Analysis of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 1, 2025

The last of George Eliot’s seven novels, published in eight parts between February and September 1876, Daniel Deronda has a double structure that follows two protagonists, Daniel Deronda and Gwendolyn Harleth, in their intertwined search for self-fulfillment. Eliot breaks new ground both in content and narrative style. She creates a hero who is an English gentleman by his rearing and education but is, by birth, a member of a despised ethnic group—the Jews. In doing so, she deliberately and subtly places English anti-Semitism on trial without having to display it, a move of interest to New Historicist critics. She also comments on the limited lives that women lead as dependents on the goodwill and good fortune of the men to whom they have ties by birth or marriage, an approach of interest to Feminist critics.

Both of her protagonists are problematic: Deronda is at times stiff and sanctimonious, while Gwendolen is mostly scheming and self-serving. Contrasting with the slow unfolding panorama of Eliot’s first novel, Adam Bede (1859), Daniel Deronda opens in medias res at a German spa and casino, narrated through omniscient third-person point of view. The coldly beautiful young woman who is the focal point of the opening scene wins and loses a large sum of money. Although she remains seemingly indifferent to her changing luck, she suffers anxiety beneath her cool demeanor; she fears seeming to be concerned about money in front of the glittering roulette-table throng more than she fears losing it. Only a strong will controls her emotions.

She notices a darkly handsome man watching in apparent fascination, but he is unknown to her. The gambler turns out to be Gwendolen Harleth; the man watching her is Daniel Deronda. As the action rises, Gwendolen’s mother summons her home. Hoping to recover some losses before leaving, Gwendolen sells her turquoise necklace. Almost immediately, before she can return to the gaming tables, an anonymous benefactor purchases the necklace and returns it to her. She suspects that the unknown young man has redeemed the necklace and feels too embarrassed to gamble with the money acquired from the sale of her jewelry. Her reticence foreshadows Deronda’s later effect on her future.

When she arrives home at Offendene, her mother informs her that the family fortune has been lost through risky investments, calling to mind Gwendolen’s own recent gambling. Gwendolen, her widowed mother, and four homely stepsisters will be obligated to move into a humble cottage, and Gwendolen will have to work as a governess. Desperate to find a means of support, Gwendolen searches for a simple and quick way to income.

Then begins a lengthy flashback, relating events that led Gwendolen to the gambling tables of Leubronn. Readers learn that her mother had relocated to Offendene a year earlier in order to place her daughters within the social sphere of her wealthy, respectable sister and brother-in-law, the Gascoignes. Gwendolen had rejected her cousin’s offer of love in order to pursue the newly arrived Mallinger Grandcourt. The symbolically named Mallinger is the n’er-do-well heir of Sir Hugo Mallinger, a wealthy man who lacks sons but has a male ward—Daniel Deronda. Although Deronda believes himself Sir Hugo’s illegitimate son, reared by him to the exacting standards of an English gentleman, he has no certain knowledge of his origins, and the family inheritance has been settled on Grandcourt, whose surname correctly suggests a man of high ambition but little substance.

Then begins a pursuit of self-identity by the two main characters that will lead each to find an unexpected destiny. Gwendolen eventually marries Grandcourt for his money, although she had promised Mrs. Lydia Glasher, with whom Grandcourt had fathered four children, that she would abandon her pursuit of him, as Lydia confided she hoped to marry Grandcourt and legitimize their children. That Gwendolen breaks her promise and marries for money, trading her honor for material goods, proves her lack of self-value and highlights her desperation, egoism, and manipulative nature. Her view of herself as a commodity interests Marxist, as well as Feminist critics.

The exposition also provides insight into Deronda’s history. A successful student at Cambridge, he had befriended the poverty-stricken Hans Meyrick and helped him earn a scholarship. However, Deronda is dissatisfied with his life at university, feeling undirected. While reared as a member of the English upper class, he lacks a sense of identity and goals. He leaves school and travels to expand his practical education. While rowing on the Thames one day, he rescues the beautiful Jewish woman, Mirah Lapidoth, from drowning, then lodges her with the Meyrick family. He later discovers Mirah has run away from a brutal father and become separated from a beloved mother and brother. The Meyricks provide her a secure home while Deronda undertakes locating her family as his personal quest. In his pursuits, he develops a strong interest in Judaism, thus making strides toward discovering his self-identity, in contrast to Gwendolen, who has nearly destroyed hers.

