Daniel Deronda
A fresh look at a classic novel
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 014043 427 9. £8.99. Rereading George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda at the same time as My Name is Asher Lev, it occurred to me that the story of the latter is actually subsumed into a single chapter of the former. When Daniel finally meets the mother who abandoned him in youth, and uncovers his Jewish heritage, he finds an artist who rejected the narrow confines of a single community in favour of the freedom to perform in the wider world. Just like Asher Lev, you might say. Daniel, though, makes a different choice, to commit his life to ‘separateness with communication’. His mother remarks bitterly, and probably perspicaciously, ‘That separateness seems sweet to you because I saved you from it’.
