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    Daniel Deronda
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    Daniel Deronda
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    Daniel Deronda
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Daniel Deronda

    Written by George Eliot

    Narrated by Eleanor Bron

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

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    About this audiobook

    Penguin Classics presents George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actress Eleanor Bron.

    'What can I do? ... I must get up in the morning and do what every one else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. I seem to see all that can be - and I am tired and sick of it. And the world is all confusion to me'

    George Eliot's last, most controversial novel opens as the spoiled Gwendolen Harleth, poised at a roulette table about to throw away a small fortune, captivates Daniel Deronda. As their lives become intertwined, they are also transformed by suffering, misfortune, revelations and Daniel's fascination with the Jewish singer Mirah. Daniel Deronda shocked Victorian readers with its portrayal of the Jewish experience in British society, and remains a moving and epic portrayal of human passions.

    Part of a series of vintage recordings taken from the Penguin Archives. Affordable, collectable, quality productions - perfect for on-the-go listening.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin UK Audio
    Release dateMay 31, 2012
    ISBN9780718198503
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot’s best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.

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    Reviews for Daniel Deronda

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Ambitious and thought-provoking, as always. Daniel Deronda begins as a traditional novel of courtship and marriage. Then, a hundred pages in, it becomes an unconventional exploration of nationalism and morality, with a conclusion that I'm sure would have been quite daring for its time.

      I'm not sure how well Eliot's musings about nationalism have aged; in a large part this book is about ethnic identity and Zionism, and Daniel Deronda's happily ever after as a Zionist feels unconvincing now that we've had sixty years of conflict in Palestine. Eliot's specific claims - that, despite the fact that some people just aren't interested in their background, or that background entails suffering in the form of discrimination or internal sexism, group identity has something to offer its members - is something with which most people will agree to a point, but perhaps not to the point that Eliot wants to take it.

      However, I imagine this was a groundbreaking novel in its portrayal of Jewish characters, and the comparisons between the female characters in Mirah's world and Gwendolen herself were genius.

