I can't get over how much I am loving Daniel Deronda. In it, George Eliot keeps making these insane plays on the Austenian marriage market. In a lot of ways Gwendoline Harleth is Eliot's riff on Austen's Emma Woodhouse. But Eliot is very clear to render as present and palpable the socio-economic world Austen only sees on the horizon (of the sea-centric Persuasion): a world defines by the values of the mercantile class. Eliot's Gwendoline, though as pretty and pompous as her Austenian precursor, doesn't enjoy Emma's social and economic security. The Crofts (Persuasion) and the Gardiners (Pride and Prejudice) are running shit now, and when Gwendolyn's family's investments tank, she is forced into a marriage with a decidedly un-Knightly-ish suitor, Grandcourt. Daniel Deronda, with his moralistic "evil eye" that humbles and embarrasses Gwendoline as she gambles, is the Knightly, but without family, money, or station, he is relegated to a Tom Jones:preferred-orphan-of-a-benevolent-nobleman-who-everyone-suspects-is-your-illegitimate-father status. Gwendolyn's ego, her vain obliviousness, and difficulty choosing a decent marriage in a world where someone's value (whether in terms of character or money) does not correlate with their title or appearance strongly prefigures Undine Spragg, the similarly detestable but irresistibly entertaining heroine of Edith Wharton's The Custom and the Country who foolishly pursues title instead of both/either character and/or economic security.
Running a more psychologically rigorous marriage plot through a world where the landed aristocracy have been unseated from the apogee of culture and society by cosmopolitan and mercantile forces, with Daniel Deronda, George Eliot is the ancestral link between Austen and Wharton.
