Gwendolen Harleth

Gwendolen Harleth, later Gwendolen Grandcourt, is a central character in George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda (1876). She acts as a foil to Mirah Lapidoth.

Gwendolen Harleth
1910 illustration of "Gwendolen at the roulette table"
First appearanceDaniel Deronda
Created byGeorge Eliot
In-universe information
GenderFemale
TitleLady
SpouseHenleigh Grandcourt

Biography

Gwendolen Harleth is beautiful and wilful, desired by many men, a fact which she revels in. However, her family falls on hard times soon after the novel begins. It becomes the once proud Gwendolen's fate to have to work as a governess in order to support herself and her family. She desperately tries to escape that fate, and explores the possibility of working on the stage as an actress. She is sorely disabused of that notion, when she learns that beauty and charm alone are not enough to gain her followers on the stage—it requires years of training and hard work. Unable to bear the idea of being a governess, Gwendolen decides to marry the abusive, authoritarian Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt—though she had promised his mistress, Lydia Glasher, that she would not do so, since that would disinherit the children Glasher has with Grandcourt. Glasher had previously left her husband for Grandcourt, and had also been given promises of marriage, but he has never kept his word. Eliot says of Gwendolen, "It was not that she wished to damage men, it was only that she wished not to be damaged by them."[1]

Gwendolen and Grandcourt have an unhappy marriage, and Gwendolen is racked by guilt when Grandcourt drowns, as she had been wishing for him to die and hesitated for a moment before trying to save him. Grandcourt had recently made a new will, in which he left the majority of his fortune and estates to his son by Mrs. Glasher, if his marriage to Gwendolen did not produce a male heir. He created the new will specifically in an effort to coerce Gwendolen to do her wifely duty with him to produce a legitimate heir.

Throughout her ordeals, Daniel Deronda acts as a moral guide. He buys back jewellery she has pawned when she becomes impoverished, and he counsels her when she is distressed about the state of her marriage to Grandcourt and her actions vis a vis Lydia Glasher and her children. When she is uncertain what to do when she is widowed, he encourages her to do good.

Onscreen portrayals

Daniel Deronda has been adapted for the screen twice. The first time, in 1921, Gwendolen was played by Dorothy Fane. The second, better-known version, a BBC serialisation from 2002, had Romola Garai as Gwendolen.

References
  1. Gornick, Vivian (1997), The End of the Novel of Love, Beacon Press, ISBN 0-8070-6222-7, In Daniel Deronda George Eliot pits the beautiful Gwendolen Harleth (shrewd, vain, ambitious, hungry for a place in the world) against Henleigh Grandcourt, the aristocrat who wishes to marry her, apparently setting in motion the classic struggle between a woman and a man who are evenly matched: in this case both cold, smart, and determined. In the bargain, Gwendolen seems malicious: she taunts and manipulates the arrogant lord as if the exercise of sexual power in and of itself is a necessary pleasure. But slowly, steadily—it takes Eliot 200 pages to get them married—we are moved deeper inside Gwendolen and we see that her behavior is meant to be off-putting. She is desperate to keep the action going, delay the moment of decision. We see that she is buying time. She dreads marriage. 'It was not,' Eliot observes of her, 'that she wished to damage men, it was only that she wished not to be damaged by them.'
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