Clearly Deutsch's visionary character, learnedness and untimely death influenced Eliot's portrayal of Mordecai. Eliot visited him several times before he sailed for the Near East, but he died on the way in Alexandria in 1873. Shortly after visiting Palestine in 1869 he developed cancer. He was interested in tracing the historical origins of Christianity in Judaism, and became convinced of the desirability of creating a Jewish homeland. Born in Silesia and educated at the University of Berlin, Deutsch had emigrated to London in 1855 and worked as a cataloger in the British Museum. By 1890 civil disabilities for Jews were removed when they were permitted to assume the last posts which had been closed to them, lord chancellor and lord lieutenant for Ireland.Įliot had long been interested in Jewish history, but the plot's concern with Jewish nationalism and Zionism reflects her friendship with Emanuel Deutsch, whom Eliot met in 1866. without taking the oath 'by the true faith of a Christian,' and in the 1870s Jews were first granted admission to Oxbridge. In 1858 Lionel de Rothchild was permitted to become an M. Parliament was thus closed to them, as was access to the bar and service in the army, and they were not permitted to matriculate at Oxford or Cambridge. Although Catholics had gained civil emancipation in 1829 (that is, the right to vote and hold office), Jews were still denied electoral rights. Mass immigration began in the 1870s (shortly before the appearance of Eliot's novel), and by 1914 there were 300,000 Jews in Britain. In 1850 there were approximately 20,000 Jews in London and a smaller number in the provinces ninety per cent were native-born and the remainder had immigrated from the continent. It's a religious romance, in which the handsome hero brings deepened morality to the heroine! Some reviewers also objected to the Latinate and evaluative diction as too ponderous. One, Francillon, suggested that Deronda was her least realistic book, a wonderfully plotted romance (Daniel's rescue of Mirah suggests Caponsacchi's of Pompilia in Browning's The Ring and the Book). They also felt the character of Deronda was a bit ponderous-more designed to be admirable than admirable.

Reviewers from time to time criticized Eliot for an excess of description over enactment.

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