Each one wishing for what the other has got: Two displaced characters in The Princess Casamassima

As one falls, the other rises: The eponymous Princess Casamassima, a wealthy but dubious aristocrat (is she Italian? who is she? how does she claim a title?) who tries to align herself with the radicals of the working class to overthrow the her own (ruling) class in 1880s London, actually gives up (most of) her wealth and moves into a kind of dowdy working-class neighborhood (Paddington). There's something totally strange about her: what motivates her? hos can she be both so committed to revolutionary ideals and such a callous person: she flirts with the novel's hero, Hyacinth Robinson, and treats him more or less like a pet or like an object in a collection: see, I'm friends with - maybe even in love with - a measly little bookbinder. Horrendously, she continues to ask him to take her to see the worst slums in the city - as if she's a tourist, gaping at the wildlife. As she tries to identify with the working class, Hyacinth, spurred by his association with her and with Lady Aurora and by his travels through Europe on the tiny inheritance from his stepmother, seems to be developing a taste for elegance and cultural beauty. In short, as the book nears its conclusion, we have to entirely displaced characters, "each one wishing for what the other has got," to quote the un-Jamesian Bob Dylan.