Analysis of George Meredith’s The Amazing Marriage

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 1, 2025

The last of George Meredith’s novels, The Amazing Marriage resembles his previous works in its defense of women against men’s errors. In his fiction and real life, Meredith declared man to be in need of woman, who could educate and encourage him in combating adversity. He also believed man could learn from nature, such as the Austrian and German landscapes in The Amazing Marriage. He thus associates woman with nature, especially hills and mountains, suggesting she is a higher moral being.

The novel’s protagonist, Carinthia, whose very name echoes the city of Corinth, first comes to her future husband’s attention through a written description that he believes succeeds in fusing “a woman’s face and grand scenery, to make them inseparable.” Later, she is described as “a noble daughter of the woods” and approaches her husband exhibiting “her rocky brows. They were not barren crags, and her shape was Nature’s ripeness.”

Critics note that The Amazing Marriage contains elements from each of Meredith’s previous novels, in addition to reverence for nature, including themes of sibling and spousal love, respect, treachery and betrayal, and emphasis on the disaster resulting from actions based on passion, rather than logic. The various voices telling the story include those of a traditional narrator, anxious to distinguish his literary genre from romance, represented by another narrator identified as Dame Gossip. She acts as a chorus at the book’s beginning, sharing mythology that grew up around the marriage of the novel’s two main characters, including a popular ballad.

The narrator declares his approach as based on intellect, not just on romantic emotions. A debate between the dame and the narrator shapes a self-conscious text that comments upon the growing popularity of the novel form. Meredith uses mythology to shape Carinthia, “a beautiful Gorgon—a haggard Venus,” “something of Persephone rising to greet her mother,” and “an Amazon schooled by Athene.” In addition to the narrators, Meredith supplies characters’ spoken aphorisms, written letters, and one “Notebook.” The many voices emphasize his condemnation of society for allowing public opinion to influence a private relationship. Society forces a man and woman together to satisfy its requirements for gossip and intrigue, rather than supporting the couple in exploring their compatibility.

In Meredith’s plot, the beautiful Carinthia and her brother, Chillon, lose their father, Captain Kirby, and depend on the largesse of their stingy English uncle, Levellier. Pulled from their Austrian mountain home, they demonstrate their close relationship to nature by following their father’s tradition of walking outside to “call the morning.” Carinthia meets Gower Woodseer, whose last name alludes to nature and his possession of insight that other characters lack. Woodseer, a philosopher entranced with Carinthia’s beauty, writes of her in his Note-book. Meredith supposedly based Woodseer on Robert Louis Stevenson, who had died the year before publication of the novel.

After Woodseer’s friend, the wealthy, egotistical Lord Fleetwood, reads the notes, he wants to meet Carinthia. Fleetwood’s name also connects him to nature, but suggests blind movement, rather than a communing. A womanizer, Fleetwood proposes to Carinthia at a ball after knowing her for only one day. While Fleetwood realizes his folly and wants to withdraw the offer, Levellier insists on his upholding it. Meredith emphasizes society’s injustice and foreshadows the couple’s disastrous future when one observer thinks, “very wealthy noblemen were commonly, perhaps necessarily, eccentric, for thus they proved themselves egregious, which the world expected them to be.”

As the carriage departs with the couple, Carinthia, ironically, feels grateful to be “in her husband’s hands.” She dreams of a fine future with Fleetwood, fancying herself “his comrade. . . . Now she had the joy of trusting her husband.” Fleetwood quickly dashes that trust, making his new wife attend a prize fight before checking into an inn. When a friend who plans to accompany Fleetwood notices Carinthia he asks with surprise, “Lady coming?” Fleetwood replies, “I fancy she sticks to the coach.” The next morning, Fleetwood deserts Carinthia after impregnating her.

Carinthia weeps with a maid who professes her loyalty, after which the narrator comments, “They were two women.” He then describes Fleetwood and his companion in a coach, spouting “the lusty anecdote, relieved of the interdict of a tyrannical sex.” Clearly, Fleetwood is the tyrant, not Carinthia.

The birth of his son further angers and frustrates Fleetwood, and Carinthia returns to the mountains. She stays at Whitechapel with Gower Woodseer and develops a relationship with his father, who cares for the poor. Gower thinks of his visitor as “Corinthia, Saint and Martyr,” emphasizing her moral superiority to Fleetwood, but he tries to reunite the couple. He convinces Fleetwood of the merit of their marriage, but Carinthia has decided to serve as a nurse in Spain, where her brother lives.

Carinthia tells Fleetwood, “I have my brother and my son. No more of husband for me!” In pursuit of Carinthia, Fleetwood encounters Owain Wythan and asks whether he knows Carinthia and her brother. Wythan replies, “They both come to the mind as faith comes—no saying how; one swears by them,” making clear their spiritual nature. Fleetwood becomes a Roman Catholic monk, dying an unhappy and unfulfilled man. Following his death, Carinthia marries Wythan, a man of few words but worshipful eyes.

Analysis of George Meredith’s Novels

Bibliography
Argyle, Gisela. “Meredith’s ‘Readable Marriage’: a Polyphony of Texts.” Essays in Literature 22 (Fall 1995): 244–52.
Bailey, Elmer James. The Novels of George Meredith: A Study. New York: Haskell House, 1971.