Serial Readers

Happy 200th Birthday to Charles Dickens, serial novelist extraordinaire!

2012-02-07T10:40:00.007-06:00

Today is the bicentennial of Dickens's birth! To celebrate, I talked with University of the Air hosts Emily Auerbach and Norman Gilliland about Dickens's serials and about "Serial Readers"--you can download that interview through the link (sidebar).

Next week, we'll start reading Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, originally published in forty weekly parts in his new magazine, Master Humphrey's Clock in 1841. I propose a slightly accelerated pace of two installments per week rather than one so that we'll take twenty weeks in all to read this novel. The reading for next week's launch at the bottom of this post. So for next week, February 13-20, chaps 1-2! If you click on the image of MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK at the top of this screen, you'll go to a website with the installments of the novel--chapter one is waiting for you!

Serially celebrating still,
Susan

Washington Square 6 (Nov. 1880)--chaps. 30-35

2012-02-07T08:29:00.005-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Today we conclude the six-part serial by Henry James. I found these final chapters of WASHINGTON SQUARE quietly satisfying, like Catherine Sloper herself. She rallies forth in her own quiet but determined way to refuse the two men who have refused or disappointed her, her father and her lover. She refuses to accommodate her father's wishes that she marry eventually and she refuses to promise him that she won't marry Morris, because she has no desire to satisfy a father who has disappointed her in his low regard for her. But Catherine also refuses Morris's renewed proposal after some decades. In that finale, she tells Morris that she didn't marry because she didn't "wish to" and that she had "nothing to gain." It's true that her father reduced her inheritance because she refused to make the promise he required, but she has enough money and property, and a comfortable life. She's a spinster by choice, and as such James gives us a new kind of heroine. I'm also intrigued by Catherine's "ancient facility of silence"--she's a woman of few words (in contrast to the babbling Mrs. P.) and yet her quiet determination speaks volumes.

As other Serial Readers have noted, we have some interesting gender reversals--it is Catherine who is the strong, silent type, not noted for her physical beauty or charms, but deeply attracted to these qualities in Morris, whose body and face (both young and middle-aged) get far more words in this story than does Catherine's. And she enjoys material independence--she has the money which Morris must marry into because of his seeming inability to make money himself--again a position more typical of women. So, again, I found Catherine's life at the end, even with that "morsel of fancy-work," quietly satisfying because she has refused both men's wishes and because she does have a life of financial autonomy and activity--not to mention that Washington Square home! Your thoughts?

Please join the next serial, Serial Readers! You can sign up for installments of Dickens's CURIOSITY SHOP via "Mousehold Words" (see sidebar) by requesting the e-delivery of TWO installments per week! Next week, chapters one and two! See the next post too!

Serially celebrating (Dickens at 200),
Susan

Washington Square 5 (Oct. 1880)--chaps. 25-29

2012-01-31T19:50:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Thanks to Lurking Leora for her global observation that we've read three novels now of widowed doctors and their daughters! I like too this idea that Catherine's money and appreciation of beauty (rather than being the object of beauty) suggest some gender reversals. I hope she ends up a bachelor rather than an old maid--we'll soon find out.

I found in this penultimate installment some of the resolve and strength and smoldering sexuality of the early Catherine. She's now quite assertive about wanting to marry Morris despite her father--whom she has distanced herself once she recognizes he has no love for her. Meanwhile Morris is a coward--he can't even break off the engagement outright (since Sloper isn't yielding on the money matter) and manufactures weak excuses--he must go to New Orleans on business. Resolute Catherine says she'll go with him and risk yellow fever. She even sees beneath Morris's evasions and gathers he's leaving her despite his denials. I like Catherine's determination in the face of both her father and Morris. But I don't know where this story will conclude--only one installment remains!

When readers of THE CORNHILL read this installment in Oct. 1880, they found another James serial launched in the very same issue: THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, a novel with some interesting echoes of Catherine, her father, and perhaps Morris, but without New York or American scenery at all.

We'll leave WASHINGTON SQUARE after next week. I just learned that Dickens's THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP was first published in 40 weekly parts in the magazine MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. I propose reading a part per week, starting the week of February 13th. And guess what? You can have each original installment of Dickens's novel emailed to you via MOUSEHOLD WORDS (see sidebar). So sign up for CURIOSITY SHOP on the weekly plan! No money down! There are a few other websites that offer Dickens's novels in serial format and I'll include these next week. Some of the installments are only a chapter long--so I hope you'll consider joining the "Curiosity" serial reading experience!

Serially yours,
Susan

Washington Square 4 (Sept. 1880)--chaps. 19-24

2012-01-25T06:58:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I must say this serial continues with its collection of unappealing characters. Morris does seem increasingly a cad, really, and Mrs. Penniman a meddlesome fool (something the narrator and the doctor seem to concur on). Sloper is willful, including his threat that he won't will his money to C if she marries M, but then so is Catherine in her subdued, dutiful way.

Sloper's distasteful views of his daughter's merits where she's "about as intelligent as a bundle of shawls" persist. I doubt he believes what he tells her at the end of this installment, that Morris should thank him because, by taking Catherine traveling in Europe, her "value is twice as great." He's already suggested she's somewhat dense. Still, that Sloper sees his daughter in terms of her value (monetary, cultural, aesthetic) is clear, and perhaps echoes how Morris sees her as well.

The last chapter surprised me. Sloper's alpine wandering made me think something dramatic would happen--he'd get killed in an avalanche. But when he returns to Catherine he confronts her about her marriage plans and expresses his anger. The installment ends just on the brink of their return to NY, what Sloper anticipates as "a most uncomfortable voyage." There's a bit of suspense here too--and I expect something will happen on that trip--maybe he'll fall overboard or die suddenly, and we'll get to see if Catherine has the grit to marry Morris after all. Her plan to wait indefinitely has its limits.

Next time: chapters 25-29. And since we're approaching the conclusion of this serial (only one more after next week), I'm thinking of returning to Dickens--The Old Curiosity Shop. What do you think, Serial Readers?

Serially yours,
Susan

Washington Square 3 (Aug. 1880)--chaps. 13-18

2012-01-18T10:30:00.002-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

The question of marrying for money--mercenary motives--continues in this installment. I rather liked Morris's candor with Mrs. Penniman: "I DO like the money!" And Mrs. P points out in turn that Dr S "married a wife with money--why shouldn't you?" So is Catherine's inheritance the underlying motivation or a benefit on the side? Isn't money always a facet of marriage alliances, does James suggest, in some way or other? Is it the money angle that irks Catherine's father, or does he use this to provide a rationale for some intuitive dislike of Morris's character (along with Dr S's sense that his daughter is easily taken advantage of--but is she)? What matter is this matter of money in marriage plotting here? Is Dr S's threat that Catherine won't receive his money should she marry Morris a test of her dutiful daughterliness (which she's struggling to preserve) or a test of Morris's ultimate motive?

I can see all the wills and will plotting at work here. Whose will prevail in the end? I'm glad this novel is short--only three more parts.

Next time, chapters 19-24.

Serially yours,
Susan

Washington Square 2 (July 1880)--chaps. 7-12

2012-01-12T13:49:00.004-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I agree that we have a story with unappealing or at least challenging (to care about) characters, most of all Dr. Sloper who has so little regard for his daughter as worth marrying for any reason but her money, or for her "liberty" in the matter. In the first installment I pounced on those crumbs of hope for Catherine's character--her childhood appetite, her red dress, her deception. But in this second installment I'm finding a too compliant daughter whose rebellion is less than mild (accepting Morris's proposal not outdoors in the Square, but in the drawing room). The only trace of that earlier sensuality is her slightly animated response to kissing.

The end of this second installment tries to muster a touch of suspense--will Catherine "retreat" or "stop," or will she elope with Morris? I'm afraid I have difficulty seeing ahead any action against her father and toward marrying Morris. But maybe that's because I'm too familiar with the dutiful daughter Pansy Osmond who follows this heroine in James's next novel.

One more thing--the narrator's voice seems to blend with Dr. Sloper's clinical gaze; neither seems to have much heart or care for these young people. Or do you see something else?

Next installment: chapters 13-18.

Serially stalled,
Susan

Washington Square 1 (June 1880) chaps 1-6

2011-12-30T14:57:00.003-06:00

Aloha, Serial Readers!

I'm reading James in Hawai'i, a setting that accentuates my reading of place in this first installment in Old New York. WASHINGTON SQUARE appeared transatlantically a month apart (with the first installment, these six chapters, in The Cornhill in June, and in Harper's in July 1880), a traveling experience of a different kind.

I also just finished Jeffrey Eugenides' THE MARRIAGE PLOT, an ideal post-sequel to this story about Catherine Sloper's marriage plot. What struck me about the description of Catherine in this debut installment is her sensuality. Her accentuated plainness, which I take to mean she possesses no conventional feminine beauty, and her strong appetite for food and for clothes (that red dress with the gold trim--what Lauren Berlant considers an allusion to Hester Prynne's Scarlet) imply to me a kind of sexual presence perhaps more common with male Victorian characters. She's "somewhat of a glutton" who "devoted her pocket-money to the purchase of cream-cakes"! Her response to Morris Townsend seems rather more embodied than otherwise--how else to read why dancing with him makes her dizzy?

At the same time she has the power of a fortune, or at least a prospective fortune as an heiress, which is where this marriage plot is headed. Apparently James began working on THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY just after finishing this story, so Catherine as a precursor to Isabel Archer and to Pansy Gilbert. While it's clear that Catherine's aunt likes the idea of Morris as a suitor with a proposal up his sleeve, and that Dr. Sloper is approaching this prospect as a business arrangement (he needs to check out the goods by visiting Morris's sister on Second Avenue), that Catherine imagines telling her father that she refused the proposal, and that she starts lying to him, throws some seasoning into this marriage plot. What other power does Catherine have besides refusing and dissembling? We shall see.

For next week, chapters 7-12.

Serial Seasons,
Susan

Upcoming Serial: WASHINGTON SQUARE by Henry James

2011-12-02T07:22:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

After this two-month break in reading Victorian serials, I am announcing the launch of our next serial: Washington Square by Henry James. The six installments were published first in the London periodical THE CORNHILL from June to November 1880, and a month later (July-Dec. 1880) these installments appeared across the Atlantic in HARPER's MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

We'll start with the first installment for the week of January 2nd and we'll arrive at the sixth and final installment for the first week of February. This is a rather short serial (considering we've read many that are twenty installments), so do make plans!

#1 includes chaps. 1-6.

Serially starting up,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 10 (Oct 1843) chaps 24-26

2011-10-01T11:24:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Another transatlantic crossing eastward with this number--back to the English Eden! Pecksniff's obsequious comments about gardening as "an ancient pursuit" took me back to the American Eden where any cultivation (land and manners) seems an impossible enterprise. That said, what are we to make of Pecksniffian cultivation, "ancient" as it is? And then we have the unfortunate newlyweds, the Jonas Chuzzlewits, with the unmerry married Merry at the end of the installment who arrives at her new "HOME" (last words of the installment and the exact textual MIDPOINT of the serial), which is already "a wicked house."

So Dickens seems to suggest that all is not so rosy in the English Eden either. Yet with such a large cast of characters, in contrast to the smaller American group (who might only appear once or twice), we also get some lovely and amusing types from the lower echelons of English society--Sairey Gamp, Poll Sweedlepipe who perhaps balance out the more obnoxious Pecksniff, Jonas C, and the insufferable scheming Tigg/Montague. We get rising characters too--Tom Pinch becomes more interesting with his attention to Mary--maybe moving somewhere, and Martin's rehabilitation via his American ordeal is on the horizon.

Next time, #11 chaps. 27-29. Which Eden, I wonder?

Serially scenic,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 9 (Sept 1843) chaps 21-23

2011-09-19T07:55:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Back across the Atlantic to Martin and Mark's new Eden adventures. Following Josh's lead, I'd say one of my favorite passages in this installment is the very first one which begins: "The knocking at Mr. Pecksniff's door, though loud enough, bore no resemblance whatever to the noise of an American railway train at full speed. It may be well to begin the present chapter with this frank admission,lest the reader should imagine that the sounds now deafening this history's ears have any connection with the knocker on Mr. Pecksniff's door, or with the great amount of agitation equally divided between that worthy man and Mr. Pinch, of which its strong performance was the cause."

I guess this opener answers my last question: Dickens's comparison between old/new, England/America. At least, the narrator challenges the reader to make "any connection," either literally through the sound of knocking on Pecksniff's door and the roaring American train, or more broadly between the cultures. But the movement of these installments does encourage such intertwining.

And we get some amusing caricatures--General Cyrus Choke on "Britishers" and the supposed political suppression of news there in contrast to the wide dissemination of that news to the "locomotive citizens" of America. The General readily admits to Martin he's only been to England "in print,"--perhaps Dickens's allusion to the widespread reprinting of his own words in the American press. There are some other choice comparisons made between US/UK through American eyes, a comic counterpoint for Martin's reverse comparisons.

The Eden settlement--or "lo-cation in the Valley of Eden" is of course a huge send-up of the scamming of Martin-types, foreigners drawn to pioneer outposts to make their fortune through colonizing the land--with a few references along the way to forerunners like Columbus and Crusoe. We meet some choice specimens of Americans, like Mrs Hominy on the steamboat passage (more transits) to New Thermopylae (another settlement like Eden, perhaps a parody of New Harmony). But I was struck by the sheer resistance of the land and landscape--"so choked with slime and matted growth was the hideous swamp which bore that name." If Eden is depicted as a kind of environmental wasteland, it also repels these two English settlers who can't cultivate this land, perhaps because their knowledge of farming is wholly in terms of English soil. If nothing else, Martin wants to go "home"--and his lust for the American dream of rich speculations has been pinched.

Now, back "home" to England in the next installment? Next time: chaps. 24-26.

Setting Sails Serially,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 8 (Aug 1843) chaps 18-20

2011-09-17T08:16:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Something interesting that reading serially brings to my attention--how the installments in this mid-portion of the novel alternate between the First Eden (ie England) and the Third (or New) Eden (America). So far, there's no mixing of the two within a monthly number. Although this format would seem to segregate the two nations, the way the narrative crisscrosses the Atlantic does prompt a fusion of the ridiculous, the relative merits and demerits of each place. Usually readings of this novel recycle Dickens's travel writing, *American Notes in General Circulation* with the assessment that Dickens lambasted American culture. True, but he does not spare his ridicule of British culture via the Pecksniffians and the other long list of characters and circumstances. But why then keep these two places serially separated? What's the effect? And in this installment, the narrative returns from America, with this lead sentence: "Change begets change." Anthony C dies, but what changes? More will-plotting among the extended family, with Jonas's confused proposal to Merry-Mercy instead of Cherry-Charity.

Next time (which I'll post shortly): #9, chapters 21-23. Back to (the New) Eden?

Serially Sailing,
Susan

PS Thanks AFH for noting Jill Lepore's NEW YORKER article on Dickens (and the Dickens Project at Santa Cruz)--has anyone else had a chance to read it?

Martin Chuzzlewit 7 (July 1843) chaps 16-17

2011-09-05T09:09:00.002-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

New York! Interesting that Dickens uses journalists and newspapers as a way to introduce this new country and its crass culture. The Rowdy Journal as "Popular Instructor"--what do we learn from this public face on American culture? I must say that Martin never seemed so appealing as he does now in contrast to the vulgar American folks he encounters. Yet even the rank swindlers like Major Pawkins perhaps have counterparts in the English Pecksniffs and Co. I love the idea of this "elastic country"--lots of space for all sorts and conditions of people. And many details on cultural customs, from food, feminism (Mrs P), and dollars, dollars, dollars. Bevan is an American with a capacity for critical analysis of his country. I found interesting the conversation comparing American and British culture, and enjoyed the pretentious Norrises who are obsessed with British peerage and repulsed by Martin's steerage passage!

It will be interesting to see how Dickens juxtaposes these cultures as the narrative crisscrosses the Atlantic.

Next time: #8, chaps. 18-20.

Serially yours,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 6 (June 1843) chaps 13-15

2011-08-26T12:34:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I found myself only reading one more installment--I shall endeavor to pick up the pace, but too many other demands on my reading time right now!

In this installment, where Martin C. and Mark T. make the transatlantic voyage, I was especially intrigued by the description of the steerage. Martin, with his English "gentleman" class identity, resents having to mingle with the riff-raff in steerage, but Mark rallies to the democratic flavor of this miscellaneous group of travelers and tends to them all with food, song, reading, writing letters for others--"there never was a more popular character than Mark Tapley" who is "the life and soul of the steerage."

I'm also struck by how miserable the journey is on bodies--everyone seems to suffer from sea-sickness in this "unwholesome ark" of The Screw, and its "terrible transport." I've read about the "middle passage" from Africa, and wonder how the steerage conditions Dickens describes compares with the horrors of the middle passage. Being chained and without fresh air or windows or the ability to walk on the deck would be worse. Steerage is the way immigrants usually traveled. But in any case, is the prospect of opportunity (which Martin seems to anticipate) in the US worth the price of the passage? We'll see.

Next up, New York, New York! Chaps. 16-17.

Serially sailing still,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 5 (May 1843) chaps 11-12

2011-08-16T08:54:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

More travels in this fifth installment, including a paean to the "strong, healthy, hardy walk" as "better than a gig" as Tom Pinch and Martin C venture to Salisbury to meet John Westlock. More too on the petulant, sour disposition of Martin in contrast to Tom's sweetness (to a fault, John notes), and more on the insufferable Pecksniff who insults his young cousin sufficiently to make Martin resort to desperate measures--to go off to America.

Tom's horror is amusing to behold: "No, no," cried Tom, in a kind of agony. "Don't go there. Pray don't! Think better of it. Don't be so dreadfully regardless of yourself. Don't go to America!"

So ends this installment with Martin on the brink of a rash journey. I'm curious for this adventure! And I'd like to try to pick up the pace of reading a bit by moving from one to two installments per week.

For next time:
installment 6, chaps 13-15
installment 7, chaps 16-17

Serially sailing (not walking),
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 4 (April 1843) chaps 9-10

2011-08-09T09:41:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

The beginning of this installment--"Town and Todgers'"--offers a perfect passage of Dickensian London with the maze of streets--"Todgers' was in a labyrinth." I think "labyrinth" must be *the* word for Dickens' London, and perhaps too for Dickens' multiplotting. I find myself drawn to some of the stories more than others, although like the streets, alleys, and whatnots, in the City of London, there are surprising plot intersections where I'm able to get better oriented. Pecksniff's London visit, in this case, is due to the business of the wealthy senior Martin, and now we know that young Martin will soon be heading abroad, at least from Pecksniff's establishment. I can't wait for narrative to sail altogether away from Pecksniff territory! Ruth Pinch is the female counterpart to her brother Tom who seems to find contentment despite the abuse she suffers as governess. Still, I hope these Pinches end up doing more than succumbing to tyrants, small as they are.

Again, like this one, the next and fifth installment consists of two chapters, 11-12. I'm wondering if the three-chapter segments, more common in later Dickens serials, offers a bit more variety for reading pleasure. I found this installment rather lukewarm and am not sure how eager I'd return for more, if I didn't have a hunch about where the plot is traveling....

Serially stalling,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 3 (Mar. 1843) chaps. 6-8

2011-08-03T10:01:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Traveling in this novel seems to take a while--perhaps to allow sufficient time for all the reading? I was intrigued by the discussion of form by the architecture student, aka Martin C, early in this installment. Pecksniff has given him the assignment of designing assorted odd constructions--a cow-house or an ornamental turnpike. I wonder if this as an extended metaphor for the raw materials of fiction-building, where even "a cart-load of loose bricks" can be transformed into architectural wonders, like the domes of St. Paul's in London or St. Sophia in Constantinople.

Despite the various tangents and odd annexes (Slyme and Tigg), the plot thickens--we learn that grandfather Chuzzlewit's traveling companion Mary is young Martin's would-be sweetheart. As Tamara noticed about Dickens's fire-gazers, Martin relates much of this backstory to Tom Pinch while watching the flames in the fireplace, a favorite Dickensian inspiration for imaginative speculations. This seems a familiar pattern: young Martin must prove himself worthy of his love, and presumably worthy of the wealth too his grandfather withholds from him. Have I read this story already?

Eager to learn more of M. Todgers while the Pecksniffs visit London--for reasons which will reveal themselves "all in good time" (apt closing words of this number) in the fullness of seriality!

Next week: chaps. 9-10 (again, two long chapters, rather than three shorter ones).

Serially yours,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 2 (Feb. 1843) chaps. 4-5

2011-07-27T09:29:00.002-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

First, if you click on the part-issue cover of Martin C to your right of this page, you'll find all the installments of the novel in pdf forms you can download, plus many illustrations (2 per installment). You'll also see the brief headnote that this novel was not popular among initial readers and that Dickens added the traveling to America portion later to boost sales.

Since all I know about this novel is that the title character does travel to the US, I did notice the attention to travel in this second installment--lovely Tom Pinch's jaunt up to Salisbury to collect Pecksniff's new architecture student (none other than the eponymous MC) *and* the allusions to reading as transportative! Tom Pinch's delight in both kinds of travel were also a pleasure to read, perhaps because of the relief we readers (like Tom) get after the stifling and miserable atmosphere of the vulgar vultures after the aged Martin C's money in chapter 4. How nice to escape to the road, and to traveling via books!

[ASIDE: I should add that while I think "Pecksniff" is a perfect caractonym, I'm less persuaded by "Pinch"--who may be pinched as Pecksniffian assistant), but has some fine qualities not conveyed through this tag.]

The descriptions of the two bookshops in Salisbury have my vote as best passages--how the smell of pages and leather binding transport Tom back to his boyhood grammar, and how the illustrations from Robinson Crusoe and the Persian Tales prompt his travels to other places and times "before the Pecksniff era" of his life. Reading here is much more than a mental activity--it involves sensations of smell, sight, touch, sounds of language. I do love the Dickensian word playing, and there are terrific flourishes in this segment too!

Next time, chapters 6-8. I'm still debating picking up our traveling pace through this serial.

Serially in Salisbury,
Susan

Martin Chuzzlewit 1 (chaps 1-3) Jan. 1843

2011-07-18T09:51:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

We've read several Dickens novels already (Dombey, Drood, Dorrit), but this 1843-44 serial is the earliest of the lot. In this opener, I recognize the Dickensian journey to the interior--it's gradual, from the scene setting of chapter one with all the somewhat abstract description of nation and world traveling, and the rise and fall of Chuzzlewits whose "high and lofty station" and "vast importance" delivered with irony at best. The Pecksniffs, father and daughters, have grandiose ideas of themselves, the father especially. And finally in this last chapter of the opening installment, we have a character with some merit--the childlike young woman (a stock character in Dickens--think Little Amy Dorrit) who accompanies the elder Martin Chuzzlewit on his travels. There's a will and wealth plot afloat here too--Martin senior has lots of money, but he sees only the corrupting power of that wealth and seems reluctant to leave the money to his grandson who, claims Mary, has "the strongest natural claim upon you." How many Dickens novels showcase the hazards of wealth for character and for familial ties?

