Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda,a novel by G. Eliot , published 1876 , the last of her novels.
Gwendolen Harleth , high-spirited, self-confident, and self-centred, marries Henleigh Grandcourt , an arrogant, selfish, and cold-hearted man of the world, for his money and his position, to save her mother, sisters, and herself from destitution and in spite of the fact that she knows of the existence of (and has indeed met) Lydia Glasher , who has had a long-standing affair with Grandcourt, and children by him. She rejects Mrs Glasher's appeals and threats, and suffers in consequence in terms of guilt and a sense of her husband's increasing power over her. In her misery she comes increasingly under the influence of Daniel Deronda, who becomes her spiritual adviser. He is an idealistic young man, whose own parentage is involved in mystery; it is gradually revealed that he is not, as he had assumed, an illegitimate cousin of Grandcourt's, but the son...
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