# Gladys — The Lost World character guide

> Gladys in The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Lake Gladys

**First appearance:** 0003-i-there-are-heroisms-all-round-us

## Snapshot

The beautiful, clear-eyed woman Malone adores, who tells him she could only love a man of great deeds and strange experiences — and means it.

## Who they are

Gladys refuses Malone not out of cruelty but out of an honest, romantic idealism: she wants a Burton or a Stanley, a man whose glories she could reflect. Her rejection sends Malone straight into Challenger's orbit and onto the expedition, making her the absent engine of the entire plot. She is less a prize than a mirror, showing Malone — and the reader — exactly what kind of man he is trying to become.

## In the story

### [The Lost World](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/chapters/the-lost-world)

Malone's love interest, whose desire for a heroic man spurs Malone to join the expedition.

### [I: There Are Heroisms All Round Us](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/chapters/i-there-are-heroisms-all-round-us)

Malone's love interest, who rejects his proposal because she idealizes a man of great deeds and strange experiences, inspiring Malone's quest.

### [He Is a Perfectly Impossible Person](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/chapters/iii-he-is-a-perfectly-impossible-person)

Mentioned indirectly as 'Lake Gladys' in the context of Malone's earlier proposal, but not present in this chapter.

### [XVI: A Procession! A Procession!](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/chapters/xvi-a-procession-a-procession)

Revealed to have married a solicitor's clerk named William Potts while Malone was away, causing Malone's heartbreak.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/gladys
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters