Novel: Diana of the Crossways

Overview
George Meredith's Diana of the Crossways (1885) traces the life of a compelling, outspoken woman who collides with the rigid expectations of Victorian society. Set in the fashionable and political circles of London and the English countryside, the novel examines how intelligence, reputation and desire for autonomy intersect and clash when a woman seeks an independent voice. Meredith models the heroine on real contemporary scandal, using her protagonist's predicament to explore public scandal, private conscience and the ways power is exercised through rumor and law.

Plot
Diana is an attractive, intelligent woman whose marriage offers social standing but little liberty. Unwilling to surrender her intellectual and emotional energies to the domestic sphere alone, she engages with journalism and social debate, cultivating relationships with politicians, journalists and influential men. A delicate and ill-fated episode involving political information and its possible disclosure thrusts her into a public controversy that rapidly grows beyond her control. Accusations, misinterpretations and the voracious appetite of the press turn private choices into public indictment, and Diana pays a high price for her candor and independence.
As events accelerate, the novel follows the unraveling of reputation rather than a melodramatic resolution. Legal constraints, marital entanglements and the era's gendered double standards leave Diana constrained even as her intellect and will remain potent. The story deliberately resists simple moral verdicts; characters can be both admirable and compromised, and the outcomes underline how social institutions and private motives together shape destiny.

Main Characters
Diana herself is the central force: magnetic, argumentative, erudite and impatient with hypocrisy. Her voice is spirited and often mischievous, yet she is vulnerable to isolation when society turns against her. Her husband represents the conventional ties and legal realities that bind women; his steadiness is not presented as villainy so much as the structural limits of marital life. Around them gather a cast of politicians, literary figures and journalists who personify different kinds of influence, ambition, vanity, conscience, and opportunism, each affecting Diana's fortunes in specific ways.
A journalist figure embodies the new power of the press and its ambivalent relation to truth, while certain political men illustrate how intimacy and influence can be bought, courted or misconstrued. Meredith avoids flat caricature, instead rendering each player with psychological insight that complicates easy sympathy or condemnation.

Themes and Style
The novel probes the constrained freedoms of women in Victorian England, especially the lack of legal autonomy and the perilous fragility of reputation. Gendered hypocrisy, the collision of public duty with private feeling, and the ethics of disclosure recur as moral and social questions. Meredith interrogates how a woman's desire to speak and act independently can be read as threat or scandal, and how social gossip becomes a mechanism of control.
Stylistically, the book features Meredith's trademark psychological acumen, dense aphoristic prose and a satirical edge. Dialogue and interior reflection move the narrative as keen observations and epigrammatic comments shape a portrait rather than a simplistic plot-driven account. The tone shifts between ironic social commentary and serious moral concern, allowing complexity to emerge from character study rather than tidy didacticism.

Reception and Legacy
Reception at publication was mixed; contemporaries noted Meredith's brilliance while quarrelling with his treatment of scandal and the moral ambiguity of his heroine. Over time the novel gained recognition as an early exploration of feminine subjectivity and public life, and it endures as a perceptive social novel that anticipates modern concerns about media, privacy and gendered power. Diana of the Crossways remains significant for its unsparing depiction of how society polices women who refuse to be merely ornamental, and for Meredith's refined, psychologically charged prose.