Novel: The Egoist

Overview
George Meredith's The Egoist is a trenchant comic and tragic study of self-centeredness and social manners set in late-Victorian England. The narrative centers on a conspicuously vain, controlling man whose relentless preoccupation with his own feelings and reputation distorts every intimate relationship around him. Satire and psychological acuity combine to expose the social rituals that enable egoism to flourish even as they inflict real harm on others.
The novel balances witty dialogue and pointed portraits with moments of genuine pathos, so that laughter and sympathy coexist uneasily. Meredith's prose is dense with aphorism and ironic observation, creating a world in which small moral failures feel amplified and consequential.

Plot
The plot follows the consequences of the egoist's dominance in family and courtship. A talented, sincere woman who loves him finds her agency systematically undermined by his self-regard, while friends and relatives oscillate between enabling, manipulating, and resisting his will. Courtship, social maneuvering, and a sequence of proposals and refusals expose how vanity masquerades as principle and how public persona governs private life.
Events escalate as characters attempt to break free from the egoist's influence, sometimes through strategy, sometimes through emotional confrontation. The novel's dénouement is neither neat redemption nor simple condemnation; instead it reveals the limits of moral reform when egoism is deeply ingrained in character and social habit.

Main Figures
At the center is the titular egoist, proud, eloquent, and perversely sure of his own superiority. His rhetoric and charm mask a propensity to interpret every action in ways that glorify himself, making him blind to the needs and integrity of others. Around him cluster a cast of observers and sufferers: a woman of intelligence and feeling whose independence is tested; friends who offer counsel but too often court convenience; and social acquaintances who play roles in the drama of reputation and alliance.
Meredith treats each figure with psychological nuance. Even those who frustrate or oppose the egoist are shown with motives and vulnerabilities, so the reader sees a network of complicity and resistance rather than a simple villain-victim polarity.

Themes and Style
The Egoist explores selfhood, social performance, and the moral cost of narcissism. Meredith dissects how egoism distorts language, intimacy, and public life, showing that self-love can be both comic and tragic. The novel interrogates the social structures that reward vanity, marriage as social contract, conversation as contest, reputation as currency, revealing how these forms sustain selfish behavior.
Stylistically, Meredith employs sharp epigrams, sustained irony, and close psychological observation. His sentences can be exuberant and compressed, carrying argument, humor, and moral judgment at once. The narrative voice often leans toward the didactic, but this is tempered by keen dramatic scenes that allow characters to reveal themselves through action and speech.

Significance
The Egoist stands as one of Meredith's most admired accomplishments, notable for its blend of comic social satire and penetrating character study. It influenced later realist and modernist writers interested in the intricacies of personality and the corrosive effects of self-regard. The novel remains resonant for readers drawn to fiction that scrutinizes the gap between how people present themselves and what they truly are, and for anyone interested in the social dynamics that permit egoism to persist.