Dear Serial Readers,
I loved the "outsourced" review Josh provided--and I thought the description of Oliphant could also apply to Lucilla herself. And I agree about the slapstick elements--I found so many scenes hilarious--like Cavendish's bad luck of sitting at the dinner table directly under the lamp so that the Archdeacon immediately recognized him. And Lucilla, whose sharp vision sees the calamity about to happen,drops her fan into her pyramid-shaped dinner napkin! And then all the mistaken assumptions about Lucilla and Cavendish, from Mrs Chiley or others watching her. AND, like last time, those allusions to "Them," or, as Mrs Chiley puts it, "everybody knows men are great fools where women are concerned." I don't think I've encountered another Victorian novelist this funny with the exception of Dickens--but, as I've said before, the Oliphantine humor is so different.
What struck me this time is the narrowness of the canvas here--that all the action of the novel is basically across two streets in Carlingford--the class-inflected neighborhoods of Grange Lane and Grove Street, and a few select homes within each. Not much traveling about this novel, but so much action, so much tempest in a drawing-room! And for all the suspense set up for the last installment (as TK said, "I wonder what will happen next!"), the playing out of the Cavendish Unveiled plot is quite drawn out. Now we have to wait for the next segment to see if Lucilla's best-laid plans to hitch Mrs. Mortimer with the Archdeacon (motivated by her desire to foil her father's leaning toward the widow who wants to disappear), will come off. And whether Cavendish will marry Barbara Lake after all, now that Lucilla has confirmed his class fall. The plot moves slowly, and not much happens, and yet the novel is oddly engrossing. As others have commented, this seems a different animal altogether from the familiar fare of Victorian domestic fiction, an alternative realism.
Despite the anxiety about this particular Thursday Evening, as it faintly registers through Lucilla's body (although her pulse remains calm!), her self-possession as hostess extraordinaire is still delightfully reassuring. She is a social artist, and what's also quite remarkable is her zest--her "genius"--for this. And so this installment propels us forward to more drawing-room suspense orchestrated by Lucilla: "her lofty energies went on unwearied to overrule and guide the crisis which was to decide so many people's fate." Is this humor in hyperbole?
Next time, chaps 33-36.
Serially salivating,
Serial Susan
5 comments:
Hi, Serial Readers, I tried to post last time but it never went up, so apologies for seeming to be missing from the conversation. I've been very much enjoying the project of collective reading, which (apart from teaching) feels like a new experience! I love Serial Susan's point that Lucilla is a social artist. I'm struck that Oliphant limits her major characters to a single talent or skill: Mrs Woodburn's mimicry, Barbara's contralto, Rose's painting, Mr Cavendish's flirting, Dr Marjoribanks' dinners, Mrs Chiley's loyalty, and then Lucilla's "genius." (This helps me to think about why Lucilla has no sense of humor: you only get one gift.) But why can't anyone have more than one? It's as though a social world is distilled less through personalities than through talents...
I’m afraid anything I have to say at this point is pretty fragmented. I feel suspended, waiting to see how all this will play out, and am enjoying the book a lot. Anyway, I was particularly delighted with little things in this installment, beginning in Chapter 29 with the description of the General’s “habitation”—the “nice pictures and a good library…an admirable cellar,” though Mr Centum was the one “to talk about vintages.” Then the bit about Lucilla giving Cavendish credit where no credit was due because circumstance rather than self-regard or any sense of dignity kept him from a meeting with her. I loved her misassumption as much as I do her principles. Best of all, though, was Lucilla’s exclusive if not ironic compassion for Cavendish and disdain for Barbara: “…a man who, on the whole had many capabilities, yet whose highest fortune in life could not mount above Barbara Lake!” And finally, it was earlier, in Chapter 29, when I thought Oliphant was telling us that we are in for more surprises, “as nobody can predict what sudden and unexpected turns human affairs may take.”
It was nice to visit Cavendish's home, and see how well he had created it, but also to wonder what sort of home he and Barbara would create together. Probably not quite what suits either of them.
But that's my own imagining, not quite Oliphantine (a delightful adjective).
I noticed again how much Oliphant stresses Lucilla's purity, maidenliness, unmarried bedchamber. It's so stressed, there must be humor there, but even though I find Oliphant so funny, I don't really get this joke. I wonder if Lucilla's maneuverings are seen as opposed to maidenliness? Are they too masculine or too matronly? Or is she too innocent to know what she is doing? I'm just not sure.
I have noticed much more in this section that perhaps Lucilla does want more recognition than she is getting.
At the same time, there is increased emphasis on the foolishness of men. I enjoyed when Lucilla suggested to Mrs. Mortimer that the chief loss in the death of a husband is someone to walk into the room with.
This book is so satisfyingly funny, and I'd say I am eager to see what happens next, but I still only had that one moment of suspense, when Mrs. Mortimer saw Mr. Beverly. (And does Mr. B have a talent? Other than broad views?)
I also notice (and must confess am enjoying) the Oliphantine ripping of men. While many novelists can be quite savage to their characters, and misogyny abounds, this subtle, good-natured but persistent critique of men (sometimes on the part of Lucilla, but also on the part of the narrator and a few other characters' voices) seems new and kinda subversive (at least relative to the tiny tempest-in-a-drawing-room scale of the novel as Susan suggests). Kari mentions a good example, and there is, of course, all the mentioning of Them as a species apart, and then the narrator here (this is a scene sans Lucilla) writes that General Travers's "babble of the club ... fell as flat upon Mr Cavendish, whose mind was full of other matters, as if it had been the merest old woman's gossip, which, to be sure, it slightly resembled in some points" (ch 29). There is also the installment's genuine sympathy for Mrs Woodburn ("the only one really to be pitied"), whose marriage is featured as a master/slave relationship (chapter 32) about to get worse after Cavendish's exposure. Add to that Lucilla's relative disinterest in them (other than as subjects of her sovereignty -- they could only pain her, according to chapter 31, if they were her equals), and you have a unique perspective on men. I'm not familiar with Oliphant's canon. Is this her common attitude or is this unique to the story she wants to tell here?
Once more on interiority: a couple times Oliphant writes, during scenes which require describing a character's significant emotional response (when Cavendish receives Lucilla's letter, or when the Archdeacon is kept from dragging Cavendish from the room), that "words could not give any idea of the state of his mind." There is so little that goes on in this novel other than words (Austen-esque in that way), and yet there is not 100% faith in them to describe the way characters feel. So maybe Lucilla's interiority (or lack thereof, or regulation of it, or whatever) is part of a broader point about representation?
In conclusion, this installment has given me a mantra that I shall always now assert in awkward moments: "Thomas is behind you with the soup!"
I have no idea why I wrote "General's" habitation. Thanks, Kari.
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