Set in the Civil War, Mandeville is a study of the obsessive jealousy felt by the misanthropic hero for the successful and honourable Clifford. Although educated together, the personalities of the two men diverge to such an extent that one becomes a tortured misfit, the other a natural leader of men. After the loss of both parents, the one human being for whom the puritanical Mandeville retains any affinity is his sister, Henrietta. When Clifford and Henrietta fall in love, his loathing turns to madness, and volume III comes to an end when Clifford's sword slashes his face, and his outward disfigurement comes to match his inward degredation. "Nowhere in his [Godwin's] writing is there a figure whose actions, beliefs and innermost thoughts are so at variance with everything Godwin himself valued and admired. Somewhere within himself he found that store of spleen to draw upon; in Mandeville he gave vent to feelings he could articulate in no other way ...." (Don Locke, A Fantasy of Reason, 1980, p. 278).