Dear Serial Readers,
A circular plot by way of this conclusion where Tom repeats his proposal from installment #3, after he returns again to Lucilla, as he did first in #2. But presumably now he is now more like--as he had wished to Lucilla in that early proposal scene--"someone you had never seen before." It's all in the beard--and all those "heaps of Indian things."
How does "after all it was Tom" make sense? If marriage, despite Lucilla's protestations in #3 that she "had not the least intention of marrying anybody," is required "after all" for Lucilla, then marrying her cousin allows her the most continuity with the character of her very self--not only does her name stay the same, but she ascends to "Marchbanks" (yes, same pronunciation as "Marjoribanks"!) which offers her a bigger social sphere (county rather than town) and physical domestic space for her social reforming genius. Even the hint that she can pitch her political hostessing skills through Tom surfaces in her idea that "there are Members for counties as well." By keeping the marriage all in the family, with a cousin who adores her from the start and yet seems a pliable quantity worthy of her efforts (unlike poor Cavendish--I wish we'd seen that he was indeed married to Barbara Lake--), Lucilla can stay her course, and yet expand her social consciousness (as Tamara K suggested in her recent comment--)
The most curious line to me is where Lucilla compares her past efforts to reform Grange Lane and Carlingford to a woman who has "slaved...in a mill." Her interest in social reform here seems ludicrously compared with the focus of reform work by E. Gaskell's heroines, for instance. But is this a comical note, Lucilla's comparison, that ironic undertone that creeps in from time to time in this novel?
The suggestion that Lucilla will now embark on housing reform projects in Marchbank anticipates Dorothea's interests in Middlemarch--so I can appreciate Q.D. Leavis's comparison a bit better with Eliot's heroine devised only five years later. Tamara K mentions Eliot's "dead hand" in Middlemarch with the startling ringing of Papa's bell, and yes, it seems to me totally clear that Eliot read this novel--after all they had the same publisher! But I don't know if they met or corresponded. Do any of you Serial Readers know, by chance? I imagine we'll see evidence too that Oliphant read Eliot's stories published in Blackwood's--
I will say that this ending is palatable too because Tom is so familiar, but also so relatively unformed as a character compared to Cavendish, Ashburton, and any other suspects who have had far more page time in the serial. Maybe this familiar unfamiliarity is a good quality too for our "genius" Lucilla to continue to have full sway for her reform works.
Your thoughts on this concluding installment? Thanks to all of you various and many Serial Readers for this novel--I counted something like eight or nine different readers posting, a record for this slow reading adventure! I've relished all your contributions!
We will take a short break from these screen-pages before starting the serialized stories, "Scenes from Clerical Life," George Eliot's first fiction, first published in the same magazine in which MISS M appeared in serial form! I estimate that the first installment of "The Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton" (in two installments) will be for the last week of April. But I'll announce that in the next few weeks. Get ready for this next serial adventure designed for short-term readers too (since the first story is only two installments)!
Serial salutations,
Susan
5 comments:
Although I enjoyed this novel very much, I remember feeling a little disappointed when I got to the last few chapters and realized that we never really learned much about Tom -- he felt like a pretty insubstantial character for someone who would be matched up with Lucilla in the end. But now that I've read this interpretation of the novel, I'm not so sure that Tom's thin presence in the book is the artistic flaw I had thought it was. I can completely buy the idea that Lucilla's independence is best maintained, if she must marry, by matching her to a character with such a small role to play. I guess this shows the advantages of reading with others who can point out things you missed!
And the novel overall? Lots of fun. It's a shame this book has been neglected for so long, but I'm certainly glad I had the opportunity to read it.
Me too! Thanks to Serial Readers for prompting me to read it and for being such good company along the way--now I'm going to recommend it widely. On Josh's point--there's something interesting to me about Tom's masculinity at the very end: he seems, on the one hand, macho (large, bearded) and on the other hand, submissive and dutiful to Lucilla. This seems almost as difficult an accomplishment as Lucilla herself, the bossy, humorless, meddling but immensely likable and sympathetic heroine! Looking forward to Eliot.
