George Meredith's Fictional Transformations of Female Life-Writings

In The Tragic Comedians and Diana of the Crossways, George Meredith alludes to the notorious life-writings of two contemporary women, Helene von Racowitza and Caroline Norton. Both women's narratives told of a public scandal surrounding their public and illicit love affair with a leading politician: in Racowitza's case, the German Social-Democratic leader Ferdinand Lassalle; and in Norton's, Lord Melbourne, then prime minister. Both women had assertively transgressed the ideology of separate spheres by entering the sphere of politics through their erotic and intellectual companionship. This essay examines the ways in which Meredith's fiction transforms these feminine, pathetic life-writings into masculine tragicomedies that are instructive examples of the condition of male-female relations.