Biography
Gwendolen Harleth is beautiful and wilful, but her family falls on hard times soon after the novel begins. Unable to work on the stage and unwilling to be a governess, Gwendolen marries the abusive, authoritarian Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt—though she has promised his mistress, Lydia Glasher, that she will not. Grandcourt has also told Lydia that he plans to marry her before instead deciding to wed Gwendolen. 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."
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. 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.
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“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
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