The sorrow and pity, as well as the hatred, we feel for Elizabeth Taylor's Angel

The title character in Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 novel, Angel, is hard to like and hard to hate. She's obviously a troubled young woman who, when we meet her at age 15, seems to be friendless, ashamed of her working-class family, aspiring to an upper-class life w/ servants etc., and turning away from the realities of her life and losing herself in her writing, filling many notebooks w/ what she calls her first novel - like thousands upon thousands of young men and women then and now. The only difference is that she has some talent and she has a tremendous ability to focus and actually completes her novel and then sells it. We have a sense that the book is a trashy neo-gothic romance (we never see any significant portion of Angel's writing), but it turns out that her publisher was right and, despite put-downs and disdain from the literary press, her book and several follow-ups become successful romance novels. This success allows Angel to fulfill her dreams, sort of, and move into a country mansion with servants - but she remains a troubled young woman, still without friends of companions save for a vicious dog (in one great scene her dog kills a much smaller pet and Angel refuses to take responsibility). As noted yesterday, we would today recognize Angle as one with disabilities, probably some kind of autism - she seems completely unable to empathize, and she has no sense of humor. In the second (of 6) parts of this novel, Angel meets a young man her age, an aspiring artist, Esme, whose work runs counter to everything in Angel's writings - he does pictures of urban squalor, for ex. - and of course she falls in love w/ him, but from afar: He goes off w/ his sister to Italy, and toward the end of section 2 the sister returns, befriends Angel (who had spoken highly of the sister's poetry in a press interview - she had never read the poems and has no interest in the sister, but she did this to draw the sister, and she hopes the brother, back into her life) and learns that Esme has been a cad and a terrible person, running up and running away from debts, impregnating a young woman and abandoning her: He's so far removed from Angel's life, but we know that he will connect w/ her in some way and ruin her as well. In part, we feel: She deserves it. She's nasty to her mother and her aunt and pretty much to anyone who tries to connect w/ her. But we also feel sorrow and pity for her, a tortured and troubled soul in an era when there was no help for someone in her condition (the novel, btw, is set in  or at least begins in the early 20th century).