      I also found Daniel, while at times a bit preachy, a very compelling character, whose total willingness to sympathize and try to understand the world leaves him unable to act in it. From this perspective, Daniel's taking on an identity is crucial and gives him a context from which to act. His adoption of this identity feels troublesomely random, but perhaps this is Eliot being a bit sly and unessentialist.
    • 4/5
      I really love Eliot, and I found this book really good. Eliot's style is great and she writes so beautifully, the characters are worked out well and are believable in their doubts and problems.What I found special about this book is the way Eliot writes about Jews. In Eliot's days it wasn't common to say anything positive about Jews, and though the characters have the common prejudices against Jews, the Jewish characters are such nice, good people that they all come to love them. Daniel Deronda himself is actually happy to find out that he is Jewish too. This is such a contrast with the way Jews are usually described in 18th and 19th century literature that I found it very refreshing. Apparently it didn't help to increase the popularity of the book at the time and many people felt it was wrong of Eliot to write something like this, so I think it was quite brave of her to do so anyway.Besides this, it's just a beautiful story, of love and kindness, but also of cruelty; it's a coming-of-age type of story in Gwendolyn's discovery of what the real world is like, and a bit of a mystery-story in Daniel's search for his parents and his identity. A book that has many different aspects, and definitely highly recommended...
    • 4/5
      Not for the faint hearted, make sure to drink plenty of liquids before hand, but well worth the effort. Plenty of bon-mots for the book club.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful classic novel by George Eliot about a young jewish man's struggles to survive and choose the right love.This is one of the most beautifully written novels of its day, and is timeless in its message.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Daniel Deronda is one of the most admirable and remarkable characters I've ever encountered. He is saintly and kind but he hasn't been very dynamic in the novel. However, Gwendolyn Harneth takes the place of the female protagonist who was a spoiled brat at first but has encountered so many strifes, brought about by the consequences of her actions, which led her to a painful curve towards learning. Eliot's attempt to explore Jewish mysticism is difficult to muddle through, even with copious footnotes. I love this book but I'm looking forward to read Mill of the Floss and Middlemarch this year so I am not certain which one I will like best until I read the others.
    • 3/5
      There are few times when I find myself completely agreeing with critics of the books I read, but in the case of "Daniel Deronda" (1876) I found the observation from F.R. Leavis that the book ought to have been split in half and the good part be published separately under the title "Gwendolen Harleth" dead-on. For "Daniel Deronda" has two main story lines which are only loosely coupled, and while the one featuring haughty and spiritually bereft Gwendolen Harleth sizzles from the first page ("Was she beautiful or not beautiful?"), the other, featuring the Jewish characters Mirah, Mordecai, and Daniel drag the book down. Comparing the book to her masterpiece "Middlemarch" may be unfair, but what's missing is its breadth of characters and life; in the Deronda portions of the book in particular Eliot is too heavy-handed and often falls into over-analysis. There are some who will recoil at occasional overt anti-semitic statements; I cut Eliot some slack because (1) as with other authors we must remember the time in which she wrote, (2) the overall message about the profundity of the Jewish faith embodied in its spiritual characters is quite positive, and (3) Eliot was about 20 years ahead of her time in suggesting that a separate Israeli state be created (Herzl's "The Jewish State" was published in 1896), though she was a bit naive ("there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a neutral ground..." Ha!). It's also clear from a letter she wrote to Harriet Beecher Stowe that her intentions were 100% good.The character of Gwendolen is memorable, as is her marriage to the reptilian Grandcourt, who slowly but surely squeezes the life out of her like a boa constrictor. If the book could have been 200-300 pages shorter such that the Deronda portions were present but streamlined and a subplot, it would have been far better.Quotes:On marriage:"...to become a wife and wear all the domestic fetters of that condition, was on the whole a vexatious necessity. Her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state, in which a woman could not do what she liked, had more children than were desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevocably immersed in humdrum. Of course marriage was social promotion; she could not look forward to a single life; but promotions have sometimes to be taken with bitter herbs...""Perhaps other men's lives were of the same kind - full of secrets which made the ignorant suppositions of the women they wanted to marry a farce at which they were laughing in their sleeves."Further, on women's position in the world:"We women can't go in search of adventures - to find out the North-West passage or the source of the Nile, or to hunt tigers in the East. We must stay where we grow, or where the gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like flowers, to look as pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining. That is my notion about the plants: they are often bored, and that is the reason why some of them have got poisonous.""You are not a woman. You can try - but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern cut out - 'this is the Jewish woman; this is what you must be; this is what you are wanted for; a woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.' That was what my father wanted."On the goodness that exists potentially in all of us:"...if only these two beautiful young creatures could have pledged themselves to each other then and there, and never through life have swerved from that pledge! For some of the goodness which Rex believed in was there. Goodness is a large, often prospective word; like harvest, which at one stage when we talk of it lies all underground, with an indeterminate future: is the germ prospering in the darkness? at another, it has put forth delicate green blades, and by-and-by the trembling blossoms are ready to be dashed off by an hour of rough wind or rain. Each stage has its own particular blight, and may have the healthy life choked out of it by a particular action of the foul land which rears or neighbours it, or by damage brought from foulness afar."On knowing another person:"Attempts at description are stupid: who can all at once describe a human being? even when he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by innumerable impressions under different circumstances."On ignorance:"Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations."On delusion:"Parents are astonished at the ignorance of their sons, though they have used the most time-honoured and expensive means of securing it; husbands and wives are mutually astonished at the loss of affection which they have taken no pains to keep; and all of us in our turn are apt to be astonished that our neighbours do not admire us."On socialism:"There are enough inevitable turns of fortune which force us to see that our gain is another's loss: - that is one of the ugly aspects of life. One would like to reduce it as much as one could, not get amusement out of exaggerating it."On memories of home:"To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side."On zionism:"The idea that I am possessed with is that of restoring a political existence to my people, making them a nation again, giving them a national centre, such as the English have, though they too are scattered over the face of the globe."
    • 3/5
      This is one of those works of classic British literature that is apparently absolutely fantastic and a must read for everyone (especially English majors), but which is extremely difficult and at times mind-numbingly boring.I like George Eliot, I really do. I think she was a great writer, and the themes and techniques she uses in her novels are pretty cool and make for some fun discussions (that is, if you're the kind of person who gets into conversations about, as one example, the rise of the middle class/democracy in the nineteenth century as shown in really long novels). But I don't like reading her books. Daniel Deronda didn't keep my attention, and I felt like I had to force myself through the middle section, and I never did read the entire thing, though I skipped to the end and I have a good idea of how the story goes. Maybe one day, I'll go back to the novel and try it again, but that probably won't be until I've read absolutely everything else on my shelves, I'm sure.Daniel Deronda is marginally more entertaining than Mill on the Floss, and definitely more enjoyable than David Copperfield, but it's really really long and Victorian, and, well, I'd rather see a film version than read it.
    • 5/5
      Still, IMHO, the best Eliot. Bigger issues, and you always know Eliot's way smarter than you and point/counter-pointed it already.
    • 5/5
      This is my all time favorite novel. Eliot managed to combine the social issues of prejudice, upbringing, and class creating a wonderful tale of love and finding one's own self.