Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot Book

A very interesting short treatise (154 pages) on the motivations that led George Eliot to write her last novel with a Jewish protagonist. In Daniel Deronda she has created a character who finds his Jewish roots and eventually becomes an avid Zionist. She was primarily self-taught through a voluminous amount of reading (the Talmud, medieval sages, Maimonides and higher biblical criticism) and translations of Hebrew texts. Surprisingly, she had mixed opinions about Jews, "my gentile nature kicks most resolutely against any assumption of superiority in the Jews...everything specifically Jewish is of a low grade." Then in turn, she creates one of the most sympathetic Jewish characters in Victorian literature. Remember, this was the time when Dickens was creating Fagin in Oliver Twist. This book does a fine job of describing the dichotimy of her life. She is supremely independent, assumes a male pen name, yet considers herself a conservative politically and refuses to support the enfranchisement of women. While Eliot is unsparing in describing Jewish vices, she is equally impressed by their virtues. Many of the issues she depicts in Deronda are still prevalent today, such as assimilation, anti-Semitism,Jewish self-hatred, and she was prescient in predicting a Jewish homeland. Himmelfarb does a wonderful job describing how relevant the themes in this book remain today. She reminds us of the fact that Eliot wrote Deronda long before the Holocaust and that ELiot did not view a homeland for the Jewish people "as a refuge for desperate people,...Jewish identity for Deronda was not imposed upon them by others, ...it was Judaism, the religion and the people, that created the Jewish state." As can be expected, the "Jewish element" of the novel was not well received by the public (it was published in two parts, the English part and the "Jewish" half), except of course, among Jews, who were delighted with her portrayal and the accuracy of her novel. She was remarkably brave in writing a novel which she knew in advance would "satisfy nobody" and would probably be received with repugnance. This is a book I would highly recommend reading in conjunction with the novel as it will provide great insight to the characters and the politics of the era.