Tensions of Faith and Freedom in Victorian Jewish Literature

• In Event: Reading Different Genres for Gender

Abstract

The majority of marriages in nineteenth-century novels are between Christian characters. Like other writers of the period, George Eliot, a master of the marriage plot, mostly centers Christian couples in her work. But her groundbreaking novel DANIEL DERONDA (1876) is an exception. DERONDA revolves around the relationship between Gwendolyn and Grandcourt, but is also features several Jewish couples, including the eponymous Daniel and his protégé Mirah, Daniel’s mother Leonora and her cousin Ephraim, Mirah’s father Lapidoth and his unnamed wife, the shopkeeper Ezra Cohen and his wife Addy, followed by the Jewish Klesmer and his Christian student, Catherine. The prevalence of artists amongst these couples is equally compelling and invites comparisons to ESTELLE (1878), a contemporaneous novel by the little-known Anglo-Jewish author Emily Marion Harris. ESTELLE follows the female protagonist as she pursues her artistic passions and her feelings for her Christian friend, a fellow artist. Because of the stigma associated with the artistic professions, many women artists were socially barred from traditional relationships. This was especially true for women of the Jewish world, where secularism was often deemed sacrilegious and traditionalism was sacrosanct. Given how extensively Eliot researched Judaism when writing DERONDA, she no doubt understood the significance of marriage and, specifically, the importance of endogamy to Jewish continuity. Both Eliot and Harris would have known that Judaism holds women responsible for creating Jewish families and fostering traditional values in their homes. Estelle longs to be a professional artist, but she understands it would conflict with her role in the religion, and so she forsakes the idea and the Christian lover, who, to her, is equally forbidden. And although Mirah becomes a successful artist, she abandons her career when she marries Daniel, leaving England to fulfill God’s promise to the Jews—a concept that Judaism portrays as analogous to marriage. By examining endogamy and intermarriage in Daniel Deronda and Estelle, this paper illuminates the connection between artistry and identity—the perceived conflict between the life of the artist and light of the soul.

Author

• Lindsay Katzir, Antioch University New England