George Eliot's 1876 novel follows Gwendolen Harleth, a willful young Englishwoman trapped in a troubled marriage, and Daniel Deronda, who discovers his Jewish heritage while seeking his purpose in Victorian society. This ambitious work of fiction explores identity, moral responsibility, and the intersection of English and Jewish culture in nineteenth-century Britain.
Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars’ unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off _in medias res_. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out. Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was…Continue reading →
Born Mary Ann Evans in 1819, this brilliant Victorian novelist adopted a male pseudonym to ensure her work received serious consideration. Her psychologically complex novels like Middlemarch and Silas Marner revolutionized English literature by exploring moral dilemmas with unprecedented depth and realism, establishing her as one of literature's greatest voices. All works by George Eliot →
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