Intriguing and Dickensian is Martin's final diatribe against the self plot, which he suspects his grandson of pursuing: "A new plot; a new plot! Oh self, self, self! At every turn, nothing but self!" And "Oh self, self self! Every man for himself, and no creature for me!" The ultimate sentence of the installment: "Universal self! Was there nothing of its shadows in these reflections, and in the history of Martin Chuzzlewit, on his own showing?" It seems like selflessness is the virtue of the day, one lacking in the male Chuzzlewit line, but modeled by little orphan Mary.

We're set up to wait for the young Martin, successor to the old: Chuzzlewit and Grandson. Traveling seems a key note in this opener too. Your thoughts on this serial launch?

Next installment: chapters 4-5. What about accelerating our travels with this novel, and reading two installments per week? I'll see if anyone has thoughts about a quicker pace (please comment), and perhaps we'll adjust for upcoming segments.

Serially starting,
Susan

"Janet's Repentance" V (chaps 22-28) Nov. 1857

2011-07-11T07:59:00.005-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

This story, and the series of "Scenes," ends with hope and loss--quite a fitting closure for Eliot's budding realism. Janet rallies forward into grey-haired age, and although she has no picture-perfect ending, she does have financial security, due to her inheritance as a widow, and a reasonably gratifying life. This story about an Evangelical curate who is subject to harassment and ridicule yet proves to be a deeply compassionate person--the best of the lot of the clergymen in the series (although the other two weren't *bad*)--for me, this story redeems the sequence. I say this because I'm wondering how many people started reading "Amos Barton" and then bailed, from boredom or something else? I'd love to hear about that. I still am inclined to think these early stories are trying out the "realism is boring" possibility, but this last story realizes the power of suspense, and dramatic incident, and the psychological realism of the title character--not a minister but an abused and despairing and alcoholic wife. That deathbed kiss between Tryan and Janet suggests the hint of a deeper, even sexual love, a potential marriage that does not happen: something we see often in Eliot's novels. The very last sentence of the story mentions Tryan's "lips" again. A lost opportunity that Tryan seems to comprehend.

There were bits in this last installment that also reminded me of those later novels: the deathbed scene of Dempster who seems about to make some kind of revelation made me think of Mrs Archer at the end of "The Lifted Veil." And the fast-forward of the last paragraphs reminded me of the ending of THE MILL ON THE FLOSS and the sense of survival in the wake of loss.

Finally I wanted to say that, unlike Kari, I don't think Eliot is "anti-religion." I just think she's critical of doctrinal rigidity, and so sometimes seems to castigate religious figures and religion in her fiction. But clearly she believes in the power of human compassion to bring about some kind of spiritual (and practical, daily) redemption. As I've said before, Tryan's talent to understand--to read rightly--Janet's struggles through his own experience forecasts other characters with this capacity in later novels, some of them clergymen (like Farebrother).

After this experiment with the serialization of a series of stories or "scenes," Eliot turns to novels, and although she writes two more stories ("The Lifted Veil" and "Brother Jacob"), only the second was serialized across a few months and is a self-contained story rather than these loosely linked three. I'm curious what these stories can tell us about the serial form.

Onward, Serial Readers, to Dickens' MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT! Dickens wrote this novel just after his trip to the US, and after he published AMERICAN NOTES, about those travels; so we might think of the novel as the fictional counterpart to the NOTES. Published in 19 monthly installments (the last a double-header), the first appeared in Jan. 1843, and consists of chaps. 1-3 (but not the Preface, which Dickens wrote after completing the novel).

For next week: MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, chaps. 1-3! Spread the word!

Serially yours,
Susan

"Janet's Repentance" IV (chaps. 15-21) SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (Oct. 1857)

2011-07-04T09:44:00.005-05:00

Dear Serial Reader/s,

I'm on a mission--these stories deserve more serious notice than they've received! I have one comment on this episode of this "Scene"/story, and then another on a way to read these "Scenes" as interlocking.

First, on the scene between Tryan and Janet. I once wrote a book on confession in Victorian literature, and I wish I'd included this remarkable scene. When Janet confesses "how weak and wicked" she feels for her sin of drinking (seems a bit harsh on herself, given that her husband drinks excessively and beats her and locks her outside in the middle of the cold night, but never mind) to Tryan, this Evangelical, renegade preacher responds with a confession of his own sin--his great guilt for indirectly causing a young woman's death. Eliot demonstrates that much more than doctrinal belief, true religion is human compassion, not just sympathy or pity, but deeply hearing and understanding another's suffering, sometimes through connection with one's own. Tryan is a remarkable confessor because of the mutuality which his sympathy means--"sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession." I can think of many confession scenes in other Eliot novels (such as Gwendolen to Deronda) and cannot recall a single instance of this response of confession to confession. It seems clear that redemption and salvation come through human connection first, not some dry religious creed. The story Tryan tells about Lucy reminded me of Gaskell's earlier seduction stories (Esther Barton, even Mary Barton and Carson, and Ruth), only this time from the perspective of the genuinely reformed seducer (unlike Ruth's Bellingham).

Second, it occurs to me that we might link together each clergyman of the "Scenes" and see a kind of evolution here, from the very ordinary Amos Barton who does his job in a perfunctory way, but nothing remarkable. Perhaps all those young children and wife and the countess distract his attention outward. Then we have Maynard Gilfil, who is a good enough vicar, even if he doesn't seem to live up to the most doctrinal principles. We learn he has a good heart, by going back through the story of his own heart. Yet it is this third clegyman, the "meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow" (according to Lawyer Dempster), who displays the greatest power of ministering to a sufferer. This is also the only story of the three where the minister's name isn't in the title, but instead the woman who turns to him out of desperation.

While I think that it's "Janet's Repentance" that typically has received the most attention as the best of the three "Scenes," I'd like to suggest that we could even see Tryan as the culmination of the serial ministers, and perhaps Janet as the composite of the women linked to them. In any case this story of a battered wife and a ridiculed Evangelical preacher who "gets" what human suffering means is quite remarkable to me. And I wonder if Eliot is recommending celibacy for her clergymen--or recovered celibacy at least. It seems to me that the most powerfully compassionate religious men are not married--Farebrother in Middlemarch, say, or even Savonarola in Romola, and Dr. Kenn at the end of The Mill on the Floss is recently widowed.

If anyone reading this knows of good scholarship on this series of stories, please tell me!

Next week: the final installment of "Janet's Repentance" (chaps. 22-28). There's more suspense, I find, at the end of each of these installments (or maybe the suspense builds from the earlier stories to this one). Now the final suspense: is Janet going to be delivered through Dempster's timely death or will he survive and she return to him? Tune in for the finale!

The week after next: Martin Chuzzlewit!

Serially sympathizing,
Susan

"Janet's Repentance" III (chaps. 10-14) SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (Sept. 1857)

2011-06-27T07:08:00.008-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

This story has now swerved into a portrait of an abused wife, with the harassed Evangelical minister on the periphery. Eliot offers an array of reactions, none helpful--how Janet's mother-in-law blames this misery on Janet's failures in housekeeping, and how her own mother sees and feels helpless, and how the people in Milby see and gossip and do not feel enough. Eliot implicates the reader in this futile search for origins of abuse: "Do you wonder how it was that things had come to this pass--what offence Janet had committed in the early years of marriage to rouse the brutal hatred of this man? The seeds of things are very small: the hours that lie between sunrise and the gloom of midnight are travelled through by tiniest markings of the clock: and Janet, looking back along the fifteen years of her married life, hardly knew how or where this total misery began..."

Several "Poor Janet!" moments--reminds me of Eliot's penchant for this pitying address in later novels, especially MIDDLEMARCH.

At the end of this installment, Dempster has locked Janet out of their house--at least he did not murder her, as she expected. But to be locked out in the cold also thrusts her domestic plight into public. I'm anticipating Tryan to the rescue.

On this serial reading and ahead: I see the conversation has fallen off in recent weeks. I am curious if this relative quiet has anything to do with the stories themselves. I have been searching for how these "Scenes" are a series, but it's clear the narrative threads are unevenly stitched, with Gilfil before Barton in time, and this tale of Tryan and the Dempsters seemingly unhinged from the other two, except for the "clerical life" theme. Two more episodes and we're through with SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. For next week: 15-21.

Upcoming serial--Dickens again! We'll start reading MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, the last of Dickens's picaresque novels (with PICKWICK as the first),in a few weeks.

Serially yours,
Susan

"Janet's Repentance" II (chaps. 5-9) SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (Aug. 1857)

2011-06-19T07:39:00.008-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

The ending of this second installment, like the ending of the first of this story, is jarring, again a hook of suspense leading to the next segment of publication. But this last paragraph also hints at the title's meaning. I had thought the title alluded to J's repentance of her marriage, but now it seems geared toward her part in ridiculing and causing pain to Tynan, the Evangelical minister with a deeply sympathetic core, unlike the wretched Dempster. On the one hand, it sounds like the narrator is scolding Janet for "looking on in scorn and merriment" at Tynan. But on the other hand, we see the pernicious claws of abuse where Janet, for the paltry crumbs of her husband's affection("Gypsy" is his nickname for her! Shades of Maggie Tulliver!), stoops to take part in humiliating a good man who has noticed her own suffering.

Like Kari, I noticed that the narrator identifies as a man with memories of boyhood. What did you make of the "mural literature" of Dempster's playbill of the "reclaimed and converted Animals"? It seemed rather silly farce to me, and somewhat surprising from Dempster who appears to lack any speculative, imaginative capacity, something Eliot usually affiliates with sympathy.

Next week: segment 3, chapters 10-14.

Serially yours,
Susan

"Janet's Repentance" (chaps. 1-4) SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE (July 1857)

2011-06-12T14:23:00.006-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

From female murderers to a High Church lawyer who has a habit of wife-beating in Eliot's final "Scene." I must say I was taken by this first installment--how we're initially introduced to Dempster's campaign against the Evangelical minister Tynan's evening lectures, and then other scenes in Milby (forerunner of Middlemarch?) replete with tea, handicrafts, and gossip, including Tynan's comment about Mrs. Dempster, aka Janet, and then finally her sad story. There's something about the form of this installment that performs the suppression of domestic abuse--until the end. All this piling up of public sphere politics, spearheaded by Dempster, and then he resurfaces at the end when he returns home, drunk, and beats Janet. Is this, like realism, or part of realism, domestic violence as ordinary or as the dirty secret everyone knows?

As Plotaholic asks about what are female murderers doing in Eliot's realist fiction, I would ask the same about the abusive husband, who has a different public face. I sometimes think Eliot uses sensational scenes (like Mme Laure or Gwendolen's held hand in Grandcourt's drowning--and do we know in either case what did cause the deaths of their husbands?)for realist ends, which could mean ambiguity, lack of resolution or full disclosure--an ending that doesn't quite conclude. It's interesting that both *Middlemarch* and *Daniel Deronda* prompted sequels.

I found moving the last paragraphs of this segment on the twin paintings over mantelpieces, one of Janet's mother, the other (Christ about to be crucified?) by Janet as a young girl, as symbolic presences of mother and martyred daughter to each other. Yet neither is able to actually speak about this horrible secret of Janet's abuse. Like Janet's mother, and Milbyites who seem to know what's going on here, the reader too can feel, but cannot do anything. I'm hoping Tynan does.

One more thing--I wonder if the "Janet" mentioned in the first chapter of the first story of Amos Barton is the same "Janet" here? Perhaps just a coincidence? Mr. Gilfil does come up in that first chapter of "Amos," and I'm suspecting that there are more networked connections across these three "Scenes."

Next week: chapters 5-9.

Serially stunned,
Susan

Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story (chaps. 14-Epilogue) SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (June 1857)

2011-06-06T08:09:00.006-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

On the lacking of the "clerical" in this story about Mr. Gilfil, the Shepperton rector who preceded Amos Barton of the first SCENE: maybe Eliot's point is that clerical life, like realism, is ordinary and secular. Notwithstanding the protracted botanical metaphor of Gilfil as a " whimsical misshapen trunk" (due to heartbreak over that "delicate plant" that died "in the struggle to put forth a blossom"--did Caterina die in childbirth?), this story concludes with the suggestion that Gilfil's "love-story" of long ago made him a better clergyman, a more compassionate presence than a doctrinal expert.

I found myself impatient with the story, and I'm not sure it was simply because I knew the ending near the outset (some of you know my agnosticism on readerly suspense). I found the writing at times too maudlin, overgrown with those botanical flourishes. I even had this suspicion: did Eliot write this story entirely, or did Lewes have a larger helping hand?

Yet here are some aspects that intrigued me:

*Caterina's dagger--her desire to murder Anthony, and Maynard's refusal to believe she would actually be capable of this deed--shades of other Eliotic women would-be or otherwise murderers (from Hetty Sorrel to Madame Laure and Gwendolen Harleth) and men who cannot fathom them as such.

*All the chapter divisions--this story has many very short chapters; I'm not sure what this means in terms of the serial parcel, but I found many sub-scenes within this larger scene.

*The verb tense shifts (as Julia noted)--the use of the present tense to generate suspense, excitement, or immediacy-- a way to insert the reader into the story.

*The scene shifts between humble homes and Cheverel Manor (between realism and romance), even between provincial England and Italy.

*There were elements that also reminded me of JANE EYRE (Caterina fleeing Cheverel Manor, and her vulnerability to the seductions of Anthony who cannot marry her) and AURORA LEIGH (the transplant of the Italian child onto English soil)

Next up: our third and final "SCENE"--"Janet's Repentance" (chaps 1-4).

Thanks, Kari, for mentioning the photographs from the 1907 edition. Are there ones that accompany the other stories in SCENES too?

Serially scenic,
Susan

Mr. Gilfil's Love- Story #3 (chaps 7-13) May 1857

2011-05-29T15:19:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR SERIAL READERS! Three years ago this week I launched this adventure with the first novel, DOMBEY & SON. Since then, we've serialized through eight novels and a few stories.

This third of four installments of "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story" showcases the structure of the serial, with the first sentences as a kind of recap from the previous chapter/installment, and the final lines a stab at suspense--is he dead or alive?
Of course, we know the end of the love-story from the start of this narrative, so whether he is dead or alive is only an issue in terms of how the plots works out, not the overall outcome.

I was amused at the rapid switch to present-tenseness for suspense value in the close of this episode with: "See how she rushes noiselessly, like a pale meteor..." But still, I'm rather detached from any gripping engagement with this story.

Next time--the end of "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story" (chaps 14-Epilogue).

Serially celebrating Three,
Susan

Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story (chaps.3-6) from SCENES (April 1857)

2011-05-23T09:57:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

First, I just added an article link to the list of blogs and articles (see right column, scroll down past several novel covers)about designing a Kindle for Dickens.

On this story as a serial: I continue to be intrigued by Eliot's reverse-narrative with Mr. G's story. In this second installment, the narration goes back several decades to the summer of 1788 in Italy to tell the backstory of Caterina Sarti and how she came to be a ward of Sir and Lady C at Cheverel Manor. I found echoes of various Victorian narratives before and after this one, including Aurora Leigh (transplanted too from Tuscany to England). The narrative structure that sets a scene in the opening two chapters and then jumps back to provide a richer narrative context for that initial moment is a form Eliot uses in her final novel DANIEL DERONDA. I wonder how effective this shape is for the serial? Perhaps one could read this story and not even need the first two chapters (ie first installment) to follow it?

That this story stands on its own apart from the first "Amos Barton" SCENE is clear, and yet Eliot does intertwine the stories, again going backward. I'm curious to see how the last story, "Janet's Repentance," will play into the serial and the backward narrative structure. But first, the penultimate segment of this story for next week--chapters 7-13.

Serially yours,
Susan

"Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" (chaps 1-2) SCENES (Mar. 1857)

2011-05-16T08:42:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Picking up on Kari's comment about the good clergyman Cleves at the end of "Amos Barton," I find this story also recommends a model of the kind vicar who can make meaningful connections to his parish flock and isn't wedded to doctrinal principles. I see seeds of future Eliotic ministers in Maynard Gilfil--the generous Dr. Kenn in THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, the warm and intuitive Farebrother in MIDDLEMARCH, to name only a few.

While I can hear some of you SRs groaning about the plodding plot, the overwrought descriptions of Cheverel Manor (supposedly modeled on Arbury Hall, where Eliot's father Robert Evans was estate agent when she was a child), I do find interesting the narrative structure in this story. It works backwards from the time of "Amos Barton," as the opening mentions "old Mr. Gilfil died" thirty years earlier. Then we see the later years of Mr. Gilfil as the vicar who doesn't "shine in the more spiritual functions of his office" yet seems a better clergyman for all that then poor Amos B. The first chapter of this story concludes with hints about the love story of the vicar's now "wifeless existence" and the second chapter goes back several decades more to 1788 and young Gilfil's unrequited love for Caterina who is in love with the seductive Captain Wybrow who apparently has no intention of marrying her. I like this backward motion, even from "Amos Barton" to this story, and then again within this story. Eliot's interest in how to write the past surfaces in these early stories. But as for seriality, it's subtle perhaps.

Next time: chaps. 3-6 of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story."

Serially yours,
Susan

"Amos Barton" (chaps. 5-conclusion) from SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (Feb. 1857)

2011-05-08T07:32:00.005-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

After reading Plotaholic's Complaint, I had to laugh when I began this installment of "Amos Barton." At the start of the fifth chapter, the narrator launches into a long defense of this "unmistakably commonplace" story about a man of "insignificant stamp." It's almost as if Eliot is daring readers to fling aside her experiment in realism, which is more "Scenes" than story: "As it is, you can, if you please, decline to pursue my story farther; and you will easily find reading more to your taste, since I learn from the newspapers that many remarkable novels, full of striking situations, thrilling incidents, and eloquent writing, have appeared only within the last season." Go ahead, toss this aside, the narrator challenges: realism (at least Eliot's version here) *is* boring!

Besides thinking of Charlotte Bronte's opening of SHIRLEY where she tells her readers that if they are hoping for "passion, and stimulus, and melodrama" to "calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard," I also thought of a novel written nearly forty years after this one--George Gissing's NEW GRUB STREET. At one point a character plans to write a novel that as "honest reporting" would be "unutterably tedious." Is this the experiment in realism Eliot initially attempts in her first published fiction here? What are the limits of the commonplace and tedious?

While I wouldn't call this a memorable story at all (and perhaps Eliot learned that she needed a larger space for a fuller development of narrative since the next two stories are progressively longer still), there were at least two memorable scenes for me: Nanny giving the pampered Countess a piece of her mind which results in the Countess's overdue departure from the Barton home AND Milly Barton's death and its effects on her children of different ages and on Amos.

As I said last time, I am surprised at how sustained and frequent are the interruptions by the narrator who addresses "dear reader." Maybe Eliot is trying to figure out the balance of story and narration, of the commonplace and enough narrative interest. At least these addresses to "you" do attempt to pull the reader into the story. We'll see whether she advances from "Scenes" to something more like plot as we head into the second story, "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." But I admit that these "Scenes" with her fabulous word-work do appeal to me.

For next time: chapters 1-2 "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story."

Serially in scenes,
Susan

"Amos Barton" (chaps. 1-4) from SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE (Jan. 1857)

2011-05-02T11:07:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

If the author weren't available to me, I might've thought this first of two installments of the story "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton" was written by Oliphant! Not only the "clerical life" theme of a provincial English community seemed Oliphantine to me, but also the deliciously ironic humor about manners and style! When John the man-servant overturns the gravy tureen onto Milly Barton's dress, I thought--isn't there a parallel scene in MISS MARJORIBANKS? Although we read that novel first, this story predates O's novel by some 8 years, so the gravy mishap has Eliotic roots! Eliot published this series of stories in BLACKWOOD'S, the magazine Oliphant began as a regular reviewer for in 1859. More to the point is that both writers worked as review editors for monthly magazines before turning to fiction.

What intrigues me most about the installment (as Eliot's first venture into published fiction) is her narrator's presence. With so many appearances of "I" and "we" and "you" in these pages, Eliot foregrounds the networking of readers/narrator/character in a way that seems to recede in her later novels. In fact, I don't recall Eliot using "Reader!" as she does in the very first chapter: "Reader! *did* you ever taste such a cup of tea as Miss Gibbs is this moment handing to Mr Pilgrim?" Such interventions seem to point to (even if they attempt to bridge) realism's gap between outside and inside the story. The writing here also reminds me of Gaskell--and although MARY BARTON seems an obvious precursor because of the character name, I sometimes found Eliot's humor Crandfordian! The only other Eliot fiction that I've found this amusing is her underread story "Brother Jacob" (published in THE CORNHILL in 1864).

As for the title character, we have a curate who is very ordinary stuff--the perfect kind of realist material Eliot elaborates on in her essay "The Natural History of German Life." But I'm more interested in the women presented in this opening installment--Milly Barton, the intriguing Countess Czerlaski (nee Caroline Bridmain) who married the dancing-master of the family where she worked as governess, and even Janet Gibbs, the fifty-year old niece of Mrs. Patten. Perhaps I'm thinking this "Janet" will figure in the third SCENES story. I admit I'm on the look-out for possible connections across the three stories, and there is a brief allusion to Mr. Gilfil who had the good sense to preach short sermons, unlike Amos Barton.

For next week we'll finish this first story in the SCENES series with chapters 5-10. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this installment!

Serially scenic,
Susan

Coming Next Week: Scenes of Clerical Life

2011-04-27T21:31:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

We'll resume our serial adventures with George Eliot's first published fiction, SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. The first story, "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," appeared in two installments. We'll read and chat about that first installment this coming week--chapters 1-4. Spread the word!

Serially starting,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 15 (May 1866--chaps 50-The Last)

2011-03-26T12:29:00.007-05:00

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

Miss Marjoribanks 14 (Mar. 1866--chaps 47-49)

2011-03-15T06:55:00.007-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

The election of all elections in this installment--but, as some of you have pointed out, an election devoid of political views. What emerges in these chapters, though, is who gets to vote, and who does not. Reform Bill debates were whirling in spring 1866 when this installment appeared. Would extending the franchise to some of working class men help Conservatives or Liberals at the polls? The Reform Bill, introduced in 1866, debated and altered and finally passed in 1867, was meant to enfranchise only "respectable" urban working men and exclude unskilled poor men by a householder stipulation. This issue of voting reform was so charged due to speculations about how new voters would aid or hurt political parties--there were demonstrations in several cities as the Reform League called for universal suffrage. And while "universal suffrgage" typically meant only men, the question of women voting was also in the air. Oliphant published an article, "The Great Unrepresented" in Sept. 1866 in Blackwood's where she notes that despite being taxpayers and householders, and even contributors to the pages of "Maga" (ie Blackwood's), "we are supposed unable to decide whether Mr Smith or Mr Jones is the best man for the borough." Yet Oliphant declines John Stuart Mill's call for women's suffrage. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't until 1918 that British legislation enfranchised all male resident householders over 21 and women over 30 who met property qualifications, and not until 1928 was there equality for women and men voters.

What we do hear about in these pages are the various boroughs of voters for the Carlingford member, from Grange Lane to Grove Street to the bargemen of Wharfside, "many of them, freemen, and a very difficult part of the populartion, excited the most vivid interest." All this flurry about voting propels the start of the installment, the only installment launched without Lucilla in view. As a woman, she is cast to the background about voting reform and the election. Even her former servant Thomas, now "an independent householder," has a vote it seems.

