Vengeance and Transformation in Daniel Deronda

George Eliot published Daniel Deronda in , 4 years prior to her death in 1880 and 2 years prior to the death of her most significant other, George Lewes in 1878. The book was written with “tears in her eyes” (p. ix) and in a state of malaise and illness. Always a realist, the infirm George Eliot was aware of Lewes' ill health, and she did not think death for herself was far off. Three months after finishing Daniel Deronda, she wrote, “Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years” (Karl, , p. 562). Out of what majesty of spirit and intellectual élan did she succeed in writing this most ambitious of novels in the declining hours of her life? It was the last of her great novels, though not the last of her writing. Surely this masterpiece of prose fiction succeeds, not unlike the paintings of Rembrandt, because of the magnitude of risk, the formal complexity, and the deep-seated ambition it presents. I mention Rembrandt's paintings because of the association with realistic detail highlighted by warm, even mystical, illumination, and draftsmanship whose every stroke manifested the artist's character. The author of Daniel Deronda has created, and therefore cultivates in her readers, a work whose multilayered levels of reference elicit passionate, though diverse, experiences of feeling and reflection. As a story itself, the novel's plot lines are deeply stirring and existentially provocative. The plot lines, however, are set in an intellectual and cultural environment that refer backward to the deepest roots of human spiritual origin yet forward with prophetic passion to consider man's future in the light of modern forces. Her descriptive power is rich in minute detail, but her cultural references extend to the furthest horizons of thought and creative expression. Eliot's inspiration is her deep inner sense of moral vision, and her struggle is with the contradictions imposed by modern