Content Warning: This section discusses abuse.

Sophie and Benedict’s first enchanted meeting influences their subsequent interactions with each other and their hopes for the future. As a result, An Offer From a Gentleman shows the power that fantasy has to influence and sometimes supersede reality. Dreams and illusions exert influence in different ways; sometimes, they shape one’s goals for one’s life, and sometimes, they keep someone from seeing what is right in front of them.

Events of the novel demonstrate that dreams and fantasies can offer reprieve when one’s current life isn’t entirely fulfilling. Though her reality is shaped by a lack of interest from her father and cruelty from Araminta, Sophie clings to the dream of having a family of her own someday—a “respectable” family, including marriage and children born within wedlock. After she meets Benedict, he becomes the focal point of this fantasy; although she is aware of the class difference between them, in her dream, he loves and wants to marry her. The distance of this dream from reality comes as a rude shock when Sophie meets Benedict at the Cavender house party and he doesn’t recognize her as the woman from the night of the masquerade. While they shared part of that evening together, it was an interlude that was separate from reality and a dream of its own.