In wonderfully drawn and finished yet never obtruded contrast to this beautiful creation comes before us Rosamond Vincy.  Outwardly even more characterised by every personal charm, save that one living and crowning charm which outshines from the soul within; to the eye, therefore—­such eyes as can penetrate no deeper than the surface—­prettier, more graceful, more accomplished and fascinating, than Dorothea Brooke;—­it is difficult to conceive a more utterly unlovable example of womanhood, whether as maiden or wife.  Hard and callous of heart and dead of soul, incapable of one thought or emotion that rises above or extends beyond self, insistent on her own petty claims and ambitions to the exclusion of all others, ever aiming to achieve these, now by dogged sullen persistence, now by mean concealments and frauds, no more repellent portraiture of womanhood has ever been placed before us.  The fundamental character of her entire home relations is, on her first appearance, drawn by a single delicate touch—­her objecting to her brother’s red herring, or rather to its presence after she enters the room, because its odour jars on her sense of pseudo-refinement.  In her relation to her husband there is not from first to last one shadow of anything that can be called love, no approach to sympathy or harmony of life.  She looks on him solely as a means for removing herself to what she considers a higher social circle, securing to her greater ease, freedom, and luxury of daily life, and ultimately withdrawing her to a wider sphere of petty and selfish enjoyment.  Seeking these ends, she resorts to every mean device of deceit and concealment.  Utterly callous and impenetrable to his feelings, to every manlier instinct within him, as she is utterly insensible of, and indeed incapable of, entering into his higher and wider professional aims, she not only ignores these, but in her dull and hard insensibility runs counter to, and tramples on them all.

Even toward Mary Garth there is nothing approaching true friendship or affection; no power of recognising her honesty, unselfishness, and earnestness of nature.  She is nothing to her but a tool and confidante, the recipient of her own petty hopes and desires, worries and cares.

All Dorothea’s gentle, unobtrusive attempts to soothe, to win her back to truer and better relations with her husband, and to awaken to active life and exercise the true womanhood, which she in her sweet instinct believes to be inherent in all her sex, are met by hard indifference or dull resistance.  And in the one act of apparent friendliness or rather explanation toward Dorothea, she is actuated far less by sympathy or desire to clear away what has come between her and Ladislaw, than by sullen resentment against the latter for his rejection of her unseemly and unwifely advances to him.