The Theme of Evil

Early in the novel, Gwendolen is badly frightened by a specter of death, but she does not recognize evil when it enters the novel through the figure of Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt. He is not the novel’s only villain. By attending to the manipulative malice of Grandcourt, the paternal neglect and petty the of Mirah’s father, and indeed, the rising spirit of anti-Semitism, Professor Wisse focuses on moments of cruelty, power, and exploitation in the novel, and in so doing, gives us a tour of the moral landscape of Daniel Deronda.