Near the beginning of Helen’s diary entries—before she has met Arthur—she recounts a conversation with her aunt Mrs. Maxwell in which her aunt warns her against choosing to marry a man for superficial reasons, such as for his good looks and agreeable personality:
“If you should marry the handsomest and most accomplished and superficially agreeable man in the world, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you, if, after all, you should find him to be a worthless reprobate, or even an impracticable fool.”
This warning foreshadows the fact that Helen will go on to do exactly that in choosing to marry Arthur—he is handsome and charming on the surface, but cruel, abusive, and lazy underneath. Helen’s response is an example of situational irony in that she promises her aunt she will not make this mistake and urges her to “set your mind at rest”:
“I know there is truth and sense in what you say; but you need not fear me, for I not only should think it wrong to marry a man that was deficient in sense or in principle, but I should never be tempted to do it; for I could not like him, if he were ever so handsome and ever so charming in other respects; I should hate him – despise him – pity him – anything but love him […] So set your mind at rest.”
Here Helen promises her aunt that she would “hate,” “despise,” and “pity” “a man that was deficient in sense or in principle,” but she goes on to love a man who exactly fits that description. Readers expect that Helen will follow through with this promise given her confidence but, as she goes on to fall for Arthur, she proves that she is more naïve than she made herself out to be.
When Arthur and Helen are first getting to know each other, he pulls her aside at a party to look at a Vandyke painting with him, as seen in the following passage:
I rose with alacrity. He drew my arm within his, and led me across the room to a splendid painting of Vandyke’s that I had noticed before, but not sufficiently examined. After a moment of silent contemplation, I was beginning to comment on its beauties and peculiarities, when, playfully pressing the hand he still retained within his arm, he interrupted me with –
“Never mind the picture, it was not for that I brought you here; it was to get you away from that scoundrelly old profligate yonder, who is looking as if he would like to challenge me for the affront.”
The painting is an allusion to the 17th century Flemish artist Sir Anthony Vandyke, a court painter to King Charles I. The portrait of Vandyke suggests that Helen is moving amongst a wealthy crowd as, at the time, Vandyke was an incredibly renowned artist.
The fact that Arthur uses the guise of seeing the Vandyke painting to get Helen alone foreshadows all of the other manipulative tactics he will use to get her to marry him and to stay in a relationship with him, even as he has affairs and leaves her for months at a time.
Before Helen and Arthur are officially engaged, Helen notices Arthur paying special attention to Annabella and hides from the pair to cry. When Arthur finds her, he assures her that he loves her and not Annabella, using a simile and a metaphor to communicate the difference in his feelings for the two women:
“Annabella Wilmot, in comparison with you, is like a flaunting peony compared with a sweet, wild rosebud gemmed with dew – and I love you to distraction!”
In comparing Annabella to a “flaunting peony” (via a simile) and Helen to a “sweet, wild rosebud” (via a metaphor), Arthur indicates that he believes Annabella is ostentatious and showy while Helen is beautiful in a more natural and refined way. Beneath this comparison is the implication that Arthur respects and loves Helen much more deeply than he does Annabella. As becomes clear later in the novel, however, Arthur is using these words to manipulate Helen—he is actually very attracted to Annabella and goes on to have an affair with her over the course of several years.
This moment also subtly foreshadows the interaction between Helen and Gilbert at the end of the novel in which she gives him a rose as a symbol for her heart. While Arthur compares Helen to a rose in an attempt to manipulate and control her, Helen takes back her power by comparing her own heart to a rose and giving it to the man who is truly deserving of it.
When Helen and Arthur are first married, Helen describes Arthur’s affection for her, using different kinds of imagery in the process:
He is very fond of me – almost too fond. I could do with less caressing and more rationality: I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose – but I won’t complain of that: I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. I sometimes liken it to a fire of dry twigs and branches compared with one of solid coal, – very bright and hot, but if it should burn itself out and leave nothing but ashes behind, what shall I do?
In implying that she feels like she is more of Arthur’s “pet” than his “friend,” Helen encourages readers to visualize the difference—as a pet, she receives affection but is in no way her husband’s equal. This is not unique to their relationship, but defines many of the romantic relationships in the novel, signaling how unjust power dynamics are tied to gender in British society generally at this time.
By describing how Arthur’s love for her feels more like “a fire of dry twigs and branches” that burns “very bright and hot” before “burn[ing] itself out,” Helen again uses imagery to help readers understand the unsustainability of their relationship as it is. This is also an example of foreshadowing as Arthur’s love does burn out very quickly, and he becomes the cruel and abusive husband Helen did not want to believe he had the capacity to be.
Early in Arthur and Helen’s marriage, Helen witnesses Arthur sitting with Annabella and kissing her hand and later confronts him about it. In an example of situational irony, Arthur denies that he is interested in Annabella and—going even further—says that he will never be seriously interested in anyone else:
“Will you never learn?” he continued more boldly, "that you have nothing to fear from me? that I love you wholly and entirely? – or if,” he added with a lurking smile, “I ever give a thought to another, you may well spare it, for those fancies are here and gone like a flash of lightning, while my love for you burns on steadily, and for ever like the sun.”
Here Arthur uses weather-related similes to try to convince Helen that, even if he does have feelings for other women, they are brief “like a flash of lightning” while his love for Helen is steady “like the sun.” This moment is ironic—and also an example of foreshadowing—because Arthur ends up having a full-fledged affair with Annabella for years and also has dalliances with many other women. In other words, his feelings for other women are much more than a simple lightning flash.
Arthur’s inability to remain faithful to Helen—along with the ease with which he lies to her—shows his lack of morality. Unlike Helen, he does not adhere to Christian principles of honoring a marriage.
In an example of foreshadowing, Helen writes in her diary that she has suspicions about Hargrave’s character even as he acts like a gentleman in front of her:
He seemed bent upon doing the honours of his house in the most unexceptionable manner, and exerting all his powers for the entertainment of his guest, and the display of his own qualifications as a host, a gentleman, and a companion; and actually succeeded in making himself very agreeable – only that he was too polite. – And yet, Mr Hargrave, I don’t much like you; there is a certain want of openness about you that does not take my fancy, and a lurking selfishness, at the bottom of all your fine qualities, that I do not intend to lose sight of.
Despite Hargrave adequately displaying his “qualifications as a host, a gentleman, and a companion,” Helen finds him “too polite” and senses a “lurking selfishness” that she refuses to overlook the way other people in the novel do. This passage foreshadows the moment in which Hargrave tries to force himself on Helen, wanting her to have an affair with him, after many months of claiming that he only wants to be her friend.
Hargrave’s behavior is also an example of situational irony because, according to everyone in their community, Hargrave is the only one of Arthur’s companions who is a moral and virtuous man (in that he is said not to be given to drinking or womanizing the way the others are). While his actions may not be as extreme as theirs, he certainly proves that he is not the moral man everyone makes him out to be.
