Content area
Full text
Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth: A Therapeutic Relationship?
Bernard J. Paris
Abstract: In Daniel Deronda, George Eliot presents Gwendolen as having been rescued by Daniel, and most commentators have agreed, with many comparing the relationship to that of patient and therapist. These commentators have allowed themselves to be unduly influenced by George Eliots interpretations and judgments and have ignored the concrete depiction of her characters. While we are being told that Gwendolen is undergoing a conversion in which she develops a new consciousness, a new soul, we are being shown a character who is full of rage, self-hatred, and despair. Instead of leading her in the direction of psychological health, Deronda offers her his own defenses and fosters her dependency on him. Despite the upbeat tone of the ending, her prospects after he leaves England seem very bleak.
Key Words: George Eliot; Gwendolen Harleth: rhetoric vs. mimesis in fiction; Daniel Deronda; therapeutic relationship
Admired by Freud, who read her in English and gave her books as gifts (Rotenberg, 1999, pp. 25758), George Eliot is one of the greatest psychological novelists. Many of her major charaters are imagined human beings who can be understood in motivational terms, in much the same way that we understand real people (see Paris, 1974, 1997, 1999). In recent years, Daniel Deronda has been celebrated as her most impressive psychological novel, largely because of the portrait of its heroine, Gwendolen, who is widely regarded as her finest creation. There have been more psychoanalytic studies of Gwendolen than of any other George Eliot character, and the relationship between Gwendolen and Daniel has frequently been compared to that of patient and therapist.
This comparison has been made by both literary critics and clinicians. Among critics, Peggy Johnstone (1994) sees Daniel as having helped Gwendolen to become a more complete person (p. 175) who is cured of her narcissistic disorder (p. 161); and Gillian Beer (1986) says that, thanks to Deronda, Gwendolen becomes capable of free-standing life at the end (p. 221). Most critics, whether psychoanalytically oriented or not, have supported George Eliots view that Gwendolen has been transformed from egoist to altruist and rescued from despair through the in-
Bernard J. Paris, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Florida.
Journal of...