WHY GOOD LITERATURE MOVES ME

I have a particular fondness for nineteenth century literature, but whatever the era, if i like an author, i am apt to read anything they write. Among the several authors who constitute my favorites is George Eliot--Mary Ann Evans. Until recently, i had read all of her novels save one, that being Daniel Deronda. I bought the book several years ago, but hadn't read it, until i finally began it a few weeks ago--i have pursued it slowly.

"George Eliot," Miss Evans, is not the technically best writer of her period. Preceeded by Austen and Scott, a contemporary of Thackery and Dickens, and succeeded by the likes of Hardy, her writing is in an exalted company to which is does not well compare. Fortunately for Miss Evans, the other popular contemporary author was Anthony Trollope, compared to whose turgid prose just about anyone with a modicum of talent can shine.

In the last few days, i have read quite a bit more of Daniel Deronda than i had been doing, and getting more involved in the story. In the narrative, at about a third of the way through the novel, Deronda manages to forstall a young Jewess from committing suicide by the expedient of precipitating herself into the Thames, upon which Deronda was at that time boating alone. He takes her to the family of a friend where she, Mirah, finds sympathetic hostesses who come to love and cherish her. Deronda is moved by this unforeseen obligation (which he does not resent) to take a keener interest in Jews and their lives and their religion than he had thereto done. Evans writes one of the most moving and technically finest passages in her literature when she describes, first, Deronda's diffidence about the world as he has found it and takes it, then his realization that his former opinions may simply have been ignorance, and finally his self-acknowledged prejudices. She describes him going into the Jewish quarter, the Juden gasse in Frankfort, and then finding and attending the Friday evening service at a synagogue there.

Evans came from a family of evangelical christians, and her eventual abandonment of evangelicalism and estrangement from her family were a profound influence on her life and her literature. In the passage in which she describes Deronda's experience of the Jewish prayer service, she gives a description of worship and the variety of motivations for it, which i think is the best writing of hers which i have ever read. I was both immediately in her mind with regard to the subject, and very much moved. This comes from no piety on my part, those who know me even a little will not doubt that.

And that is why literature moves me so--the ability in the finest examples of literature which an author has of taking us out of ourselves, and giving us experiences which our quotidian lives do not afford.