Subverting (Great) Expectations
Sep. 13th, 2004 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel27 Jun 2004
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot - Wordsworth Classics 1996
* * * * *
It starts with the great cliche of romances - a handsome young man and a beautiful young woman catch sight of each other across a crowded room. But George Eliot had done romance in her earlier novels and the relationship that develops between them is very different from the one that you expect.
For a start, they don't like each other much. The room in which they meet is a casino. Gwendolen is gambling and gets put off by Deronda looking at and, she (rightly) thinks, judging her, which establishes with wonderful economy that she is a) a risk-taker and b) overly sensitive to what other people think. When she pawns her necklace to cover her losses, he buys it back and returns it to her with a superciliously worded note. Unsurprisingly, they don't see each other again until almost half way through the book.
Part of the interim is taken up with a long flashback (a flashback! in a Victorian novel!) describing Gwendolen's early life. This is the best bit of the book - Gwendolen's mixture of liveliness, innocence and knowingness is fascinating, and the way in which she breaks the heart of the unfortunate Rex is entirely comprehensible. One admires her spirit and independence whilst regretting the devastating effects that her selfishness has on others.
So Gwendolen is a fascinating mixture of the attractive and the unattractive, a real woman as unlike the idealised portraits in, say, Dickens, or even Trollope, as one could imagine. Which makes her eventual entrapment into a loveless marriage by the wicked Grandcourt all the more tragic (another unusual feature of the structure of this novel - the supposed "happy ever after" marriage happens half way through the book). Grandcourt never uses violence, bad language or threats to achieve his mastery over Gwendolen. He simply plays ruthlessly on her faults, especially her pride, and tries to twist her into something she is not. In this he is unwittingly assisted by the Reverend Gascoigne, who is described in extremely positive terms by the narrator but whose high moral tone is undermined by his determination for Gwendolen to make a good match. Whether Gwendolen actually loves Grandcourt doesn't enter into his calculations at all. Both these characters are fascinating examples of human evil in action, in subtle and realistic ways.
Sadly Gwendolen's story fades out after her marriage and she reappears only sporadically in the second half of the book, while Deronda's story takes centre stage. This is much slower to get going and, frankly, has some longeurs. This is largely due to Deronda himself who is passive and ironical, an observer of his society but not really part of it. His lack of passion makes him seem colourless and uninteresting to the reader. Eliot clearly realised that this would be a problem and has him rescue the beautiful Mirah when she tries to drown herself - the only truly implausible incident in the book. Mirah is Jewish (for some reason I get a cold shudder at the thought of using the term "Jewess" that Eliot uses - is this now politically incorrect?) and leads Deronda (and Eliot) into an exploration of Judaism. Interestingly, Eliot raises similar questions of nurture vs. nature as Bujold does in "Ethan of Athos", but takes a diametrically opposite standpoint. For her, it seems that Judaism (and presumably any other culture/religion) is essentially genetic, and thus to bring up a Jewish child in a non-Jewish environment would be the height of cruelty. Hence her apparent support, as expressed through the overly saintly Mordecai, for a Jewish state. This raises a small flaw in Eliot's doctrine of "sympathy" (defined in Carole Jones' perceptive introduction as "the disposition to share in another's feelings to the extent of thinking and feeling in tune with their emotions"), which is its selective nature. Eliot clearly has sympathy with the plight of Jews living in an anti-semitic world, but neglects to have sympathy for the existing inhabitants of Palestine and what they might feel about others taking over their land. It is striking that in the chapter where these ideas are discussed, none of the participants thinks to raise it as an objection to Mordecai's vision. If Eliot's view is typical of Zionists of her day, one can begin to understand the roots of the current tragedy in Palestine.
Eventually, Deronda's story does start to grip and we begin to understand and, yes, sympathise with his behaviour in the first half of the book. His relationship with Gwendolen also develops, but not in a romantic direction. He instead becomes her spiritual guide, her moral compass through the storms of her murderous feelings towards Grandcourt. I'm not sure that the advice he offers her is actually of much use, but through it she manages to find her own path.
It must be said that this book is not an easy read. It took me over six weeks to finish it. The prose is dense, somewhat over-earnest and largely lacking in humour. Nonetheless, the subtle characterisation, the engagement with ideas as well as characters, the dense web of allusions and reflections that tie the stories of the two main protagonists together, the realism of the action and the marvellously original structure make this a five star novel.
When I said that this novel is largely humourless, that isn't quite true. Eliot clearly had a high old time playing games with her readers' expectations of what a Victorian novel should be, and she continues this to the final page. You might think that it's going to end with the hero and heroine riding off into the sunset in the traditional fashion, but it ain't exactly like that. Frankly, what she does it is outrageous. Read it (and the rest of the novel) and you'll see what I mean.
