8. A Wider Vision: Daniel Deronda

Program Description

In the 1870s, when George Eliot was in her 50s and at the height of her fame, she knew many believed "I must have already done my best," but she was amazed by "the number of and wide variety of subjects that attract me, and the enlarging vista each brings with it." It's not surprising that her final novel, Daniel Deronda, is her most controversial and ambitious. In it she takes the psychological insight, breadth of social vision, and concern with ethical development that characterize her earlier works in a daring new direction. Intertwining the story of the spoiled Gwendolyn Harleth, a beauty who disastrously marries for money, and the idealistic Daniel Deronda, who discovers his Jewish heritage and embraces the nascent Zionist movement, she creates a vivid tapestry of late-nineteenth century English and European life. Eliot's sympathetic portraits of Jewish characters were virtually unprecedented in English fiction and influenced many Zionist leaders. Daniel Deronda continues to inspire today: novelist Edmund White places it first in Eliot's oeuvre, arguing that it is "subtler, richer, more rapidly notated, and more challenging intellectually than anything that preceded or followed it."

In our discussions we will explore the range of questions the novel raises, seeking to understand Eliot's ideas and our reactions to them.

Discussion Leader

Nancy Carr is a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago who is also engaged in freelance teaching and discussion leading. She is drawn to Daniel Deronda by its searching investigation of how individuals can create an ethically meaningful life in a rapidly changing, often overwhelming world.

Books

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, Modern Library Classics (2002). ISBN: 0-375-76013-X. (paperback; introduction by Edmund White)