An Unsympathetic Network: Female Defiance as Narrative Force in Daniel Deronda

In Daniel Deronda, female aberrations from social norms are not straightforwardly punished, nor are unruly women linked together in friendships. Instead, women form an unsympathetic network, each defying socially prescribed roles but also unable to extend solidarity to the rest. This collective network threatens to upset conventional gender structures, disrupts the goals of British imperial masculinity, and propels the narrative. Thus this article challenges the perception of female friendship as a requisite for a conventional happy ending in the Victorian marriage plot.