"Secrecy and Revelation in George Meredith’s "Lord Ormont and His Aminta""

Despite an unenthusiastic reception from both readers and critics at the time of its publication, Lord Ormont and His Aminta (1894) is one of George Meredith’s most significant novels in terms of literary experimentation. In his last three novels, One of Our Conquerors, Lord Ormont and His Aminta and The Amazing Marriage, all written between 1890 and 1895, Meredith is actively engaged in exploiting the possibilities of the novelistic writing, thus contributing to the transformation of the genre towards the later Modernist accomplishments. This article deals with Meredith’s experimental effort to give a new sense to the realist novel by providing an original construction of the female character and the relationship between the sexes. To this scope, letters and letter writing in Lord Ormont and His Aminta are regarded as useful means of investigation of the novel’s structure that is modulated by the themes of secrecy and revelation. Characteristically, writing, hiding, discovering and reading letters allow the reader to follow Aminta’s gradual process of acquiring self-awareness towards spiritual and physical independence. For Meredith, Aminta represents the real “new woman”, that is to say, an intelligent, courageous and unexpected heroine who is able to challenge the strict limits imposed by the Victorian society on women and to establish positive patterns of gender relationships that anticipate later developments.