The Sentimentalists

"The Sentimentalists" by George Meredith is an unfinished comedy written during the late 19th century. The book centers around the complexities of love, marriage, and individual identity against a backdrop of societal expectations. With a blend of social commentary and romantic entanglements, the narrative explores the dynamics between a group of characters navigating their feelings and societal roles in a Surrey garden. In the play, the central character Astraea is a widow struggling with the implications of her status in society and the pressures from various suitors, including the young Arden. She wrestles with her feelings of desire and the expectations of remaining dedicated to her deceased husband. Throughout the dialogue, characters discuss themes related to love, marriage, and self-identity, often debating the nature of womanhood and romantic pursuit. As the story unfolds, misunderstandings and emotional conflicts arise, especially when Astraea confronts her own agency, complicating her relationship with Arden. The work captures both humorous and serious undertones as the characters navigate their sentiments within the societal confines of their time. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

George Meredith was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) briefly scandalised Victorian literary circles. Of his later novels, the most enduring is The Egoist (1879), though in his lifetime his greatest success was Diana of the Crossways (1885). His novels were innovative in their attention to characters' psychology, and also portrayed social change. His style, in both poetry and prose, was noted for its syntactic complexity; Oscar Wilde likened it to "chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning". Meredith was an encourager of other novelists, as well as an influence on them; among those to benefit were Robert Louis Stevenson and George Gissing. Meredith was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.