Lucilla's participation in politics is through proxy, through her selection of "the best man" for Carlingford. But now it appears this "best man" is not the best man for her. That frantic bell-ringing that interrupts Ashburton's proposal at the end of the installment heralds, no doubt, cousin Tom fresh from India. All Lucilla's pounding heart here suggests she's swayed by the love match for her cousin (the cousin about whom she seemed to hold a pragmatic older sister attitude early on) over the marriage of political and financial and social merit. But this familiar choice perhaps is the closest Lucilla can achieve to her past reign in her father's house; at least by marrying Tom, she remains Lucilla Marjoribanks, or becomes Mrs Marjoribanks.

I much prefer Lucilla's sealskin coat over Barbara's tin dress, that's for sure. Even so, I'm glad Cavendish and Barbara appear to be on the verge of marrying. For a novel to conclude with two women "gone off" in age at least and marrying too seems rather remarkable.

Next time--the final installment!

In some serial suspense,
Serial Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 13 (Feb. 1866--chaps 44-46)

2011-03-06T08:24:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

To offset last week's lengthy dialogue, I'll offer a brief comment on this week's installment. Lucilla's decision to remain alone (with only cook Nancy rather than the entire household retinue) in her Grange Lane house is remarked upon sufficiently to suggest the boldness of her move not to move or to "abdicate." I wonder about the importance of Lucilla's remaining in this house which bears the marks of her interior designing. The house has become an exemplar of herself: for Lucilla and this house to part company is unthinkable. Will she retain her domestic rule then by marrying someone who can move into this house and support her life there? The relationship between property and personhood seems crucial.

One tiny leftover from last time: I had meant to mention Maria Brown, the photographer, whose picture-making career reminds me of Rose, the little Preraphaelite. I find it interesting that Oliphant does provide these examples of working women even if Rose is forced to "abdicate" her profession for home work.

There are two installments left of this novel. Our next serial reading adventure will begin in three weeks (the week of March 28): George Eliot's SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. These "Scenes" are three stories, which ran in serial segments from January to November 1857, as Eliot's initial foray into fiction after writing essays and translations. For those of you who haven't kept up with the program of a novel's worth of installments, you might like this next selection since you could pick and choose the stories: the first ("The Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton") with only two installments, the second ("Mr Gilfil's Love Story) with four installments, and the last "Janet's Repentence" with five.

For next time, Lucilla's latest experiment continues with chapters 47-49.

Serially yours,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 12 (Jan. 1866--chaps 40-43)

2011-02-27T10:35:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers: A dialogue follows--

Reader Ann: More happened in these four chapters than in all the previous installments combined!

Serial Susan: How so?

Reader Ann: Well, we start with politics and end with death.

Serial Susan: Yes, and Lucilla's moment of reflection about her own condition forms the keystone in the middle holding together politics and death. It's there, early in chap. 42, where the narrator comments that "she had come to an age at which she might have gone into Parliament herself had there been one disqualification of sex, and when it was almost a necessity for her to make some use of her social influence."

Reader Ann: And she recognizes her "instincts go beyond even dinners," that she "was a Power in Carlingford and she knew it. But there is little good in the existence of a Power unless it can be made use of for a worthy end."

Serial Susan: And there's the rub--what "worthy end" can Lucilla pursue given that direct representation in politics is denied to her and that by the end of this installment she loses even her financial power--along with papa?

Reader Ann: Even in her supporting role in the Carlingford election she's aware that after the election she would feel a "blank."

Serial Susan: This "blank"--perhaps that's also an allusion to death, nothingness, no matter any more. Were you surprised about her father's death and how we're prepared for it?

Reader Ann: I would've been surprised if you hadn't said while we were reading aloud that you thought her father would die! But it seems logical given how frequently we are told in early installments that her purpose is to be a comfort to "dear papa." He needed to be taken out of the picture in order for her to realize her next step.

Serial Susan: And her father starts hinting about her marrying eventually, maybe sooner than later, maybe Ashburton, although all he wants is that his daughter not marry "a fool." He advises her to marry because "I don't think you are cut out for a single woman."

Reader Ann: Isn't it a contradiction that he says she's not suited to the single life, but that she should be careful about too much self-sacrifice. If anyone can come up with a new idea of marriage, it will be Lucilla! Maybe that explains Lucilla's great "Experiment" of marrying someone who is poor. Or maybe this "Experiment" is the hint that she's about to design a new notion of marriage.

Serial Susan: Maybe such an "Experiment" would provide an opportunity to use her Power to some good. But what a surprising ending to this installment where it's learned that she has lost monetary Power at the moment of her inheritance after her father's death! What's the point here? Again, like Rose the little Preraphaelite, a young woman is forced to surrender her talents and suffers a diminishment.

Reader Ann: We had been speculating that the "poor man" she might marry could be Tom--

Serial Susan: or possibly Cavendish, although we're told so abundantly that he's truly "gone off" with his corpulence and red face, that that's *highly* unlikely! So where are we at the end of this twelfth installment with only three remaining?

Reader Ann: I am looking for a glimmer of hope in her father saying that a woman's self-sacrifice can be "useless" or "carried too far." In her genius and creativity perhaps she'll find an option that is outside the norm, something we've not considered.

Serial Susan: It's certainly true that Lucilla's options seem very limited. She cannot travel as she'd envisioned, the Grange Lane Marjoribanks home along with its Thursday Evenings (not "parties") must be relinquished, and whom could she marry? The "gone off" Cavendish? Hardly. The boring Ashburton? Possibly. What about cousin Tom? He was on the scene at the start, so I expect him waiting in the wings for the finale.

Reader Ann: Lucilla was feeling guilty that her mind wouldn't stop with her father's sudden death--that still she schemed, hatched plans, relishing her options in spite of her grief which made these new circumstances disclosed by the will even crueler.

Serial Susan: Yes, this double "inconceivable reversal of fortune"--her father's death and her loss of property and station--

Reader Ann: I thought all that was a way of saying so much for guilt, that's a waste of time.

Serial Susan: I still like your idea that Lucilla will rise above this calamity too and surprise us with a resolution to this difficulty.

Next week: #13, chaps 44-46.

Miss Marjoribanks 11 (Dec. 1865--chaps 37-39)

2011-02-21T08:16:00.005-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

After the doleful conclusion of last time, I was delighted with the turn of events some ten years later. Despite the repetitive concern that Lucilla may have "gone off" in her looks, here she's given a taste of political influence in her bid for Ashburton. Mrs Woodburn even notes that influence is "a great deal better than a vote." Oliphant has this social genius put her talents to use in the political arena, and her strategy of a simple sound-bite "the right man for Carlingford" and the standard bearer colors of green and violet (with the green--Lucilla's own color--the dominant hue) seem to be effective. Although there is mention several times that women cannot vote, Lucilla indirectly votes by influencing her father and Col. Chiley. Of course the whole matter of political choice gets mystified here as tasteful colors and sloganeering, but Oliphant has a point as intertwines public and private spheres into a network with effects. To bring home women's disenfranchisement, Ashburton even tells Lucilla that if he could put her on his election committee, that would be "the first thing to be done... but unfortunately I can't do that." Mild perhaps, but this seem a bid for suffrage and at least some recognition that women do participate, if from the margins, in the political scene. Besides, how can a candidate supported by the pageantry of those lovey green and violet cockades lose?

Oliphantine humor continues, I think, with those wry allusions to Lucilla like Joan of Arc with her ribbons, as if she's martyring herself for a cause instead of marrying. And like Joan of Arc Lucilla is inspired by extraordinary forces, not voices exactly, but those lightning flashes and possible spirit-rapping from the deceased MP. Amusing!

The return of Harry Cavendish seems a momentary threat to Lucilla's campaigning convictions, but she stays the course--with the help of that marvelous sealskin coat. I find so intriguing this female character who seems to deflect obstacles from within or without-- and an unmarried Victorian heroine at this grand age of 29 whose independence seems the envy of at least one of her married women friends. The installment concludes that Lucilla's current "satisfaction and well-being" renders unnecessary any love interest. Such a radically different tone from last time and, as many of you have noted, from most Victorian novels I've read.

Next week: #12 (Jan. 1866), chaps 40-43. I have one more idea for our next serial, again a novel I'd proposed before: Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit.

Searching for Sealskin,
Serial Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 10 (chaps 33-36, Nov. 1865)

2011-02-12T12:47:00.005-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

This installment has more than a glimpse of Lucilla's interiority. I was especially taken with the momentous scene where Cavendish comes up to her in the street (chap 34) and the sense of anger and regret on each respective side that this match cannot come off. Here we learn that Lucilla's heart "fluttered" more than once, as Cavendish is on the brink of some kind of proposal or love confession. But propriety makes her follow on the course she's established, and she tells her favorite imposter (and brother of the mimic) that she hopes he marries Barbara. All this happens with her throat contracting, her heart fluttering, and with many explicit and pregnant "pauses" in her performance of this scene. And then afterward, the sense of a lost opportunity--Lucilla "a little sad in the solitude of her genius" with her unappreciated sacrifice. That she might have married Cavendish after all and rally to the great challenge of being a political wife--a "position which pleased her imagination, and suited her energies, and did not go against her heart," but instead she acts according to social laws that dictate she must marry within or above her class. Cavendish reminds me of some of Trollope's struggling heroes, Johnny Eames (whom some of us have met in these screen-pages) or even Phineas Finn--created *after* this novel. If only Lucilla could've been Cavendish's Madam Max!

Instead we have Lucilla's self-renunciation of a marriage (and not only is Cavendish the most popular man in Carlingford, he is with this reader too), much like Rose, the little Preraphaelite, forced to give up her "Career" for domestic duties. I can't help but feel "a little sad" and also marvel that Oliphant links the relative sacrifices of these young women, including Barbara, with her gorgeous voice and fiery passions, whose disappointment in love motivates her to turn to governessing.

Otherwise, I have been thinking about the staginess of these scenes, especially those that take place in the Marjoribanks drawing room, like the Archdeacon's encounter with Mrs. Mortimer, under the watchful eye of Lucilla as director, who has set up this reunion, and then goes on to provide all the necessary props for the wedding. But the walking scene with Cavendish gives the hint that perhaps her social artwork, genius that she has for it, does leave something to be desired.

I was intrigued by the final chapter, a reflexive commentary on the progress of the story and the shift to the second phase of Lucilla's career--"amid mists of discouragement, and in an entire absence of all that was calculated to stimulate and exhilarate..." Oliphant's realism indeed, especially on the subject of women's careers--whether the artist class of Grove Street or the elites of Grange Lane.
The strong chord of this segment seems about women's wasted talents and surrendered desires. Not just a "little" sad.

For next time, chaps. 37-39 for installment 11--only four more after this (15 in all).
Recommendations for the next serial? I had suggested Eliot's first fiction, "Scenes of Clerical Life," but am eager for other suggestions!

Serially sad,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 9 (Oct. 1865--chaps 29-32)

2011-02-06T19:48:00.007-06:00

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

Miss Marjoribanks 8 (Sept 1865--chaps 26-28)

2011-01-30T18:00:00.004-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Yes, I can see how Darwin's theory of natural selection resonates with Lucilla's fitness and the variety of weaknesses we get, from Barbara Lake to Cavendish and his sister (if she is his sister). And then, going along with this, the occasional remark that suggests 'Nature red in tooth and claw' (apologies Tennyson) aggression, like the Archdeacon "lying in wait to crunch his [Cavendish's] bones."

I loved Lucilla's compelling command of the episode where she dispatches with the Lake sisters in succession and appropriates the feckless Cavendish--such ordinary suspense, now, to find out in the next installment what Lucilla manages to extract from him about his secret life! I also enjoyed the attention to the scene as a performance--highlighted by the little Preraphaelite's awareness of its "pictorial qualities" like Millais's paintings--I wonder which Millais?

I was also amused by the places where Lucilla's genius for plotting all the threads of lives around her hits an unanticipated snag--the very possibility that her father may be too attentive to Mrs. Mortimer; the narrator remarks that "it was doubtful whether even Miss Marjoribanks's magnanimity could have got over any ridiculous exhibition of interest on the part of her father, who certainly was old enough to know better." Lucilla does seem to have a very pragmatic view of affairs of the heart (and attractions of the body). She likes some flirtation and matchmaking, but within social bounds set by herself.

She does seem to be tending toward cousin Tom, yet it's hard to reconcile how this "woman of genius" could find him a suitable match. Perhaps that's the point.

Next week: chapters 29-32.

Serially yours,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 7 (August 1865--chaps 23-25)

2011-01-23T11:38:00.004-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

If Oliphant and Lucilla resemble each other as designers, there is one way in which they part company: a sense of humor. I'm finding Oliphantine humor a delicacy I've come to relish. I'd place this humor somewhere between Dickens and Eliot, more subtle like Eliotian humor, but without the acerbic edge. As one example: the "web of pronouns" episode where Lucilla endeavors to make sense out of Mrs. Mortimer's rather imprecise jumble of words. I could not resist thinking of Flora Finching, whose prolix proclivities Dickens offers up as lexical fun, as we considered a while back in these screen-pages (Little Dorrit). Unlike Dickens, Oliphant turns Mrs. M's pronoun confusion into a reading lesson as we see Lucilla struggle to locate some sort of pattern in the story. To return to Lucilla's insistence that she lacks a sense of humor: does she? or what does this insistence suggest about her, about her---interiority--her self-scrutiny?

I really did admire this installment for cavorting with the genre of sensation fiction, once again. A subtitle for these chapters could be: "Mr C's Secret." It seems that Cavendish has several of the signature features of the sensation heroine: disguised or mistaken identity ("the impostor") complete with a name change, a suspicious inheritance plot, and last but not least, bigamous desires. Cavendish, if he might be "Kavan" too, has been associated as a possible husband for at least three women: Lucilla, Barbara, and now Helen Mortimer (at least in Lucilla's crafty suggestion to Beverley). Earlier, last week, he expressed the quandry that he desires Barbara but he knows that marrying Lucilla is the socially proper course to follow--if only he could marry two women at once!

Finally, I loved Lucilla's command performance, including the sobbing, with Mr. Beverley to test him out and to test out her hunch about this "Kavan" character. Our "genius" Lucilla now must keep "three different threads of innocent intrigue with the three different persons in the drama" all in motion and without confusion--much like the novelist of a multiplot serial!

Next week, chapters 26-28. I think I'm back on track with reading and posting by the start of each week. Since we're at about the halfway mark in this serial, I'd like to invite suggestions for the next. I was thinking about another Blackwood's serial--or rather series--SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. I know these three loosely linked stories may not satisfy you suspense addicts, like Plotaholic, but these would offer another angle on the serial possibilities of Victorian fiction. Let me know if you have thoughts!

Serially simmering,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 6 (July 1865--chaps 19-22)

2011-01-19T09:34:00.002-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Kari will launch us for this week's installment, and I'll chime in later with a brief comment. For next week, chaps 23-25 (vol edition; or chaps 22-24 original installments).
Thanks to Kari for what follows! Yours, Serial S.

I enjoyed these chapters so much! Not one, but two not-quite proposals.

Let's start with the end, when Lucilla is surprised, which in itself is so unusual. It seems that it is she who feels "the earth had suddenly given way under her feet." The sentence is surprising, and perhaps that is why its grammar is also a bit confused. And I, this reader, was surprised that Lucilla had been providing for this school, such an idyllic setting for her in which to be posing when the Archdeacon runs into her. I had completely forgotten about Mrs. Mortimer, perhaps the first character for whom I've felt there might be real risk, and therefore, for the first time, I feel suspense. Since I can't wait for the next installment, I agreed to write this so we can get started blogging and I can keep reading!

This seems the most interiority we've seen of Lucilla. Perhaps that is because as contemporary readers, we are trained to see the unexpected, the unwanted, and the undesirable as the most inner and the most "true." In any case, that's how my students talk, and I often hear myself say the same thing. I do wonder what the notion of interiority was at the time of this novel, and how much literary uses of interiority were setting the stage for Freud's notions of repression and the unconscious.

And, in other drawing rooms, Lucilla's "self-devotion" is what can't help but convince Rose (and others) to follow Lucilla's will. I find that quite intriguing. I'll leave Barbara for others to dsicuss, aside from mentioning that it makes me a little sad to see the vast difference between Barbara's and Cavendish's desires. I'm probably giving more sympathy to Cavendish than Mrs. Oliphant is.

The other room that figures often so far in this novel is Lucilla's bedroom, which seems to my memory to be regularly referred to as "maidenly," although it is her "womanly" feelings that naturally wish she could have received Cavendish's proposal as a another tribute to her successes, but not to necessarily accept. This contrast between "maidenly" and "womanly" also reminds me of her vast wisdom compared to that 18-year old young man in the last installment.

I'm eager to hear what other serial readers noticed in this chapter. What shifts in tone do you all notice? What did you think of the lovely rural portrait of the schoolhouse in the midst of Carlingford? How did you see Lucilla's comparison between herself and Rose? Or . . . ?

Miss Marjoribanks 5 (June 1865--chaps 17-18)

2011-01-13T07:32:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Sorry to be a bit delinquent here--too much going on for serial pleasure! And so much to remark on from last time, all your comments, before getting to this week's installment!

Professor R's comments about Lucilla's character lacking the kind of interiority we're accustomed to finding in Victorian heroines is so intriguing! It's almost as if Oliphant is offering a send-up of all that interiority, with her domestic queen who is outwardly oriented to such an extent that what internal access we have seems all about her working through the challenges and rocky bits of the Thursday evenings. Barbara Lake seems a foil to Lucilla's character in this regard, and so Barbara becomes the cautionary tale (we're told) about the wrongs of showing your feelings. This is selflessness taken to a perverse extreme! Or are there hints of some lurking interiority?

There is attention, in this installment, to the discrepancy between outward calm and inward turmoil--that "somebody" who at once would have pounced on Lucilla for interrupting the Archdeacon's revelation and at the same time wanting to tear out his tongue for almost revealing the story of the adventurer (whom must be Cavendish).

I also keep thinking Oliphant is offering a kind of parody of the sensation novel, noted for plot over character. Here was have a character who is devoted to her scheme of social engineering, her "grand design of turning the chaotic elements of society in Carlingford into one grand unity." If Mr Beverley's story of the adventurer seems like a sensation character's social impostering (Lady Audley, for instance), does Lucilla's devotion to social mixing seem a benign or ordinary variation on the theme?

Plotaholic's point about the Lakes's proud class identification as artists comes through to me in this first chapter about Rose's disapproval of her sister. But I also love how Oliphant suggests that "the little Preraphaelite" too has her own social ambitions and dreams when the Archdeacon seems interested in her art portfolio. Some good puns too--such as Mrs Chiley on those "designing" Lake sisters!

I'm struck by the seemingly mild suspense woven into these installments--the fourth ending with Cavendish's "ghastly look" at the mention of the newcomer to Carlingford and in this installment the "somebody" at the Marjoribanks dinner table who has such a marked response to the Archdeacon's tale of the adventurer. Suspense is ordinary, Oliphant seems to be claiming here.

Finally, to respond to Plotaholic's question about bedside reading for Victorians: wouldn't there be the matter of illumination? I would think a candle to read in bed might be risky.

I'm reading the Penguin edition of this novel, and there is a note that after the June 1865 installment, the chapters in the revised volume version don't exactly square with the original serial version, since Oliphant applied a lot of editing at this point--to this installment. If I had time, I'd compare the revised volume version (which is what I've read) with the Blackwood's version. If someone knows, do chime in!
But from now on, the chapter numbers are off between serial and volume versions.
For next week, it's chapters 19-22 for the volume version (which I've been following), but chapters 20-23 for the serial version (which suggests this week's serial went through chap 19). Sorry for all the confusion! What version are you reading?

Serially yours,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 4 (May 1865--chaps 13-16)

2011-01-03T16:21:00.005-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

All your terrific comments take me in a different direction than I thought I'd go in response to this latest installment. I wanted to say (and so I do) that this monthly segment ends with the drawing-room suspense (perhaps a mock suspense, in keeping with the mock epic others have pointed out) about the "young-enough" Archdeacon's arrival on the scene, and the mystery of Mr. Cavendish's "green ghastly look"--as the narrator concludes, "The question was, What did it mean?" But mostly, for me, the mystery that I fear will never be answered is what *was* that "famous dish" Lucilla requested and Nancy provided?

I agree with TK that Lucilla's lack of humor may be consistent with her materialist practicality, but you have all convinced me, for now, that the narrator's tone is an intriguingly ironic contrast to her character. It also occurs to me that the doctor's wry amusement about his daughter's success--her unflappable self-composure in the wake of the scandal of Barbara Lake's play for Cavendish--perhaps is a model for how we are to read her with something like detached affection. We might consider this novel a mock-biography (the narrator refers to "Miss Marjoribanks's biographer") where Lucilla's character is less obvious than at first it seems, maybe like the garden she's remodeled with dark corners and a spot of strategic illumination. But where are her dark corners?

Here I wonder if Lucilla seems somewhat sexless. She is rather impervious to all the marriage plotting in her direction. And while Lucilla may remark to Tom (as Prof R noted) that he's lucky he spilled his heart to her rather than someone else who took marriage seriously, her lack of susceptibility to men might point to some hidden quality, some reserve or fear. I do think of a later Victorian heroine, namely Gwendolen Harleth, who enjoyed male adulation, but the indication of sexual passion toward her seemed a source of trauma or terror. In any case, Lucilla and Barbara are quite different in drawing power from their physical charms. Lucilla is larger than life, a woman with a commanding presence, but what else?

I was sorry to see Barbara reduced to a rather pathetic figure, someone belittled by the narrator for her desire to hurt Lucilla, who did not take the sting of Barbara's attempt to conquer Cavendish. At the same time, I admire the recognition of Barbara's class sensitivity over L's patronage. Lucilla's "sleeping the sleep of the just and innocent" also implies her social privilege, that she can afford to cast off the affront.

Next week, chapters 15-16 (a shorter installment than usual).

Serially sifting,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 3 (April 1865--chaps 9-12)

2010-12-26T13:52:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

To begin by responding to last week's conversation--I admit I'm stymied by this novel so far, like Plotaholic's "bad faith" suspicion. I agree with Kari that Lucilla's ambitions to enter "social politics" through her community organizing of the Thursday Evening affairs resemble Glencora's social hostess work in Trollope's Palliser novels (a model or companion series for Oliphant's). But I'm less convinced that the tone of the novel prompts amusing affection for Lucilla with her domestic campaign, her warfare in a teacup. So tiresome becomes the repetition of Lucilla's professed mission to give comfort to dear papa who seems not to need or desire it. Is this refrain meant to convey something like gentle ridicule? I cannot say that I admire or even feel terribly interested in Lucilla's machinations, although I find the attention to decorative renovations (the use of green that suits Lucilla's appearance) in concert with the reshaping of Grange Lane society intriguing. But for all these strategems, including her deft handling of Tom's proposal, it's inevitable that she will marry someone by the end, and that someone is likely to be cousin Tom. This is rank speculation, dear Plotaholic and like-minded readers! I have never read this novel!

The characters I'm most drawn to are the Lake sisters. Here is where Oliphant best sketches the finer points of class distinction in Carlingford. I loved the detail that Barbara's six-times washed muslin comes off as a very different shade of white than Lucilla's pristine frock. More compelling than Lucilla's so-called devotion to papa is Barbara's confused feelings of resentment and cautious ambition, her mixture of "fright" and "spite" or "shyness" and "temper." And I also liked the fancy that the aspiring young MP Mr Cavendish could become her own private hero--that this dream springs from the novels Barbara reads. Lucilla does deserve credit here for the "heterogeneous elements" that she draws together for these Thursday Evenings.

