Daniel Deronda

“And I feel sure that with a little murdering he might get a title.”

Gwendolen jokes about Grandcourt’s proximity to titles and wealth, suggesting that he would only need to kill a few people to gain a great inheritance. Her words are laden with tragic irony, given the way in which her marriage will unfold. She will grow to resent Grandcourt and will be implicated in his death, to the point that she fears she killed him.

“She was the central object of that pretty picture, and every one present must gaze at her.”

In Gwendolen’s perfect world, she is the protagonist. The structure of the novel briefly indulges her desire to be the center of attention, before eventually pulling back to reveal Daniel Deronda as the story’s protagonist. Gwendolen’s delusion, therefore, plays out in a structural sense, supporting her belief in her own importance before revealing her to be less consequential than she believes. The structure of the novel echoes the plot.

“But we know that she was not in the least fond of them—she was only fond of their homage—and women did not give her homage.”

Gwendolen does not have many female friends because most don’t give her the attention and adoration that she craves. Gwendolen tends to value people by how much they cater to her ego, rather than anything they offer in their own right. To her, the rest of society is merely an audience.

“The best horse will win in spite of pedigree, my boy.”

Sir Hugo assures Deronda that pedigree is largely irrelevant in the game of love. This will prove to be untrue, as Deronda becomes fixated on his own Jewish ancestry as a factor in any possible relationship with Mirah or Gwendolen. Despite Hugo’s assurances, his heritage is important, at least to him.

“At last she said in a low sweet voice, with an accent so distinct that it suggested foreignness and yet was not foreign, ‘I saw you before.’”

When he first hears Mirah’s accent, Deronda is struck by a sense of uncanniness. Mirah is a Jewish woman from Prague, whereas Deronda has been raised in England. Their accents are very different, but something about Mirah’s accent is not so foreign to him. The familiarity Deronda feels lays the foundations for his future bond with her. Deronda will discover his own Jewish and European ancestry, helping to explain why Mirah’s particular accent seems both foreign and familiar to him at the same time.

“She will never be an artist: she has no notion of being anybody but herself.”

In this quote, Mirah’s artistic potential is dismissed due to her inability to be anybody other than herself. Like Gwendolen, Mirah has harbored artistic ambitions of being a singer in the past, but her personality has limited her artistic expression. However, Gwendolen is limited by her struggle to empathize with others on an artistic level. Both women struggle with similar limitations, but for different reasons.

“Each was content to suffer some unshared sense of denial for the sake of loving the other’s society a little too well.”

The budding romance between Klesmer and Catherine is threatened by society’s expectations regarding social class. Catherine Arrowpoint is a member of the social elite, and Klesmer is not seen as her equal, though he is a respected musician who often interacts with the elite. Klesmer and Catherine love one another, but they understand that their social classes are incompatible; they nearly lose one another because of social pressure and expectations. In this world, people are willing to deny themselves true love so that they may adhere to a system that makes them miserable.

“Grandcourt is not a man to be always led by what makes for his own interest; especially if you let him see that it makes for your interest too.”

Lush advises Sir Hugo on how best to convince Grandcourt to sell him Diplow. Lush, who knows Grandcourt well, suggests that Grandcourt must come to the idea himself. Grandcourt does not care about money. He cares only about self-interest and spite, so much so that he is willing to sacrifice his own interests to deny others what they want. Grandcourt is the richest and most powerful figure in the novel, yet those closest to him realize that he is an influenceable child who is governed only by vindictiveness.

“He had no taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, full of petitioning solicitude and willing obedience.”

Grandcourt is rich and powerful enough that he can have anything that he wants, while his bad behavior is overlooked and indulged. Gwendolen fascinates him because she is the rare woman who does not do exactly as he wants. He suspects that she does not love him and she has shown herself to be independent, so the prospect of forcing her to do as he wants makes him all the more attracted to her. Grandcourt does not love Gwendolen; he loves the opportunity of bending a strong person to his will.

“This morning she could not have said truly that she repented her acceptance of Grandcourt, or that any fears in hazy perspective could hinder the glowing effects of the immediate scene in which she was the central object.”

On her wedding day, Gwendolen seemingly has everything she has ever wanted: She is the “central object” of attention in the scene. This achievement, however, is colored by the reality of the wedding. To become the center of attention, Gwendolen has been forced to marry a man she does not love. She is paying the price of her ambitions.

“I don’t want to make a living out of opinions.”

Deronda is relentlessly focused on helping other people. He is motivated by genuine empathy, but his outward focus also reflects a deeper insecurity about his identity. He does not truly know himself or his heritage, so he feels uncomfortable asserting himself, so much so that he does not even enjoy sharing his own opinions with others. Deronda’s insecurity and lack of knowledge about his heritage compel him to fade into the background.

“What you think has nothing to do with it.”

After their marriage is sealed, Grandcourt begins to show his true nature to Gwendolen. He emotionally abuses her, decimating her self-confidence by announcing that her opinions and thoughts have no value to him. She is an ornament in his life and he gives her thoughts as much credence as he does a house or a horse. Gwendolen has become an item of jewelry, a fashionable adornment to be shown off in public and then discarded in private.

