{"id":7341,"date":"2010-01-21T09:39:43","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T13:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=7341"},"modified":"2010-01-21T09:39:43","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T13:39:43","slug":"daniel-derondas-double-heroine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/01\/21\/daniel-derondas-double-heroine\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Deronda’s “Double Heroine”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"george_eliot_640\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Adamson notes that the \u201cdouble-heroine\u201d structure is worthy of further study whether it be (and I hope I am not over-reading here) in canonical literature or in popular literature.\u00a0 In his response to my post, he mentions one of my favourite novels, Daniel Deronda<\/em><\/a> by George Eliot.\u00a0 The novel itself was added to my field exam bibliography late in the process, and I remember groaning when it happened (and also questioning why a realist novelist was to be included).\u00a0 However, as I started to read the novel, I quickly became entranced by it and ended up getting through it in a single day.\u00a0 But, after thinking about Joe’s response, I’d have to say our readings are different.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that Daniel Deronda\u2019s selection of Mirah isn’t that he selects the \u201cdark Jewish heroine\u201d as a rebellious move, but rather that the choice is, in many ways, a reinscription of Frye\u2019s structure of romance.\u00a0 The great \u201csurprise\u201d of Daniel Deronda<\/em> is the protangonist’s realization that he is Jewish and not Christian. His marrying Mirah is really, I think, quite similar to Ivanhoe<\/em> \u2013 although in Eliot\u2019s novel, what has been reversed or inverted is not structural, but religious.\u00a0 That is, the structure of the marriage hasn\u2019t been disrupted nor has the definition of community \u2013 if anything, Deronda is the sort of pharmakos<\/em> character (rather than hero) who must be accepted by the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

Daniel Deronda<\/em> is, because of the problems of religion and genre, fascinating, especially in light of Frye\u2019s writings on genre.\u00a0 The \u201cproblem\u201d with the novel \u2013 if there is a problem \u2013 is that it is two novels.\u00a0 Many critics have pointed this out; F.R. Leavis, for instance, memorably suggests that the Jewish novel should be edited out and readers left with the Christian novel named, Gwendolen Harleth<\/em>.\u00a0 Of course, the opposite argument has been made as well.\u00a0 In a recent article, \u201cWriting the Philosemitic Novel: Daniel Deronda Revisted\u201d (Prooftexts<\/em> 28, 2008), Alan T. Levenson writes: \u201c[i]f gentile readers preferred Gwendolyn to Daniel on literary grounds, and Jewish readers preferred Daniel to Gwendolyn on political grounds, all agreed that the novel intended to champion Jewry\u2014a perspective, which, as we shall see, has been challenged in more recent criticism\u201d (130).<\/p>\n

But this \u201cdouble novel\u201d with its \u201cdouble heroines\u201d also includes a hero who serves a \u201cdouble\u201d purpose (if not more).\u00a0 Deronda acts as the conduit between the two novels and is able to take on the role of hero of tragedy \u2013 for Gwendolen\u2019s story is tragic \u2013 and hero of romance \u2013 Deronda\u2019s story proper.\u00a0 Eliot’s \u201cgenius\u201d is that she is able to weave these two narratives together and allow readers to \u201cidentify with characters.\u201d\u00a0 Frye, in his notebooks on romance, observes that \u201c[i]dentifying ourselves with a character we like is the first step towards genuine identity.\u00a0 The next identification is with the social group presented, identifying in the sense of participation\u201d (CW<\/em> XV:237).\u00a0 The challenge \u2013 which really marks Eliot\u2019s \u201cgenius\u201d \u2013 is that she presents a hero with whom many identify, but then this identification is suddenly disrupted by the realization that Deronda is Jewish.\u00a0 That is, we move from the archetypal hero to the \u201cdark hero\u201d character.\u00a0 How then does one\u2019s identification with a character change when the narrative includes such a religious and radical change?\u00a0 Frye goes on to say that, \u201c[t]hen we move to realizing that romance, with all its snobbery, deals with projections of ourselves, not with the divine being out of reach.\u00a0 Somewhere in here goes the final renunciation of social mythology and the turn toward genuine literature\u201d (CW<\/em> XV:237).\u00a0 I am not sure that I fully understand the idea of a\u00a0 \u201cgenuine literature\u201d (it sounds strangely and uncomfortably Bloomian), but Eliot\u2019s Daniel Deronda<\/em> certainly seems to draw upon these ideas, at least in my own reading of it.<\/p>\n

In many regards, Deronda becomes like the \u201cdouble heroine,\u201d but he embodies both heroines (and of course is the hero rather than heroines \u2013 although, like heroines, he is virginal).\u00a0 He is the hero of Gwendolen\u2019s story and also of Mirah\u2019s story.\u00a0 However, he only fulfills the requirements of the romantic hero in one of these stories and readers are left to come to terms with this heroism and ultimately to decide if they are satisfied with Eliot\u2019s choices.\u00a0 It would, however, seem that Eliot has managed to bring, as Joe puts it, the \u201cthe two cadences or \u2018creative moods\u2019 of romance, the comic and the tragic or romantic, the social and the withdrawn, the world of ritual and the world of dream,\u201d together in the character of Deronda.<\/p>\n

All of this being said, I was introduced to the novel as a Comparatist who is in fact a Hispanist.\u00a0 English literature is a foreign literature in my research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Adamson notes that the \u201cdouble-heroine\u201d structure is worthy of further study whether it be (and I hope I am not over-reading here) in canonical literature or in popular literature.\u00a0 In his response to my post, he mentions one of my favourite novels, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot.\u00a0 The novel itself was added to my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[92,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-criticism","category-notebooks"],"yoast_head":"\nDaniel Deronda's "Double Heroine" - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/01\/21\/daniel-derondas-double-heroine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Daniel Deronda's "Double Heroine" - 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