Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Gwendolen Harleth" in English language version.
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.'
