In the epigram to the first chapter of Daniel Deronda, Eliot compares the novelist to the scientist. She does so again in the epigram to chapter 16. She writes, " Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction...and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action"(164). Eliot's perspective on character is the scientist's; she believes it can be accounted for, it's causes located. Of course, unlike the scientist, the novelist is a creator/locator of effect as well as cause. Daniel Deronda is clearly her hero, a virtuous exemplar, and part of her novel's project is to imagine how such a character might come about.
Unlike the scientist, the novelist is after both the everyday and the exceptional. In focusing on Daniel, Eliot is not looking to the ordinary but the exceptional in the ordinary. Such a character demand exceptional origins, but not too exceptional. The exceptional and extraordinary falls within the scientist's study. This is not necessarily true of the novelist who is working within a much more didactic tradition. To be a bit reductive, as a novelist, Eliot is after a recipe of sorts for a hero. For it to be of some use, it must be practicable. Her task is a difficult one. It is hard to see how she will square all the demands she's placed on herself.
The central, determining fact of Daniel's life is his murky origin and his mysterious and hard to credit reaction to it. Apparently, because he is so happy living with his Uncle Hugo, he has no great curiousity as to his parents and is content with the smidgen of information that Uncle Hugo provides him. When he comes to fear that he might be Hugo's son and a bastard, a fear of discovering more and his sensitivity about what others actually think of him, leads him to develop a reserve. As a reader, his willful ignorance makes sense at a certain level, but ultimately requires some suspension of disbelief.
Because it strains credulity, Eliot's insistence on Daniel's willful and semi-content ignorance indicates it is in her mind an essential foundation to his character. A creature like Daniel must be sui generis. Yet, how to accomplish this outside of making him an orphan or bastard, both of which options carry semantic/literary baggage presenting potential problems. Orphans lack the means that Daniel will need; Eliot still retains a great faith in a classic and traditional education that would not credibly open to many orphans. Bastards traditionally have been portrayed as warped characters by virtue of their position outside society. Yet, Eliot seemingly can't see Daniel growing into who she wishes him to be from traditional, societally sanctioned soils.
Distrusting most parents, Eliot would have her hero be without such a burden and liability; she doesn't want him to inherit the prejudices of a parent nor have his freedom restricted by a traditional parent. Fallen parents wish to replicate themselves, and Eliot is looking to create a less fallen man. Yet, she want him to have the love of a parent; her hero needs to feel loved as a child. However, her hero can't be touched and bound by the parent.
The wonderfully drawn "Uncle" Hugo serves as a solution. Daniel admires him with a filial intensity that is not entirely warranted or rewarded. To be fair, Uncle Hugo does provide him "with what would generally be considered more than the due love and nurture"(175). But, there is clearly a distance between the two. Hugo is shallow. Daniel as a boy seems a more serious and thoughtful than his "parent." thouthe most worldly of men and wonderfully unaware of it. His own education seems to have been largely wasted on him. Discussing futures with Daniel, he warns him away from becoming a don, or to investing his time to heavily in the classics, cautioning, "'unless a man can get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it's hardly worthwhile of him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself, and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you'll give him as cue. That is all very fine, but in practical life, nobody gives you the cue for pages of Greek'"(177).
Daniel seems very different and actually seems to have taken to learning at some level. At thirteen, his knowledge is primarily from books, but it's clear that he holds it tight. Eliot writes, "he could have talked with the wisdom of a bookish child"(167) and tells of how "he had often made stories about Pericles or Columbus, just to fill up the blanks before they became famous"(168). In this latter activity, he seems a version of the novelist herself? Moreover, when the time comes for application, he's capable of letting his learning and its habits inform his experience, as when he first imagines he might be a bastard and "the ardor which he had given to the imaginary world in his books suddenly rushed toward his own history and spent its pictorial energy there, explaining what he knew, representing the unknown"(167).
In addition to leaving him relatively untouched by a parent or adult, Eliot also seems to work against her scientific endeavor, her recipe for a hero, by gifting him with apparent gifts of character as a child. Eliot does not present Daniel as a blank slate. First, she repeatedly refers to his having a loving nature. She writes, "For in what related to himself his resentful impulses had early been checked by a mastering affectionatness"(178). Likewise, she remarks, "If Daniel had been of a less ardently affectionate nature, the reserve about himself and the supposition that others had something to his disadvantage in their minds, might have turned into a hard, proud antagonism".
