Citation:
Date Published:
9 June 2021Abstract:
This article traces the place of the Book of Esther in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and argues that the biblical work can be seen as Eliot’s primary “map” in her own project of literal and metaphorical remapping. Historical and cultural contexts, as well as close readings of the texts, suggest that the Book of Esther is especially relevant because it engages with the “Jewish Question” and the “Woman Question” in tandem; it offers a terrain for the novel’s ideas on both issues, while precipitating a revised hermeneutic of the biblical text. Remapping the Book of Esther serves Eliot in advocating for a Jewish return and to the Land of Israel and in spurring discourse towards the depolarization of gendered traits, roles, and relations. However, while Eliot answers the Jewish Question with proto-Zionism, she leaves the Woman Question chillingly unanswered — as does the Book of Esther itself.
March 2021: Channah Damatov is a PhD candidate and Kaete Klausner Fellow in the Department of General and Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her dissertation explores the Book of Esther in Victorian Literature, with a focus on its reception in three novels, Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell, Villette by Charlotte Brontë, and Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. Her wider research interests include the Bible as literature, immigrant literature (especially as regards homeland and exile, displacement, assimilation, and cultural identity), and gender in literature. Channah lives in Giv’at Shmuel, Israel, with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.