Elizabeth Sabiston\u27s Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot is a somewhat perplexing book. Ostensibly, Sabiston sets out to contribute to ongoing discussions about the difficulties faced by nineteenth-century women writers, who \u27were confronted with the dilemma of effecting an elision of public and private spheres\u27 (2). The first three chapters, on Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, lane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, argue that the central protagonist of each novel offers an image of confident female authorship. Anne Elliot is presented as a heroine who \u27against all odds ... strives for autonomy\u27 (36), Jane Eyre moves from making amateur drawings to penning her autobiography, and Cathy\u27s book is identified as the core of Emily Bronte\u27s novel. Each argument is wrapped inside a highly detailed analysis of the novelists\u27 language. However, the theme of female autonomy becomes increasingly muted in the remaining chapters which, devoted to Elizabeth Gaskell\u27s and Harriet Beecher Stowe\u27s literary relationship, and, finally, Daniel Deronda, are best read as separate reflections.
The chapter on Daniel Deronda can easily be read independently from the rest of the study. It opens with a summary of Amos Gitat\u27s film Kadosh (1999), whose rapport with Eliot\u27s final novel is not explained. Instead, Sabiston presents her argument that the \u27key to the unity of Daniel Deronda ... is ... a hidden allusion to Shakespeare\u27s The Merchant of Venice\u27 (153), namely the moment in Act IV, Scene I, when Shylock addresses Portia, disguised as a male lawyer, as \u27Daniel come to judgment\u27. Having drawn attention to this androgynous moment, Sabiston perpetuates a tradition reaching as far back as Leslie Stephen\u27s early response to the novel in asserting that Eliot gave her eponymous hero \u27feminine\u27 qualities. The study goes on to argue that \u27we need to view Deronda and Gwendolen together, as alter egos\u27 (155), with Deronda\u27s feminine qualities balanced against Gwendolen\u27s more masculine ones. Indeed, despite the chapter\u27s introduction, Sabiston is less interested in the novel\u27s Jewish portions than in the interwoven destinies of Daniel and Gwendolen. The remainder of the chapter traces the development of the two characters. In the process, Sabiston raises a number of engaging ideas, such as the suggestion that the relationship between the two characters is less that of potential lovers than an echo of the fluid and complementary relationship between Lydgate and Dorothea in Middlemarch. The chapter - and indeed the study as a whole - is at its best when Sabiston engages in close readings, providing rich interpretations of Eliot\u27s language and drawing attention to the underlying unity of the novel. Sabiston is less convincing in tying her conclusions to the overall concern of the study: if, at the end of Daniel Deronda, Gwendolen is \u27offered no hope for even partial achievement in her circumscribed world\u27 (186), it is left unclear how a progression from \u27private sphere to world stage\u27 has been achieved
