In George Eliot'sDanielDeronda, animal vitality figures prominently in shaping the human shell, to use an opening animal metaphor. Approaching the significance of the animal leads to a reading of Gwendolen Grandcourt's character as a responsible creature. Gwendolen is Eliot's heroine, one half of the pair of protagonists around whom the novel revolves. Eliot's fantastic character takes shape in three movements, each punctuated by its own animal metaphor: Gwendolen morphs from Lamia to mastered-animal to white doe. Animal imagery appears at the edge of the human, the point at which humanity gains and loses subjectivity, and Gwendolen's novel is fundamentally one of finding her place in the world, her singularity, her responsibility. Images of animals stand in the linguistic gaps – in the places words fail – to figure the subject.1Animals appear at the end of the ability of language to mean. Nevertheless, this analysis is not intended to encompass the complex range of animal representations in George's Eliot's oeuvre, or even to catalog every example inDaniel Deronda. Instead, it suggests the possibility of using animal metaphor as a map for reading a Victorian heroine.
The Role of Luck in the Art, Ethics and Politics of Daniel Deronda