Dear Serial Readers,
Great comments on the first three installments! One idea I have links up with Barbara's several interesting observations about suspense and plot and time. It seems to me that the ends of each serial installment are marked by some dramatic incident designed to bring readers back for more: Jicks's white frock with the bloody words "help me!" and Oscar's epileptic fit, and finally with the sixth installment (ends with chapter 19), Oscar's treatment which will turn him into a "blue man." I'm curious how serial format (how the novel was first written with serial publication in mind--rather than volume publication) maps onto serial forms within the story--serial crimes, serial characters (the Dubourg twins, for instance, and then the unnamed "blue man" in Paris as a prequel to Oscar treated with silver nitrate), serial spaces (even with uneven borders or location) and other possibilities.
Barbara's comment on how the two parts of the house don't align (an observation also about forms and formats) dovetails with how topsy-turvy some elements of the story seem: Oscar's feminine hyper-nervousness, Lucilla's unfeminine lack of modesty and her boldness (which Mme P links to her lack of physical sight--clearly there are advantages for a woman who does not see the male gaze!), Jicks's wandering propensities and her precocious perception about the strange men who turn into robbers, and even Mme P's aged father who uses cosmetics, false hair and teeth, and even "stays" to make himself look younger for a woman. All these are inversions of some kind from the usual!
Tamara's observation about Mme P's appropriating the male (and narrating?) gaze is intriguing. If the novel seems to be discrediting Mme P's (masculine-linked) rationality, is it also opening up other possibilities for knowing the world? Collins seems to explore how Lucilla's acute sense of hearing and touch do matter, sensory knowledge offset by the narrator's litany of "my poor Miss Finch." Lucilla's blindness is not simply an impediment--instead, she's able to "see" in the dark, to apprehend the world (and people) around her in valuable ways. Mme P even notes how Lucilla leads Oscar around the house "as if it was he that was blind, and she who had the use of her eyes." There are also ways in which physical sight seems inferior to insight or other forms of knowledge--take Mr. Finch who only sees himself, and Mrs. Finch whose "watery blue eyes" don't seem to register much. Yet the language of vision, eyes, and sight seems to appear on nearly every page. Perhaps it's only my heightened awareness of this sensory capacity that has alerted me to how contingent the narration is on a lexicon of sight.
On the treatment with silver nitrate and the blue-black complexion--this also seems a doubling or kind of serial from another Collins serial--Ezra Jennings in The Moonstone, serialized only a few years before this one. Collins associates some physical disablements (or "disfigurement") with immaterial capacities.
I'm also curious about how Mme. P's "revolutionary" politics via her her husband matter to this story--I guess we'll "see"!
For next week: installments 7-9, chapters 20-25. Rachel will provide our lead post.
Serially yours,
Susan
3 comments:
Thanks for a great post Susan!
I just wanted to add a couple thoughts about Jicks, our "dramatic incident" in someone else's blood, and how she functions as a communicative device. The novel itself is full of different forms of communication, both over long and short distances. In this incident, we see a human being employed as a carrier of information. Her body is the paper and she holds meaning by presenting a part of someone else's body (the blood).
As we move forward, we might want to think about what that demonstration suggests about the nature or importance of the methods of communication that the characters employ.
I like Rachel’s focus on communicative devices in this comment. I’m not sure about other readers, but I found the writing on the dress to be a bit clunky—almost unnecessarily melodramatic and by no means sure to communicate effectively. It doesn’t have the elegance of some of Collins’s other novels. Ditto Madame Pratolungo’s too-convenient retreat to France. But these are small complaints and I will be interested to follow how this focus on alternative modes of communication unfolds through the novel.
Not surprisingly, I have started to wonder about the novel’s meditations on race. It feels like there is so much to be said on this topic that I don’t even want to begin. BUT I do wonder if Collins will attempt to do for race what he is doing for blindness: redirect stereotypes, write against the grain, offer a sympathetic account. I was struck by his comparison of Jicks to a “gipsy.” And now we have Lucilla’s aversion to dark people (impossible to read that kindly) coupled with Oscar’s increasingly serious nervous condition and the silver nitrate “cure.” Bentham wrote about permanent dyes coded according to crimes as punishments for criminals: criminals would be dyed (somehow?) colours that matched their crime and thus, following Bentham’s interest in visibility, the criminals would be immediately recognizable and social order would be maintained accordingly. I have no idea if this idea was on Collins’s mind and I also can’t recall what the colour blue stood for in Bentham’s criminal lexicon. It’s interesting that Collins highlights the colour blue but that silver nitrate, based on what the notes describe anyway, tended to turn the epileptic’s skin more black or lead-coloured than blue. Because Rachel noted the colour blue in one of her early posts I have been watching for it and, until chapter 19, had only seen it in the context of Lucilla’s stepmother’s blue merino sweater and, as Susan notes, her blue eyes. Is there any reason why Lucilla’s stepmother and Oscar are being linked? Or is this just a coincidence? (she takes the sweater on and off—and sometimes misplaces it—moreover, whereas Oscar’s new skin will presumably be there to stay).
Interestingly, in mid-September 1871 the Times ran a series of letters on “The Education of the Blind.” There are also a couple of descriptions of criminal cases that share many particulars with both the murder for which Oscar is wrongfully accused and the housebreaking and robbery. Critics may have already traced these connections but I was interested to see them. (The Times also reminded me that Collins is writing during the period of the Paris Commune which possibly gives a different inflection to Madame P’s position on revolution.)
I was struck (belatedly!) by the title that highlights Lucilla’s status as *Miss* Finch. It makes me now wonder about whether the marriage will, in fact, occur. I’m also intrigued by the point that Susan mentions with respect to the serial format and its relation to others forms of seriality. And (perhaps because I’m trying to read slowly and not get ahead) I’m also interested in the tension between hurrying (and, in this section, “violent hurry”) and the slow unfolding of events in the novel thus far.
All the best, Barbara
One odd thing about Lucilla's aversion to dark colors whether on clothes or people is that she cannot see any of this with her eyes, so "dark" and "light" for Lucilla are abstract ideas quite apart from how clothes or decor or people's complexions look.
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