Daniel Deronda's character and susceptibility

The reader isn't given a proper introduction to the title character of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda until page 162. We meet him in the opening as a spectator to the show that is Gwendolyn gambling at Leubronn. We see his hand in the necklace that is returned to her from the pawn shop. Then, there's the interlude establishing Gwendolyn's immediate past. Finally, after Eliot returns us to Leubronn in the immediate aftermath of Gwendolyn's sudden departure, we meet him discussing the girl with Malinger and Grandcourt. According to his louche ways, Malinger teasingly asks Daniel if he "won't run after the pretty gambler," and Daniel replies, "Decidedly not"(163). Quickly, we realize that Daniel is a decisive man; taking some of that glow away, piquing our curiousity, Eliot fills us in "history had given him a bias in another direction. He felt himself in no sense free"(163). With a few bold strokes, Eliot gives us a first glance at her Daniel as a virtuous hero.

In keeping with his classically heroic nature, Daniel is a man without firm roots. As a little boy, he lives with the never married Sir Hugo (who marries later, at 45). Sir Hugo refers to himself as Daniel's uncle and when the boy asks after his parent, apparently only once doing so, Hugo tells him that his parents are passed away. According to Eliot, Daniel is so terribly fond of Sir Hugo that he doesn't spend much time as a child pursuing the matter of his passed away parents.

His initial lack of interest in his past is kind of stunning, especially considering his supposed interest in history. Moreover, it's hard to figure out how Sir Hugo could have explained away his having only one real brother, Grandcourt's father, Henleigh Malinger Grandcourt (HMG senior takes his wife's name for unexplained reasons). Nor is his curiousity prodded by his lack of resemblance to any of the generations of Malinger's that hang upon the walls of the family estate.

Eliot memorably describes Daniel as "handsomer than any of them" and as a boy who could have

"served as a model for any painter who wanted to image the most beautiful of boys: you could hardly have seen his face thoroughly meeting yours without believing that human creatures had done nobly in times past, and might do more nobly in time to come. The finest childlike faces have this consecrating power, and make us shudder anew at all the grossness and basely-wrought griefs of the world, lest they should enter here and defile"(166).

When a tutor's comment on the origins of bastards suggests that he might be the bastard child of Malinger, Daniel is not sure what to feel about it. Seen as possibly a father rather than an Uncle, the charming and beloved Sir Hugo suddenly appears in the aspect of a deceiver. Daniel finds that the stories of heroic Shakespearean bastards may have a bearing on his own story. He discovers that "the ardor which he had given to the imaginary world in his books suddenly rushed towards his own history and spent its pictorial energy there, explaining what he knew, representing the unknown"(167). Daniel is a child of imagination and for Eliot this is crucial to a person's living a heroic and a virtuous life. Presented with murkiness, Daniel's imagination is capable of reading his life in light of history, myth and drama, of seeing himself as possibly having a self similar to storybook heroes of yore.

Like Eliot, Daniel is interested in History, especially history of character or how heroes and villains come to be. In the epigraph to the opening chapter, Eliot spoke of the difficulty of locating the start of a story, or, of locating and determining what are the truly determinative causes of a rise or fall. Her own story then demonstrates the difficulty by launching out on an opening only to circle the story to a point further back in the past than the original start of the novel. Sharing his author's interest, the child Daniel has often puzzled over the missing history of great heros. Now confronted with murkiness in his own past, he begins "making conjectures about his own history, as he had often made stories about Pericles or Columbus, just to fill up the blanks before they became famous"(168).

However, beyond conferring upon his life a possibly heroic destiny, the mystery of his antecedents also provokes a "premature reserve which helped to intensify his inward experience"(168). He feels that things are being held from him. He decides, if people do not wish to make mention of his past, he should be careful not to prompt them to do so. A curious choice and one that aligns him a bit with Gwendolyn in her love of gambling and uncertainty?

It is the mystery surrounding his origins which profoundly shapes his characters. He wants to know where he comes, is upset that others know this but he doesn't, but is afraid to find out. This position or "experience" as Eliot labels it is in the author's main often the foundation of "the main lines of character" and plays a larger role than any type of formal education via science or literature (171). Yet, his experience is transformed by inherent aspects of Daniel's being. He possesses "an ardently affectionate nature" and "an inborn lovingness...strong enough to keep itself level with resentment"(171). The "indignation which had long mingled itself with his affection for Sir Hugo took the quality of pain rather than of temper"(175). Yet, his consciousness about this origins is a handicap, a "silent consciousness of a grief within, which might be compared in some ways with Byron's susceptibility about his deformed foot"(174).

