The figure of Will Ladislaw is a beautiful attempt, with many finely-completed points; but on the whole it seems to us a failure. It is the only eminent failure in the book, and its defects are therefore the more striking. It lacks sharpness of outline and depth of color; we have not found ourselves believing in Ladislaw as we believe in Dorothea, in Mary garth, in Rosamond, in Lydgate, in Mr. Brooke and Mr. Cauaubon. He is meant, indeed, to be a light creature (with a large capacity for gravity, for he finally gets into Parliament), and a light creature certainly should not be heavily drawn. The author, who is evidently very fond of him, has found for him here and there some charming and eloquent touches; but in spite of these he remains vague and impalpable to the end. He is, we may say, the one figure which a masculine intellect of the same power as George Eliot's would not have conceived with the same complacency; he is, in short, roughly speaking, a woman's man.
What he said.
Or to render it more from my own, un-young and un-cocky perspective, Ladislaw is tiresome because unlike every other character, there is nothing petty or contradictory about him. There is no "blot" in his self. Eliot, narrator, and Dorothea are apparently united when he is described in this way at the end of Chapter 50: ". . .he was a creature who entered into everyone's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance." But to me what this novel is so expert at, and what James likely took from it, is portraying the resistances between people, particularly people trying to become intimate with one another.
