Novel: Evan Harrington

Overview
George Meredith's Evan Harrington is a comic social novel of manners that follows a young provincial aspirant as he negotiates the porous boundary between humble origins and genteel respectability. Written in 1861, the book tracks the ambitions, vanities and small hypocrisies of mid-Victorian society while maintaining a steady sympathy for its protagonist. The tone moves between satire and psychological insight, exposing the absurdities of social climbing without turning its characters into mere caricatures.

Plot and structure
The narrative centers on Evan Harrington, a youth of modest background who dreams of literary and social advancement. His efforts to be accepted as a gentleman and a man of letters lead him into encounters with different social milieus, provincial respectability, London literary circles, and the pretensions of upwardly mobile families. The plot weaves episodes of comic misunderstanding, mentorship and rivalry, and a succession of social tests that force Evan to reconcile what he admires with what he truly is able to sustain. Meredith structures the story episodically, allowing scenes and conversations to illuminate character and theme rather than driving the action through a single, propulsive plotline.

Major characters
Evan himself is the moral and emotional center, open-hearted, ambitious and often gullible, whose sincerity contrasts with the opportunism around him. His relatives and acquaintances display a range of social postures: some are devoted and well-meaning, others are pretentious, grasping or vain. A handful of more worldly figures, mentors, rivals and social arbiters, test Evan's temperament and ambitions, offering temptations and counsel in equal measure. Meredith gives particular attention to how these interactions shape Evan's self-understanding, showing how external approval and internal integrity are frequently at odds.

Themes
The novel examines class, identity and the theater of self-fashioning in a society obsessed with rank and appearance. It spotlights the anxieties of social mobility and the comic lengths to which people go to assert a refined identity. Meredith also probes the relationship between art and social respectability: literary ambition is shown not as an abstract calling but as something entangled with reputation, patronage and class expectations. Beneath the satire sits a humane interest in authenticity, asking whether a person can reinvent themselves without losing a true sense of who they are.

Style and humor
Meredith's prose blends sharp comic observation with psychological nuance and occasional lyrical asides. Dialogues crackle with irony, and the narrator's wry commentary often punctures pretension with surgical precision. Humor arises from character foibles and social absurdities rather than slapstick plotting; the book delights in the minutiae of manners and the incongruities of social aspiration. The result is a novel that entertains while also asking readers to reflect on the costs of social ambition and the virtues of self-knowledge.

Significance
Evan Harrington stands as an early example of Meredith's social satire and his interest in personality and motive. It anticipates later Victorian novels concerned with class mobility and the ambivalences of modern individuality, and it helped establish Meredith's reputation for wit and moral perception. The novel endures for its lively portraits, its humane critique of social pretension and its portrayal of a young man's struggle to find dignity without deception.