But, Daniel's handicap, his disadvantage, works towards his nurturing a sympathetic character. While the circumstances and mystery surrounding his birth might made him into a "self-centred, unloving...Ishmaelite," in fact, Daniel is a "rarer sort, who presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a mmyriad, the inexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imagination tender. Deronda's early-wakened susceptibility, charge at first with ready indignation and resistant pride, had raised in him a premature reflection on certain questions of life; it had given a bias to his conscience, a sympathy with certain ills, and a tension of resolve in certain directions, which marked im off from other youths much more than any talents he possessed"(175).

Further notes of Eliot's Daniel Deronda

All references are to a paperback of the 1995 Penguin edition, edited, annotated and introduced by Terrence Cave

Deronda seems a bit asymmetrical. On the one hand, there is the sad story of Gwendolen Harleth, a classic reprise of the forceful young woman who attempts to defy convention and impose her own will on the choice of her mate. Then, there is the story of Daniel Deronda as he searches for his self, his duty and finds it in his mystical connection to the Zionist Mordecai. There seems a great gap in character between the often times impulsive, thoughtless, egotistical Gwendolen and the almost saintly Daniel. What is the program? What is Eliot after in wedding such odd character and story strands?

It is hard to look to the otherworldly Daniel as example. Moreover, the manner in which his life's dilemma is resolved doesn't seem realistic or convincing. He chances upon his savior Mordecai by such a melange of chance and resolute action and it is difficult to imagine encountering parallel circumstances. It is important to remember that he begins to find Mordecai by attending to the immediate need of his sister when he encounters her on the verge of drowning herself in the lake. And, he is only in the position to do so because he is out in the world, engaged in an effort to free himself from his own mind and self-preoccupations. All this is in keeping with some of Eliot's central beliefs:

Eliot seems at pains to explain, redeem her interest in Gwendolen. The character of Daniel is an easy sell. He's a classic paragon of virtue, a literary figure that is presented as an example. Gwendolen is more of a cautionary tale for the most part, but yet from the beginning, Eliot is limning character and qualities that will ultimately save her, at least according to the value-frame of the narrator, in some small measure. And, I find her the more compelling example. She is a more engaging character and a more human one. It is easy to identify with her and the identification cements a stronger interest in her and how she'll achieve a worthy life. There is a heroic aspect to Gwendolen. She's a girl who has a grandiose self-conception. It is bound up in achieving and expressing itself upon a narrow stage: the social whirl of mid-nineteenth century England. This doesn't necessarily speak to the poverty of Gwendolen's vision. It is hard to imagine her conceiving of or finding another handy stage upon which she might act and rule as she wishes to do. She brings a strong, imperious nature to these narrow, trivial confines. Despite that, the strength of her character is obvious and fascinating. Gwendolen is a queen, a king, a leader, born outside the ranks of the powerful. Her refusal to compromise this vision of herself seems heroic to me.

Early on in the book, when Gwendolen is considering Grandcourt as a future husband, Eliot alludes to the asymmetry of the two stories and their central characters. She writes:

"Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?-in a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely: when women on the other side of the world would not mourn for the husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause, and men stinted of bread on our side of the world heard of that willing loss and were patient: a time when the sould of man was waking to pulses which had for centuries been beating in him unfelt, until their full sum made a new life of teror or of joy.

What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions? They are the Yea of Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affetions."(124)

While this may be true in fact, Eliot's assertion here hardly seems borne out by the story which is about to follow. Gwendolen doesn't seem to have a yea or nay upon any good. No man seeks the vote of her affections, nor redirects his course to win them. And, I don't think Daniel looks to even Mirah for confirmation or direction when he launches upon his own good, the vision that Mordecai provides him. Eliot's little apostrophe above, charming as it is, seems oddly out-of-place here. At least after this reader's first reading, the question still remains: what is Eliot after in the wedding of Gwendolen and Daniel's tales?

I will add to this as I encounter answers in re-reading.

Notes on Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

quotes from Penguin edition of Daniel Deronda, edited with and introduction by Terence Cave, 1995.