To expand on Josh's point that Tom is rather insubstantial, I was struck that Lucilla accepts Tom by telling him she'd never choose Mr. Ashford. When she turns to the positive, and "acquiesces" to Tom, the novel turns to indirect discourse, which may show Lucilla's moment of weakness, but felt to me like the novel pulling back from the scene. It reminded me a bit of how Emma does not include much about knightley's proposal, which some readers might expect to be the climax of the novel.
And also detracting from the sense that marriage is the climax is Mrs. Chiley's initial disappointment in the match.
I do think all of this reveals an irony, as Susan suggested. To me still a gentle irony--and, to my mind, one that shows the limited options for women, when marriage is the pre-eminent climax. Fortunately Lucilla found the perfect man, not too manly or a major character, "but he had a perfect genius for carrying out a suggestion." A wonderful match. It's interesting to me, however, that Lucilla shows no interest in decorating her new drawing room herself.
I find this novel quite enjoyable, and richer for the discussion we've had, which to me suggests it's quite teachable! And it makes me want to read more by Mrs. O.
I know it's a kind of mockery of Lucilla that her piety consists in finding Providence continually looking out for her in particular (and I think this coheres with the unsettling quotationSusan pointed out, in which Lucilla shows so little understanding of the lives of working women), but I admit to longing for a little of her confidence in a me-centered Providence, if none of the self-satisfied comparisons to the working poor.
It’s interesting that, regarding Cavendish and Ashburton, Lucilla’s “feelings had never been engaged.” But when Tom re-enters the picture, all of her “powers seem to find her.”
To be overcome with emotion is to lose self-possession, the narrator suggests. Thus she decides, as if from her unconscious mind, to marry Tom. “He would be her project.” But not her only.
I noticed one shift in particular in this final installment. At the beginning and throughout most of the book we are told and frequently reminded of Lucilla’s superiority, in intelligence, of course, but also in general. There are at least two references in the last three chapters instead to Lucilla’s *shared* characteristics with other people:
“When she had time to consider the prospect which had so suddenly opened before her, it also had its difficulties, like everything else in the world.”
“She had been worried and wearied, and had had her losses, like most other people.”
This change lines up well with another. The impulse behind her philanthropic quest to save, or lift up, Carlingford seems to turn more toward social just as she approaches her new home, new life. In fact she makes a most unsentimental argument for social justice: “They may be as stupid and ungrateful as they like, but to be warm and comfortable instead of cold and hungry always makes a difference.”
It’s quite a different idea of generosity than the one Mrs. Chiley had in mind for Lucilla—to marry Cavendish in order to make up for his disappointment.
I wouldn’t mind watching Lucilla in her new life. Too bad there isn’t a sequel.
Hello Serial Readers! Sorry I've been away. I wish it had been to as interesting a place as Tom, and, alas, I come not with heaps of Indian goodies but only a few final comments on this exceedingly enjoyable novel. I had been dreading the end, both because I enjoyed Lucilla's company more and more with each installment, and because I suspected that it would "after all" be Tom. I didn't think the Tom we had met and thought of from time to time would be worthy and I felt like it was kind of a crutch for Oliphant to have him there, undefined, in the wings when all the other suitors were so microscopically examined.
And while I do miss Lucilla as much as I thought -- I share Readerann's desire for more! -- I was so impressed by the final two installments' portrayal of Lucilla's long-held-at-bay interiority that I found the conclusion satisfying. I thought Oliphant's rendering of Lucilla's response to the loss of her father and her fortune was moving. On the one hand, we have the characteristic double negative that keeps us from getting too close ("It would be vain to attempt to say that it was not a terrible blow to Lucilla"); on the other, we have Oliphant pushing beyond the self-assured narration to portray Lucilla's grief-induced brain fog about her future (that "supernatural hum and buzz"). A decade before this, for such a character to wander through an identity crisis (I'm thinking of Esther Summerson's illness), it would have been expressed in a dream or disfiguration, rather than something that can happen to an otherwise sentient, functional person. A divided self happens. But then the novels moves away from this "hum and buzz" back to the sure-footed Lucilla in a way that seemed satisfyingly authentic.
I think the marriage, while it forecloses some of the more radical implications of Oliphant's critique of women's options, doesn't gender Lucilla in as limiting a way as other novels. She is represented as "manfully, womanfully" struggling with her decision and as you all point out, Tom is himself both masculine (bearded) and in touch with the feminine (making decorating choices, having a high EQ in sussing out the situation with Ashburton).
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