A few other favorite details from this segment seem directed in different ways to the question of women as agents and objects of looking: the Brown sisters' photographic glass-house next door facilitates Lucilla's camera-ready poses and Rose Lake as "the little Mistress of the Design School" who teaches drawing (like her father). Visual appearances, from the Marjoribanks drawing room to the dress and manner and even body (Rose's life classes at the Design School) all warrant self-conscious notice.

But my jury is still out on the title character, whether her frequently remarked "genius" is deserved, whether her energetic social engineering is only frustrated and misdirected energy after all. I just can't quite parse the tone.

Next week: chapters 13-16.

Serially slipping,
Susan

Miss Marjoribanks 2 (March 1865--chaps 5-8)

2010-12-20T10:35:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I am happy to turn the lead for this week's conversation over to ReaderAnn. I'll chime in at some point (overloaded right now in various ways). For next week's #3 installment, chapters 9-12. Thanks to all for contributions--a lively start!
Serial Susan

From Reader Ann:

Lucilla is a complex young woman, I'm just not sure yet quite who. She is, of course, well distinguished by her desire to be a comfort to dear papa. By the end of Chapter Five, she shows attributes of not only a conqueror and ruler, but also a "leader of mankind." So far, if she is not out and out manipulating people and situations, she is engaging in "simple reconnaissance" in route to exercising her will. Still, I am watching and warming to her, like her father as he gets to know his daughter, seemingly
for the first time. Early in Chapter six he bemoans the "blunders of Providence," and by the end is taking tea with a daughter cleaver beyond his wildest dreams. Is it Oliphant¹s gentle, ironic touch that makes Lucilla so likeable, or is it something within Lucilla¹s character that will be only gradually revealed? For my part, I'm crazy for anyone who differentiates "Evenings" from "parties," and knows how to pull off the former.

We meet so many new women, from Miss Barbara Lake, shy, injured,unappreciated, the perfect foil to Lucilla, to the zealot Mrs. Bury and the veiled Mrs. Mortimer whom we may never see again. I love watching how Lucilla responds to the varieties of women, and to the, so far, few men. For all her confidence and intention, she is fearful of something, and vulnerable. A dream about sorry Tom is all it takes for her to steer clear of him in the rudest of ways for someone as socially astute as Lucilla.

I've rarely been so eager see how a plot will thicken. Will her father remain enchanted by her? Will some uncontrollable love interest undo her? Despite Lucilla's persistent claim about the aim of her life, I end up wondering: What is it she really wants?

By the way, like Josh, I noticed the lack of sentimentality around the mother's death, but I didn't stop to be thoughtful about it. I chalked it up instead to the one line about Dr. M, "too busy a man to waste his feelings on mere sentiment."

Miss Marjoribanks 1 (Feb 1865--chaps 1-4)

2010-12-12T11:23:00.005-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Welcome back Serial Readers!

So much humor (ironic? sardonic? something else?) here in this opening installment that brings us the remarkable Lucilla Marjoribanks. Of course I'm intrigued by Q. D. Leavis's connection between this heroine and Jane Austen's Emma and George Eliot's Dorothea, but I see far more of Rosamond Vincy than Dorothea. What's an ambitious, capable, intelligent young woman to do, given the limited sphere of domesticity in which she has the opportunity to reign, especially if she wants to be a social reformer of sorts? And given her formal education at Mount Pleasant, where her "active mind" has been "condemned over again to verbs and chromatic scales"? Oliphant's opening chapters almost read like a riff on Ruskin's "Of Queens' Gardens"--even with some garden imagery. Yes, Lucilla seems the consummate arranger, with her light-speed renovations of the drawing-room space which she illuminates. She is "Lucilla" for a reason.

Lucilla has the makings of a strong-minded domestic goddess with a hint of the sensation heroine lurking beneath her determination. In the pages of the same journal, a few years later, Oliphant had this to say about sensation novels: "What is held up to us as the story of the feminine soul as it really exists underneath its conventional coverings, is a very fleshy and unlovely record." I gather Lucilla is a different creature from the sensation heroine who "waits now for flesh and muscles, for strong arms that seize her, and warm breath that thrills her through" (this also from Oliphant's review "Novels"). Perhaps all this libidinal energy is displaced or sublimated through her passion for managing the home. She clearly doesn't relish the prospective visit of her cousin Tom who probably lacks the suitable flesh and muscles Oliphant claims female readers yearn for. Lucilla seems instead to recoil from flesh (about meat on the plate, I'm not sure yet--but I love all the details about Nancy's sauces--gravy-beef and all).

I can't resist a link to a serial novel we've read in these blog pages--Gaskell's WIVES AND DAUGHTERS (the words "wives and daughters" appear in chapter two here). By Feb. 1865 when this novel was launched in Blackwood's, Gaskell's novel, also about a widower doctor and his young daughter, was in its sixth monthly installment. Gaskell's "Hollingford" seems close to Oliphant's "Carlingford," although here Gaskell was echoing Oliphant who'd already published novels, like SALEM CHAPEL, in her Carlingford series.

So the suspense of sorts--will Miss M's Thursday evenings prove "a revolution in the taste and ideas of Carlingford"? We must wait for next time, chapters 5-8.

For those of you who are new to "Serial Readers," I encourage you to post a comment (short is fine--a sentence or two if you like!) in the box at the bottom of this entry where you'll also see a link to other comments, once posted. If you're getting the weekly posts emailed to you, let me know if you don't want your address on this list. Or if you're not getting those posts, let me know if you do want me to add you to that list!

Serially started again,
Susan

Next Serial, Coming Soon! Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks

2010-11-19T07:19:00.004-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Instead of Gaskell's CRANFORD, we'll start reading a novel by a new writer for this blog, Margaret Oliphant's MISS MARJORIBANKS, serialized initially in BLACKWOOD's EDINBURGH MAGAZINE from February 1865 to May 1866. It appeared in fifteen monthly installments (with a gap in the January 1866 issue), so we'll take fifteen weeks to read it.

Q. R. Leavis described this novel's Lucilla Marjoribanks as "the missing link" between Austen's Emma and Eliot's Dorothea Brooke, yet "more entertaining, more impressive and likeable than either." This novel is the fourth in a series of seven titled THE CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD, but like Trollope's series (CHRONICLES OF BARSETSHIRE, a likely model for this one; we've read one of those--THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON), these novels stand alone and don't require moving through the novels in order.

There are several volume editions available. The Penguin edition (see cover image) provides asterisks to show the serial breaks, but I will also include that information for each upcoming reading segment. You can also find the novel in an electronic version either through Victorian Women Writers Project or the link to the left here. If you know of another online source, please post a comment here about that!

We'll begin our reading in about a month, with the first installment (chapters 1-4)for the week of December 13th (I'll post a comment around that date). We should finish the novel the week of March 21st.

So do get ready, Serial Readers, for this next reading adventure! Pass the news along to anyone who might be interested.

Serially yours,
Susan

The Moonstone (installments from August 1868), Blake, Cuff, Betteredge, Epilogue

2010-09-19T12:07:00.005-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

At long last, I am back to wrap up this serial reading! I enjoyed the variety of these last installments, from Franklin Blake's continuation, after Jennings' journal, of the story, and then the remarkable Sargeant Cuff's detective work, followed by Candy's letter about Jennings' death, and then--I know at least two of you serial readers were pleased--the return of Gabriel Betteredge as narrator.

I loved how he brings to a near-close the narrative with his ringing endorsement of the prophetic power of fiction (his beloved ROBINSON CRUSOE) as the new secular bible--he mentions his pleasure in pointing this out to Franklin Blake with the feeling that he's "converted" Blake to this new religion of English fiction! Can you imagine someone using this novel in a similar way?

Rather than the colonizing tendencies of Robinson C., this novel ends with a reversal of colonial conquest: the Epilogue describes the Moonstone's global journey as it is returned to its original home in the forehead of the statue of the Hindu god of the Moon from (as Murthwaite mentions) "the bosom of a [English] woman's dress!" But then he concludes with a few provocative questions that perhaps the Moonstone (and whatever else it signifies) may travel again: "Who can tell?"

According to the design of the novel, many can tell! I believe we have not encountered another novel in these screen-pages of "Serial Readers" that includes so many different tellers. I find this variety works well with the serial form.

Some lingering questions: the undisclosed secret of Ezra Jennings' sad life? and the thematic links between him, as outsider, with the wandering Murthwaite, who describes himself as "semi-savage" with hybrid origins, like Jennings. Interesting too that this novel both opens and closes in India, yet most of its settings are in England. I saw some interesting links to a novel that appeared some decades later, namely DRACULA--it also begins and ends in the "East" (Transylvania of Eastern Europe) and it also suggests the power of the colonized to regain and even extend their property and power.

I look forward to your comments on this novel!

My relative silence in these pages/screens suggests that I am compelled to take a recess from "Serial Readers"--the first hiatus in the twenty-eight months of the life of this reading log! Here is my proposal: we will reconvene in the second half of November with the linked stories of Elizabeth Gaskell's CRANFORD, first published in Dickens' HOUSEHOLD WORDS (from Dec. 1851-May 1853). We will begin with the first two installments, which include the first four chapters of most modern editions (through the chap titled "A Visit to an Old Bachelor"). I'll plan to post on these first installments the week of November 15th.

In the long meantime, please enjoy your serial readings and viewings, wherever they may take you! See you here in two months (and before, with all comments on the end of THE MOONSTONE).

Serially stalling,
Susan

The Moonstone (installments from July 1868), Blake's narrative, Ezra Jennings' journal

2010-09-08T14:03:00.002-05:00

Dear Serial Readers (and non-readers),

Many of us regular serialists have fallen behind due to the season! I am determined though to post on the final installment, which is short, for next time. I am also considering taking a brief recess from this serial reading, and would love to know if a month off would be disastrous? Or we could continue, but I'm afraid I'd still need help from other serial readers. Next up is one we've considered before: Gaskell's CRANFORD stories. Let me know what you think about how to proceed--either email me or comment here!

Meanwhile, thanks again to Kari for the following on the July 1868 installments of THE MOONSTONE. For next time, what remains.....
***********************

In looking up Betteredge’s story of the night of the birthday party/diamond disappearance, I was reminded how fond he is of Godfrey, and especially was that night. I’m a little surprised that Miss Clack isn’t fonder of him, because a lot of what Betteredge likes in Godfrey is what Miss Clack likes. But Miss Clack also no doubt notes Betteredge’s greater reliance on Robinson C. than on church.
I was struck, and tried to convey, how little Miss Clack focuses on love—certainly the least loving narrator of all.
I also wanted to go back briefly to last week’s reading and F Blake’s focus on his “manhood”—working it up to get the strength to go see Rachel, and losing it when she tells him she couldn’t sleep because she was thinking about him. Wow! Sexual tension! That may be the most open sexual tension I’ve seen in much of our Victorian reading (though I know it often lurks in cupboards and such), and at that moment, Franklin is “almost unmanned.”
I figured Ezra Jennings was trustworthy when F Blake liked him, even though Betteredge calmly says everyone dislikes him. It’s interesting that Ezra’s story is so similar to Franklin’s, in some ways.
I don’t see much about Ezra’s voice that marks him clearly distinctive from other narrators—did anyone else? And one last word: will the diamond be in the buzzard or the Cupid? Any significance to both winged creatures losing their flight?

The Moonstone (installments from June 1868), Blake's narrative, chaps. 4-8

2010-09-01T17:21:00.002-05:00

ReaderAnn returns this week with the following observations. I'm looking for one more lead poster for next week, then I hope to be back on the track for the very last installment of THE MOONSTONE! Thanks to all readers! --Serial Susan

***I'll comment without giving away any new developments in deference to
readers not caught up. Though I will say I have no new sense of who the
thief might be, and I¹m afraid I might end the book not knowing for sure.

In this installment I particularly enjoyed the Franklin Blake chapters, the
voices within voices, if you will. I don't recall other chapters like this
one, though there might have been. Here, through Blake, there is the happy
return, from my point of view, of Betteredge. And from Betteredge's hand,
there is the very, very, very long letter from Rosanna Spearman, whose voice
is entirely believable as the hard-life girl with the crooked shoulder,
hopelessly in love.

I must say I miss Cuff, and I paged back to the Table of Contents to see
when he returns. Sad to say, there will be no more Clack!***

For next time (July 1868): more Blake, chaps 9-10; Ezra Jennings' journal. Only one more installment after that, then.....??

The Moonstone (installments from May 1868): Clack chaps. 6-7, Bruff chaps 1-3, Blake chaps 1-3

2010-08-24T11:47:00.003-05:00

I am grateful to Serial Susan for allowing me to write the lead entry on the text for this week, as I have had a few suggestions that I have hoped to share with the entire group. First, I would like to suggest that after we complete this worldly book, we turn to a course of enlightening and strengthening reading for the better guidance of our spirits. Yes! The Strength of our Spirits! I suggest not that we read about Christ, nor about God, but proper, beautiful, English, moral readings, which I will be happy to mark for all readers to help you find the most profitable sections, where you might wonder “is this me?” Tracts such as “Satin in the Library,” “The Serpent of Suspense,” and “The Letters and Remembrances of Mrs. Molly Earnest-Prune” would be excellent places for our group to begin. I find this serial group so happily suited to such readings, as it gives us the time for pious reflection on each section before advancing to the next.
I know that you, my serious serial reader friends, will understand the comfort and joy I felt at dear Mr. Godfrey finding himself free of the distractions and, I fear, profaning attentions of Rachel, allowing him to return to his Ladies and Charities. The later slander which the odious Mr. Blake’s and Betteredge’s narratives hint at about Godfrey, are merely the vile jealousy of lesser men.
Were Kari writing this herself, instead of ceding the space to me, I must in honesty acknowledge that she would speculate as to the possibility of a doppelganger for Mr. Blake. But OH! What a sadly German term for a sadly profane concept, and how sorrowful I am to consider that she would so profligately waste time on wondering about what might happen when she might use that time modestly and honorably at charitable work, such as preventing young children from stealing candy or handing out tracts warning about profanity at sporting events.
How joyful I am that I have had this opportunity to share just a few improving ideas with the group! I thank Serial Susan for the opportunity, and I hope to be asked to comment again!

For next week, continue with Mr. Blake’s narrative, as in June 1868, Chapters 4-8 were released.

The Moonstone (installments from April 1868), Clack's Narrative, chaps 1-5

2010-08-17T10:47:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

So Lady V. dies suddenly, Rachel has accepted Godfrey's proposal of marriage, but we don't know the contents of that will Lady V. signed, Bruff drew up, and Clack witnessed, but divulged nearly nothing about. So there's some suspense afoot about the impending revelation of that will. I suspect there will be some connection between with the "outrages" against moneylender Luker (a Dickensian pun-name) and Godfrey.

Clack's Tracts! What a hilarious voice this one is--with her sowing those tracts, planting them around Lady V's house and then, after they're all returned, determining to send them in small fragments inside envelopes! I had heard that some read this novel as anti-imperialist, and it does seem that Collins is having a field day with his send-up of Clack's evangelizing, missionary zeal--all her clap-trap about "the true Christian never yields...our mission" and the related "Glorious, glorious privilege" where "we are the only people who are always right." Her Sunday-School Style is such a distinctive way of reading--what she attends to is so different from Betteredge. Again, how characters affect circumstance, or read events.

After my comment last week about how we don't know a master editor of these narratives, I found that answer quite quickly: Clack relays that Franklin Blake has requested her witnessing account and is paying her for it! So we know he has a vested interest in the disclosure of the full truth of what happened, from different eyes/I's.

For next time, the five installments from May 1868: the rest of Clack, chaps 6-7, then the narrative of Bruff, chaps 1-3, then Franklin Blake's, chaps 1-3. So three different narrators next time--should be interesting!

Serially suspicious,
Susan

The Moonstone (installments from March 1868) chaps. 16-23 (end of Betteredge's narrative)

2010-08-09T17:29:00.006-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

So Gabriel Betteredge's narrative comes to an end! I wonder how Miss Clack (who sounds like a character piece from the board game CLUE) will proceed. I'm intrigued that we're prepared for the next witness (and Betteredge tells us that we're in effect judges, the narratives are testimonies) whom we've barely seen (one of the guests at Rachel's birthday dinner), rather than a more predictable witness, like Lady Verinder or Franklin Blake.

Collins mines the lengthy reportage in newspapers of court trials. What do you make of this scheme where the novel itself is the trial proceedings, the narratives the testimonies, and we readers the judges? Julia mentioned this structure, in relation to the question of what details to include, what to omit, and how Collins's allows Betteredge to "wander"--something not permitted in a courtroom testimony. Those of you who've read Collins's THE WOMAN IN WHITE may remember this style of interlocking witness-narrators. And, as Josh points out, and ReaderAnn echoes, these wandering details (like GB's fondness for Robinson Crusoe) illuminate the effects of character on circumstance (or on relating events).

But one difference here is that there is no master narrator (like Walter Hartright), or at least, we don't know who is telling Gabriel Betteredge to tell his version, to stick to his "own experience," not to wander, not to be "too familiar." And how has he heard that "you are likely to be turned over to Miss Clack"?

This mix of the personal with the impersonal, the up-close character-narrator with the abstract editor more distanced, imprecise, reminds me too of Franklin Blake's mini lecture on the different ways of reading the mystery of the missing Diamond: what he calls "the Objective-Subjective view," which encompasses both reading "from the inside-outwards" (the Subjective) and, presumably, the outside-inwards. Like Josh said last time, we're fed bits of information and clues, enough to keep us craving more--that "detective-fever" which Gabriel B. also calls an "infection."

So, if you have caught this fever, and want your cure to come fast, how do you stop reading ahead? Or does the slow reading/curing approach to this infection have some pleasures too?

Any thoughts about Rachel's financial needs that might motivate her to raise money on the Moonstone? Actually, she's been quite an enigma throughout, yet, like Rosanna, seems susceptible to passionate moods or mood swings. I'm reminded how women, especially uneducated, working-class women, were often regarded as conducive to seances and spiritualist contacts in the Victorian craze for such things, around the time Collins is writing. So with this gender binary (women are guided by feelings, men by reason), I'm curious to see how our female narrator Miss Clack will address the question of the Disappeared Diamond. Certainly Betteredge's emotions surface often in his narrative, especially his disdain/admiration for Cuff. I'm also amazed by all the details of the household staff, how many servants appear in the pages of GB's narration, from the gardener and cook to page boys and the different levels of housemaids--a vast and hierarchical structure, to be sure.

Finally, it occurs to me that there's a parallel between Cuff as the private detective and Betteredge as house-steward: both are privy to family secrets, to information regarding this "family scandal."

Next time, Miss Clack's Narrative: chaps. I-V. For the week after next, I'd be grateful if one of you would mind taking the lead post? I'll be traveling that week and am not likely to be able to post in a timely fashion! Just let me know here or by email.

Yours in serial secrets,
Susan

The Moonstone (installments from Feb. 1868)--chaps. 10-15 (Betteredge's narrative, continued)

2010-08-04T07:11:00.007-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Thanks for all these terrific posts!

In this past set of chapters we're introduced to the "celebrated character" of Sergeant Cuff. Although original readers would not have made this comparison, I thought of the Watson/Holmes pairing in Conan Doyle's Sherlock stories. Like Watson, Betteredge is the earnest narrator who, despite his attentiveness, simply cannot *see* in the ways that Cuff does. I was struck too by Cuff as a reading master, by his repeated lessons about how to be a good reader of clues, of everyday, ordinary things and events and characters. These lessons, within the narrative, are directed at Betteredge, but do we too profit from the scenes of Cuff's instruction? I read somewhere that detective novels, sensation fiction, and more generally the enterprise of reading, can stimulate a kind of paranoia, where details overwhelm us to suspect everywhere the possibilities of clues, of hidden meanings. Betteredge seems an average, close reader, attentive and able to draw obvious conclusions. But Cuff is a different kind of reader, a master reader who makes startling connections. What makes him so?

My other observation, perhaps proof that I'm reading in a different way here, is that there are evident "curtain scenes" with the end of each installment, much more so than I'd noticed in Dickens' serials. Even if you're reading an edition of THE MOONSTONE that does not show the serial breaks, you can probably tell where they fall because of the dramatic suspense with which Betteredge ends that chapter or section. Chap. 10 ends with Betteredge's "The next thing to tell is the story of the night." This would be the night when the Diamond disappears. And this is also the break between the Feb. 1 & Feb. 8, 1868 installments. Then chap. 11, which includes two different installments, notes that division with, "..and out walked Rosanna Spearman!" And the very last of these five Feb. 1868 installments ends with Betteredge hearing Lady V's voice calling to them, on the heels of Cuff's assertion that some scandal is about to "burst up in the house." Perhaps these marked divisions are part and parcel of sensation fiction that stimulate the reader on for more episodes. Did such provocative endings to installments actually stimulate sales, get readers to buy the next edition of the magazine, in this case?

So I'm curious how Julia's "DailyLit" option for today's serial reader would affect these deliberate "curtain scenes" from the original serialization? Am I finding these suspenseful accents because I know that's where the installment ended when Collins first wrote it and Dickens published it? Surely I'd read the novel's new divisions in the DailyLit mode differently! I wish I had the patience to try out the experiment!

Next time: the remainder of Betteredge's narrative, chaps 16-23.

Serially struck,
Susan

The Moonstone (installments from Jan. 1868): prologue through chaps 1-9

2010-07-28T09:41:00.010-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Here we are in a new serial reading country--the metaphor works too since, like Little Dorrit, this one opens out of England, this time in India. This is the first serial novel we've explored on these bloggy pages that is regarded as "sensation fiction"--a genre of Victorian popular reading that was always serialized first in magazines, either monthly ones, or weekly ones, like this one--Dickens' ALL THE YEAR ROUND. You can see the top of the first page from that weekly, the early Jan. 1868 issue that launched this novel, and sold for 2d, two pence (the monthly magazines were usually a shilling, or 12d, so this was quite a good deal!) Like Dickens, Collins wrote as the serial was being issued, usually a month or two ahead of schedule. Sensation fiction (like many of Dickens' novels) traded in suspense and secrecy, disguises and masquerades, and were designed to keep readers coming back for the next segment, like (as this one is regarded) a good mystery. Critics sometimes complained that sensation novels favor plotting over character, rather than the other way round. I see the emphasis on the plotting here, and marvel at how the timeline of the plot echoes serial time, the very dates that head each installment. What do you think? Too much emphasis on plotting? Do you get a sense of these distinct characters too?

Collins uses multiple narrators here (and in some of his other novels), and the first four segments, from Jan. 1868, are largely from Betteredge (nice Dickensian pun name!), the Verinder house-steward. What do you make of him as a narrator and whom is he addressing? All the attention to his *telling* of the story of the Moonstone certainly highlights the way this story is delivered to us.

The romance plotting, the servants taking bets about which cousin Rachel will marry, is humorous, and also interesting for this attention to the below-the-stairs (class) view of the "gentlefolk" (as Betteredge puts it). Yet when an engagement or marriage is previewed in the opening sections, there's bound to be complications. Cousin marriage, while 'normal' in nineteenth-century novels, even from Austen's EMMA, becomes more complicated as the century advances.

