Leonora Alcharisi’s Individualism in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda Although Daniel’s mother is only in two chapters of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, she stands out as one of the novel’s most memorable, and shocking, characters. Leonora Alcharisi completely obliterates any preconceptions that Daniel, and the reader, had about what his mother might be like. The crux of why she is so shocking is that her character is bereft of any motherly …showed first 75 words of 2382 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2382 total…suffered for attempting to deny things that were beyond her power, with a heart like hers, what choice did she have but to fight society. The reader may construe Leonora’s eventual failure to be a foreshadowing of the one that awaits Gwendolyn. Yet Eliot finds hope in Gwendolyn’s newfound ability to love others and keeps alive the possibility that she may one day become “one of the best of women” (Eliot 694). Bibliography none