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English Advance Access published online on June 4, 2009
English, doi:10.1093/english/efp013
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the English Association; all rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

WINNING, LOSING, AND LUCK IN THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF DANIEL DERONDA

K. M. Newton*


  Abstract

Luck affects almost every aspect of ‘Daniel Deronda’, especially ethical and political issues. The formal innovations in which beginning and ending are destabilised create a context which highlights the role of luck. There is no fundamental distinction between major Jewish and non-Jewish characters as both tend to occupy separate mental worlds and are subject to luck, good or bad, though judgement as to what constitutes good or bad luck will always be open to derferment. Luck is especially fundamental to Deronda and he becomes an inadvertent gambler.

As luck inevitably creates winners and losers, it is morally problematic as there is no necessary relation between luck, good or bad, and desert.

Traditional forms of moral thinking which ignore luck are called into question. The novel's treatment of the relation between luck and the ethical anticipates the ethical philosophy of Bernard Williams and Jacques Derrida. Though the political dimension may seem unconnected with luck, Deronda's hope that Mordecai is an authentic visionary and that his ideal of Jewish nationhood is both practicable and will benefit humanity in the future is necessarily a gamble and dependent on luck.

* Correspondence to K. M. Newton, University of Dundee.


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