Book contents
- Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Plotting a Novel Industrial Infrastructure
- Chapter 2 Writing between the Lines
- Chapter 3 Junctions
- Chapter 4 Rerouting Plot Lines in Daniel Deronda
- Chapter 5 Tunnel
- Chapter 6 The End of the Line
- Afterword
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
Chapter 4 - Rerouting Plot Lines in Daniel Deronda
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2025
Book contents
- Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Plotting a Novel Industrial Infrastructure
- Chapter 2 Writing between the Lines
- Chapter 3 Junctions
- Chapter 4 Rerouting Plot Lines in Daniel Deronda
- Chapter 5 Tunnel
- Chapter 6 The End of the Line
- Afterword
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
Summary
If literary form and railway infrastructure do not neatly align in nineteenth-century novels, then what is the significance of their close, inconsistent entanglement? Chapter 4 examines George Eliot’s 1876 novel Daniel Deronda, which takes full advantage of transport and communications infrastructure in its two mainline plots. Throughout Eliot associates markers of such systems – ‘dusty waiting rooms’, un-consulted Bradshaw’s railway guides, and telegrams relaying old news – with stasis and regression. Even where they advance the plot, they draw the narrative back in time. This chapter parallels communication infrastructure and novel form to interrogate how and why Eliot reconfigures established and well-traversed form in her final novel that pushes against the margins of literary realism. By offering an upset chronology and a refusal to drive plotlines to a conventional resolution, to what extent does Eliot reconceptualise systems rooted in timeliness and destination in Daniel Deronda?
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- Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian NovelFrom Platform to Plot via the Railroad, pp. 101 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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