This novel had all of the worst characteristics of 19th-century literature. I suspect, also, that there’s good reason that I couldn’t get through either Cranford or Romola, and maybe Middlemarch was just a fluke. (Though perhaps if I revisited Middlemarch now, I’d classify it with Eliot’s others.)

Daniel Deronda is preachy, over-long, dull, lacking action, and peopled with characters who are entirely too virtuous. On the other hand, the few villainous characters—consequently, the only ones who are at all interesting—are not gifted with much of a history.

I do give Eliot credit for placing two difficult, rather unlikeable characters in a relationship at the center of the novel. And I shouldn’t blame her for not being modern enough to treat with sympathy a woman who’s being abused by her husband. (Then again, didn’t Ann Bronte do so nearly three decades earlier?)

Deronda himself is unpleasant company and hardly has an ounce of personality. One wonders that his lively, somewhat debauched painter friend has any time for him. And Mirah? Dear god, I’m so bored by saintly women who’ve borne challenges but somehow remained naive, childlike, and incredibly attractive. All that gasping and marveling and gratitude for their masculine saviors. Yawn. (Also, it’s quite unlikely that anyone who spent time on the stage in that era would be so... sheltered.)

And that leaves Gwendolen. It’s a strange, pasted-together plot that places these two main characters together, her and Deronda. I think that’s my primary complaint, and maybe the lesson of the novel, which was underscored rather too obviously in other areas.

She’s certainly a type: real, spoiled, needy, approval-seeking. But she doesn’t deserve to be flogged for the one unselfish, practical action that she takes early in the novel. I won’t say more about her fate—it’d be a spoiler.