From the epigraph of the first chapter, Eliot is interested in cause and effect, the fact and explanation, of character and virtue and she links her task as an artist to that of a scientist. She is going to explore how virtue and its opposite, how character, occurs. Yet, the epigraph acknowledges the difficulty; where do we draw a limit as to causes? Narrative demands a starting point, but determining such a starting point is more than a technical matter of craft. What types of circumstance, background might be thought of as key to a persons development and character. Eliot plays with the starting point of her tale by raising the importance of a starting pointn and then beginning with Gwendolyn gambling at Leubron under the gaze of Deronda, only to then move back to Gwendolyn's coming to Offendene one year prior to her visit to Leubron.

Gwendolyn exterior is the center of the opening pages. Eliot is hesitant to label her beautiful. Instead, she presents Gwendolyn as exotic, evocative of Nereids. We open from Deronda's perspective; he is watching her gamble and is determining whether he thinks she is beautiful, and whether her expression is animated by good or evil. He inclines to the latter conclusion, since her form attracts but fails to calm. Deronda's is not the only person watching and assessing Gwendolyn's exterior. Soon, we are treated to a whole anonymous chorus worth of comments on Gwendolyn's physical appearance. Indeed, later, alone in her room, Gwendolyn's exterior remains under studied fascination, albeit her own, in the scene where she gains calm by observing herself in a mirror after receiving the distressing news of her family's financial misfortune. This scene ends with her kissing her image in the mirror. Immediately, we are induced to think of Gwendolyn with some ambivalence. Certainly she is vain and exceedingly egotistical, but at the same time, as the object of what seems nearly universal fascination, it is difficult to blame her.

Eliot's picture of Gwendolyn's life heretofore is the textbook map to poor character. She has the childish mother who can hardly help herself less her daughters. When her mother bemoans her daughter's behavior, Gwendolyn asks her why she raised her as she did, why she allowed her to become the person she is. Mrs. Davilow objects "'Yourwill was always too strong for me'" and this awakens Gwendloyn's "compunction." Gwendolyn apologizes to her mother by excusing her as a parent. She tells her mother, "'How can you help what I am? Besides, I am very charming"(96). She has no real father, the first dying early on and a deceased step-father who spent little time with his family while alive and that time spent was of such a quality as to "reconcile" the family to his frequent absences.

There are aspects of Gwendolyn's egotism which are appealing. In distinction to expectations, she possesses an appealing resolve, a force of will. After worshipping her form in her mirror, she resolves, "How could she believe in sorrow? If it attacked her, she felt the force to crush it, to defy it, or run away from it, as she had done already. Anything seemed more possible than that she could go on bearing miseries, great or small"(18).

She's shrewd. While she's open with her mother as to her feelings regarding men and Grandcourt, she keeps quiet around her Uncle "for the very reason that she was determined to evade her uncles' control, she was determined not to clash with him"(97). As Eliot put it, "Gwendolyn knew certain differences in the characters with which she was concerned as birds know climate and weather"(97).

Gwendolyn has a natural nobility; she takes to the aristocratic role as if born to it. Eliot goes so far as to suggest that there is such a thing as inherent nobility, or stature, that one comes to by nature rather than birth. As she parades through neighboring Quetcham Hall, home of the Arrowpoints, "she felt exultingly that it befitted her: any one looking at her for the first time might have supposed that long galleries and lackeys had always been a matter of course in her life, while her cousin Anma, who was really more familiar with these things, felt almost as much embarrassed as a rabbit suddenly deposited in that well-lit space"(43).

Childish and narcissistic, Gwendolyn's feelings seem a natural product of her prospects. She is not blind to the narrow choices that her society offers her, and she objects. Arguing against her own experience, Mrs. Davilow advises Gwendolyn that "marriage is the only happy state for a woman" and Gwendolyn calls her on it by replying "I will not put up with it if it is not a happy state. I am determined to be happy-at least not to go on muddling away my life as other people do, being and doing nothing remarkable"(29). Moreover, Mrs. Davilow isn't necessarily interested in Gwendolyn finding the love of her life; as she comically muses to herself "'It would not signify, her being in love, if she would only accept the right person'"(94). Gwendolyn's objections, even mixed with her characteristic bragaddocio evidence a strength of character and a great deal of justifiable aspiration. Gwendolyn declares "There is nothing I enjoy more than taking aim-and hitting'"(340. Yet, such determination has little scope to exercise itself.

