SOURCE: “Aliens at Home and Britons Abroad: George Eliot's Orientalization of Jews in Daniel Deronda,” in Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation, Routledge, 1996, pp. 191-229.

In the following excerpt, Lewis comments on George Eliot's depiction of Daniel Deronda as both an Englishman and a Jew, noting that his characterization within the context of Orientalism brings out the best qualities from both identities.

This chapter sets out to examine how George Eliot's representation of Jews and Judaism in Daniel Deronda relates to the Orientalist paradigm. Daniel Deronda, published by Blackwoods in eight parts from February to September 1876,¹ was George Eliot's eighth and final novel. It offered a devastating critique of English society, seen as degenerating and regressive, by holding up a Jew, the Daniel of the title, as an emblem of an ancient but thriving Jewish culture to which England should look for inspiration. Whilst the earlier ‘English’ half...