I'm also struck by the attention to alternative forms of knowledge--occultism (even if through Betteredge's Orientalism), clairvoyance, dreams and visions, drugs. Since some of us read Dickens's DROOD in this format, I want to mention that Dickens was writing DROOD just after MOONSTONE was issued in his magazine. I had not previously thought of DROOD as a companion text, but perhaps it is!

Finally, I'm fascinated by a thing (the upper-case Diamond--also "mere carbon") as something like a mute character, or the Moonstone as a fetish attached to multiple kinds of values and powers and debts: familial revenge, colonial theft, monetary worth, spiritual or occult powers, or the meaning of a jewel as gift to a young woman. The sheer attention to the displaying of the Diamond to Rachel and her family on her birthday compares with Betteredge's detailed description of her own body and face!

Looking forward to your thoughts as we embark on this *Moonstone* expedition!
Thanks Julia for the link to online versions of this novel. As I've redesigned this site, I've also done some housekeeping, including the righthand column where I've noted the serials we've read and when we read them, as well as two links to downloadable versions (including THE MOONSTONE--try Project Gutenberg).

For next week: Betteredge's narrative continued, chaps 10-15 (Feb. 1868)

Serially shimmering,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Parts Nineteen/Twenty, II, chaps 30-34 (June 1857)

2010-07-19T09:31:00.008-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I can hardly believe we've reached the end of this novel we began reading in March (and when I was in London and took the photo of the Thames)! I found this one of the most satisfying, if somewhat predictable (but not entirely so), of Dickens' novels. I'm eager for your reviews! Apologies for the length of this post--and there's so much I'm leaving out!

First, I was so intrigued by Josh's recollection that Shaw thought this novel was more "seditious" (the word Shaw used) than Marx's CAPITAL. Here's a link to an article a few years ago that mentions this: "Why Dickens is so relevant today..." Shaw was a great admirer of Marx, a Socialist, and member of the Fabian Society. What seems to me most startling and radical about Dickens' portrayal of financial speculation, greed, and the pervasive networks of capitalism is the sense of accountability or responsibility from so many different quarters. In this light, Arthur's recriminations over a wreckless investment (even if he did not act with the rank ruthlessness of Merdle), or his resolve to take consequences, suggests a model of shared responsibility; the same with Pancks, expressed through his noble, hilarious, and satisfying rant on Casby's Principle of the Squeeze in Bleeding Heart Yard. In other words, Dickens doesn't rest content with eliminating a few outlier criminal crooks, like Merdle or Rigaud, but shows how they're part of a huge network of characters who profit from others' losses: Casby, Mrs. Clennam, Flintwinch, and many more.

This shared responsibility seems a far cry even from today's response to financial crimes and misdemeanors, and a widespread refusal to see the vast interconnections between speculation, fraud, gains and losses. See Paul Krugman's recent op-ed where he notes the contradiction of the position that argues, on the one hand, that extending aid to the unemployed is unthinkable in this era of national deficits, and on the other hand, that reducing tax cuts for the rich is equally unthinkable.

In this novel, all players and speculators are linked together in the intricate webwork of the plot and the circulations locally and abroad of money, or paper documents about money (such as the iron box with that codicil of the Clennam will, which trades hands, crosses borders, and involves legacies uniting Arthur's real mother and Little Dorrit). The only way truly to leave the vast debtor's prison which is, in a sense, the world of the novel (which opened in a quarantine prison of foreigners in Marseilles), is to realize and accept the implications of one's debts, to see that one is in a debtor's prison in the first place, something perhaps Dorrit Senior, with his delusions of grandeur, never quite managed to do. Or perhaps living in a state of indebtedness is vastly preferable to the alternative. Maybe that's why Marshalsea is a more genuine place in contrast to all the scenes of fraudulent pretenses. And maybe that's why "Little Dorrit" insists on this name rather than "Amy" as one that emphasizes smallness (grating though I find that choice--and doesn't "Amy" come from the French "amie" or 'friend'?)

What did you think of Mrs. Clennam's secret and her justification of her possession of the baby Arthur from his nameless mother and the related suppression of the codicil? So many miserable women in this novel (including Miss Wade, with her brief curtain bow in Calais)! Amy Dorrit is certainly the model held up for women to emulate, and Tattycoram seems to rehabilitate herself in that direction. But I think Pancks and Clennam and even Doyce, are male models of the right ways to speculate and conduct responsible financial and interpersonal relations.

Did you notice how the last chapter opens with "a voice" reading to Arthur in prison, Amy's reading something like a Dickens novel of fancy that encourages imaginative speculation that is soothing and replenishing in contrast to the immediate environment? Is this a panacea, or a way to curtail trading on others' losses?

The whole ending, marriage too, reminded me of the ending of a later Dickens novel, Our Mutual Friend, where Lizzie Hexam nurses Eugene back from the edge of death and marries him. Dickens likes unlikely angels (from lower class or modest origins or inclinations) to rescue his fallen men back to life. There are many such pairings throughout his novels. But what also struck me in this finale, with the long-foreshadowed marriage, was Amy's active role. She is the one who makes a full confession of her love to Arthur, and her desire to share her "fortune" with him--she in effect reverses their roles and so becomes his mother, rather than his child.
On Julia's comparison with Jane Eyre: in Bronte's novel Jane's fortune allows her to approach Rochester on the class ladder and to free herself from financial dependence on him as (former) employer. In this way, Jane can return to Rochester as a closer equal, even one with the power to see and to lead (Amy is similar in this respect). Here, Amy has either lost her fortune (as did her siblings) through bad speculations or destroys it, at least symbolically, through the burning of the codicil, in order to demonstrate that she and Arthur are equals. I see this ending too as part of Dickens' desire for a world of social and even financial equals--rather than the peaks and valleys of the rich upper class and lower working class and destitute.

Finally, I loved the sudden collapse of the House of Clennam. This reminded me of the role of houses, edifices, even bodies in Dickens that collapse or seem on the brink of some disaster (Bleak House, Krook's own spontaneous combustion, the House of Dombey, just to name a few) as richly symbolic.

Yes, this novel grew on me in startling ways, as some of you have mentioned too. I'm glad I'm teaching it this fall! I've also just ordered the 2008 BBC adaptation, which earned much praise.

Now, onto a novel that was serialized in Dickens' magazine All the Year Round: Wilkie Collins' THE MOONSTONE! As I mentioned earlier, we'll read each week the four installments published weekly in the course of a month. I'll list the chapters for our weekly reading, but also the original divisions in case you want to follow the flavor of the serial form, and divide these readings up according to the original weekly installments (which you could read in four daily sittings each week).
For next week: The Moonstone, Prologue through chapter 9 (January 1868: Prologue-chap 3; chaps 4-5; chaps 6-7; chaps 8-9).

Serially Sailing (to India....),
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Eighteen, II, chaps 27-29 (May. 1857)

2010-07-12T07:33:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Julia's comment makes me see some affinities between the world of crime, money, corruption in this novel and in more recent serials like The Wire, and the connections across social class and institutional divides. Yes, the remaining mystery--saved up for the double-number finale (next week!)--is the unraveling of Mrs. Clennam's money-related crimes, and the nature of "the commodity" Blandois had offered to sell to her. I'm also a first-time reader of this novel, so I can only speculate. But I suspect this secret around the Clennam household will go far in explaining many of Arthur's early questions when he first returned to London at the start of the novel. Maybe he and Amy are half-siblings, although I think that's far-fetched! Still, in the spirit of wild speculation! There is a tightening of the scene and action in these last installments too--these three chapters set in Marshalsea, and the last five, at least according to their titles (Closing in, Closed, Going, Going!, Gone)all plot-driven around resolutions.

I was also thinking there are different kinds of avarice at work in this novel. Obviously there's plenty of money-greed. But there's people-greed too (even self-greed), and here Amy Dorrit's overwhelming determination to sacrifice herself to a father/figure (now, Arthur, who continues to call her "my child") is a prime example. But like the range of money mishaps and crimes, there seems to be good and bad forms of this personal avarice. Young John is another stellar example--he knows Amy is in love with Arthur and his struggle to quell his jealousy by telling Arthur suggests the good kind of people-avarice. Young John's gravestone fantasy ending with the cap-fonted "MAGNANIMOUS" humorously announces that such self sacrifice might also desire recognition. I loved that tombstone inscription--in part because it provides another angle on what appears to be Amy's selfless devotion. In other words, this seeming self abnegation might not be so purely selfless after all. With so much giving, there's the pleasure one takes in that form of virtue. Now Mrs. Clennam seems the wrong kind of avaricious person and I suspect we'll learn more about that in the concluding chapters. There are the in-between comic kinds too, like Fanny.

Next week--all the rest! How many of you have truly played by these "Serial Reader" rules and *not* yet finished the novel at this point? It is a different kind of reading experience, isn't it, to move in small and steady increments like this?

Starting the week of July 26: The Moonstone!

Serially speculating to the end,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Seventeen, II, chaps 23-26 (April 1857)

2010-07-05T07:23:00.006-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

New design features available, so I did some redecorating. I don't think I'll hold on to the background though--too busy.

This installment did surprise me--I had no idea that Amy and Arthur would be reunited through the Marshalsea romance (and, the poverty-is-better-than-wealth conceit) again! At least, that's how things wind up, with Arthur, and his altered fortunes, weeping for need of Amy's devotion. And of course we know that Amy was most happy tending to her father in prison, and now Arthur, long a father figure in the making for her, is back at the old home, waiting her return. But Arthur going into debtor's prison seems so clearly a kind of martyrdom, his insistence that he take the punishment for ubiquitous financial crimes of others, because his speculations have caused harm to his innocent partner Doyce, even though Arthur was never motivated by self-gain (unlike the likes of Merdle and Barnacles).

So many passages in this section could, with a bit of tweaking, come straight out of our own times--ruthless financial speculation that causes the ruin of many due to the unethical conduct of a few--Wall Street 2008 echoes here, as well as suicide--try Googling "financial suicides" and you'll see what I mean--the rate spiked in late 2008, early 2009. Merdle's suicide in the public Baths surprised me--quite spectacular and gruesome, seemed to echo Marat's death in his tub, meant to look like suicide although the work of Charlotte Corday. Even Merdle's weapon--Fanny's penknife--seems an allusion to Marat's death, and the 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David, which shows pen and knife and letter (see sidebar).

The extended bit about "Physician" and "Bar" rolls out all the cliches about lawyers as low-life manipulators, but also the physician as "a great reader" and the modern-day confessor, or the one who penetrates into (or is told) the secrets of others. Dickens aligns Physician with "reality" through this ability to gain knowledge beyond people's surfaces. Is Physician in this sense like the narrator of a realist novel?

Finally, Dickens also attributes an "equality of compassion" to Physician, and here I want to return to Kari's comment last week on the subject of compassion and Miss Wade's Narrative. Through Miss Wade's story, Dickens seems to ask why would someone spurn compassion, or refuse to see compassion as anything more than pity and condescension? I see here a kind of struggling with certain profiles of liberalism and social justice--not so much (as Kari puts it), "she made me do it" (that Miss Wade is so miserable that her mistreatment is really her own fault due to that bad temper), but "we gave them every opportunity, and still they persisted in their bad, mad, ways." This is a long way of saying that perhaps Dickens is showing the limits of compassion, or that sometimes compassion is simply not enough. I don't think he provides answers here, but does generate lots of questions about social and psychological behaviors that seem puzzling, reprehensible, or worse. Is Miss Wade taking in Tattycoram motivated by compassion, by revenge, by something else?

Nevertheless, compassion will rule the day in the world of this novel, I bet. Even Young John shows some compassion as he reserves that special room (ie, where William Dorrit once lived) in Marshalsea for Arthur. And we know how Little Dorrit, aka Amy, longs for the old Marshalsea days when she could provide solace and comfort to her father. Now she'll get another chance to return. But is this compassion at its best? There are still many threads (including the secret about Blandois and his mother which Clennam tried to extract from Affery)to be worked through to the end. And Fanny's baby in the works!

Only two more installments (since the final one is a double issue)! We'll finish this novel in two weeks (I'll post the last on this novel on July 19), and then we're launching THE MOONSTONE!
Next week, #18, part ii, chaps 27-29.

Serially speculating,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Sixteen, II, chaps 19-22 (Mar. 1857)

2010-06-28T09:26:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

The part of this installment I found most interesting was Miss Wade's narrative addressed to Arthur. A note in the Penguin edition relays that Dickens' biographer John Forster dismissed this as THE WEAKEST chapter of the novel, and that Dickens "ruefully conceded." Besides the fact that I'd never consider voting for the worse chapter of a Dickens novel in the first place, I think that this "History of a Self Tormentor" does highlight the problem of the woman's voice in Dickens' novels. Some aspects of Miss Wade's story reminded me of Esther Summerson's (in BLEAK HOUSE) description of her ambiguous and shameful origins and her treatment by various guardians and masters and mistresses. And in some ways Miss Wade's narrative works as counterpart to Amy Dorrit's with her low birth in a debtors' prison. But unlike Amy who is selflessly devoted to her father, despite his abuse, disregard, and petty selfishness, Miss Wade has "an unhappy temper" as well as "the misfortune of not being a fool" (which fuels that temper).

Dickens seems to recognize plentiful causes of resentment and anger from his female characters, especially those oppressed by their class position as well as by gender, but his portrayals remain curiously ambivalent, at least to me. And maybe that's the reason Forster finds this such an unsuccessful chapter. Rather than "suffer and be still"--the motto of Victorian angels of true womanhood--Miss Wade and her other Dickensian sisters (Louisa Gradgrind, Edith Dombey, Alice Marwood, Hortense, to name only a few preceding this one) are vengeful and spiteful and proud. Yet there is something to be said for their insistence on their due, on equality rather than bondage (whether in employment or marriage), on treatment without condescension. Miss Wade's early recognition of Harriet aka Tattycoram as a Sister of the Bad Temperment might even imply a kind of fledgling feminist alliance, but Dickens does not bolster this alliance whatsoever. Instead, this "bad temper" of feeling and reacting to injustice (rather than the Amy Dorrit model of endurance) amounts to self torment only. Still, this measly chapter did make me reflect on the problem of women's voices throughout this novel (as well as in other Dickens novels)--from Flora's prolix ramblings to Mr F's Aunt's equally garbled, if telegraphically concise, articulations to Fanny's hot-cold, mercurial temper, to Affery's perplexing visions and Mrs Clennam's evasions. What did you make of this chapter? I was uncertain why Miss Wade would address her story to Arthur in the first place, except to set him straight about Gowan. Like Amy, Arthur is the recipient of many revelations, just as he is seeking some disclosure about Blandois and his mother.

As for the death of the Dorrit brothers, I can only account for this double death by thinking they were two parts of a whole--the proud, pompous, and self-centered William balanced by the attentive, sympathetic, kindly Frederick. I can only imagine too that their double deaths liberate Amy from her continued servitude (with her happy temper) to these men, as surely she would've remained devoted to her uncle if he had survived her father. Not to mention the added oppressions by a new stepmother in the form of Mrs. General. At least she's spared that disaster by her father's timely death! Now maybe she's free to shift her filial devotion to someone else, along the lines of the new father figure of Arthur Clennam.

I was also intrigued by more wandering and traveling out of England in this installment--Miss Wade as another wanderer who has traveled in Marseilles, London, Venice, Calais.

After next week (chaps 23-26 in part II), we have only two more installments, since the last (#19=20) is a double one. So get your MOONSTONE copy lined up soon!

Serially stirred up,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Fifteen, II, chaps 15-18 (Feb. 1857)

2010-06-20T16:21:00.006-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Fanny's marriage is no surprise, nor is her Pa's (if only you could read my lips!) caution to Amy that marriage is a "responsibility imposed on you by your position." But stay tuned. Amy won't succumb to this marriage of convenience for wealth and stature.

What did surprise me in this installment is the attention to Dorrit's discomfort and curiosity. He's proud, proud, proud, we know, but he also bristles under the scrutiny of the Chief Butler, even assuming that this servant has some knowledge of the Marshalsea days. When Flora approaches him about the missing Blandois/Rigaud, he shows curiosity about this foreigner he remembers him from the Gowans in Venice. Dorrit's visit to the Clennams forces him from the tony Mayfair district to the "uglier" sections of London--a near-return to the Marshalsea vicinity (although across the river). His interview of Mrs. Clennam exhibits unusual questions from him here--although why he wants to know about Blandois isn't clear to me. But perhaps we'll see more plot strand knitted together. What is the mystery behind Blandois and the Clennam family, Blandois and Miss Wade?

Dorrit also relents a bit in his arrogant pride when Young John Chivery visits, although he cautions Young John not to mention their conversation. What did you make of the description of Dorrit's journey back to Rome, as an escape expedition from England and from his past, but also as more opportunity for "castle-building"? The moral message of material affluence is clear here and prevalent in many Dickens novels. But I suspect Dorrit's fanciful castle will crumble very soon. But how?

Before I forget, for you Facebookers, there is actually a "Mr F's Aunt" page on Facebook. I joined. For next week, part ii, chaps 19-22 ("Who Passes By...").

Yours in Serial Secrets,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Fourteen, II, chaps 12-14 (Jan. 1857)

2010-06-14T10:59:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I'd like to start with Dickens's extended trope of the epidemic, that "moral infection" that corrupts British society (both at home and overseas), from Bleeding Heart Yard and the Circumlocution Office to "Britons" in Rome (the black Thames and the yellow Tiber). This disease concerns financial speculation, the widespread practice of investing in a paper economy where value is removed from the objects (bills) that stand in for real worth. In the conversation between Arthur and Pancks, his "Eastern pipe" is a steady prop, a reminder of British international speculation and the traces of imperial investments threaded through the novel.

This is what I find so intriguing in many of Dickens' novels--he seems to caution his readers against ruthless, unchecked, self-serving financial speculation at the same time that he's clearly a proponent of literary speculation. By this kind of speculation, I mean the wonder of reading, the play of conjecturing about outcomes without knowing for certain. Even realism might be like financial speculation in a paper economy: after all, realist novels pose analogies between fictional and real worlds, one standing in for the other, but crucially different. Both Arthur and Amy are good speculators, characters who wonder at the world, who are curious about others, but are also risk-aversive.

In this installment, Fanny seems a dangerous speculator in her engagement to Sparkler: she seems to know he's a bad penny along with his Merdles connections, but she's determined to take "her own imperious self-willed step" into the marriage. Amy, however, does not adhere to speculations of this sort, since she tells her sister that poverty is better than marriage without love. This makes me think that Amy will either end up with Arthur or alone. Fanny also identifies Mrs. General as a kindred speculator, and seems to think she'll be the next Mrs. Dorrit. And here Fanny chooses her poison, Mrs. Merdle rather than Mrs G as mother-in-law, or the position of wife rather than daughter. Marriage is the kind of speculation women are usually able to pursue in Dickens' universe.

Further speculations on Serial Readers: we have five installments left of Dorrit, which will bring us to late July. Our next serial novel will be Wilkie Collins' THE MOONSTONE, first serialized in Dickens's magazine ALL THE YEAR ROUND in weekly installments in 1868. Once again, I'd like to speed up this slow reading schedule and suggest that we read each week the four weekly installments published by Dickens' magazine each month. This means we'd take eight weeks to read THE MOONSTONE instead of eight months. The reading each week will be longer than usual, probably closer to 70-80 pp rather than 40+pp. With some advance notice, I thought this might be manageable. Let me know what you think of this plan!

Serially speculating,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Thirteen, II, chaps 8-11 (Dec. 1856)

2010-06-08T07:08:00.013-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

As always, your comments are terrific! I definitely see Julia's point about the Gothic cast to Dickens' rendition of places as a way to align and blur the London prison and the Continental European landscapes. Amy's letter to Arthur at the close of this installment makes a related point as her "travelling mind" links the shadows cast in old Italian cities (specifically here, the shadow cast by the tower of Pisa) with shadows on the walls in Marshalsea. All her observations of the wonders of Italy seem to lead back to life before the "change in our fortunes" when she had a sense of purpose--perhaps part of the "homesickness" she confesses to Arthur in this letter, though I suspect he is very much the object of that homesickness.

It occurs to me that Amy is struggling to do what Arthur has also resolved to do--to repress or cast overboard, down the river, an unrequited love by dedicating herself selflessly (without hope of mutuality) to Arthur. It seems possible that Arthur and Amy will end up together in this story, and less likely that Pet/Minnie will unite with Arthur. Not that I think her marriage with Gowan will last, or that he will last (somehow I suspect he's headed for a full demise, maybe foreshadowed by Blandois's treatment of their dog), but now that she has a son, I can't imagine that she can remarry another man. Perhaps we'll have the new domestic triangle at the end of the novel--Arthur, Amy, and Minnie---with son. It seems many mid-Victorian narratives end this way. I'm thinking here of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh--which had just been published when Dickens was writing these installments and is full of Italian scenery. The Dorrits and Gowans in Italy recall the many expats, artists and writers too, British and American, in Florence in the 1850s. I wonder if Dickens ran an article on the subject in Household Words?

Also a major Gothic motif, secrets flood the chapter on the Clennam household where Blandois appears, after his mysterious encounter with Miss Wade and Tattycoram. Through Arthur, we're seeing so many puzzling pieces, still to be fit together--if all of them can be. What is Blandois's relationship to the Clennams and to Flintwinch? Why does Miss Wade have dealings with him? What are the deeper secrets that haunt the Clennam family? "What is going on here?" as Arthur puts it to Affery. Blandois seems like a stock villain figure, curling moustache and all--from stage melodrama--what is he doing here?

I noticed too that this number is set almost entirely in London, just as the twelfth installment is in Italy, with Little D's letter as a link between the two places. Her letter reminds me too of Esther Summerson's narration in Bleak House--the modest, self-effacing feminine voice that jars with its sharp, acute perceptions of other people and circumstances. And just as John Jarndyce renames Esther with all kinds of nicknames, so has Arthur names Amy "Little Dorrit" as she reminds him (and us) in this letter. What do you make of that?

Finally, Serial Readers just had its second year birthday! I posted initially on this forum on June 2, 2008 on the first installment of Dombey and Son. Happy Birthday, Serial Readers, and may the third year be filled with more slow reading pleasures!

Next week, II, chaps 12-14 (for Jan. 1857)

Serially in secrets,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Twelve, II, chaps 5-7 (Nov. 1856)

2010-05-31T14:36:00.007-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

That paragon former of surfaces, Mrs. General, aka the governess who is not to be named as such, cautions Amy not to say the "vulgar" word "Father," but to use "Papa" instead. Then follows a string of acceptable "p" words, part of her varnishing the surface of her pupil into a suitably well-polished appearance. "Prunes and Prism" becomes the delightful code for social varnish. What I loved here is Dickens' attention to the surface of language, to the mere spectacle of sounds that go together--whether Papa, potatoes, poultry, or prunes and prisms--quite apart from meaning. A language writer, Dickens, before the day! I also liked the aural affinity between "prism" and "prison," a key theme of the narrative. Amy Dorrit is the antithesis to the varnishing principle (a precursor to the Veneerings of Our Mutual Friend), here with her aversion to surface shaping and her ability to see beyond surface displays.

