IRVING HOWE
375
from the greatness of her achievement in
Daniel Deronda
itself–
against that darkly luminous picture of systematic debasement, what
invoked positives could survive?
Neither Eliot's dilemma nor her strategy for coping with it is
unique. One thinks of Mark Twain in
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn
as he turns toward the black slaves for some point of moral
authority that will contrast with the violence and falsity pervading life
along the Mississippi.
It
is a strategy that works for Twain, but not for
Eliot.
One wonders why. An answer that comes to mind is that Twain
knew the blacks intimately, they were a familiar part of his culture, he
did not have to go to books in order to learn about them, while George
Eliot was turning here to a portion of European experience she did not
know intimately, the Jews were far from a familiar part of her culture,
and she did have to go
to
books in order to learn about them. But surely
there is more to it. Writing
Huck Finn
only a few years before Eliot's
last novel came out, Twain could draw upon the warmly-remembered
and perhaps still-vibrant tradition of plebeian fraternity in America.
He could not, to be sure, find a satisfactory way of ending his book, but
in yielding to the strength of the blacks, the poise of Nigger Jim, he
reached a few moments of moral radiance. The plight of George Eliot
was more severe.
