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I have read a couple of articles that said Gwendolen had been sexually abused as a child by her step-father. What do you think?
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Daniel Deronda,
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Paul Driskill
Consider checking out (if you haven't already) Louise Penner's "'Unmapped Country'": Uncovering Hidden Wounds in Daniel Deronda." I think there is a valid argument to be made that there was some sort of abuse (physical or mental). The novel subtly creates a backstory for Gwendolen through a few marked clues (the hidden panels shocking her into fits of terror, the unconscious embodied). However, most of Gwendolen's backstory is told through present absences--as Deronda discovers his father, his heritage, his genaelogy, as readers we feel the absence of Gwendolen's father.
In terms of passages, consider the one in which the narrator says this: "Gwendolen, immediately thinking of the unlovable step-father whom she had been acquainted with the greater part of her life while her frocks were short" (Chapter III).
In terms of passages, consider the one in which the narrator says this: "Gwendolen, immediately thinking of the unlovable step-father whom she had been acquainted with the greater part of her life while her frocks were short" (Chapter III).
Kathy
I've just read 999 pages and if George Eliot wanted me to think that something as significant as this had happened during Gwendolen's childhood, I think she would have squeezed it in somewhere. Eliot seems fairly clear that the wound that Gwendolen felt was the lack of security and boundaries that could have been supplied by a good father. For the purpose of the narrative, we are shown that Gwendolen has been damaged by being spoilt and over-indulged by her silly mother and that she has been harmed by the neglect of her moral character: something that a father or stepfather could have corrected, but did not.
Paul Of
If you look hard enough, long enough and with enough creative imagination you will no doubt find words here and there that will feed a supposition but tis just a fiction born of "...the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendos. Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker." GE
Lara
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