The other passage in this installment that jumped out was in the last chapter ("Mostly, Prunes and Prism") where Little D. speculates on the similarities between expats abroad and prisoners in Marshalsea--how similar both ways of living seem to be, with a "general unfitness for getting on at home." This made me think about how often Dickens' novels highlight the discomforts of home life or the elusiveness of home. Perhaps, as Tolstoy's famous first sentence of Anna Karenina suggests, that's the stuff of fiction, or the nineteenth-century novel at any rate. But this novel is especially insistent on the displaced persons experience, the travelers in quarantine in Marseilles, the Marshalsea prisoners, and now the expats in Geneva, Venice, and Rome. And then people, like Amy and like Arthur, who don't "fit" with the family they're in. Lots of wandering, searching, or is this also fleeing?

That "Papa" Dorrit (as Mrs. G insists) is "concerned" about Amy might suggest some finer qualities to his character, but this concern seems more to do with his discomfort that she is not adapting to the new, elevated station of the Dorrits and that her not fitting in could embarrass him. Dickens also seems fascinated with inept fathers, whether out-and-out cruel or just very self-centered and short-sighted or otherwise impaired. This pair of the selfish and limited father and the deserving, dutiful (sometimes to a fault), and overlooked or rebuked daughter reminds me of the pair from Dickens' most immediately previous novel Hard Times: Gradgrind and Louisa. But there are legions of similar pairs, including Dombey and Florence or, much later, Gaffer Hexam and Lizzie, or Jenny Wren and her father. There is of course the abused or neglected or unappreciated son too, and this reminds me that Arthur has yet to appear in these chapters abroad. But we know Amy has written to him, so perhaps soon there will be news.

Next week, chaps 8-11 (4 chaps).

Serially sauntering,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Eleven, II, chaps 1-4 (Oct. 1856)

2010-05-27T11:37:00.006-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

To carry on from Julia's post (welcome back, Julia!), yes, Amy Dorrit's unconscious departure from Marshalsea parallels her birth there. And in this next installment, she struggles with the 'unreality' of her new life of wealth and elevated station, in contrast to the 'real' life of London poverty and prison, and an active life of work in contrast to doing nothing but watching (which has value of its own). Her experience of new-found wealth is all about loss and estrangement, from her father explicitly (but also from beloved others left behind)now that she can provide no service of comfort or material support to him.

The first chapter of this section parallels the opening of the novel, both outside England and both about three groups of travelers who intersect at a convent rather than a prison or holding cell for foreigners in quarantine. Of course our favorite villain with the moustache is here too, as in the opening installment. He's almost a leitmotif, as he bounces in and out of view, but I suspect there will be more to Rigaud as we move on.

While I found the opening chapter disorienting, which seems perfect in a way, much like Little D in her new position in life, out of Marshalsea, and London, and England. I loved the way the last chapter, Amy's letter, fills in the narrative gaps of that opening chapter too--at least some of them. Why the Dorrits are a large traveling ensemble, rather than installed in some estate in England, is unclear, but of course this movement is something Father Dorrit couldn't do before, and now they have the disposable wealth to travel in style. Amy's uncle seems the only one in the family group with an inkling of genuine affection and concern for Amy. I also noticed the attention to geographical borders once again, as in the opening--this time between Switzerland and France and Italy--and then the lovely fairytale unreality of Venice, for Amy, who travels on her own about this watery city. Actually, I was reminded of Lucy Snowe at one point--"the little figure of the English girl who was always alone"--and realize that Villette had been published recently before this novel was underway.

The meeting between Amy and Pet seems familiar Dickens territory: the modest "little" heroine awed by the more majestic "beautiful" heroine--Lizzie meeting Bella in Our Mutual Friend, or Esther meeting Lady Dedlock in Bleak House. I still think Dickens is hinting at a future romantic union between Arthur and Amy, but I'm not sure if Pet has to die first, or how Arthur will resolve his unrequited love there.

Next week, II, chapters 5-7 (3).

Serially suspended,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Ten, chaps 33-36 (Sept. 1856)

2010-05-18T17:20:00.012-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Halfway point, and now we see the binary plot: poverty, first half, riches, second half. I suspect all won't be so rosy with the riches, given the shoals of Barnacles out in the great ocean of London, given the many signs of William Dorrit's haughtiness.

Speaking of the Barnacles, who attend Pet's wedding in shoals, I realized that Darwin was publishing about barnacles just a year or two before Dickens wrote this. My friend Rebecca Stott has written a beautiful book, Darwin and the Barnacle, on Darwin's fascinating and protracted studies of these little sea creatures with a propensity to attach themselves everywhere possible and with the most bizarre shapes and sexual parts. I think this Slow Reading pace does make lots of space for speculating. Darwin certainly was a master of Slow Reading, a speculator of nature and natural histories. Pancks in this novel also speculates (the word "speculation" occurs early in chap 35) about the Dorrits of Dorchester connection--his researching here called "moleing"--"this new verb." Pancks' description of his process of moleing does sound similar to Darwin's painstaking work on barnacles over decades and on bringing to light his great discovery of descent via natural selection: "he had alternated from sudden lights and hopes to sudden darkness and no hopes, and back again, and back again." "Speculation" of course has a different meaning in relation to finance, and the word also appears in this chapter around the Ruggs family. By the way, Rebecca is currently writing a book, "Speculators," about evolutionary theories before Darwin!

But onto the grand finale of this number, and this first half of the novel: the release of the Dorrits from Marshalsea, a parade of pomp and circumstance. There are too many hints that wealth will not make Dorrit a better man, that his pride, arrogance, egoism will swell out of proportion in the midst of his new affluence. Dickens has many tales of men spoiled and perverted by wealth--Dombey before Dorrit (in order of publication). And Amy? What does her fainting that prevents her from changing that "ugly old shabby dress" mean? Rather than parading with the family through the prison gates, she's carried out by Arthur. She of all the Dorrits shows some ambivalence about this change of fortune.

All the editions I've looked at begin again with chapter one for the second part of the novel, so I'll use that too. But in case you have sequential chapters, I'll also indicate the number of chapters to read for the upcoming installment.

Next week: II, chaps 1-4 (4).

Serially speculating,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Nine, chaps 30-32 (August 1856)

2010-05-10T08:48:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I invite someone to skip (as in DNR, Do Not Read) an installment, and then comment on your reading experience of the next. I know from reading letters Victorian readers sent to newspapers, that sometimes people did skip installments, sometimes more than one or two or three, and then picked up the serial later on (like watching serial dramas on TV). With Dickens especially, perhaps there's something satisfying about each number, quite apart from the diligent reader who is always trying to keep all the plot lines and characters, major and minor, in order. But does that seem outrageous, this suggestion, for discontinuous reading? Let us know if you try the experiment!

Kari mentioned the way the narrative seems to set up expectations and then disappoint, or turn in an entirely different direction. We're prompted toward constant speculations, like hers, about what might happen--interesting idea that Tattycoram and Miss Wade may be victims of the Clennams' past transgressions. But with this #9 installment we're promised via Plancks at the end of chap 32 (and the installment) some kind of resolution--SOON. What is his discovery and what will he "break" to Little D? I would guess that the FATHER of the Marshalsea is about to be released, and then we'll get to see what happens to him and his "little" daughter when they experience this new freedom of mobility. Rigaud is a cosmopolitan man "of no country," he tells us (as Blandois), from "half a dozen countries." And yet his character is not a model we're encouraged to adopt.

This number also plays up Arthur as a limited reader--he just cannot fathom that Amy is in love with him. I'm amused by the blindness given his emotional contortions about even entertaining romantic notions toward Pet who is half his number of years (something he says to LD). Okay, so we get the "Princess" tale about the "little" woman's secret (as if "little" and Amy's nickname weren't enough), and we see that Arthur's blindness is contrasted by Maggy's insight here. Still, Arthur remains clueless. But, like Kari's precaution, I wonder if this is a reading lesson for us too, that we may think we know where this novel is headed, we may think we see clearly, but we'll learn differently.

To me, one of the most remarkable passages in this installment is the metaleptic moment, where the future breaks into the perpetual present of the narrator's storytelling as if it is in the past ("metalepsis" as collision of (a) time within the story and (b) the time of the narration of that story). This is after Amy delivers a string of "no"s when Arthur suggests maybe one day she will have a different interest for her heart than her father. "The time came when he remembered it well, long afterwards, within those prison walls; within that very room." The verb tense--"the time came"--makes this a confusing comment--since that past tense is actually a future point. But this odd remark by the narrator does portend the falling of the scales of misreading (or confusion) from Arthur's eyes. Still, we don't know what that illumination on his part will mean.

As if the curious verb tense isn't enough to alert us to the emphasis on temporalities in this novel, the segment begins (chap 30) with Rigaud's interest in Mr Clennam's watch, a family heirloom with "DNF" engraved on it as a motto for not a person's initials, but for the motto DO NOT FORGET. But how can we help but forget, given all the myriad details and all the passage of time that erodes memory? Yes, this odd engraving on the watch is linked to the "secrets in all families" (or here, the Clennams), but I also took this as part of the long reading lesson of the narrative itself--here, the warning not to forget what we've read, when perhaps some forgetting, especially if we're misreading or led astray in our reading (like Arthur's reading of Amy), might be more helpful than remembering.

Next time, chaps 33-36.

Serially sober,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Eight, chaps 26-29 (July 1856)

2010-05-04T19:51:00.002-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

This week, ReaderAnn has generously written a post to launch our conversation. I'll have the opportunity now to offer a comment later this week! Thank you, ReaderAnn!
For next week, chapters 30-32. --Serial Susan
***************

For some reason, the moral and philosophical tone of the first paragraph of this installment immediately seemed such different territory from the fortune tellers and conspirators of the previous installment that I felt as if we'd been on a detour and now have returned to Dickens. Arthur's moral tug of war plays throughout the chapter, first in his conversation with Doyce, who wants A.'s company in disparaging Gowan (how tempting!). All the while, though, A. advocates for fairness and generosity over judgment. What do you make of the many references to "nobody" and "Nobody" and "somebody"? It all started in Chapter 16, when he made the "resolution" not to fall in love with Pet. Who is Nobody? Somebody?--Anyone?

No rest for the weary, A. is up against it again in his encounter with Gowan, and then he's blindsided by the "dreaded" invitation to meet G.'s mother. Taxing as the day was for poor A., I appreciate his enduing it for what was rendered in narrative: Mrs G. "who must have had something real about her, or she could not have existed, but it was not her hair or her teeth or her figure or her complexion...." Then there was the "Refrigerator" who had "iced several European courts in his time," and the talk of Barnacles and Stiltstalkings. All great fun and the perfect set up for what Mrs G. really wanted to talk with A. about--that plebeian, Miss Mickles/Miggles, Pet.

Dickens has been letting Pancks lurk in the shadows, with notebook and without purpose, until now. In Chapter 27, it seems clear that Pancks will be the one who at last "brings to light" why A.'s mother took in Little D.

I was very happy to meet up with Miss Wade and Tattycoram again. Tattycoram's "if only I'd had a mother" woes remind me of Gaskell's Cynthia, but never mind. How will Miss Wade and Tatty play in how things develop?

In Chapter 28, what seemed A.'s mere rebound musings about falling in love with Pet suddenly appear to have been more serious. Doesn't his attitude seem a bit patronizing when he spots Pet's error in thinking that one day her father and Mr G. will fully appreciate one another? Or is his a fair perspective, given the difference in age and experience?

Doubles come up again--Pet's dead twin, who, Mr Meagles observes, grew as Pet grew and changed as she changed. He continues, "I feel tonight, my dear fellow [Arthur], as if you had loved my dead child very tenderly, and had lost her when she was like what Pet is now." What? Then, in the Chapter, "Nobody's Disappearance," it's back to the river of Chapter 16, where and when Nobody first appeared. Poor Arthur tosses the roses, "pale and unreal in the moonlight," that Pet had given him, and they "floated away upon the river." Is he "over" Pet? If A. is not Nobody, who is he? Will this river flow through the entire novel? Will it return Pet to A.?

--ReaderAnn

Little Dorrit, Part Seven, chaps 23-25 (June 1856)

2010-04-25T12:43:00.009-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I am thinking of changing this enterprise from "Serial Readers" to "Slow Readers." I would love to hear your thoughts on what this slow reading is like for you, how it differs from other ways of reading Dickens or reading novels or any kind of immersion reading that you enjoy. Does reading installments on the once-a-week plan pose problems, does it enhance suspense or confusion or enjoyment or frustration? Does reading this way give you an awareness of part-ness, of the craft of Dickens's serializing each number, each set of chapters, as an integral text, like the episode of a television serial? Please reply even if you're not caught up or reading along with this program these days!

As for Part Seven of Little Dorrit, I enjoyed the mix of scenes and the play with different kinds of secrets, from the larger mystery behind Dorrit's imprisonment and the connection with the Clennams, to "the Planck mysteries." What is Planck's fortune-telling about? Is he really on a mission to get Little D to accept John Chivery, or is this fortune telling about something else? His watching Little D made me think of how many eyes are upon this needlewoman, from Arthur to the narrator. But what would be Planck's motivation to facilitate her marriage to John Chivery? Then there's Little D's own secret, which she hints at in the story of the Princess and the "little tiny woman" and the "Shadow of someone" she holds onto in secret. I took Little D's fairy tale to be about her own secret love of Arthur Clennam. Plancks's fortune telling also seems a kind of foreshadowing with the hint that he will have some role, if behind the scenes, in Little's future.

I confess I enjoy Flora and Mr F's Aunt (although I take Kari's point about the caricature of women here)! Such an interesting pair whose words underscore the challenges of verbal communication: Flora with her lack of commas and full-stops (her "loquacity" and "scattered words" as a "loose talker") and Mr F's Aunt whose relative terseness still produces words that are difficult to comprehend--as if each suffers from different kinds of aphasia--Flora can produce only metonymic strings and streams of words, or untamed syntax of too much context, while MFA (Mr F's Aunt) economic sentences that have no evident relationship to her verbal environment or the speech acts of others around her. Perhaps Dickens is highlighting different problems of styling narrative threads in a serial, multiplot novel.

Finally, I was struck by the passage on foreigners following Cavelletto's treatment at the factory and Bleeding Heart Yard. Since Dickens wrote this after Gaskell's NORTH AND SOUTH, with its portrayal of poor Irish workers breaking the factory workers' strike, I wondered if Dickens was widening this canvas of refugees in England by including an Italian who has come from France? The passage (in chap 25) seems to assail English chauvinism and builds sympathy for "the foreigner" through the sarcastic treatment of the "Bleeding Hearts": "they had a notion that it was a sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he was not an Englishman, and that all kinds of calamities happened to his country because it did things that the England did not...." Given that Dickens did not always handle foreigners or foreign places (I'm thinking of Mrs Jellyby's philanthropic work in BLEAK HOUSE) with particular care, this criticism of English ethnocentricity (along with the foolish comments characters like Flora make about China) stood out for me.

Next week, chapters 26-29. Please do chime in, even if you're not at this point in the novel--as my opening questions encourage!

Serially sailing,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Six, chaps 19-22 (May 1856)

2010-04-19T09:02:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Kari's questions first: the note in your edition about a chapter missing in the MS probably refers to the volume edition which appeared AFTER the original part number serial publication of this novel. Most contemporary book editions of Dickens are based on what is deemed the most recent authorized version of his novels, but there are increasingly more editions that do use the original serial text. The quality and quantity of changes between Dickens' editions (from original serial to later volume) most likely varied, but with few exceptions these changes were very minor. So I'm confident that all the chapters from part five were in the original part issue number, although I'd have to confirm this by looking directly at that initial print issue (which I can do, since Wisconsin's Special Collections has a copy).

And we know that Dickens did continue writing his novels AS they were being published in the installments--typically he was two months ahead, so that when PART SIX of Dorrit appeared, he was likely finishing PART EIGHT. And we know that he read the reviews that appeared in the press of each part issue number, and that at least with one of his novels (OUR MUTUAL FRIEND) he actually changed his plans in response to reader reactions to the earlier installments. I like to think of consuming these novels over even increments of time as "slow reading," but we might also say that Dickens followed a "slow writing" pattern that followed closely on the schedule of his monthly (in the case of eight of his novels) segments of three or four chapters.

Onto Part Six: the social satire of the Merdles is familiar Dickens fare, and puts me in mind of his Veneerings, of his last completed novel, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. I do find intriguing how he remakes London geography a bit differently in each novel--this one (like OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, but also different) aligns social class position with neighborhood, so in this segment we have Harley Street, Cavendish Square with the likes of the Merdles, in great contrast to the Marshalsea Southwark area to the south and east, or the Clennam household, or even the Meagles on the suburban outskirts. These areas of the city almost figure as characters in themselves, so powerfully particular is Dickens' language for each of them. Harley Street of the Merdles names characters by their function or profession and with the articles dropped off: Treasury, Bar, Admirality, Bishop, Society. Then there's "the bosom" for the Mrs.--here a body part as synecdoche (rather than a profession or public position). What did you make of the bracelet bribery story concerning Mrs M (and her son Sparkler) and Fanny Dorrit? All the bit about daughters, "classical" and faithful or otherwise (like Amy in contrast to Fanny) reminds me of Lear and his daughters--a modern equivalent. We expect Little Dorrit to be richly rewarded at the end--but we'll see.

There is the pointed contrast between the marriage proposals received by the two Dorrit sisters: Sparkler's mother bribes Fanny to comply with her wishes that this marriage not take place, while John Chivery's mother appeals to Arthur Clennam to urge Amy (although "Little" seems the preferred name) to accept--perhaps another instance where the poorer people have hearts superior to their social superiors. What do you think of Arthur's "fancy" about "the hopeless unattainable distance" (a fancy repeated at the end of the installment)? Is this his hope that Amy/Little will marry him someday? I think this fledgling fancy would fit with Dickens's obsession with dutiful daughters as objects of fetishized attention. There are so many Dickens heroines who are devoted to unworthy fathers (Florence Dombey, Louisa Gradgrind, Lizzie Hexam, Jenny Wren as four, the first two from novels that appeared before this current one). Big Dorrit (or the Father of the Marshalsea) is an ambivalent one in this instance--he is kind, but so very weak. Arthur Clennam seems to regard Little as the daughter of his philanthropic (or guilt-by-association) urges, or "his poor child." So perhaps he offers a substitute for the father who would marry the devoted daughter? Then again, the family positions are jumbled up too: Little is Maggy's "Little Mother," and certainly acts as if the mother of her father. Then the bit where she tells Arthur on the bridge that she must go home to her prison, that the prison is her "home"--how domesticity incarcerates women is a favorite theme of many Victorian novels too.

Next week, part seven, chapters 23-25.

Serially yours,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Five, chaps 15-18 (April 1856)

2010-04-13T07:24:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I didn't especially enjoy this installment, much like a so-so episode of "Mad Men" or something equivalent in serial viewing. I suppose Mrs. Flintwinch's second "dream" confirms there's some mystery afoot between Mr. F. and Mrs. C., but then again, we already knew that. "Time shall show us," as the narrator intones, but that time hasn't come about, yet. Is Mrs. F's dreaming supposed to pose as an allegory for reading the novel, where there's some mixing up, some secret we can only partially decipher at this point? Did you think some crucial tidbit was revealed, something my sloppy reading missed?

About Arthur's long ramble out of London--again, sort of like the larger meandering narrative that moves in and out of London, in and out of England, in and out of a core preoccupation with the back story of Clennams and Dorrits. Arthur Clennam seems to have (or be insinuated in)multiple romantic attachments, whether in the past to Flora, or in his uneasily restrained fantasies about Pet, or through his narrative obsession with Amy Dorrit. I can't see the connection with Pet/Minnie, the age difference notwithstanding (and surely not so unusual in Victorian tales). Little Dorrit's refusal of John Chivery, who seems a nice enough son-of-a-turnkey, does fortify her character, her devotion to her father's fragile station in life. I can only imagine her revising her repudiation of marriage (or her desire for aloneness) once her father is reclaimed in some way, and surely Arthur is pursuing this salvation. Is his wobbly attraction to Pet a way to show he has choices as a consumer in the marriage market? or that his choices too are limited by circumstances beyond his control?

Another element in my frustration with this number has to do with teasing (by mere mention in one case and slight appearance in the other) about Tattycoram and Miss Wade. I would like to see more of their particular discontents, more of their stories, but that desire was serially deferred! Maybe next time--chapters 19-22.

Serially stalled,
Susan

Little Dorrit, Part Four, chaps 12-14 (March 1856)

2010-04-06T10:46:00.008-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I did want to provide some London touring here, and it happens that just last Friday and Saturday I was walking around areas mentioned in this section of the novel: Southwark (just behind today's Tate Modern) and St George's Church, Borough Street (both near today's Imperial War Museum). You'll see here a photo I took from a bridge over the Thames looking toward the Waterloo Bridge; Blackfriars Bridge is just beyond Waterloo Bridge to the east.

This installment introduces a few new characters, including the Plornishes, Mr Casby and Flora Finching. I love how Dickens frequently endows his characters with verbal traits, and that's especially true with this cast--from Mrs. Plornish's 'not to deceive you' and Plornish's 'no ill-conwenience' to Flora's syntax of commas without full-stops and Mr. F's Aunt's non-sequiturs. Nearly every character seems to have linguistic features that even overshadow facial ones. Flora's circumlocutionary habit mirrors in this small way the Circumlocution Office, and Mr. F's Aunt (her name notwithstanding) another instance of perplexity and verbal style.

I was also struck by Dickens's accentuating not just places but temporalities, something that has particular significance in a serial novel released across time. Flora's name emphasizes the ephemerality of youth (along with the vagaries of erotic attraction and love). But for all her silliness and overgrown state (in contrast to Arthur's memory of her as a "lily"--now transformed into a 'peony'--), I was impressed that Flora *knows* she speaks nonsense ("I am sure I don't know what I am saying")and she *knows* that aging is a liability for women, but not so for men. Some interesting lines too about the Present, the Past, the Future (along with Dickens's agile and varied use of verb tenses, something we noticed with DOMBEY AND SON). Still, for my own personal reasons, I would hope for a finer character named "Flora"!

The final chapter of this number, "Little Dorrit's Party," returns to the notion, raised by earlier comments here, of human resourcefulness under bleak conditions of poverty and incarceration. After all, Amy Dorrit's "party" consists of the stars shining in the night sky when she and Maggy are shut out of their home in Marshalsea Prison. This point also seems to accord with the value Dickens places on Fancy in HARD TIMES, his previous novel. What did you make of the prostitute who speaks to Little D. in the London streets at night? I was also intrigued by the narrative attention to point of view--at least the gesture of giving this "history" to "Little Dorrit's eyes"--although she is still caught within the gaze of Arthur Clennam (and the narrator's and the reader's) who follows her from his room in Covent Garden. By the way, do you think that's Cavelletto who has been injured by the Mail collision? Why else would we get this London street mishap? The networking web of Dickens's multiplotting continues....

Next week, chapters 15-18!

Serially yours,
Susan

Little Dorrit Part Three, chaps 9-11 (Feb. 1856)

2010-03-28T04:09:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Dickens's Circumlocution Office dovetails so wonderfully with his rendering of institutional misery and mismanagement. Of course, I couldn't help but think of the Court of Chancery from his previous serial novel BLEAK HOUSE. How timely still is the "science" of government satire on "how not to do it." I wonder too if "circumlocution" especially suits Dickens' narrative style here--both the circuitously (at best) related variety of chapters within an installment and more broadly his serial structure where plot lines and characters move in and out of focus. Is there a center, or just meandering to various places?

