Of all the characters portrayed in fiction, there is perhaps not one so difficult to analyse and define as that which stands out so prominently in this wonderful work, Gwendolen Harleth.  At once attractive and repellent—­fascinating in no ordinary degree, and yet, in the estimation of all around her, hard, cold, and worldly-minded—­bewitching, alike from her beauty, grace, and accomplishments, yet a superficial and seemingly heartless coquette,—­she presents a combination of at once some of the finest and some of the meanest qualities of woman.  Her hardness towards her fond, doting mother, and her contempt for her sisters, are conspicuous almost from her first appearance.  Her arrogant defiance of Deronda in the gambling-house, and the fierce revulsion of pride with which she received the return of her necklace, are entirely in keeping with these characteristics.  And the news of the reduction of her family to utter poverty awakens no emotion save on her own behalf alone.  Yet, ever and anon, faint gleams of tenderness towards her gentle mother break forth, though soon obscured by the bitter insistance with which her own claims to station, wealth, and luxury assert themselves.  Her first acceptance of Grandcourt represents this phase of her twofold nature; her rejection of him and flight from him, after her interview with Mrs Glasher, are equally characteristic of the second.  That rejection is actuated much more by resentment against Mrs Glasher, that she should have dared to anticipate her in anything resembling affection he had to give, and against him, that he should have presumed to offer to her a heart already sealed to anything resembling love, than by the faintest approach to it in her own.  The leap, as it were, by which she ultimately accepts him, is merely a quick, half-conscious instinct to secure her own deliverance from poverty, and the attainment of those higher external enjoyments of life for which she conceived herself formed; and if, in addition, a thought of relieving the wants of her mother and sisters obtrudes, it holds only a very secondary place in her mind.  Deeming herself born for dominion over every male heart, in her utter childish ignorance of human character, she deems that Grandcourt also shall be her slave.

But through all her relations with that magnificent incarnation of self-isolation and self-love, she is compelled to cower before him.  Again and again she attempts to turn, only to be crushed under his heel as ruthlessly as a worm.  During the yachting voyage it is the same; intense inward revulsion on the one side—­cold, inexorable despotism on the other.