While Blackwood was certainly trying to flatter and calm an anxious, important client, this letter also highlights a central element of Eliot's final completed novel: the depth, development, and realism of its psychological portraiture. What made the psychology of Gwendolen Harleth especially, but the eponymous Daniel Deronda as well, resonate with discerning readers from that time to this? This essay argues that it is the same cause that frustrates many readers: Eliot's engagement with the most famous and scientifically integrated psychological theory of her time -- Herbert Spencer's.
...MoreReview Clare Stainthorp (2016) Review of "Spencerian Evolutionary Psychology in Daniel Deronda". Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 58-59).
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