DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Title

Daniel Deronda: The Cultural Imperative of Religion

Authors

Annemarie Frank

Date of this Version

2008

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 39 (2008)

Comments

Published by The George Eliot Review Online https://GeorgeEliotReview.org

Abstract

George Eliot's last novel Daniel Deronda differs strikingly from her earlier works in the presentation of its protagonists and her innovative use of the literary genres of realism and romanticism. In her earlier novels Eliot had espoused an idea of humanism that transcended social class by fictionalizing the small but significant contributions ordinary men and women make towards England's social and cultural progress. Eliot had created realistic heroes with human frailties on the principle that 'human deeds are made up of the most subtly intermixed good and evil'.1 Furthermore, she had attacked the ideal hero type, who was the favourite subject of certain 'lady novelists', as unrealistic, dishonest and mischievous? Stowe's Dred, for example, was criticized for idealizing slaves and implying that they were inherently better than their masters.3 Yet, in Deronda, Eliot could be accused of similar bias when she depicts Deronda, Mirah and Mordecai as seemingly flawless Jews, while the secular figures of Gwendolen and Grandcourt are morally corrupt. Eliot's main complaint against the kind of fiction which falls loosely into the category of romance was its author's inability to 'describe actual life and her fellow-men'.4 In its stead, Eliot advocated 'genuine observation, humour, passion' ,5 which became her trademark and definition of realism.

I will argue that Eliot explored in Deronda the dichotomies that she perceived in the kind of pluralism, tolerance and cultural progress she had advocated in her earlier works. The cultural discourse which Eliot seeks to address was defined by religious, scientific and philosophical views; they disrupted each others' assumptions, but also contributed toward an expanding view of the world and how it functions. Mikhail Bakhtin's conceptual theory of discourse can illustrate how Deronda explored a complex process between incompatible ideas like secularism and religion and the function of tensions between them. Bakhtin identifies contrasting ideological tensions as a 'contradiction-riddle, tension-filled unity of two embattled tendencies'.6 According to Bakhtin, both orthodox sentiments that act as centripetal elements and their opposite, centrifugal forces, which disrupt that activity, are necessary for progress: 'alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted process of decentralization and disunification go forward.'7 In Deronda these contrasting sentiments are enacted between religion and secularism, Judaism and common cultural forces; some sought to make things cohere, while others preferred new ideas.