There's a dark, aberrant side to Gwendolyn's narcissism. In a scene that nicely prefigures both Gwendolyn's majestic faults and virtues that Eliot elaborates on as the plot develops, Gwendolyn rejects her cousin Rex's "love-making." Shortly after, her mother finds her "sobbing bitterly" and complaining that "'there is nothing worth living for'"(82). When pressed, Gwendolyn explains "'I shall never love anybody. I can't love people. I hate them'"(82). Initially she pursues Grandcourt in hopes of rejecting him, a punkish maneuver that seems feuled by an antipathy that extends beyond Grandcourt to the structure of societal expectations imposed upon her by virtue of her gender. In effect, she wishes to win society's prize so as to then toss it down in derision. Wow.

Similarly, shortly after meeting Grandcourt,an enormously wealthy and powerful figure, the nearly penniless Gwendolen insists on considering him. In part, Eliot is mocking Gwendolen here? It feels as if we are meant to find her debating the prospect of accepting Grandcourt as an act hubris on the part of a young girl with few options. Yet, as with so many of Eliot's sketches of Gwendolen, while we may laugh a bit out of habit and thoughtlessness, further consideration compells an admiration of her unwillingness to concede to the way things are, the unjust place a young girl like her continually finds herself in by virtue of prejudices of her time. She refuses to play along. And, sadly of course, one could argue she is punished for it? Or, is Eliot suggesting something else with this novel: does Gwendolen end up punished because she ultimately does give-in and does play along by accepting the odious Grandcourt?

Or, are we debating an impossibility. Gwendolen can't but play along with the script dealt her. Outside of Grandcourt, she has few real options, or at least few real options that might allow her to develop, exercise and express her uniquely powerful character. For all her daring and bravado, Gwendolyn retains an awareness that she's extraordinarily limited by her time and place. Perhaps it is this combination which gives rise to her fits of existential anxiety. Eliot terms it a "spiritual dread" but hedges "this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into connection with the religion taught her or with any human relations. She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when for example, she was walking without companionship and there came some rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself"(63-64). When she experiences this in the past, she's "recovered the indifference to the vastness in which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world in which her will was of some avail...she had always hitherto recovered her confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire"(64).

Earlier, Eliot contrasted Gwendolyn's naturally nobility with her cousins lack of the same and finds it puzzling. Gwendolyn's nobility seems born of something within her, of her nature. As the first chapters epigraph suggests, Eliot is looking at character and identity as a novelist but with a scientist's frame of cause and effect. The entire novel can be considered a query on identity, examining both the causes and effects of identity. She goes toward locating its causes by defining it as an inherent source of self, as a collection of duties imposed upon a person by their ancestors, history, and the time and place of their birth. With her portrait of Gwendolyn, she also suggest part of its source lies in biology. As to its effects, the book would seem to posit a sense of identity as a determinative bedrock of character.

As mentioned, Gwendolyn is lacking in some of the constituent elements. While in possession of a regal, imperious nature, she lacks a necessary connection to something larger than herself, some entity that might roots her to something outside herself. It is a lack springing from her childhood circumstances and upbringing. In addition to lacking a serious parent, or any type of guiding adult, Gwendolyn lacks roots. Writing of Gwendolyn, Eliot laments, "Pity that Offendene was not the home of Miss Harleth's chilhood, or endeared to her by happy family memories! A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sound and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakeable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but by a sweet habit of the blood"(22). Eliot believes in a sustaining, childhood connection to place as "this blessed persistence in which affection can take root"(22).

Daniel too lacks strong roots, although the nature and effect of his lack is different. Daniel has some connection to a place: he's grown up in the orbit of Sir Hugo Malinger and in his various homes. However, his connection to Malinger is tenuous. One of the central oddities of the book is Daniel's seeming complacency in the face of the mystery surrounding his origins. Nobody tells him much that makes sense and he doesn't push the issue. He simply assumes that he might be the son of Sir Hugo, born out of wedlock. This causes him some anxiety. Unlike Gwendolyn, Daniel's absence of a past causes him to worry about his future; he is never able to dedicate himself to any particular future since he imagines that it should somehow be initimately determined by his past. He's convinced that if he were to know the details of his past, the course of his future would obviously suggest itself. More on Deronda's character in a future posting.