It is this ardent loving nature which conditions his response to his circumstances. However, while an ardent loving nature may not be rare, Eliot nevertheless qualifies Daniel's response or reading of his circumstances as rare, again suggesting essential aspects of Daniel's character as inherent. Eliot claims, "the sense of an entailed disadvantage...makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer sort, who presently see their own frustrated claim as one among myriad, the inexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship and make the imagination tender"(175). Above, Eliot makes mention of yeast, as in a recipe, yet her account seems more descriptive, like a natural history, rather than prescriptive.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Daniel and Gwendolen connections in Eliot's Daniel Deronda
In an earlier posting, I began to ask what Eliot was after in wedding the two strains of her story. I wasn't entirely sure upon a first reading of the book. In re-reading, one does note similarities between the characters.
-Daniel and Gwendolen are both raised by single parents. Sir Hugo has a wife but she doesn't seem to interact with Daniel on any level, much less a parental one. Gwendolen is raised by her foolish, easily-led mother. Daniel by his father. Neither does much in the way of parenting. Eliot comically notes "the lightness with which the preparation of young lives seems to lie on respectable consciences"(174).
-Daniel and Gwendolen are both striking physical specimens who provoke admiration in the literal sense of the word. In the midst of a description of a youthful Daniel's person and talents upon a crowd, the normally loquacious Eliot simply ends, "Everyone was admiring him"(169) as if she must here stop and simply admire herself.
-Both aspire to be gentlefolk, despite the fact that they weren't born to it. But, Daniel never harbors the outsider's perspective. Born to a gentleman's state, he sees it as natural.
Daniel and Gwendolen contrast.
-Unlike the emotionally frigid Gwendolen, Daniel is of a "ardently affectionate nature" which protects him against growing a "hard, proud antagonism" in reaction to the mystery surrounding his origins (171).
-Gwendolen loves her mother but hardly admires her in any sense. Daniel has a profound filial attachment to Sir Hugo. It's a bit hard to credit seeing as Daniel is a fairly subatantial and serious character while Sir Hugo seems like a shallow, good-time Charlie. He is Daniel's hero and when it seems he's harboring a secret suggesting flaws, he experiences a "revolutionary shock" which Eliot likens to that of a believer first doubting his or her "habitual beliefs" and feeling the world "totter"(172).
-Daniel is educated.
-Daniel is susceptible, or sensitive. His hardships and handicaps have had the effect of making him capable of recognizing the pain and suffering of others. The circumstances of his birth have caused him to be kind in the face of like suffering and injustice.
-Daniel and Gwendolen are both raised by single parents. Sir Hugo has a wife but she doesn't seem to interact with Daniel on any level, much less a parental one. Gwendolen is raised by her foolish, easily-led mother. Daniel by his father. Neither does much in the way of parenting. Eliot comically notes "the lightness with which the preparation of young lives seems to lie on respectable consciences"(174).
-Daniel and Gwendolen are both striking physical specimens who provoke admiration in the literal sense of the word. In the midst of a description of a youthful Daniel's person and talents upon a crowd, the normally loquacious Eliot simply ends, "Everyone was admiring him"(169) as if she must here stop and simply admire herself.
-Both aspire to be gentlefolk, despite the fact that they weren't born to it. But, Daniel never harbors the outsider's perspective. Born to a gentleman's state, he sees it as natural.
Daniel and Gwendolen contrast.
-Unlike the emotionally frigid Gwendolen, Daniel is of a "ardently affectionate nature" which protects him against growing a "hard, proud antagonism" in reaction to the mystery surrounding his origins (171).
-Gwendolen loves her mother but hardly admires her in any sense. Daniel has a profound filial attachment to Sir Hugo. It's a bit hard to credit seeing as Daniel is a fairly subatantial and serious character while Sir Hugo seems like a shallow, good-time Charlie. He is Daniel's hero and when it seems he's harboring a secret suggesting flaws, he experiences a "revolutionary shock" which Eliot likens to that of a believer first doubting his or her "habitual beliefs" and feeling the world "totter"(172).
-Daniel is educated.
-Daniel is susceptible, or sensitive. His hardships and handicaps have had the effect of making him capable of recognizing the pain and suffering of others. The circumstances of his birth have caused him to be kind in the face of like suffering and injustice.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
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
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).
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).
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