“Duteous Bonds”: Daniel Deronda and the 1870 Naturalization Act

Abstract

This essay reads George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876) in dialogue with mid-Victorian debates on British nationality law, illuminating the larger questions of nationality and community that Eliot considered throughout her career. The 1860s, the decade in which the novel is set, witnessed a transformation in the law of subjecthood that culminated in the Naturalization Act (1870). In the lead up to the act, officials reconsidered the doctrine of “indelible allegiance” and debated whether and how the legal status of a subject should reflect an individual's choice and commitments. In the novel, Eliot approaches these issues by examining nationality as an individual experience in addition to a philosophical issue. For example, although both Sir Hugo Mallinger and Mordecai Cohen are British subjects, Mordecai's identity as a Jew conflicts with his legal status—to his great distress. Eliot uses Mordecai's proposal for a Jewish state to engage with an alternative form of national identity: one in which legal identity aligns with cultural and ethnic indices. In tackling these issues, Eliot exposes the complications and contradictions of national identity, showing how nationality law functions as a battleground for larger conflicts over the fate of nationality, both in Britain and beyond.