."
• 328 Cohens run a pawn shop
• 365 Vandernoodt on lack of scandal G keeping Lydia and family: "Oh, there are plenty of people who know all about it; but such stories get packed away like old letters."
• 380 lovely description of sensuousness of private library
• 461-2 key one: GH picking books that she thinks DD would say would further her but they’re beyond her grasp and she has no time bc of her social obligations (and onto 463, enlargement of sympathy)
• 610 Mrs Meyrick reads the newspaper marriage lists to get the feeling of having finished a fashionable novel without "knowing what poor creatures they were"
• 630 the chest an archive of Daniel’s Jewish family history

Criticism

Said

"Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims" (1979)

• http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ikalmar/illustex/said%20zionism.htm
• from Edward Said Reader:
  • an important Palestinian argument for full political engagement between Israelis and Palestinians
  • "If Zionist critics tried to disavow the imperial legacies of Zionism, many Palestinians thought that Said had conceded too much. In effect, "Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims" considered the fact that the Palestinians, as "the victims of victims," have become a crucial part of Zionism's history. Said argued that they must be acknowledged within this history just as no Palestinian can ignore Zionism."

• "Interestingly, Eliot cannot sustain her admiration of Zionism except by seeing it as a method for transforming the East into the West. This is not to say that she does not have sympathy for Zionism and for the Jews themselves: she obviously does. But there is a whole area of Jewish experience, lying somewhere between longing for a homeland (which everyone, including the Gentile, feels) and actually getting it, that she is dim about. Otherwise she is quite capable of seeing that Zionism can easily be accommodated to several varieties of Western (as opposed to Eastern) thought, principal among them the idea that the East is degraded, that it needs reconstruction according to enlightened Western notions about politics, that any reconstructed portion of the East can with small reservations become as "English as England" to its new inhabitants. Underlying all this, however, is the total absence of any thought about the actual inhabitants of the East, Palestine in particular. They are irrelevant both to the Zionists in Daniel Deronda and to the English characters. Brightness, freedom, and redemption-key matters for Eliot-are to be restricted to Europeans and the Jews, who are themselves European prototypes so far as colonizing the East is concerned."