A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

83.
'Mordecai, presents this view of a
Jew'ish racial memory at the gathering
of working-class men who meet regularly to exchange ideas and extend
their knowledge. tltThe heritage of Israel,' he says, 'is beating in the
pulses of millions; it lives in their veins as a power without understanding,
like the morning exultation of herds; it is the inborn half
Ef.memory, moving as in a dream among i'lI'itings on the walls, which it
sees dimly but cannot divide into speech.' \I 41 (my italics)
This might seem but a chance remark of a Jewish fanatic, Vlere it
not for other evidence. Deronda attends a J evrlsh service while visiting
Franki'urt and is deeply moved b;:,r it. I'!hen he mentions this to Mirah on
his return to London, she is surprised and says: "'I thought none but
our people would feel that.' II 42 Deronda finds an explanation in keep­
\
ing with an anthropological and comparative view of religion and
suggests that the Christian religion is lit chiefly a. Hebre'w religion;
and since Jews are men, their religious feelings must have much in
common with those of other men--just as their poetry, though ~n
one
sense peculiar, has a great deal in common with the poetry of other
nations. ttl 43 This statement accords with a view of evolutionary
psychology which would give all men a common heritance. His next tentative
remark suggests the possibility, which is borne out by subsequent
events of the book, that there is a specific racial consciousness. He
continues, "'Still it is to be expected that a Jew would feel the forms
of his people's religion more than one of another race.'" 44 The significance
of this remark is missed on ~
first reading of Daniel
Deronda but the dramatic irony is ve~J
apparent to the reader on subsequent
readings. fit is interesting to
L.........
from a belief in a universal ancestral
,
note tha.~jGeorge
Eliot t s shift
inheritance to a spebific~ly
Jewish one anticipates a simila.r shift in the thought of Sigmund
Freud. David Riesman comments that 1'reud, in his study of the Jews,