Harleth, Gwendolen

The sutocrat of the Davilow family; a beautiful, selfish, undisciplined girl who marries Grandcourt to escape poverty. "Was she beautiful or not beautiful ? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance ? Was the good or the evil genius dominant in those beams ? Probably the evil ; else why was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm ? . . . The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale sea-green feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green hat and light-brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth." "Having always been the pet and pride of the household, waited on by mother, sisters, governess, and maids, as if she had been a princess in exile, she naturally found it difficult to think her own pleasure less important than others made it, and when it was positively thwarted, felt an astonished resentment, apt, in her cruder days, to vent itself in one of those passionate acts which look like a contradiction of habitual tendencies . . . Gwendolen's nature was not remorseless, but she liked to make her penances easy." "She meant to do what was pleasant to herself in a striking manner ; or, rather, whatever she could do so as to strike others with admiration and get in that reflected way a more ardent sense of living, seemed pleasant to her fancy. . ." "In her beauty, a certain unusualness about her, a decision of will which made itself felt in her graceful movements and clear unhesitating tones . . . However, she had the charm, and those who feared her were also fond of her ; the fear and the fondness being perhaps both heightened by what may be called the irridescence of her character —the play of various, nay, contrary tendencies." Her beauty and aloofness attract the rich Mallinger Grandcourt, and she is about ready to accept him when she learns that he ought to marry Mrs. Glasher. Promising Mrs. Glasher not to marry Grandcourt, she goes away to escape his attentions, gambles at Leubronn, where she is influenced by seeing Daniel Deronda as she is losing, and is called home by the news that all her mother's property has been lost. As the only way of earning money herself which she can find is a hated position as governess, she marries Grandcourt in spite of her promise to Mrs. Glasher, attempting to quiet her conscience by the plea that she is doing it for her mother, to whom she is really attached. The false position in which she finds herself soon makes her unhappy, and she turns to Daniel Deronda, whose effect on her at Leubronn she has not forgotten, for spiritual aid, thereby arousing her husband's resentment and jealousy. Grandcourt's cruel and contemptuous attitude so arouses her hatred that she trifles with the idea that she could kill him, and when he is drowned before her eyes, she feels that her momentary delay in throwing him a rope makes her a murderess. In her remorse and despair she turns to Deronda as her only help, and from him gradually attains the beginning of a new spiritual attitude and unselfishness. When George Eliot was at Homburg in 1872 she was much impressed by a young lady whom she saw gambling there. This incident furnished the model for Gwendolen Harleth's gambling at Leubronn. (See Cross, George Eliot's Life, vol. 3, p. 172 ; also article in Nineteenth Century, vol. 17, p. 483.)

<em>Daniel Deronda</em>

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