“She sat in her splendid attire, like a white image of helplessness, and he seemed to gratify himself with looking at her.”

Gwendolen has always sought to be the center of attention. When she walks into the room as Grandcourt’s wife, she achieves this effect but at a tragic cost. She feels less human, less in control than ever before. The attention of others has taken away her agency—she is perceived as merely an image to be looked at.

“He had always been leaned on instead of being invited to lean. Sometimes he had longed for the sort of friend to whom he might possibly unfold his experience.”

Deronda is so driven by a desire to help people that his own problems are often overlooked. Privately, he wishes that he had a Deronda of his own, someone in whom he could confide his fears and anxieties. Deronda keeps this desire hidden from the world, continuing to bear the burdens of others.

“There are ugly debts standing on both sides.”

At the meeting of The Philosophers, the non-Jewish participants remark on the “ugly debts” that exist on both sides of the religious and ethnic divide. This remark, however, does not acknowledge the power imbalance between the two sides. Whatever perceived slight that Jewish people have committed against Christians is not comparable to the centuries of persecution faced by Jews. That even a group of supposedly educated men would propagate this misinterpretation of history illustrates the depths of antisemitism in British society, even among those who are supposedly sympathetic to Jewish people.

“She was thinking of Deronda much more than he was thinking of her.”

Gwendolen is much more dependent on Deronda than he is on her. For Deronda, Gwendolen’s plight is a secondary matter as he pursues his interest in Judaism and tries to help Mordecai and Mirah. Left alone, however, Gwendolen has become fixated on Deronda as her only means of escape from her terrible marriage. She places a burden on him that he never invited or expected, tasking her with freeing him from her problems. Gwendolen misinterprets her significance to Deronda, demonstrating that her self-centered thoughts have not been completely destroyed by her marriage.

“He would have denied that he was jealous; because jealousy would have implied some doubt of his own power to hinder what he had determined against.”

Grandcourt cannot bring himself to say that he is jealous of Deronda’s relationship with his wife. In a sense, he is correct. He cannot be jealous of their relationship because he does not desire any kind of emotional bond with his wife. However, he is jealous of Deronda’s ability to affect Gwendolen’s emotions in ways that he himself cannot. Grandcourt feels no positive or warm emotion. Instead, he envies another man’s ability to “dominate” Gwendolen.

“That separateness seems sweet to you because I saved you from it.”

Since Deronda did not grow up as a Jewish person, he has only observed Jewish culture from the outside. He is fascinated by Jewish culture, which to him is an intellectual pursuit. His mother points out that he does not understand the alienation and the prejudice endured by those who have grown up Jewish, so he can never truly understand what she saved him from. Deronda is privileged enough not to have experienced antisemitism throughout his life, allowing him to fetishize Jewish culture from an external perspective.

“I could not endure the prospect of failure and decline.”

Leonora wants to live on her own terms. When her singing voice began to falter, she chose to retire early rather than slip into seemingly humiliating ignominy. The tragedy of this assertion of agency is that her voice recovered; if she had waited, she might have continued doing what she loved.

“Grandcourt had an intense satisfaction in leading his wife captive after this fashion.”

Grandcourt insists that sailing and yachting are among his favorite pursuits. In reality, his favorite hobby is abusing his wife. He enjoys subjecting her to his company, knowing that she cannot escape him. At sea, she is even more trapped. Grandcourt sails his wife around the Mediterranean to demonstrate his power over her, a power that gives him “intense satisfaction.”

“Not by any one else—only by me—a dead face—I shall never get away from it.”

The sight of Grandcourt’s dead face disappearing from the waves is an echo of the macabre portrait which appeared in the earlier chapters. When the door sprung open and revealed the portrait, Gwendolen was shocked into silence. The dead face has followed her through her courtship, her marriage, and her decisions. Like a prophecy, the haunting of the dead face has come to pass. Between Lydia’s curse and the presence of the dead face, Gwendolen’s seemingly happy life has been marked by an inevitable movement toward tragedy.

“What I have will depend on what I accept.”

In the wake of Grandcourt’s death, Gwendolen struggles to put her life back together. In his will, Grandcourt denies her much of his fortune. But Gwendolen has the opportunity to decline this meager offering, reasserting the agency Grandcourt denied her while he was alive. Her awareness that she has the option of declining it illustrates Gwendolen’s ongoing efforts to rebuild her sense of self.

“It so happened that in passing the table his fingers fell noiselessly on the ring, and he found himself in the passage with the ring in his hand.”

Lapidoth excuses his crimes as inconsequential. As he steals Deronda’s ring, the prose echoes Lapidoth’s self-exculpation. The narrative mode switches into the passive voice, in which the ring happens to find itself in Lapidoth’s hand, who then happens to find himself in the passageway outside. At no point does Lapidoth actively steal the ring; he is just a passenger in the unfurling of events. Lapidoth is never seen again, and the passive voice disappears from the novel with him.