The Awakening of Conscience: Daniel Deronda – Editions Rémanence

Editions Rémanence book reviews

In her final and most ambitious novel, George Eliot moves beyond the pastoral realism of Middlemarch to explore the darker, more turbulent waters of the human spirit. Daniel Deronda (1876) is a book of stark contrasts: between the flesh and the spirit, the claustrophobic drawing rooms of the English gentry and the expansive vision of Jewish mysticism. It is a novel that asks a question as relevant to the theologian as it is to the novelist: what happens to a soul that worships nothing but itself?

The narrative is bifurcated, following two distinct paths that eventually intertwine. The first is that of Gwendolen Harleth, one of literature’s most complex anti-heroines. Beautiful, spoiled, and terrifyingly confident, Gwendolen is the embodiment of the modern will. She believes the world is a stage erected for her performance. She is a creature of the "world" in the biblical sense—obsessed with position, wealth, and the adoration of others. Yet, beneath her vanity lies a paralyzing dread, a "spiritual void" that she cannot name but frantically tries to fill with gambling and conquest.

The Purgatory of the Will

Gwendolen’s arc is a harrowing journey through a moral purgatory. Seeking to secure her future and save her family from financial ruin, she enters into a marriage with Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt. If Gwendolen represents the misguided will, Grandcourt represents the death of the will—a cold, reptilian dominance that seeks only to crush the spirit of others. He is a villain of absolute negation.

From a traditional perspective, Gwendolen’s suffering is the necessary breaking of the idol of the Self. Her marriage becomes a prison where her ego is systematically dismantled. It is in this pit of despair that her conscience begins to stir. She realizes that her actions have consequences, that the moral law is objective and unyielding, and that she cannot manipulate the universe to her liking. Her agony is the birth pangs of a soul.

The Lay Confessor

Enter Daniel Deronda. If Gwendolen is the penitent, Deronda is the confessor. A man of mysterious origins and profound empathy, he wanders through the novel looking for a vocation—a purpose higher than the idle life of an English gentleman. He becomes the mirror in which Gwendolen sees her true self. Their interactions are charged with a spiritual intensity that mimics the sacramental; she confesses her sins to him, not seeking legal absolution, but moral direction.

Deronda does not offer her cheap comfort. He offers her the "hard saying" of the Gospel: that she must look beyond her own small happiness to find peace. He teaches her that the "fear of the Lord"—or at least, the fear of doing wrong—is the beginning of wisdom. He is a Christ-like figure in his capacity to absorb her pain and reflect back a vision of a higher life.

The Vocation of Blood

While Gwendolen struggles with her demons, Deronda discovers his own destiny. Through his encounter with Mirah, a Jewish singer, and her brother Mordecai, a visionary dying of consumption, Deronda uncovers his Jewish heritage. Here, Eliot contrasts the aimless drift of secular society with the fierce, binding power of tradition and religion.

For Deronda, discovering he is Jewish is not a burden but a liberation. It gives him a "yoke" to bear—a duty to his people and his history. It is a powerful affirmation that man is not an atom floating in a void, but a link in a chain of generations, bound by a covenant. The novel suggests that true freedom is not doing "whatever one wants" (Gwendolen’s initial error), but submitting oneself to a duty that is larger than life.

A Warning and a Promise

Daniel Deronda is a challenging book. It warns us that the wages of egoism are a living death, a contraction of the soul until it suffocates. But it also promises that grace can operate in the most unlikely places—even at a roulette table. It suggests that if we are willing to be broken, we may yet be made whole.