The Relic and the Ruin

Early in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda , Daniel's life is set on a decisive new path by his fleeting attraction to an object in a shop window. He is turning into a side street off Holburn Road when: his attention was caught by some fine old clasps in chased silver displayed in the window at his right hand. His first thought was that [his aunt] Lady Mallinger, who had a strictly Protestant taste for such Catholic spoils, might like to have these missal-clasps turned into a bracelet; then his eyes travelled over the other contents of the window, and he saw that the shop was that kind of pawnbroker's where the lead is given to jewellery, lace, and all equivocal objects introduced as bric-a-brac . A placard in one corner announced - Watches and Jewellery exchanged and repaired . (344; bk. 4, ch. 6) Daniel then moves across the street to avoid the shopkeeper, and it is only from this new vantage point that he notices the name "Ezra Cohen" above the window - the name he's been seeking while wandering Jewish neighborhoods in London in the hopes of reuniting his protégée Mirah with her family. He will return to the pawnshop later and become acquainted with the Cohens, eventually finding through them his mentor and Mirah's actual brother, Mordecai. Although some discussion of the silver clasps ensues, they are neither purchased nor used in the space of the novel. Still, this seemingly inconsequential trinket proves to have a long history, one that raises questions about the lingering remains of the past, the equivocality of the object, and the dispossessions that haunt Daniel Deronda

Aunt · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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