George Meredith indulged himself with a comedic presentation in his 1879 novel, The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative. It allowed him to engage in his favored approach of satirizing bourgeois stupidity. In doing so, he satirized himself. He felt he was among the group that practiced such ignorance and that his self-interest led to the failure of his marriage, blinding him to his wife’s needs and the realities of life.

Rather than adopt a realistic view toward their relationship, he had remained blinded by a romantic attitude that prevented his making sensible decisions that might have relieved marital stress. He first featured a character of enormous ego in The Ordeal of Richard Feveral (1849). By the time he returned to this approach in The Egoist, he had reached full maturity as a writer. In addition, he had time to absorb the ideas of Darwin, which invaded fiction by casting the spotlight on character motives and actions. This led naturally into studies of relationships. Meredith supplies an essay on comedy to open what critics term his most intellectual novel. He may have hoped the challenging foreword would discourage non-serious readers.

The novel’s protagonist, Sir Willoughby Patterne, is so self-centered that he cannot fathom anyone or anything not holding him as the center of the universe. His apt epitaph reads, “Through very love of self himself he slew,” and he is described as one who possessed “without obligation to the object possessed.” His tendencies appeared at a young age, as one character recalls, when he climbed onto a chair in the middle of a room where he demanded that all gaze at him, declaring, “I am the sun of the house.” His admirable estate serves as the setting for events that take place over about six weeks.

Wealthy, handsome, and vacuous, Patterne, as his name suggests, engages repeatedly in attempts to snare a wife, never varying his approach, regardless of his failures. This represents Meredith’s definition of a failed man, one deserving of the harshest judgment by society, a man so closed-minded that he refuses to learn and change. While engaged to Constantia Durham, he encourages the love of Laetitia Dale, who he wants to “move” without “exposing himself.” Contrary to her name’s suggestion of constancy, Constantia deserts Patterne as soon as she recognizes him as a selfish, fatuous individual who needs others only as an audience. She abandons her one-time fiancé to elope with an officer of the Hussars, completely shaming Patterne. Victorian mores viewed a broken engagement to be almost as serious as a broken marriage. More serious still is Patterne’s failure to meet the test of his character, in contrast to Constantia, who seeks independence and self-development.

Due to his boundless ego, Patterne does not suffer long from chagrin, and he begins the pursuit of a new victim, Clara Middleton. Despite her name, which suggests clarity of thought, Clara gives in to Patterne’s attentions but will not plan a wedding after learning about the former engagement to Constantia. Her father, Dr. Middleton, based on Thomas Love Peacock, Meredith’s father-in-law, sides with Patterne, swayed by his attentions and impressive wealth. An additional major character is a handsome scholar named Vernon Whitford, based on Meredith’s good friend, Leslie Stephen, father to Virginia Woolf.

One final character that proves important to the man-versus-man conflict is Crossjay, a young, poor relation of Patterne. To gain revenge on Patterne for once having insulted his father, Crossjay shares with Clara the fact that he overheard Patterne proposing to Laetitia Dale. Clara has already transferred her affection to Whitford, meaning that Patterne finds himself again rejected. Daunted only momentarily, he proposes in earnest to Laetitia. When she also has the intelligence to reject him, Patterne becomes persistent, at last convincing her to marry. Unfortunately, he never undergoes any epiphany to help change his behavior and overblown sense of self.

However, Meredith takes care not to villainize Patterne. Instead, readers likely feel sympathy for him as they recognize that his unacceptable behavior has its basis in universal human traits. Feminist critics find interesting Meredith’s theme of female self-repression of intelligence in response to male aggressiveness, while Marxist critics will find abundant reference to the social classes and the noticeable gap separating the wealthy from the poor. Replete with simple yet admirable dialogue, the novel resembles a play filled with verbal irony. The Egoist sold the best of any of Meredith’s many novels and remained among his most popular into the 21st century.

Analysis of George Meredith’s Novels

Bibliography
Stevenson, Lionel. The English Novel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1953.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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