Daniel Deronda might show some stereotypes here and there, but the novel pushes those stereotypes onto individual characters instead of creating "types" of people.Īnother reason why people debate so much about this book is that it can sometimes feel like you're reading two different novels. If you've ever read other Victorian novels, like those by Charles Dickens, for example, you've probably seen Jewish characters portrayed in pretty unflattering ways.
That said, it was pretty much unheard of at the time for a novel to focus so much time and energy on Jewish characters and to portray them as normal, loving, good people. We're not going to say that you won't see some stereotypes in the novel, because you will. So why was this novel so controversial, and why is it so memorable? For one thing, it is one of the first novels published in the English language that takes on Jewish characters and portrays them in a sympathetic light. One cool thing about this book was that Eliot had to be really committed to the road she set her characters on, because the first parts of Daniel Deronda were published in book form before she actually wrote the last ones! The first book of Daniel Deronda was published in February of 1876, and the last one came out in September of that year.
Instead, the story was divided into manageable chunks of about 100 pages or so.
The novel was actually first published in monthly installments, so unlike you, her audience at the time didn't have this scary-looking novel of over 800 pages to tote around. While she's best known perhaps for novels like Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Daniel Deronda was one of Eliot's most controversial works and continues to attract a fair mix of praise, criticism, and debate even today. George Eliot was actually named Marian and/or Mary Ann Evans (who doesn't like options in spelling one's own first name?), but she took on a man's name when it came to her literary career because she believed that female authors were usually not taken seriously as writers – they tended to be pigeonholed as romance writers. Published in 1876, Daniel Deronda was George Eliot's final novel.
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