Led by Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse, Comparative Literature

In eight definitive lectures, Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse explores the greatest novel of Jewish nationalism, guiding you through the drama, the romance, the politics, and the moral imagination of Daniel Deronda. Deronda is uniquely suited to our time because it presents characters struggling with the same forces we struggle with today: the breakdown of inherited custom and morality, the fruits and challenges of love influenced by society, religious identity and the place of the nation in the world.

A comprehensive study guide is included that explores the themes of each episode with key passages from Daniel Deronda and discussion questions.

Titles include:

The Theme of Beauty and Goodness
Meet two extraordinary women: George Eliot, the author of Daniel Deronda, and her character Gwendolen Harleth. In this first episode, Professor Wisse calls our attention to the main aesthetic and moral themes that will run through the entire novel. Though the book concerns England, it opens abroad in Germany, so that the characters are not in their usual orbit. This immediately draws attention to the mobility of their society and disquiet of their lives.

The Character and Education of Gwendolyn Harleth
Who is this alluring, modern woman, Gwendolen Harleth? Her virtues and shortcomings are on display throughout Daniel Deronda, and her trials suggest what is happening in the country that is the novel’s setting. Professor Wisse outlines the education that Gwendolen received from her mother and her society, and asks whether it has equipped her to succeed in love and marriage, in providing for her wellbeing, or in confronting the inescapable moral choices that all young people must face as they mature into adult men and women.

“Alien Invaders:” Jewish Figures in Deronda’s Britain
Daniel Deronda introduces the Jewish characters Herr Klesmer and Mirah Lapidoth in ways that reflect the dilemmas of modern Jewry. Some in the novel regard Judaism as a social disadvantage to overcome; others see it as a precious inheritance that endows its carriers with inner strength and moral conviction. The same character may experience each of these feelings at different times. The Jews also provoke ambivalence in the English society they enter. One learns about the people in the novel from their reactions to the “foreigners” in their midst.

The Theme of Evil
Early in the novel, Gwendolen is badly frightened by a specter of death, but she does not recognize evil when it enters the novel through the figure of Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt. He is not the novel’s only villain. By attending to the manipulative malice of Grandcourt, the paternal neglect and petty the of Mirah’s father, and indeed, the rising spirit of anti-Semitism, Professor Wisse focuses on moments of cruelty, power, and exploitation in the novel, and in so doing, gives us a tour of the moral landscape of Daniel Deronda.

The Character and Education of Daniel Deronda
Brought up as an English gentleman with the paths of scholarship and government open before him, by the end of the novel Daniel Deronda chooses to embrace Judaism and to dedicate himself to Jewish national renewal. Professor Wisse analyzes the emerging qualities of his character, Mordecai’s role in calling him to a grand national mission, and the way in which the overall themes of the novel are expressed in Daniel’s British and Jewish identities.

Jewish Nationalism
Decades before Theodor Herzl wrote The Jewish State, George Eliot saw the necessity for the Jewish people to recover their national independence in their ancestral homeland. Daniel Deronda interweaves Jewish historical consciousness, Jewish political thought, and the socio-political conditions of Europe to point its hero in that direction.

How Fiction Differs from Philosophy
George Eliot, who could write powerful essays, regularly chose to present social and political ideas in fictional form. The contrapuntal voice of Princess Leonora Halm-Eberstein demonstrates how arguments and counterarguments come to life in the characters of the novel, creating a mode of storytelling that speaks to readers’ emotions and reason. In asking how the content of Daniel Deronda relates to its form, Professor Wisse illustrates the unique power of fiction to engage the imaginative sympathies of the reader.

The Political Vision of Daniel Deronda: Separateness with Communication
Daniel Deronda is George Eliot’s great novel of nationalism. Through it, she gives voice to the restoration of Jewish pride and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people, ultimately urging a form of political nationhood and moral rejuvenation. But the novel’s teaching about the purpose and identity of nations has as much to do with British liberalism as it does with the Jewish people. Professor Wisse draws out the political vision of Daniel Deronda by interpreting Eliot’s phrase “separateness with communication.” Is homogeneity the ideal of political community, or can a society nurture distinct ways of life within it?