Almost all the liaisons in the novel – heterosexual or single sex – are determined by construction of the ‘other' (that is, the not-self), inspired and driven by the attempt to achieve self-definition. Such ‘othering' images are created by preconceptions which in their turn are responsible for establishing illusory or deceptive notions. The source of these preconceptions is twofold: the social, sexual and moral ideologies which frame each character's behaviour; and the desire which motivates that behaviour.

Many of the relationships in the novel are initiated by misapprehension or untested assumption. So Charley Kinraid's first romantic glamour for Sylvia is due to her mistaken belief that he is Molly Corney's lover, while Kinraid himself, observing her ‘innocent blooming childlike face' as he sees her weeping at Darley's funeral, assumes that she is the dead sailor's ‘sweetheart' (p. 69). Each continues to see the other according to sexual or romantic ideality: Sylvia considers that Kinraid is ‘the nearest approach to a hero she had ever seen’, one who challenges injustice and performs wonderful deeds of bravery; Kinraid (like Arthur Donnithorne with Hetty Sorrel and Angel Clare with Tess) pursues his courtship in the appropriately female sphere of the dairy, domesticating her through a patriarchal image of femininity which endorses her ‘beauty, and pretty modest ways' (p. 134).

Philip even more exclusively constructs Sylvia according to his desire, mediated through romantic ideology. His attitude is a mixture of adoration, possessiveness masking as protectiveness (in the opening scenes of the novel he tries to squash her instinctive warmth towards the morally dubious ‘Newcastle Bess’), and patronizing superiority; he regards her as ‘sadly spoilt, and shamefully ignorant; a lovely little dunce' (p. 29). He, too, confines her image within suitably domestic proportions, admiring her picturesque stance as she spins, comparing her prettiness to blooming flowers, and attempting to make her wedding outfit replicate his associational idea of her as a ‘pretty, soft little dove… puffing out her feathered breast, with all the blue and rose-coloured lights gleaming in the morning rays' (p. 305).

False constructions of character also empower the pursuit of self-fulfilment. Philip justifies his treachery towards Kinraid by converting the stories about the latter's faithlessness into incontrovertible truth, eagerly seizing on the accounts of his breaking women's hearts, which he hears from Coulson and others, as signs that he was right not to have transmitted the impressed sailor's message to Sylvia. Indeed, Kinraid's removal as competitor for Sylvia's love reinforces this sophistry: ‘Philip took upon himself to decide that, with such a man as the specksioneer, absence was equivalent to faithless forgetfulness' (p. 213). The narrative is notably evasive about Kinraid's probity, juxtaposing stories of his philandering and the fact of his rapid marriage once Sylvia is no longer available with his declarations of love to the young girl and his loyalty to her during his period of impressment. But it mercilessly uncovers the self-deception and self-gratification at the root of romantic desire.

Such constructions, both emanating from and perpetuating a failure to ‘see' or ‘read' character properly, produce disharmony and mutual misunderstanding. Most notably in the sphere of matrimony, but also elsewhere, the narrative unfolds the tragic results of self-preoccupation and obsession. There are many unfulfilled relationships in the novel, the consequence of misplaced desire. Hester loves Philip, but he, engrossed in his adoration of Sylvia, has no conception of her emotional feelings; Coulson loves Hester, but she, cherishing her secret longings for Philip, has no interest in his attentions. Even where there is apparent compatibility of desire, communication may fail as a result of characters' entanglement with their own visions. At the New Year's party, for instance, Kinraid's high-spirited enjoyment blinds him to Sylvia's sorrowful apprehension that he has forgotten her. Again, on his dramatic return to Monkshaven, he is quick to read her refusal to allow him to strike Philip as a betrayal of her former love (‘“Oh! thou false heart!… If ever I trusted woman, I trusted you, Sylvia Robson”’ (p. 346)).

Misrepresentation or misinterpretation also divides people of the same sex. Philip's wilful misreading of Kinraid, already referred to, separates the two men both actually and conceptually: he reconstructs the specksioneer's difference (‘his bright, courteous manner, the natural gallantry of the sailor' (p. 153) as moral inferiority, thus permitting his subsequent behaviour towards him. Kinraid, on the other hand, considers that Philip's lack of evident manliness precludes his being a serious rival for Sylvia's affections. Less dramatically, Sylvia and Hester are separated by mutual misunderstanding. At first Hester regards Sylvia as flighty and insubstantial, an unworthy partner for Philip; though she starts ‘to love the woman, whose position as Philip's wife she would have envied so keenly had she not been so truly good and pious' (p. 315), she is still unable to read accurately the younger woman's response to her attentions to the frail Bell Robson. Sylvia's similar inability to recognize the ‘real' Hester makes her largely indifferent to the latter's suffering, and even at Philip's death-bed she is unconsciously cruel in her refusal to accept the validity of Hester's grief.

Most central to the narrative is the discordance between Philip and Sylvia.