Talk:Daniel Deronda

message: The discussion about Zionism in this article is woefully anachronistic. At the time Eliot was ahead of her contemporaries in viewing the Jews as a people worthy of respect - you just have to look at how Jews are spoken of in Trollope, du Maurier and even some Dickens to see how rife anti-semitism was in British society at the time. Compare how the millionaire Melmotte is presented in Trollope's THE WAY WE LIVE NOW with how Mordecai is presented in DANIEL DERONDA. Eliot's sympathetic view of Mordecai's Zionism (a word which I don't think even existed at the time) came in the wake of the sudden surge of nationalism going on in Europe at the time. This was when nationalist and independence movements were happening in Germany and Italy and old regimes such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire were starting to crumble (Eliot mentions the Battle of Sadowa where the Italians defeated the Austrians in a key battle to do with the libeartion of Italy has happening at the same time as Deronda's meeting with his mother). The idea of oppressed or disenfranchised people being allowed self-determination was a popular one among intellectuals of the time. Eliot, who had met and befriended the Jewish intellectual and mystic Emmanuel Deutsch, saw no reason why the Jews should not have the right to self-determination either. 
Eliot's sympathy with the Jewish cause and support for Jewish determination is a long way from supporting the disenfranchisement of Arabs. Daniel Deronda is not a tank demolishing a Palestinian home, nor is George Eliot Ariel Sharon. I think Eliot would have been horrified at the suffering the Arab-Israeli conflict has caused in the Middle East. Zionism may not be a fashionable cause now but when she wrote the book Eliot was ahead of her time in seeking to understand Jewish lives, culture and aspirations. Her support for Mordecai is support for a people who had been systematically supressed for centuries, not for settlements on the West Bank or bombing of Lebanese homes. One has to see the 'Zionism' of the book in its historical context. Eliot would have seen it more in terms of the liberation and return to equality of an oppressed people rather than the means to oppress someone else.
The other element of the book which is left out of this discussion - and it is one which causes immense embaressment among British academics who like to see Eliot as the sine qua non of British Victorian Agnostic Humanists - is the influence of Jewish Mysticism in the book. Mordecai is explicitly stated to be a Kaballist who sees himself as the reincarnation of a spirit which was born in Spain and Middle East and migrated through incarnations to the present day (of the book). Eliot actually refers to the Kaballah in the text so it is absolutely clear that she had studied it. The way in which Eliot describes Mordecai's relationship with Deronda is couched in mystical, visionary terms. In some scenes they seem to have an almost psychic relationship. She even drops in names of famous Kaballists, such as Kalonymos, the character in the book who speaks to Deronda when he is in the German synagogue and turns out to have been a friend of his father's. No-one likes to think of Eliot as being anything other than a liberal humanist, forgetting, of course, that she was also very interested in psychic phenomena (cf The Lifted Veil). Sorry guys, but in this book she clearly embraces the idea of a cosmic element to human life - cf Gwendolen's encounter with the Death's Head in the early chapters, her encounter at the Standing Stones with Lydia Glasher. It would be fascinating to really study how much Kaballistic imagery and ideas pervades this book - Mirah's relationship with the Shekinah for instance. Who knows? All I know is that there is very interesting avenue to explore here, one which would completely reevaluate what this book represents in Eliot's canon. It would also mean that decades of scholarly opinion that the Jewish side of the novel is peripheral, inferior etc would have to be completely thrown out and rethought. In fact it is key to what Eliot was writing about.
Food for thought. :-) ThePeg 18:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While the defeat of Austrian forces at Sadowa on 3 July 1866 led indirectly to the transfer of Venezia to Italy, is there any record of Italian forces being at the battle? --Hors-la-loi 14:01, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Zionism & Mysticism

message: The article makes the assertion that Kabbalah "is directly referred to in the text."  As far as I can tell, it is only implied and not referred to directly.  Can we get confirmation on this, or even a textual citation?  I tried searching the Gutenberg Etext, but found nothing.  Then again, I have no idea how Eliot would have spelled Kabbalah, so it may be there and I just don't remember. Victorianist 23:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Kabbalah

message: I've done an edit on the article, filling in some gaps and putting a rather more well-rounded view of its characters and ideas (Zionism in particular). I've left the stuff about peoples' hostility to Eliot's Zionism but have also tried to put the book in context so as to try and understand Eliot's particular take on this topic. ThePeg 23:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good edits, ThePegQuizzicalBee 23:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have time to fix it up but the references to Said's criticisms are in his book "Culture and Imperialism" - he devotes quite some analysis to Daniel Deronda in that book. While being a huge fan of Said, I must say he is way off the mark - I just wonder how closely he read the novel to be honest. His main criticism is that Eliot advances a mythic view of Palestine as an "empty place" that needs civilising, thus legitimating historical claims that deny Palestinian nationhood. The novel does quite the opposite - a young character is sidelined early in the novel for his delusional view of the Middle East as an "empty place". The novel deconstructs the issue to some extent: Daniel has no firm sense of what on earth is in Palestine; he is motivated by very vague desires: love for Mirah, devotion of Mordecai, acceptance of Judaism... --150.101.207.19 (talk) 01:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Edits

message: i just finished reading this and it states that the grandfather is a physician, and general scholar. Was he also a rabbi as stated in the article? and should it not mention his being a physician?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brokencalculator (talk • contribs) 19:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Daniel's Grandfather was a physician and scholar of some distinction. He was not a rabbi. Nonpareilles (talk) 06:13, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Daniels Grandfather

message: Is it potentially mistaken to call this "the only novel set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day" (or something to that effect -- sorry for potential paraphrase)? The novel's set in 1864-5 -- that is, about a decade before it was written. Further, the chapter on crinoline (and in particular, the ending thereof), seems to specifically see the novel as set "in the past," as, that is, another historical novel (and Middlemarch is only about 30-40 years past, right?) So I think this might be a wrong not to hit, especially in the opening graf... does someone have a source maybe for the claim that Deronda is significantly different from Eliot's other, historical novels?
Summortus (talk) 16:37, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem in Intro? 

message: I'vve come across this viewpoint in a blog. It deserves mention. Does anyone know of a WP:RS taking the same line? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:38, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support for the Leavis view 

message: just started listening to BBC audiobook
in first chapter , the jewish pawnbroker is, to modern ears, a repulsive racist trope  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 18:11, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: jews are not so well portrayed

message: The discussion here is very narrow and ignores much (most?) of the novel. When I have finished re-reading it I will try and add things. Rwood128 (talk) 20:57, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Narrow emphasis 

message: Mordecai is NOT Ezra Cohen. The paragraph must be revised. 2A01:827:1D8:7900:A570:345B:69F2:4A22 (talk) 20:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mordecai