Daniel Deronda Foreignness and 'The Other' Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #1 Those who were taking their pleasure at a higher strength, and were absorbed in play, showed very distant varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish, Greco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejeweled fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. (1.4) |
One way that Eliot demonstrates "otherness" is through appearances. Here, we see a person's "yellow, crab-like hands" in contrast with a "white, bejeweled" English hand. By defining what seems English, the narrator helps us identify what is absolutely "not English," or foreign.
| Quote #2 Gwendolen's dominant regret was that after all she had only nine louis to add to the four in her purse: these Jew dealers were so unscrupulous in taking advantage of Christians unfortunate at play! (2.5) |
We see a lot of instances of prejudice towards "the other" in this novel, particularly Jewish people. By the way, this is a great example of the narrator's use of free indirect discourse, which is when the narrator directly tells us what a character is thinking without saying "she was thinking this."
| Quote #3 Fancy an assemblage where the men had all that ordinary stamp of the well-bred Englishman, watching the entrance of Herr Klesmer—his mane of hair floating backward in massive inconsistency with the chimney-pot hat, which had the look of having put on for a joke above his pronounced but well-modelled features and powerful clear-shaven mouth and chin; his tall thin figure clad in a way which, not being strictly English, was all the worse for its apparent emphasis of intention. (10.11) |
Once again, we get an example of someone being different because they do not look typically English. Here we see Herr Klesmer dressed like everyone else but looking different – from his sexy hair to his facial features.
