Last week, I finished my first George Eliot novel: Daniel Deronda. It wasn't by design that I read her last work first. It was simply the best looking book I could find in my room when I was looking for a new book to throw into the rotation last December.
I feel like I ought to do some sort of penance for waiting so long to read any Eliot. Though Daniel Deronda seems to generally be regarded as her best overall work (not her most famous or significant though; that will always be Middlemarch), it's obvious at all points throughout the novel that Eliot is a master of the English language and deserves as much credit as we can give her.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of DD is its insistence on giving agency to British Jews. For as genuinely forward thinking I believe my favorite 19th century British authors to be, even Emily Bronte has her ethnic taboos to work through as a post-modern, 21st century reader. Eliot, as a white, provincial author, actually wants to give credence to the Jewish race and religion. What's more, she does so without turning her 800 pages into a treatise in favor of better conditions for Jewish people in England. She weaves her commentary into a real plot, with real characters; a move ultimately more affective than any vitriolic political piece would actually be. That is not, however, to put it alongside Huck Finn or Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Both of those emphasize the existence of the Other and try to convince the reader that "they" really aren't so bad after all. But Eliot, more skilled as a writer and at crafting a plot, does what she can with 19th century British sensibilities to blur the lines creating the other. The main character enters as both. He is always already the other and the privileged set. I haven't read Silas Marner or Middlemarch (though I know I must, very soon), but Eliot is ahead of her time by, literally, a couple of centuries.
As an English major with a particular penchant for Dickens, the Brontes, and Austen, I won't lie to myself or to any of you and claim that I can speak to the novels broad appeal to the average 2011 reader. I loved it, but it was probably more "boring" than Wuthering Heights, so be warned.
But if you do decide to pick up this veritable masterpiece, I urge you to finish it (as I always do). It is worth every second. Every word finds its place alongside others in ways you've never before experienced. Wrap your mind around Daniel Deronda and you'll be a better reader. Do so with an open heart, and you just might be a better person too.
-Zack
It's great, and agree with you completely. I think anyone who digs the narrative style of Mad Men where nothing can seem to happen for episodes but where there is a gentle building of themes and characters, would love Eliot. So much better than a lot of her peers. You should check out Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss. I read MM every couple of years and it always feels like a different book to me. I'd probably avoid Romola though.
ReplyDeleteCheers
Steven