When George Meredith published his 1885 novel, Diana of the Crossways, women readers welcomed his heroine as representative of recent social reforms. The novel reflects its era’s obsessive interest in the breakdown of standards, which had been part of a now waning traditional religious practice. Religious dogma had given way to new legal, economic, and educational opportunities for women. The Marriage Act of 1858 introduced the possibility of divorce, while the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 granted women crucial financial rights. Decades of female suffrage efforts kept women and their social needs before the public, with voting rights for women almost included in the Reform Bill of 1884, following compulsory education for females instituted in 1870. New careers opened to women included medicine, which admitted females into practice in 1876. These events changed the traditional heroines of fiction. Whereas heroines of the past required males to rescue them through marriage, the more modern heroine achieved a modicum of fiscal and emotional independence on her own. Even the inconsistencies in Meredith’s protagonist, Diana Merion, delighted critics, particularly later feminist critics, who viewed her as a more complete portrait of a heroine than Meredith had formerly produced.

The novel became Meredith’s most popular to date, as he used a new approach to silver-fork fiction, combining it with a roman à clef. Meredith adopted high society’s true stories of Lord Melbourne, Sidney Herbert, John Delane, and other well-known early Victorians as his plot. In a notorious political scandal from the 1860s, the Honorable Mrs. Norton took blame for revealing a crucial Cabinet secret told her by her lover to a Times editor, an action similar to Diana’s well-intentioned error. Meredith’s tale demonstrated that blunders committed by an otherwise clever woman resulted, not from inherent weakness, but due to the lack of a responsible educational system and instruction in social responsibility for females. While the facts of Meredith’s novel are obviously drawn from real life, when Mrs. Norton’s relations complained that Meredith had slandered her, he inserted a disclaimer in later editions, telling his audience the novel should be read as fiction.

The novel opens in Dublin, where the charming Diana Merion gains admirers at a ball to honor an Irish soldier, Lord Larrian. Much is made of her Irish background, reflected in her stunning beauty, although she has not yet reached the age of 20. As clever and witty as she is beautiful, Diana captivates everyone present, including the guest of honor, who becomes a devoted friend. Her older best friend, Lady Emma Dunstane, a semi-invalid, receives much of Diana’s attentions. Thomas Redworth, a young Englishman neighbor to Crossways, Diana’s home, also loves her, providing her with intellectual stimulation. A low-level government official, Redworth wants to propose marriage to Diana, but feels of insufficient financial means to support her. He successfully invests in the railroads, but when Diana reacts coolly to that news, praising the life of a soldier instead, Redworth still does not propose.

When Diana visits Emmy, Emmy’s husband, Sir Lukin, is overcome by her beauty and makes advances, which Diana resists, and he instantly regrets. Disgusted by high society, she decides to marry her cousin, Augustus Warwick, a cold gentleman of leisure and 15 years her elder. Emmy is shocked by the match, but Diana explains that Warwick has agreed to allow her to keep Crossways forever. As foreshadowed, the marriage dissolves into disaster; Warwick accuses Diana of having an affair with her politician friend, Lord Dannisurgh, and then sues for divorce. Friends help Diana clear her name, but in the meantime, she becomes depressed and leaves society. With attentions from Emmy, Tom Redworth, Lord Larrian, and her faithful maid, Danvers, Diana works her way back into society, following a declaration of her innocence. Stuck in an unhappy marriage to Warwick, she lives separately from him in London, where she becomes a popular novelist.

Diana travels abroad, and in Italy meets Percy Dacier, a handsome and brilliant man of influence in Parliament. Although engaged to Miss Constance Asper, Dacier finds Diana intriguing, and his admiration grows when she fulfills the final request of Lord Dannisburgh and sits with his body. Their passion grows, and although Diana at first rejects him, she later consents to run away with Dacier. When she is called away to care for the suddenly ill Emmy and does not keep a rendezvous with Dacier, he gives up hope for their union. When they later meet, their passions have cooled, and a year passes with no interaction. However, when Dacier accepts an invitation to Diana’s home, their friendship grows, and Diana’s social salon helps further Dacier’s career, to Diana’s financial detriment. Facing ruin, she sells political information Dacier had confided to her to a journalist, not realizing its importance. Dacier reacts by deserting Diana to marry Constance Asper.

When Warwick dies in an accident, even the promise of her freedom cannot lift Diana’s spirits. Determined to die, she refuses food, but Emmy rescues her, persuading her of the value of life. Diana recovers and at last agrees to marry the faithful Redworth. Young female readers conceived in Diana a representative of their newly emancipated group, due to the spirit that allowed her to separate from an intolerable mate, take up a man’s profession of writing, and flourish. Although they protested her selling her lover’s confidence, Meredith again emphasized that society’s marginalization of women left Diana’s position unstable, despite her seeming triumphs.

Analysis of George Meredith’s Novels

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bedford, Herbert. The Heroines of George Meredith. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennicat Press, 1972.
Manos, Nikki Lee. Introduction to Diana of the Crossways, by George Meredith. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.
Roberts, Neil. Meredith and the Novel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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