ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the social, political, and ethical value of national separateness as Eliot defines it in her controversial late essay “The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!.” As in Daniel Deronda, Eliot uses the conceit of national separateness as a means to highlight the ethical value of separateness as such. She defines separateness not simply in anthropomorphic terms, as the otherness of another person from ourselves. She also defines it in collective terms, as the otherness of another nation, race, or ethnicity from our own. And more radically she defines separateness intrinsically, as an otherness that inheres within our individual and collective selves, an internal otherness to which she insists we must also be ethically responsible. The final section of the chapter refutes critics who have found in Eliot’s essay an endorsement of English national chauvinism and separatism. I demonstrate how Eliot instead uses her concept of separateness to critique definitions of nation and of nationality in terms of an alleged purity or homogeneity.