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot - Wordsworth Classics 1996
* * * * *
It starts with the great cliche of romances - a handsome young man and a beautiful young woman catch sight of each other across a crowded room. But George Eliot had done romance in her earlier novels and the relationship that develops between them is very different from the one that you expect.
For a start, they don't like each other much. The room in which they meet is a casino. Gwendolen is gambling and gets put off by Deronda looking at and, she (rightly) thinks, judging her, which establishes with wonderful economy that she is a) a risk-taker and b) overly sensitive to what other people think. When she pawns her necklace to cover her losses, he buys it back and returns it to her with a superciliously worded note. Unsurprisingly, they don't see each other again until almost half way through the book.
Part of the interim is taken up with a long flashback (a flashback! in a Victorian novel!) describing Gwendolen's early life. This is the best bit of the book - Gwendolen's mixture of liveliness, innocence and knowingness is fascinating, and the way in which she breaks the heart of the unfortunate Rex is entirely comprehensible. One admires her spirit and independence whilst regretting the devastating effects that her selfishness has on others.
So Gwendolen is a fascinating mixture of the attractive and the unattractive, a real woman as unlike the idealised portraits in, say, Dickens, or even Trollope, as one could imagine. Which makes her eventual entrapment into a loveless marriage by the wicked Grandcourt all the more tragic (another unusual feature of the structure of this novel - the supposed "happy ever after" marriage happens half way through the book). Grandcourt never uses violence, bad language or threats to achieve his mastery over Gwendolen. He simply plays ruthlessly on her faults, especially her pride, and tries to twist her into something she is not. In this he is unwittingly assisted by the Reverend Gascoigne, who is described in extremely positive terms by the narrator but whose high moral tone is undermined by his determination for Gwendolen to make a good match. Whether Gwendolen actually loves Grandcourt doesn't enter into his calculations at all. Both these characters are fascinating examples of human evil in action, in subtle and realistic ways.
Sadly Gwendolen's story fades out after her marriage and she reappears only sporadically in the second half of the book, while Deronda's story takes centre stage. This is much slower to get going and, frankly, has some longeurs. This is largely due to Deronda himself who is passive and ironical, an observer of his society but not really part of it. His lack of passion makes him seem colourless and uninteresting to the reader. Eliot clearly realised that this would be a problem and has him rescue the beautiful Mirah when she tries to drown herself - the only truly implausible incident in the book. Mirah is Jewish (for some reason I get a cold shudder at the thought of using the term "Jewess" that Eliot uses - is this now politically incorrect?) and leads Deronda (and Eliot) into an exploration of Judaism. Interestingly, Eliot raises similar questions of nurture vs. nature as Bujold does in "Ethan of Athos", but takes a diametrically opposite standpoint. For her, it seems that Judaism (and presumably any other culture/religion) is essentially genetic, and thus to bring up a Jewish child in a non-Jewish environment would be the height of cruelty. Hence her apparent support, as expressed through the overly saintly Mordecai, for a Jewish state. This raises a small flaw in Eliot's doctrine of "sympathy" (defined in Carole Jones' perceptive introduction as "the disposition to share in another's feelings to the extent of thinking and feeling in tune with their emotions"), which is its selective nature. Eliot clearly has sympathy with the plight of Jews living in an anti-semitic world, but neglects to have sympathy for the existing inhabitants of Palestine and what they might feel about others taking over their land. It is striking that in the chapter where these ideas are discussed, none of the participants thinks to raise it as an objection to Mordecai's vision. If Eliot's view is typical of Zionists of her day, one can begin to understand the roots of the current tragedy in Palestine.
Eventually, Deronda's story does start to grip and we begin to understand and, yes, sympathise with his behaviour in the first half of the book. His relationship with Gwendolen also develops, but not in a romantic direction. He instead becomes her spiritual guide, her moral compass through the storms of her murderous feelings towards Grandcourt. I'm not sure that the advice he offers her is actually of much use, but through it she manages to find her own path.
It must be said that this book is not an easy read. It took me over six weeks to finish it. The prose is dense, somewhat over-earnest and largely lacking in humour. Nonetheless, the subtle characterisation, the engagement with ideas as well as characters, the dense web of allusions and reflections that tie the stories of the two main protagonists together, the realism of the action and the marvellously original structure make this a five star novel.
When I said that this novel is largely humourless, that isn't quite true. Eliot clearly had a high old time playing games with her readers' expectations of what a Victorian novel should be, and she continues this to the final page. You might think that it's going to end with the hero and heroine riding off into the sunset in the traditional fashion, but it ain't exactly like that. Frankly, what she does it is outrageous. Read it (and the rest of the novel) and you'll see what I mean.
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Six weeks
Date: 2004-09-14 02:21 am (UTC)Re: Six weeks
Date: 2004-09-15 03:15 pm (UTC)