George Meredith first published his third novel, Sandra Belloni, under the title Emilia in England. The title character is a singer, discovered while singing in the woods by the three Pole daughters—Arabella, Cornelia, Adela—and their brother Wilfrid, an army officer without merit, recently returned from India. Their party also includes Mr. Pericles, a Greek merchant who partners with Samuel Pole, the girls’ father and a great music aficionado. Excited by his discovery, Pericles wants to train Emilia to become an opera singer.

After inquiries, Wilfrid discovers she is Emilia Sandra Belloni, daughter of a violinist in a London orchestra who has been exiled from Italy. The Pole sisters move Emilia to London and introduce her to the social scene. At one gathering, she meets the Welshman Merthyr Powys, an Italian sympathizer, and also Captain Gambier, a socialite who once tried to pick up Sandra in a park and with whom Adela has struck up a flirtation. All admire Emilia’s talent, and then she departs to keep a promised singing engagement at a village club. When she is caught up in a dispute between men of different villages, Wilfrid rescues her, causing Emilia to fall in love with him.

Love triangles develop between Mr. Pole’s children and their various suitors and love interests, causing intense conflict. Two of the would-be matches are ordered by Pole himself, allowing Meredith his traditional commentary lambasting society’s requirements of women and men of position for “good” marriages, often not based on love. Wilfrid is loved by, and sometimes loves, both Emilia and his father’s choice as his wife, Lady Charlotte Chillingworth. Cornelia, in love with the disinherited son of a baronet, Purcell Barrett, is destined, according to Pole, to marry instead the middle-aged member of Parliament, Sir Twickenham Pryme. Arabella does not feel strongly enough about either of her suitors, Edward Buxley and Freshfield Sumner, to express a preference.

As for the widower Pole, he romances an Irish widow named Martha Chump, whom his daughters despise for her brogue and her commonness. The setting for much of the novel is the Pole home in Surrey, Brookfield, where Pole invites Martha to visit. He engages in speculation with Martha’s money to finance a much grander home in a higher-status area called Besworth, a move that Wilfrid assumes will improve his chances of marrying the well-placed Lady Charlotte. In a regrettable move, Emilia pursues Wilfrid to Stornley, Lady Charlotte’s mansion, pestering him to marry her, offering to sacrifice her opportunity to train in Milan at the renowned Conservatorio. This infuriates Pericles, who has plans for her future.

Wilfrid tells Emilia that he would like to marry her but cannot, due to his father’s plans for him to marry Charlotte. Pole has suffered a financial disaster and depends more than ever on Wilfrid making a wealthy match, a recurring theme in fiction of the day. Recovering from a stroke, Pole escorts Emilia to a theater where she sees her father performing, causing her conflict, and leading her to attack Pole for turning Wilfrid against her. A short time later, Charlotte hears a rumor from Pole that Wilfrid has “compromised” Emilia, provoking Charlotte to meet with Emilia to persuade her to stop pressuring Wilfrid. Charlotte later agrees to marry Wilfrid even should he lose his fortune, when he attempts to break his engagement with her in order to marry Emilia, displaying his weak will.

Emilia has in the meantime developed three additional romantic interests. The symbolic meaning of character names holds true with the poet Tracy Runningbrook and one of Pole’s clerks, Braintop; Merthyr also pursues Emilia. Charlotte invites Emilia to eavesdrop on a planned conversation with Wilfrid, in which he denies loving Emilia, a plot contrivance that hearkens back to Shakespeare’s dramas and beyond. Convinced at last of Wilfrid’s worthlessness, Emilia decides to train for the opera after all, but when she attempts to sing formally for Pericles, her voice deserts her. Feminist critics find interesting her self-silencing at this point in her career, as silence traditionally was inflicted on women by society.

Meredith emphasizes the arbitrary value placed on humans—and particularly women—as commodities when Pericles no longer has use for Emilia, who contemplates suicide, equating her value with her capacity to perform. As Emilia wanders London, alone and hungry, Merthyr, her one true love, finds and rescues her. She learns as she recovers that Wilfrid has plans to depart England for a commission in the Austrian army, a fact Merthyr and his half-sister Georgianna try to distract Emilia from considering by taking her to a ball at Penarvon Castle. Wilfrid surfaces there, appealing to Emilia as she sits in her carriage. Merthyr, ever vigilant for Emilia’s well-being, dissuades her from accompanying Wilfrid, and then departs to fight for freedom in Italy.

Wilfrid begs for Emilia’s hand and she refuses, but bargains to stay in England if he will not go to Austria. While all this conflict is disconcerting, tragedy occurs through a misunderstanding with Cornelia’s love, Barrett. He has become a baronet after all following his father’s death and travels to Brookfield to deliver the good news. While there, another eavesdropping scene occurs when he overhears discussion of a pending marriage, believes incorrectly that Cornelia is to marry Pryme, and kills himself. Meredith again emphasizes the terrible consequences possible when parents force partners on their offspring, as well as the manner by which money is used to manipulate others; Pericles uses it to control Emilia’s fate, and Pole takes advantage of a widow in attempts to restore his fortune.

The novel seems to come full circle when Emilia regains her voice, travels to Italy after all, and is again heard singing in the woods by Pericles and Wilfrid, who are on this occasion accompanied by Charlotte. The imagery suggests the traditional female symbol of a bird in nature, as Emilia’s art is identified with independence and the natural order. Pericles becomes excited again about Emilia’s future career and agrees to support her training at the Conservatorio. Again vacillating between affections, Wilfrid declares his love for Emilia, but she cannot be deterred from her studies. Charlotte at last cuts Wilfrid loose, determining him of irredeemable character, and he loses her support in obtaining a diplomatic post.

Upon the wounded Merthyr’s return to England following the crushed Italian uprising, Pole has been rescued from his debts by Pericles, who takes Emilia to Milan. She corresponds with Merthyr and writes that she belongs in Italy but will always remember England; learns from Merthyr that Wilfrid has completed his plan to join the Austrian army. Merthyr anticipates Emilia’s eventual return to England, at which time he hopes they may marry. Their relationship would act as the focus for Meredith’s later novel Vittoria (1867). In that novel, many of the characters reappear to play roles in one of Meredith’s most directly political works, in which Emilia, who has renamed herself Vittoria, marries an Italian revolutionary.

Sandra Belloni was praised by critics for its presentation of a strong, shrewd female protagonist, rather than the stereotypically helpless, non-intellectual being of most popular literature.

Bibliography
Jones, Mervyn. The Amazing Victorian: A Life of George Meredith. London: Constable, 1999.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 19th century british literature, Analysis of George Meredith's Sandra Belloni, arranged marriages in literature, Brookfield Surrey setting, Emilia in England, Emilia Sandra Belloni, female protagonists in Victorian fiction, Feminist literary criticism, gender roles in victorian fiction, George Meredith, George Meredith feminist themes, literary motifs of eavesdropping, literary representations of class and marriage, love triangles in Victorian novels, Merthyr Powys, opera in literature, Pericles character analysis, Sandra Belloni, social critique in Victorian novels, symbolic character names, tragic misunderstandings in fiction, victorian novels, Vittoria sequel, voice and silence in literature, Wilfrid Pole, women in opera fiction