I was surprised too that this installment concludes with the chapter out of London, out of England, as the Marseilles prisoners journey northward in France, toward Paris and England. This moving back and forth between London and out of England really intrigues me in this circumlocutionary narrative! Also in this number Clennam describes himself as a "stranger in England"--so the foreign and strange are accentuated both in this center character (if there is a center, which seems both Clennam and A. Dorrit) and in the various ex-centric movements away from Dorrits and Clennams and England altogether. Don't know what to make of the brief appearances of Meagles (and his Circumlocution office post) and the disguised convicted Rigaud and the Italian Cavalletto, who flees from the French inn from his former prisonmate.

Maggy reminds me of Dickensian disabilities--how Dickens sometimes uses disabled characters to showcase virtue (either via the character or someone--like Amy Dorrit--who shows compassion) or some moral perversion. I was also interested in Doyce, the wronged inventor with patents problems--

Next time, chapters 12-14.

Serially sailing,
Susan

Little Dorrit Part Two, chaps 5-8 (Jan. 1856)

2010-03-22T06:08:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Thanks for all those comments! I will keep mine short because I am here to do research of a different sort. Like Josh, I was struck by the paratactic (as in parataxis) style of the first installment where there are different scenes and casts of characters that don't seem linked together at all--except only loosely by the theme of imprisonment. As a reading act of faith to persevere--perhaps that depends on being an experienced reader of Dickens, as Julia suggests (although, strictly serially speaking, someone reading the first installments of DORRIT in late 1855-early 56 wouldn't know the MUTUAL characters). But yes, Dickens is a very particular kind of reading experience, as all of you mention in different ways. This novel seems to intensify what it means to try to catch your bearings in a vast fictional landscape. I am so struck by the opening chapters set on foreign soil, rather than London or the English countryside. Will we exit England again in this novel?

This second installment provides some back story about the "little" needlewoman Amy Dorrit (although her first name appears very rarely)--the Child of the Marshalsea prison. Arthur's suspicion seems to drive his curiosity (and ours) about her--and I'm interested to see how this "secret" wrongdoing--the "fall" behind the debtor Dorrit in prison--emerges. Is one of the Dorrit children fathered by Mr. Clennam? Why would Mrs. Clennam want to make amends by hiring the Child of the Marshalsea? I was also intrigued by the rather detailed portrait of Mrs. Dorrit in labour--in confinement while in confinement!

I'm sure you all know that when Dickens was 12, his father was imprisoned for 3 months for debt, and young Charles had to suspend his schooling to work in a factory. So Dickens's lavish attention to the social problem of the imprisonment of debtors has this strong autobiographical keynote. Odd too that despite the horrors of the place and the idea of a child born there and raised there, bits of humor and humanity shine through the bleakness.

Next week, number three, chapters 9-11.

Serially yours,
Susan

Little Dorrit Part One, chaps 1-4 (Dec. 1855)

2010-03-15T06:07:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Ah, but it's nice to be in the familiar realm of a Dickens serial once again, after the detours of the short fiction of Collins and Gaskell (thanks, Julia, for those illuminating comments about Gaskell's linked stories). And yet this first installment is so disorienting--with the theme of travelers subject to imprisonment and quarantine in this border crossing into Dickens' shadowy world. I can't recall another Dickens novel with such an engrossing yet perturbing opening! The first chapter seems the stuff of melodrama and penny numbers (cheap crime fiction) with this tale of Rigaud (who calls himself "a citizen of the world"--a modern cosmopolitan unanchored to any place) imprisoned for murdering his wife whom he claims committed suicide (if accidentally) in her fury. She, in his account, sounds like a familiar Dickens familiar--the angry, vengeful woman--shades of Hortense from his previous serial. But this crime is ambiguous, based on Rigaud's account which is muddy enough.

Then we move to quarantine quarters in Marseille where assorted English characters are halted en route, including two more angy females--Tattycoram and Miss Wade. The travails of travel certainly don't encourage transnational journeys, but there is also so much emphasis on not moving, on the wretchedness of being indoors (or outdoors for that matter) in the last chapters in London. Arthur Clennam's story is the one anchor that keeps this early narrative afloat--and a familiar type too, the unhappy child of abusive, cruel parents.

Lots of doubles too, just to insure our disorienting plunge into this Dickensian world: Pet's dead sister, Mrs. Flintwich's dream where she sees her husband in stereo, both asleep and awake, and the odd doubling of the dream--is it hers, or Mr. F's? The installment ends with this unsettling vision where the outside and inside of dream, of visionary experience, is difficult to access. Is this the climate of Dickens's fictional world, one that blurs dreams and reality? And finally the mysterious girl in the shadows, Little Dorrit. Who is she? To be continued.....

I'm writing from London now, although not the hallucinatory and stifling quarters of the Clennam Cheapside home, but from the British Library, Euston Road. I'm hoping to be able to take some photos of locales in the novel and upload them.

Next week, chapters 5-8.

Serially stimulated,
Susan

The Grey Woman (All the Year Round, Jan. 11 & 18, 1861): portions 2 and 3

2010-03-06T06:59:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I am glad Julia is writing about the Gothic, so she can illuminate us on this story! Too bad that the French maid's potential threat hinted about at the close of portion one turns out to be illusory, yet I don't think we're getting "mock Gothic" here as we do with Austen's novel. Still, the story seems more Gothic than contemporary sensation fiction, in part because of the setting on the European Continent, the emphasis on the elaborate chateau with secret passageways, the two women hiding and eavesdropping, the villainous husband and his criminal society of men who seem to murder without much in the way of interesting motivation. And the entire fugitive episode (lots of "wandering") occurs when Anna is pregnant! So much for middle-class Victorian women's "confinement"! There *are* elements--disguise and cross-dressing and bigamy--that populate sensation fiction. Oddly perhaps, this story reminded me of the section of Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (a novel Gaskell knew) where Cassie and Emmeline disguise themselves and hide inside and then flee. Only the problem is that there's no Simon Legree here, no compellingly corrupt villain or social evil driving their flight, disguise, wandering. Just a naive (silly?) young woman who tries to do as she's bidden, and ends up with a wicked husband she flees due to the resourcefulness of her French maid.

I wonder if part of the problem is the limited space of the short story, a container too tight for this kind of narrative, at least for Gaskell. Collins's "Miss or Mrs"--even though printed in one number--did have the episodic structure of the twelve dramatic "scenes," and some interesting plot complications and plenty of dialogue and variety. Anna's long prosaic ("grey") letter to her daughter and the telling of her flight from her murdering husband made me sleepy rather than on edge with suspense. I did not care about any of these many murders and deaths, although Gaskell is so skilled with portraying affecting deaths in her novels. I wonder too how Gaskell's foray here into the Gothic might compare with Victorian ghost stories as a subset of the Gothic? "The Grey Woman" seems a kind of ghost, a shadow of a past self, a more haunting presence (although I did not feel haunted).

Next week we'll start another Dickens serial--Little Dorrit--with the first four chapters, published in December 1855. My next post, and three after that one, will be from London, so I'm hoping Dickens supplies some good local scenery!
As for this Gaskell story, I can only sign off as:

Serially soporific,
Susan

The Grey Woman (ALL THE YEAR ROUND, 4 Jan. 1861): Portion One

2010-02-28T08:29:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

First, the news you're naturally eager to know: our next serial will be---Dickens' Little Dorrit!! I realize that the winner of the poll was a different Dickens serial, but for complex reasons I've decided to assert my serial authority and move ahead with this wonderful, favorite (for legions) Dickens novel. The first installment is chapters 1-4. You can download the novel from the two sites I've mentioned (and both linked in the sidebar on the right). I'll post my first entry on this novel the week of March 15th from London!

Now, to the story for today: Gaskell's "The Grey Woman." How different from Collins! The narrative gets off to a very slow start, a bit hard to latch onto--not much in the way of plotting at all. And the focus is so clearly on one character, who is also the embedded narrator (once we get through the framework of the German tourist who sees the portrait of a beautiful woman known as "The Grey Woman" because of some terrible terror she endured). The straight expository-narrative style, hardly broken by dialogue, is also tedious reading, at least compared with most serials that offer variation in styles across chapters. Collins' story with its "scenes" accentuates this feature.

That the long narration is in the form of a letter to Anna's daughter Ursula is also difficult to assess since we have no sense of the daughter or the nature of her estrangement from her mother. Yes, like Ursula, we're to judge for ourselves after we get Anna's account. That set-up, that the reader of the letter is to act as judge, is similar to other sensation novels--I'm thinking of The Woman in White, published around the same time as this story. But unlike Collins' novel, it seems unlikely that we're going to get Ursula's side (or any other side) of this story. The frame and embedded narratives are supposedly to heighten authenticity--this really happened since the outside narrator has no vested interest in the characters or events, and there's a document (the letter) that supposedly certifies the authenticity.

I can only hope that the Gray Woman's account is worthy of all this fuss--clearly we're getting a tale of a bad marriage to a foreigner (oh those French, always a problem from the British perspective, even if circuitous), and the new maid of middle age and from Paris is certainly going to spell trouble. The chateau seems like a ne0-Gothic setting with secret passageways, mysterious doors.

Next week: the final two "portions" (although each published in consecutive weeks) of this story. But do line up your copies of Little Dorrit now!

Serially stalling,
Susan

Miss or Mrs? Scenes 7-12 (Christmas Number 1871, THE GRAPHIC )

2010-02-21T12:43:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Did you find anything humorous at all, about this family Christmas tale? I think precisely its appearance in the Christmas issue seems delightfully ironic--especially with such scene settings as the final one on Xmas Eve in RT's Somerset house: "The scene in the drawing room represented the ideal of domestic comfort." Lovely "domestic comfort" indeed--with an underaged daughter secretly married to her sweetheart and planning to elope Xmas morning also her 16th birthday, with her officially betrothed plotting to murder her father in order to obtain necessary funds to rescue himself from financial fraud, just to name a few of the intrigues afoot! Would this be entertaining reading to offset any seasonal malaise at holiday time? Would it stir up any suspicions for parents or prompt some scheming by children? So different from Dickens's sentimental "Christmas Carol"!

And how would suspense work given that the entire story is contained in the one issue? Perhaps the scene divisions (and even the asterisks or other inscribed breaks) might offer pausing spots for a serially suspenseful reading experience. I did love the melodramatic flavor of the entire story--with the shifting scenes (s0 many! the sea, suburban Muswell Hill, West End London, the City, East End London, Somerset country estate--both exterior and interior sets) and the staging of exaggerated feelings. Just before the end of the ninth scene, after Turlington learns from Lady W's stepdaughter about Natalie's secret marriage, those rather "extra" stepdaughters have an outburst (via the narration) of anxiety: "The Graybrookes! Now he knew it, what would become of the Graybrookes? What would he do when he got back? ....What would happen? Oh, good God! what would happen...." These stepdaughters never appear on stage again, but I loved that melodramatic flair, in case readers need coaching about the suspense!

As for the the drunken East End accomplice, the eloping hero in disguise at the right time and place, and finally the jammed gun and the foolishness of fiddling with it as RT did, somehow all the machinations of the murder and elopement and whatnot plots reminded me of a Victorian version of "Law and Order" or "SVU" (what I prefer to call "SUV")--only a quick few minutes to wrap all this up, and the audience knows precisely what will or won't happen (the villain will be killed or apprehended, the damsel in distress and the hero saved)!

I'm very interested to read some of Gaskell's serialized short stories. I was hoping to find one that was only two installments due to my upcoming London trip two weeks from now. But Gaskell's are either one installment or three, or many more. For next week and the week after, let's read "The Grey Woman" which was serialized in three short installments in All the Year Round (Jan 5, 12, 19, 1861). We'll read the first installment ("portion 1") for next week, and then portions 2-3 for March 7th. Again, you can download Gaskell's stories from two different websites: Many Books or Project Gutenberg. See the links to these sites in the sidebar to the right.

After "The Grey Women" I'm not sure whether to continue with Gaskell's stories or to go to Eliot's three "Scenes of Clerical Life" or move on to a long serial novel--Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit interests me because of its transatlantic (American) sections. So--please vote early and often in the poll I've installed below! I'll announce just before my London flight where Serial Readers goes next!

Serially shorter,
Susan

Miss or Mrs? Scenes 1-6 (Christmas Number 1871, The Graphic)

2010-02-14T11:20:00.009-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

What a contrast to Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is this heavily-plotted Collins novella! Even in the first half, scenes one-six, I marveled over the compressed plot elements--presumed murder of foreigner on a boat, commercial fraud, arranged engagement vs. secret engagement, clandestine marriage, suspense that the clandestine marriage will be discovered in time, and the set-up for bigamy, even embedded in the title. By the way, I love titles of novels that are questions--such as Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? --because of the way they immediately engage the reader in the act of reading and judging. Can you think of other interrogative titles?

With all this suspense, it's interesting to note that the entire story was printed in one issue, the Christmas number of The Graphic, on Christmas Day 1871. And then, to emphasize this date, Natalie's birthday is Christmas Day, and of course the elopement plot is contingent on her sixteenth birthday, and her marriage to Turlington one week later on New Year's Day. I wanted to see the original Christmas Number online at least, but learned that the database for the Nineteenth Century British Periodicals (British Library) does not include Christmas Numbers! Still, I did see advertisements of this particular holiday gift volume, advertised as "A Christmas Story...equal in quantity to a one volume novel" with 12 illustrations and one large plate titled "Saved!"--all this for the price of a shilling. As you can see in the sidebar, I found one of the illustrations online, this one presumably of Natalie and Launce.

What did you make of the emphasis on "scenes" or places for each chapter, the melodramatic staging of this story? Unlike Gaskell's slow-paced serial, this story is about scenes and plot points, not much on character, here a list of "persons in the story" in the front matter. (By the way, why aren't the church clerk, the clergyman, and especially his wife who speaks in the story listed here?) Each setting is so different--the private yacht at sea, the London suburb, and the various locales of Victorian London. I was also intrigued by the attention to storytelling itself--the embedded tales told by Sir Joseph and his sister Lavinia, and their disagreements about the story, about how to tell it. I found all this amusing, and wondered even if Collins were offering a kind of parody of melodrama and sensation fiction (a form he is identified with creating). There is the damsel in distress here, Natalie the underage heiress, and two men battling to possess her via marriage, whether lawful or not--the one marked as villainous, namely Turlington, with his name very suggestive of Dickens' dastardly lawyer Tulkinghorn in Bleak House, and the other Launce, the doctor (maybe an allusion to Alan Woodcourt, also from Dickens' novel?) Yet (like sensation fiction) there is also attention to women not as hapless, passive victims (often the case in standard melodrama), but as entering actively into the intrigue--the second Lady Winwood (who is younger than her stepdaughters!) and the perspicacious clergyman's wife and perhaps even Lavinia.

So much conniving around marriage, and so much hilarity around different stock notions of marriage--the paper marriage of convenience (and the problem of a paper economy where value is mercurial at best--hence, Turlington's financial difficulties) and the love match (with a hero of the name "Launcelot"--is this a joke about the knight in shining armor who goes to some lengths to effect this clandestine marriage?)!! What do you make of Natalie's racial otherness, her ancestry associations to French Caribbean Martinique, not unlike Rochester's secret wife Bertha in Jane Eyre? One theory is that Natalie's "mixed blood" is to explain how a fifteen year old "girl could be sexually mature enough to attract these men, as if pure-blooded "English" girls could not be so erotically precocious. But it seems there's lots of emphasis on exploiting her youthful inexperience.

Eager for your responses! Next week we'll finish these scenes (7-12). Then I'd like to move on to Gaskell's magazine stories. But perhaps we can return to Collins later--perhaps even his novel Man and Wife. serialized in 1870 both in London and New York.

Scenically yours,
Serial Susan

Wives and Daughters: #18 (chap 60 + postscript)--Jan. 1866

2010-02-07T09:05:00.005-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

One thing for sure: Gaskell is a far superior writer, in my estimation, than Frederick Greenwood! The clash between their styles and voices made this closure especially jarring for me. Greenwood of course has nothing much to add to the plot--so our questions about the Gibson marriage, Lady Harriet, Mr. Preston, etc. are not addressed. After embellishing the predictable (Roger returns and marries Molly), Greenwood's postscript is more along the lines of a review. And here I was quite fascinated by his discussion of Cynthia--"one of the most difficult characters which have ever been attempted in our time"--and his comparison between her and Eliot's Tito! Greenwood credits Eliot with the finer "splendid achievement" over Gaskell's Cynthia, but then Lewes was the editor of *The Cornhill* while Greenwood was the sub-editor (and Eliot was Lewes's "wife"). All the attention Greenwood pays to Cynthia and Osborne both highlighted the novel's similarity to sensation fiction, and at the same time he begged to differ, to defend Gaskell's fiction from other popular novels that present "an abominable wicked world, crawling with selfishness and reeking with base passions."

Yet in a way I found what Gaskell had written, even to the last trivial words from Mrs. G who delights over news that her well-married daughter is bringing her a new shawl, is more compatible with Gaskell's usual mild closures, such as we have in *North and South* where the key marriage is merely on the horizon, and the closing words are not words of romance or future events. I did feel slightly uneasy at the repetition of Roger's farewell--complete with Molly (who has to compete with her stepmother at the window) watching his departure, and his "last turning." See the lovely rain-streaked illustration, his white handkerchief like a flag of romantic surrender, bright in the gloomy atmosphere--but Molly doesn't know this surrender for sure. Given the accentuated comparison with Roger's first leave-taking for Africa, and the assorted turn of events he found when he came home, this ending does seem to me rather suspended, unfinished, yet perhaps in keeping with a new kind of closure Gaskell explores. I couldn't help but think of the ending of Bronte's *Villette* too, the obligatory trip across the British Empire that defers the promised reunion of the lovers. For those of you who don't know this novel, Bronte supplied two possible outcomes: shipwreck and death during the homeward voyage, and a miraculous return.

As for Josh's interesting comment about external and internal obstacles to marriage plots: I did think there was one "external" issue regarding Molly and Roger--namely, money. And this seems to be addressed on both sides: Mr. G tells Roger that Molly does have an inheritance that he hasn't told her about; and in the postscript Greenwood tells us that Roger becomes a professor at a scientific institution (sounds more like Huxley here than Darwin) and "wins his way in the world handsomely." Money is that key external obstacle that rears its head in most every Victorian novel!

Perhaps the most satisfying element of closure was the arrangement for Aimee and the young heir to live so close to the squire, but in their own separate place--a different composition of a family here.

Now, for future reading, dear Serial Readers! I relish shorter fiction for a while, in part because I'll be in London during the month of March and have less time and access for blogging around. Here's my proposal for the next two items: Collins's story "Miss or Mrs?" over two weeks, and then Gaskell's "Cousin Phillis" and other Gaskell magazine stories. Collins's story is rather long for the one issue of *The Graphic* in which it appeared (the special Christmas issue of December 1871). It's arranged as a drama in 12 scenes, so for next week, scenes 1-6, and then the rest for Feb. 21. Again you can download this story from Project Gutenberg or from MANY BOOKS, a very user-friendly website of free books with many downloading formats available (for Kindle, for other devices, as pdfs etc).

Serially somewhat satisfied,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #17 (chaps 55-59): Dec. 1865

2010-01-31T08:35:00.010-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I want to begin with Daun's comment about Molly as our most dependable close observer who at key moments seems to get swallowed up by event-ness and loses hold of the narrative focus. I loved too Daun's comparison with other Victorian heroines as would-be or partial narrators (like Esther in Bleak House). At this juncture in Wives and Daughters something else is going on which might account for Molly's falling away momentarily: Gaskell is preparing to establish Molly as the object of the culminating courtship plot.

Molly's transformation, or the transformation in her relationship with Roger, comes about in these chapters, so that the final page makes clear that Roger's "too late" has to do not with the condition of his jilted heart but his fears that Molly would not have him. Perhaps because I've been watching the Masterpiece Theatre "Emma," I've been mulling over this narrative challenge to convert a quasi- sibling attachment (like Emma and George Knightly) into a romantic one. Gaskell has several devices to get this transformation underway: first, Cynthia safely married away in London (see sidebar for this installment's illustration--Cynthia and Henderson in the garden, with Roger and Molly overhearing from the window) and Molly's illness have the double advantage of releasing Molly from Cynthia's train and removing her to the Towers, to a new scene for Roger to encounter Molly in a new way; second, Molly's advocate (and sharp-eyed matchmaker) Lady Harriet who brings her to the Towers to restore her to health, so that Molly sheds her duckling girlhood and takes on a swanish glow of womanhood in the eyes of the Towers society. I loved the veritable sexual selection scene (chap 58)when Roger's changing interest in Molly is piqued by his notice of the attentions of Sir Charles--the triangulation of desire, this is sometimes called!

As we approach the ending (such as Gaskell was able to complete and Greenwood was able to conjecture), I have a few questions. It's clear that Molly and Cynthia are matched with suitable men for each. But I'm curious about Preston and about Lady Harriet. At first I thought Lady Harriet is the perfect candidate for the revamped, recuperated spinster since she's clearly not of the same cliched mold as the Browning sisters (although Gaskell does try to give them some more complex traits than mere stereotype usually permits). But then, this character is entitled by class position: the "Lady" protects her from the ignominious "Miss" after all. Wealthy women can, Gaskell suggests, act with intelligence, independence, and pleasure.

I'm also curious about Preston. Is he simply a prop, a figure to complicate Molly's reputation via town gossip and to give more substance to Cynthia's dubious judgment? Or is he only the dangerous suitor in a moral tale about girls who attempt to make their own romantic arrangements without benefit of a reliable social vetting network (such as Cynthia has with Henderson)? I think there's more to this character; at one point, as estate agent, Preston seems to represent a different approach to land use reform. But if he drops out completely, then I'm not so sure. Maybe Gaskell just didn't pursue this character beyond the prop status.

Are there other characters for whom you're wanting closure? I suspect Hamley Hall will mean a reconstituted family: the grandfather, French daughter-in-law, grandson, and the prodigal son (once he returns from his six month expedition) and his new bride (our old and favorite Molly). Molly, as Roger's intended wife, will appease the squire sufficiently (he's dropped so many hints about how much he'd love Molly for his daughter in law) so that he'll presumably accept Aimee too.

There is still the problem of money in the Molly-Roger match on the horizon, since he isn't heir to Hamley Hall and Molly doesn't appear to have any assets to bring to the marriage. But perhaps a collective household of Hamleys will ease this problem, at least for the moment. So although there's little left, although we know Gaskell died before writing the full end of this novel, I think we'll be close.

Next time, just a short installment (for Jan. 1866), one chapter and Greenwood's postscript.

And here's the link to Project Gutenberg's pdf of Wilkie Collins's novella, "Miss or Mrs?"
You can download it to your screen (and print it out) or to a device like a Kindle or iPhone or (eventually) the iPad!

Serially submitted,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #16 (chaps 51-54): Nov. 1865

2010-01-24T16:08:00.009-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Gaskell and death: this installment features Osborne's (anticipated) death and its rippling effects, including the squire's intense sorrow along with his retreat from the pit of grief through the charm of an unexpected (to him) grandchild. Here is du Maurier's illustration (see above) with the caption "Maman, maman!" when baby Roger Stephen Osborne Hamley cries out as his mother swoons with the apprehension that Osborne has died. And of course there's Molly, always quick to offer solace.

