Conclusion: Social Critique, Education, Allegory

Abstract

This study has tried to demonstrate that there is a discernible Jewish background to George Eliot’s fiction, in particular that ideas derived from Jewish mysticism become increasingly prominent in her work. As we have discussed, mysticism and kabbalistic practice grew as a result of increased persecution of the Jews and both Romola and The Spanish Gypsy are set at a time when such persecution existed, the Jewish character Sephardo in the latter having connections with kabbalism. Although there is little direct Jewish reference in Middlemarch, there is evidence of anti-Semitism, and as suggested earlier it is possible that Dorothea may have been partly based on the Jewish Dorothea Schlegel, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn. In Daniel Deronda, the culmination of the Jewish presence in her work, both anti-Semitism and Jewish mysticism are crucial elements. Even Deronda, before his involvement with Mirah and Mordecai, has some anti-Jewish prejudice and Mordecai is clearly in a tradition of Jewish mystics, one to which Maimonides, Maimon and Moses Mendelssohn belonged and which significantly influenced Dorothea Schlegel even though she converted to Christianity.