The title for today's post is taken from p.375 when Deronda is trying to argue for the lack of difference between Jews and other people---a kind of universality of ideas etc... Mirah however points out that even with Conversion, one is still racially a Jew.
I want to use this to talk about the conflicted response Deronda has to individual Jews. So, for tomorrow, I'd like you to look at Deronda's trip to Frankfurt through this conversation with Mirah (362-380), and of course Deronda's search for Ezra Cohen and encounters with "unpoetic Jews," with recognizable Jews and remarkable Jews (or rather Jew---Mordecai). Recall that Eliot is not expressing what 'she thinks' about Jews but rather dramatizing the conflicted logic of Deronda's attitudes about the relationship between the body and race/religion---that is, toward the question of legibility. Of course related to this is the important scene where Deronda is approached in the synagogue by a man asking about his mother's heritage (368). Please comment on Deronda's response--" I am an Englishman"--which doesn't of course answer the question. But pay attention to the slippage of nationality and race.
I also would like for you to focus on the interactions between Mordecai and Deronda--for example the "exchange of fascinated, half furtive glances" (397). Where does desire fit in here? By desire I don't necessarily even mean sexual desire, but rather that each embodies something the other is yearning for. This is especially important for Mordecai, but I want you to comment on both.
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I always had an innate feeling that Deronda may be Jewish, but my suspicion seems valid because every Jew he encounters, instead of Mirah, questions if he is a Jew. Does this prove the fact that a Jew can be distinguished by his physical appearance? We have already discovered that Deronda is terrified of who or rather what he came from and would rather leave the situation unresolved because then he would be apart of the English gentleman race, in which he craves for. Eliot also blends race and religion with Mirah during her conversation with Deronda and the Meyrick family. When Mrs. Meyrick suggest that Mirah does not have to be of the same faith as their parents, Mirah states, “but I could not make myself not a Jewess…even if I changed my belief” (375). So the question that still puzzles us, is Jewishness a race or religion? I believe Mirah sees her Jewishness as a race and religion because he acknowledges that it ties her to her “people” and her mother, thus it is something she can not escape. Also she views it as a history and religion because she is embarrassed that she has not been educated within it as a child.
There is also a lot of desire in this section of the novel. There is Deronda’s desire to love Mirah but not love her. There is also his desire not to find her birth family, because I believe he is afraid of finding out something about himself and his past. There is also a desire from Deronda to prove his stereotypes about Jews to be true, thus he is apprehensive for find out if Ezra Cohen is Mirah’s brother because the Cohen family shatters his stereotypes. There is a desire of Mordecai that he has for Deronda to be Jewish because that would be a Jew could be a gentleman. It would be a braking the glass moment for the Jewish race/nation.
In this section of the novel, we continuously encounter the idea of physical and spiritual separateness and connection to religion. This is obvious in the observation that “Mirah’s religion was of one fiber with her affections” yet there is still question that “perhaps [Jewishness] would gradually melt away from her” (362). This paradox seemingly revolves around Mirah as she is affectionately indebted to her rescuers while her restless urge to reconnect to her Jewish heritage in form of her mother and brother also remains. Similarly, the blend of non-Jewish/Jewishness in Mirah is portrayed in her lisping the Jewish hymn. “If I were ever to know the real words, I should still go on in my old way with them” (374). This is interesting because her religious discourse is in fact not Jewish but a copy or personal form of spiritual language. While this makes her a bad Jewess, it does not make her a bad person. Perhaps, as readers, we become more enchanted with Mirah due to her sincerity and nostalgia to her roots – roots which may have originated in Jewishness but today represent something else. Deronda’s connection to Mirah can be seen in this episode as he understands and supports her desire to be close to her heritage and past when he asserts that “the lisped syllables are very full of meaning” (374).
Deronda compares religion to poetry to show the universality of faith: “just as their poetry, through in one sense peculiar, has a great deal in common with the poetry of other nations” (374-375). He is very open with the idea of sameness amongst all religions; that real difference between Jewishness and Christianity results from exaggeration and prejudice. His belief is challenged when the old man in the synagogue asks him his mother’s maiden name. Suddenly, Deronda becomes defensive and embarrassed that he could be seen as Jewish. “Whether under a sense of having made a mistake or having been repulsed, Deronda was uncertain” (368). He chooses to brush aside the incident without mentioning it to anyone (embarrassment) and instead harnesses his energy in the search for Mirah’s mother. Later, we see that Mirah is “always forgetting” that Deronda was not brought up as a Jew. We are once again aware of Deronda’s embarrassment and self-consciousness in this mistake that something about his face or personality or being signifies Jewishness. Perhaps Deronda’s ability to understand Mirah and recognize the universality/faith/spiritually of Jewishness can be seen as making him more Jewish in comparison to the Christians around him. Jewish outsiders seem to recognize this Jewishness within him, but he cannot see it for himself as he is blinded by the idea of his being English, noble, or connected to Sir Hugo’s society.
The representation of the Jews is wrapped up in what the Englishmen glean from eachother regarding Jews. For example, before Deronda begins his journey, he considers: "Deronda, like his neighbours, had regarded Judaism as a sort of eccentric fossilised form which an accomplished man might dispense when studying, and leave to specialists...flashed on him the hitherto neglected reality that Judaism was something still throbbing in human lives" (363). I think it is nice here that Eliot ties the sterotyping and impartiality of the English with the humanness they are overlooking regading the Jews. After reading this passage, it is surprising that Deronda would still respond in the synagogue that he is an Englishman because he seems to make the connection above that the Jews and the English are all one: humankind.
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