Daniel Deronda presents George Eliot`s social vision with its dual plots being inextricably interlocked in thematic parallelism. The split fictional world represents the social reality of contemporary England, in which opposing worldviews and social forces were intensely contested. Division is not just the form of the novel, but also constitutes its social and moral theme. While the Jewish plot represents a culture of traditional communitarianism, the English plot, formally and semantically counterpointed with the former, is set up as an emblem for an alienating modern society. Characterization in the English section, which evinces the unsettling aspects of modern existence, claims attention. Particularly notable is the representation of modern femininity, which indicates George Eliot`s engagement with feminism, a topical issue of her time. In characters like Gwendolen and Leonora, the writer carves out a new kind of femininity which is transgressive of the Victorian codes of womanhood, seeking to redefine woman`s role and place in society. Leonora stands for female empowerment and self-assertion and Gwendolen, the more subtly drawn of the two, appears a stranded figure. The latter represents the complexity of modern femininity, exhibiting the plights and dilemmas of a modern woman in the making and, in this respect, prefigures the heroines of twentieth-century novelists such as Henry James, D. H. Lawrence or E. M. Forster.