ABSTRACT
Craik’s construction of ideal masculinity and femininity, personified by her hero and heroine, makes it surprisingly difficult for her to bring about a marriage between them. The tragedy of Philip’s position, as Eliot portrays it, is that although he is uniquely capable of sympathising with our frustrated heroine, because as a disabled man he shares so many of her experiences as a woman in patriarchal society, he is totally unable to awaken her sexual desire, on account of the very disability that makes them in other ways so compatible. The figure of the healing storyteller has much in common with the queer go-between, but their power to aid others’ marriage plots is rooted less in the fluidity of their gender identity than in their superior powers of naming and narration, which are linked to their disability. Mordecai treats his own soul, here, as something he can gift to Daniel, along with the role of Zionist leader.