Grandcourt turns out to be a good match for Gwendolen. Dictatorial, cold, and cruel, he makes her miserable despite the wealth and prestige the marriage brings her. Deronda’s connection to Sir Hugo places him in the same social sphere, so that Gwendolen sees him frequently at parties and dinners. She eventually confesses her guilt to Deronda, who advises Gwendolen to atone by devoting herself to the welfare of those oppressed by misfortune. She promises to follow his advice but does not at first succeed.

Searching for Mirah’s lost family, Deronda locates and reunites them with Mirah. Their unification foreshadows his own personal identification with the Jews, as well the suggestion that the Jews as a race must unite. He also meets a Jewish intellectual named Mordecai and learns to share his political ideas, which include the dream of a Jewish nation-state. Unexpectedly, Deronda receives a letter from Sir Hugo telling him the identity of his mother, who wishes to meet her son before expiring of a fatal illness. He learns from her of his Jewish descent and how she had placed him with her friend, Sir Hugo, so he might escape common prejudice against the Jews.

As Deronda develops a Jewish identity, Gwendolen further alienates herself from family when she allows Grandcourt to drown through her inaction following a boating accident. She later shares her suffering over Grandcourt’s death with Deronda, and readers understand that she loves him. However, Deronda hopes to marry Mirah and not only physically join a Jewish family but also share their racial struggle, serving the Jews by helping to establish a homeland. Deronda meets Gwendolen one last time to tell her of his plans, and she does not receive the news well. Later, however, she at last masters her feelings and sends Deronda a letter, ironically on his wedding day, informing him that his presence in her life has made her a better person.

Gwendolen and Deronda represent mimetic inverses of each other. He repudiates life among the upper classes, embracing his exile heritage, and she begins an exile from self-fulfillment, repudiating her most basic human instincts in order to secure her place in the upper classes. Gwendolen manages to remain a sympathetic character, however; victimized due to her gender, she must accommodate herself to limited options. Such limitations cause her great suffering but also promote her final heroic epiphany as she moves beyond her bitterness to accept Deronda’s rejection, yet still acknowledge his value. Deronda, on the other hand, possesses a sacrificial nature that many critics find part of a too-perfect character. The events of the plot prepare him to accept and embrace his Jewish identity, so he exhibits little heroism in that act. He could reject his identity and hide the evidence to secure his elevated position in the English class structure, but he never shows any inclination to do so.

Some critics also indict the novel as too intellectually based. Unlike with her previous novels, Eliot had no memories or experiences on which to base her plot and characters, resulting in what some declare a colorless novel. Those who appreciate the novel, however, note that Eliot unifies her dissimilar stories through carefully crafted parallels, inversions, recurring images, character motivations, and plot developments; Eliot herself proclaimed that themes, images, and symbols interconnected the “Jewish story” and the traditional tale of marital machinations. The novel’s supporters also claim that Eliot executed a superb interrogation of 19th-century English assumptions about nation, class, race, religion, and gender. As part of that era, they write, she automatically identifies with those assumptions and can invest more than her intellect in plot development. While perhaps her least critically successful novel, Daniel Deronda remains popular. Modern readers find of special interest the prophetic nature of the story, as the novel predates the rise of Zionism by some two decades.

Bibliography
Caron, James. “The Rhetoric of Magic in Daniel Deronda.” Studies in the Novel 15, no. 1 (1983):1–9.
Gray, Beryl. George Eliot and Music. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
Irwin, Jane, ed. George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda Notebooks. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Nurbhai, Saleel, and K. M. Newton. George Eliot, Judaism, and the Novels: Jewish Myth and Mysticism. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Perkin, J. Russell. A Reception-History of George Eliot’s Fiction. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1990.
Semmel, Bernard. George Eliot and the Politics of National Inheritance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Shalvi, Alice, ed. Daniel Deronda: A Centenary Symposium. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, 1976.