Commentary on “Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth: A Therapeutic Relationship?” by Bernard J. Paris

“Every rereading of a classic is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading … A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” (Calvino, 1982, pp. 127-128)

It is an honor to have the opportunity to discuss this very significant article authored by the dedicated Eliot scholar, Bernard Paris. The honor is enhanced by the significance of the issues that Dr. Paris raises in this article, not only for the novel Daniel Deronda but for psychoanalytic studies of literature as a whole.

In this article, Paris discusses a number of subjects of great relevance. He asks how we read the text of psychological novels, and how we distinguish the rhetoric of the author from the mimetic portraits she draws in the actual text. Since a major influence for this particular paper is psychoanalytic, he also indirectly raises the question if similar distinctions can be drawn in the clinical “text” of patients' verbal productions. I found his distinction of rhetoric versus mimetic portrait drawn from the actual text immensely helpful as an organizing basis for experiencing art in general, and I have found it helpful to think of patients' associations with this distinction of rhetoric versus actual text in mind. He also describes the differences between his 1965 readings of psychological literature, particularly the novel Daniel Deronda, and his contemporary rereadings of the same literature, influenced as he has been in the intervening years by the psychoanalyst Karen Horney. I shall refer in this discussion to his original reading as reading A and his subsequent rereading as reading B.

Much of his article is about the content of the novel Daniel Deronda, and specifically, about the literary integrity of the author's relationship to the characters she imagines. He raises serious questions as to whether Gwendolen Harleth, one of Eliot's more impressive characters, really undergoes significant personality development in the course of the novel. His current reading le