I liked Gaskell's recognition of the limits of and harm to Molly as caregiver extraordinaire. After all, her father routinely turns to her to convey unpleasant news to others, and here she's back at Hamley Hall tending to a bereft father and daughter-in-law. Molly's mental and physical exhaustion isn't surprising, and it's through the wonderful Lady Harriet's letter that Cynthia promptly returns from London to her step-sister's side. As Josh mentioned, Cynthia's affection for Molly and recognition of her worth has the added benefit of elevating Cynthia in our eyes. In addition, her assertion, "Molly, Roger will marry you!" attests to her perceptive abilities and the romantic logic that's been clear to us for a while now. Also, Cynthia's evident concern for Molly helps to balance her violent rejection (as Julia mentioned) at the end of the last installment. What will become of Cynthia? Do you suppose she'll end up married to Henderson of London rather than Preston, or not married at all? That last option, the "old maid" she finds herself most suited for, somehow seems unlikely to me because marriage is what ultimately redeems and rewards young female characters of novels of this era. And Cynthia, while erring, does have redeeming qualities too.

I think the squire is a wonderful character too, his gruffness in human relations clearly not due to hardness, but to clumsiness around emotions. By the way, if any of you happened to watch the Masterpiece Theatre "Emma," the actor Michael Gambon, who plays Emma's father, also has the role of Squire Hamley in the BBC adaptation (he also plays Dumbledore for you Harry Potter fans). Mr. Gibson is a similar portrait of this masculine emotional awkwardness (Eliot's "emotional elephant" for her doctor character, Lydgate). Do any of the younger men suggest an improvement in this department? Roger's early sensitivity to Molly's distress over her father's remarriage might be one such indication. Others?

I've mentioned in an earlier comment how Gaskell often treated death in more detail and complexity than I find in many other Victorian novels. This November 1865 installment is especially poignant on the subject since Gaskell died suddenly on November 12th while at tea with family members in a new home she had purchased with her income as a writer. At that point, she had already written the December installment, and had a chapter finished of the final installment, to appear in January 1866. I hope you all have an edition of the novel that includes Frederick Greenwood's (editor of the The Cornhill) postscript. I'll be interested to hear whether you also find the novel's conclusion rather evident, despite its unfinished state. We'll have a very very short installment in two weeks.

Next time, chaps 55-59, for December 1865. Then the last chapter Gaskell wrote, along with Greenwood's postscript for the week after (Feb. 7th). If you don't have the postscript handy, just email me and I'll send it to you. Then we'll take a couple of weeks to read Wilkie Collins's "Miss or Mrs?" novella. You can download this from Project Gutenberg. If you happen to have a Kindle or Sony Reader you can download/upload for free onto such a device! Or else you can just print it out (or read on your screen). I'm looking forward to reading the story on my Kindle, so that I can blend our latest reading technology with the Victorian corollary--paper periodical literature that allowed for cheaper, easier, more rapid circulation.

Until next time,
Serial Susan

Wives and Daughters: #15 (chaps 46-50): Oct. 1865

2010-01-12T14:32:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Kari wrote last week that she was disappointed there's no sex, quite a surprise for a novel laced with sensational plot elements (secret marriages, multiple engagements, blackmail). I was amused because to me, perhaps over-seasoned in the codes of Victorian language, there's sex aplenty! True, no graphic accounts of bodies naked and entwined and in spasms. But I suspect that Gaskell's contemporary readers would've understood the depths of Cynthia's transgressions by those repeated solitary encounters in the woods (which Du Maurier's illustration spotlights), the exchange of the promise of her body in marriage for money (and the sideways allusion to prostitution, the commerce of sex that was a big big topic in Victorian culture), her rather careless enjoyment of many men (Roger, Mr. Coxe, Preston, and now the marriage offer from Mr. Henderson) drawn to her (sensation heroines as bigamists or as having clandestine affairs), and then her education in France--a culture symbolizing to British Victorians a hotbed of sexual license for women!

This episode especially focuses on Cynthia's propensity to attract men in the form of FOUR proposals, as well as her "Jilting Jessy" behavior. One comment I found especially intriguing is when Cynthia replies to her mother's warning that she'll end up old maid, she says, "I sometimes think I am the kind of person of which old maids are made!" Typically the Victorian "old maid" or spinster stereotype is sexlessness, but I think Cynthia is suggesting otherwise--her inability to love someone despite her evident sexual attraction. In any case, Gaskell casts a different light on spinsterhood cliches, especially through the character of Lady Harriet, Molly's great champion in the slander scandal of this installment. I suspect that Cynthia can only redeem herself by marrying Preston in the end, that her behaviors suggest that she has has as good as shared a bed with him! But alas, as Kari notes, no obvious sex here. But you have to imagine something beyond those layers of clothing, or the gaps between the surreptitious trysts in the lonely lane! That Molly's reputation is tainted for those two brief encounters with Preston adds more fuel to the signifying fire of Cynthia's clandestine meetings with and engagement to Preston.

The illustration for this installment is, alas, sideways in the margin here--it shows Lady Harriet asking Preston a few questions as she determines that Molly has taken the heat for Cynthia's indiscretions. Lady Harriet is a gem--and delightfully portrayed in the BBC adaptation. The small drawing inserted into the text of the installment's first chapter shows the moment when Mr. Gibson grabs Molly's arms and hurts her as he demands to know why those rumors have been circulating about her. I thought the moment was disturbing--the suggestion of Mr. Gibson's physical violence--and it's highlighted in the magazine image. I vaguely recall a moment in Gaskell's first novel Mary Barton that suggests a father's physical abuse of his daughter.

In this issue of the magazine, there's also an article in this Oct. 1865 issue titled "Maori Sketches" by "Miss Morris." I had just read some fascinating scholarship on Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain (1856) and learned that some of that novel is set in New Zealand. Perhaps "Maori Sketches" might have formed a provocative travel piece alongside Mrs. Gibson's brief mention of Roger in "unhealthy" and "savage" and "cannibal" Africa.

Maybe because "Serial Readers" is a kind of digital book club, I was especially interested in the brief mention of the Hollingford Book Society at the start of the installment. This local book society is an attempt to circumvent the higher subscription fees and selection of books (a form of censorship, some writers complained) of the large scale circulating libraries like Mudie's in London (with subscribers all over England). Grinstead, the Hollingford bookseller, acts as the local agent and manager for the society. It's also interesting that Gaskell makes clear that some members of this society do not actually read books, but are members for the social prestige, "a test of gentility" rather than desire for education or love of literature. Once again, Gaskell shows that books have multiple uses. As the town's "centre of news and gossip" the book society members are implicated in the spreading of the scandal about Molly and Preston, gossip that makes clear the harm of hasty or careless reading of events.

Please take a moment to vote again for our next selection, and then I'll announce that decision next week! Only two more episodes left of this delicious novel! Next week: chapters 51-54. What will happen? Will Osborne rally or die? Will his secret wife and child be disclosed as Cynthia's secret has come out? I suspect we'll be getting more of the Hamleys soon. And will Molly's steadfastness be rewarded when Roger returns (if he does)? Will Cynthia marry Preston or Henderson, or neither one?

Serially yours,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #14 (chaps 41-45): Sept. 1865

2010-01-10T15:02:00.005-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I made this installment's full-page illustration (by George Du Maurier) especially visible, as you can see, because it captures the moment when Molly comes upon Cynthia and Preston in the "lonely path" in the wood! The pair does appear rather uneasy with Molly's appearance, while we don't quite see her face--note that she's dressed in a light-colored dress, those unruly tresses (according to Mrs. G) lying on her cape. Your thoughts about this illustration? It appeared just before the start of this September 1865 installment.

This episode (the five chapters together) does align the two sensation plots, as Julia mentioned last time, Cynthia's secret engagement (a wink at the infamous "bigamy plots" of Mary E. Braddon's sensation heroines like Lady Audley and Aurora Floyd) and Osborne's secret marriage, which he briefly tells Molly about at the end of the installment. When I found this illustration in the magazine, I also came across the installment of the Wilkie Collins sensation novel that was simultaneously running at the time--Armadale.

But what do you make of Cynthia's story of her engagement to Preston? Schoolgirl folly? We also have Preston's brief account to Molly. I like the ambiguity, the range of possible explanations or excuses--Cynthia again pleads she really had no motherly guidance as a young girl should, yet of course neither does Molly, and it's impossible to imagine Molly in such straits. Even Cynthia notes that Molly's "grain is different" (when Molly tries to say she would've behaved in the same way)--so that it's not all nurture or training or maternal influence that entirely explains their difference.

I once wrote a book on confession scenes in Victorian novels (but not this one), so I was especially interested in the chapter, "Cynthia's Confession." Imagine how her tale of this secret engagement (in exchange for £25 for clothes!) would've been received by Mr. Gibson or by one of the Hamley men (although perhaps Osborne would've been more sympathetic--)!

But what struck me most in this installment were letters--how Cynthia is so letter-ladden (or has so many letters attached to her) with the ones she received from Roger, but Molly longs to read, and her own letters to Preston which he threatens to use as blackmail. Molly is relatively "letterless"--a word Gaskell actually uses to describe her one day after the post arrives. I just came across an interesting article on a new scholarly book by Catherine Golden titled Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing. Golden points out that before the introduction of the penny post in 1840, recipients rather than senders had to pay for the postage (which was more expensive). There are multiple references to letters throughout the novel (perhaps not so unusual for its day), but in this particular set of chapters the possession of letters matters to the blackmail plot and Preston's power over Cynthia. Yet with Roger's letters from Africa, it's Cynthia who has control, and Gaskell makes this very evident by showing how much Molly craves to know the contents of the letters while Cynthia seems hardly interested! It occurs to me that letters are serial texts too, written and read over time in installments, so in a way correspond to the very form that this novel takes.

On the poll for our next reading (only THREE more portions left of this novel!)--so far, the three (unlinked) Collins stories are the favorite pick. We could read Armadale instead, although I did like the idea of stories for a change. Please vote early and vote often! I'll announce the next selection in TWO weeks. And then I'd like to take one week to write about book clubs--to hear what your experience of books clubs have been, or what you hear about them from friends and family--maybe even some testimonials? This blog is an e-book club. And I should mention here that "Serial Readers" had a nice shout out from my friend Ellen, on her blog Elenabella. I'm hoping we'll have more voters and readers as a result--thanks, Ellen!

Next week: chaps. 46-50.

Yours in serial secrets,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #13 (chaps 37-40): August 1865

2010-01-03T14:06:00.007-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Finally a bit of progress with Cynthia's "secret" relationship to Preston! Perhaps though this progress is only a playful tug at the chain of suspense. What do we learn? Do you get the impression that she may be secretly engaged to Preston, especially since she mentions to Molly that she might marry him "after all"? And how does money enter into this history, do you suppose? Cynthia mentions the "horrid poverty" and "money matters" that complicated her and her mother's life at Ashcombe, where Preston was the estate agent. This installment ends with the gossip wheels churning by Miss Browning who has put "two and two together" (more dangerous readers, like Mrs G) to decide that Molly was in the lane with Preston. We readers know, as clear as day, that it was Cynthia with Preston. I continue to see Cynthia as a domesticated sensation heroine--her repeated confession of an inability to love as a sentimental heroine might (and as Molly can), her concern with material and monetary matters, her bewitching appearance that seems to draw every young man--fickle Mr. Coxe included, her association with France (with its scandalous status in Victorian culture) and the repeated hints at her "secrets" and her claim that she's not "good"--that she's a "good hater" even!

Just two other comments: on depression and death. While I do understand that illnesses, especially mental ones, are historically and culturally variable, Gaskell's description of Molly's "low" spirits of hopelessness does seem very much like depictions on TV ads (and elsewhere) today about depression. About death--just Gaskell's allusion to the euphemisms parleyed instead of direct words when Cynthia considers risks to Roger's life in Africa. Gaskell is perhaps the most candid of Victorian writers I know on this subject of death, something she handles very differently than, say, Dickens.

If you scroll down all the way to the bottom of this blog, you'll see the new poll I've installed to figure out our next serial reading, to begin in February. I'd like to try short stories rather than another long novel. So I've proposed three possibilities: (1) George Eliot's "Scenes from Clerical Life" stories which were published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1857 (3 thematically linked stories); (2) Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cranford" stories, published over several years in Dickens's Household Words and now usually read together as if a novel by the same name; (3) 3 stories by Wilkie Collins which are not linked thematically or otherwise: "Miss or Mrs?", "The Haunted Hotel," "The Guilty River." Please do go to this poll (bottom of this blog) and vote soon--and forward this link if you think you know anyone who might be more interested in a relatively short serial reading experience (3 to 5 weeks, depending on which one we select).

Daun suggested sensation fiction. There is at this moment a serial reading blog around Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. Paul Lewis manages this endeavor and they're currently at installment #7 (1 per week). Email if you'd like to get the installments: womaninwhite@paullewis.co.uk

I also put up the first page of this installment from the Cornhill in the sidebar because it shows Roger in Africa, a scene we never see directly and barely indirectly. I hope you can manage to see this image although it's so small!

For next week: #14, chapters 41-45 (yes, 5 chapters).

Serially searching,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #12 (chaps 33-36): July 1865

2009-12-27T13:59:00.002-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

You'll see the illustration for this installment alongside this post. That's Molly with the long dark hair, and Cynthia will her lighter hair piled up high. The caption, "Oh! it is no wonder!" are Molly's thoughts in chapter 34 when Cynthia comes to Molly's room after Roger's confession of love to Cynthia in the drawing-room below, and his departure on his scientific expedition for two years. The text suggests that Molly has just seen herself alongside Cynthia reflected in the mirror and compares herself unfavorably to "Cynthia's brightness and bloom." The episode makes clear that Molly is one who loves Roger and that the engagement *ought* to be between Molly and Roger if--Mrs. G wasn't so meddlesome to encourage that match or if Roger was a better reader of female character. One favorite textual bit for me was the long passage at the end of the previous chapter where the narrator recovers Roger's thoughts about his long voyage and Cynthia--the latter all filled with romantic platitudes: "the thought of her would be a polar star, high up in the heavens, and so on, and so on...." those "so on"s capture a certain impatience with Roger's obtuseness here, I think!

At the same time, it was gratifying (although frustrating for this to happen too late) for the scales to finally fall from Mr. Gibson's eyes about his wife's character and about the error of his "act" of marrying her. So perhaps Roger will correct his vision in a more timely fashion. Still, this novel anatomizes two uneasy, complicated households--Hamleys and Gibsons. The men (Hamleys) with their unwillingness or inability to truly communicate with each other in contrast to the inane and even harmful chatter of Mrs. G. Molly and Cynthia keep more to themselves too, especially Cynthia whose determination to keep her engagement to Roger a secret surely points to some other secret--perhaps a secret engagement to Preston?

There is one other lovely drawing for this #12 installment in the magazine--a small one at the very start of chapter 33, but pointing toward the moment in chap 34 when Molly throws open the windows longing to catch sight of Roger leaving. I have a softness for Victorian images of girls at windows looking outwards (as some of you know already). I'll put that image up too for you to see.

Next week, #13, chapters 37-40. Your thoughts about our next serial novel (or stories)? And this Slow Reading pace? How slow can you go?

Serially signing off,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #11 (chaps 30-32) June 1865

2009-12-21T14:04:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

With this #11 of 18 installments (the last one is very short), we're now well beyond the halfway mark. So, time to start thinking about the next serial novel. Please feel free to suggest possibilities, and I'll construct a poll, as I did last time when we chose between this novel, Trollope's Orley Farm, and Dickens's Little Dorrit. I'm also interested in reading early Dickens, his transatlantic novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. But perhaps a Wilkie Collins novel or Mary E. Braddon, or something else, possibly another Gaskell--her linked Cranford stories?

Because of reading serially in this weekly fashion, I'm finding the divulgence of a secret backstory of Preston and Cynthia increasingly suspenseful. The novel moves along in its full ordinariness, and yet I feel hungry for the revelation. The mounting tension between Preston and the squire is intriguing too, especially the attention to different practices of land use, limited resources, and the impoverished who live on the land, highlighted by the illustration (see sidebar) in the magazine, titled "The Burning of the Gorse" (with reference to the encounter between Squire Hamley and Preston, who is wearing the top hat, presumably).

I continue to marvel over Gaskell's handling of fine gradations of social class, whether it's Mrs. G (with her excess of names--as Daun has pointed out for us) telling Lady Harriet that they now follow the fashionably late dinner hour or the narrator mentioning that poor people are more candid about death "the leveller" than "is customary among more educated folk." It does seem to me that Gaskell supports fuller candour and straightforwardness, for all her characters, and in this way applauds some of the habits of the poorer classes whose behaviors might be labeled "vulgar" otherwise.

On the historical dating of the novel: I want to correct my earlier assertion (in response to Josh's comment) that the interest in the Cumnors in getting votes must place the novel post-1832 Reform Act. As Kari noted, Gaskell is a little loose with her temporalities. But still, I think it makes sense that the novel is set in the 1820s, and that the votes that Lady Harriet and her brother Lord Hollingford must be after (during the charity ball) belong to the fallen landed gentry like Squire Hamley. Gaskell punctuates these chapters with "in those days" to accentuate temporal changes, like the use of envelopes!

Molly once again comes off as the most astute reader in the group of women in the Gibson household. Cynthia, "a passive coquette," poses a reading engima whose "brilliancy" the narrator qualifies as "the glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders." Ah, the slow turn of the screw of suspense again! Molly is most vexed and angered in this segment by Cynthia's puzzling submission to her mother's marriage plotting directed at Roger now, instead of the ailing Osborne. Does Molly's irritation over Cynthia as "the conscious if passive bait" forecast her own refusal of prescribed roles later in the novel? We'll see!

Finally, it looks as if Roger is to have a manly adventure on a scientific expedition, much like the young Darwin (whose Cambridge professor recommended him as naturalist aboard the Beagle, which set sail in 1831). Enjoying greater mobility than their female counterparts, Roger and Osborne leave and return, while Molly's furthest ventures are to the Towers. It seems too that Roger's talents as a "careful observer" of nature are drawing some recognition (as the review of his article mentions), while we readers are left to notice Molly's qualities as a struggling reader of human natures, her own and others around her.

Next time, chapters 33-36 (the next installments include more than three chapters)--and, a rousing cheer for SLOW READING!

Yours in the fullness of serial time,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #10 (chaps 27-29) April 1865

2009-12-13T15:48:00.002-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

This past week I became a Serial Viewer by watching part one of the 1999 BBC adaptation of Wives and Daughters. It is really a splendid production with excellent casting and attention to period details. Like many recent adaptations of Victorian (and Austen) novels, it tends to be fairly faithful to Gaskell's text, but of course has these odd patches of pure invention--but nothing egregious so far. I stopped viewing just as Mrs. Hamley died and Cynthia arrived from France. Molly is exquisitely played by Justine Waddell, who seems to have a penchant for acting roles of Victorian heroines (with one exception--Natalie Wood): Tess (Tess of the d'Urbervilles), Laurie Fairlie (in The Woman in White), Estella (in Great Expectations, and even the invented wife of Van Helsing in the 2000 adaptation of Dracula. Keeley Hawes, who has the role of Cynthia, played Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend. I just can't imagine a more perfect Molly Gibson than Waddell's creation--amazing silent acting through facial expressions. I'm planning to watch just enough each week to keep up with the serial installments we're reading. Enough of my plug for serial viewership!

Not much comes out in this installment about Preston and Cynthia, except that when she learns he's to take Sheepshanks' (Dickensian name!) position as estate agent and live in Hollingford, she briefly contemplates going out as a governess to escape her "doom." Like Molly, I wonder what this "doom" could be--and can only imagine an unwanted marriage to Preston. There's also a hint that she's borrowed money from him.

The attention to reading characters continues--Molly fully sees Roger's romantic interest in Cynthia and wonders "how soon it would all end," since she can't imagine anyone declining an offer from Roger. In her modesty or self-suppression, Molly seems not to express even to herself at this point envy or pain over Roger's redirected interest, although she does object to him referring to Cynthia as her "sister"--but I thought this was more because he knew her initial unhappiness about her father's second marriage. Cynthia is not at all the kind of reader that Molly is, but we learn she's a good reader of boys if not books: "Instinctively she knew her men." So she understands Roger's interest in her is very different from his brother's, something her mother (who seems incapable of any accurate reading) fails to realize. Then Gaskell brings in another reader--"an older spectator"--who views the blooming romance (lopsided though it is) in a different way than Molly or Cynthia or Roger. Is this "said spectator" the hypothetical reader of the serial here? The episode ends with Osborne's "poetical and romantic" view of a reconciliation with his father brought about by the grandchild in the works. Clearly we're not meant to be readers of this sort. What kind of reader or readings does Gaskell seem to endorse most?

Serially suspended still,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #9 (chaps 24-26) March 1865

2009-12-06T17:38:00.006-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

This week's section of the novel is a gorgeous set-piece of an installment, moving from the little dinner party at the Gibsons to the Hollingford charity ball, with the preparations chapter sandwiched between as the interlude, with plenty of gossip and gown-gathering. I love reading in the format of these segments because I see the arrangement (like the nosegays Molly admires, but Cynthia pulls apart) of the chapter scenes in a way that fades away when we read chapters in whatever chunks we like. I know that Gaskell disliked the serial format when she was commissioned by Dickens to contribute a novel (North and South) to Household Words in weekly segments, but her experience providing the monthly installments of this novel to The Cornhill was different. For one thing, she wrote out the cluster of chapters as installments, something she did not do with the earlier serial. I'd love to find out more about this.

Back to the story: I loved the array of class-conscious details. These revolve mostly around Mrs. Gibson, and her hyper-sensitivity about dining (later hours meaning higher class status), dressing, and dancing partners, but Lady Harriet also injects some humor into this satirical treatment by speaking out about how the Towers family must dance with partners across class lines in order for Lord H to be relected. I was amused by the bit about the duchess and her diamonds, about how the people longed to catch a glimpse of the duchess, but she shows up in muslin, dressed à l'enfant and without jewels, and, worse, drinks beef-tea! When Lady Harriet goes over to the Browning sisters at the ball, a gesture we readers understand, Mrs. Gibson, without a shred of self-awareness, tells Molly about the Brownings: "If there is one thing I hate more than another, it is the trying to make out an intimacy with great people."

Last week, some of you readers talked about Molly's self-suppression, whether chosen or imposed, around Roger's attentions to Cynthia. In these chapters I like the glimmers of Molly's candor--her "spice of malice" in reply to her stepmother or her reputation as a "little truth-teller" to Lady Harriet. And her interest in scientific topics makes her enforced dancing with Lord H. somewhat a pleasure, even if he's not Roger. Mrs. G even advises Cynthia to read scientific books to attract the attentions of a lord! But poor Cynthia, she can barely read at all (indicated by the three-day-old newspaper she holds), since something is on her mind.

And about Cynthia's distraction the suspense builds, but in this low-keyed, underground way, around Preston. As other readers have mentioned, this is a different kind of suspense from sensation fiction and large-scale melodrama. But I am finding the mystery around Preston's power over Cynthia rather compelling, perhaps because of its subtle disturbance of the placid surface of the ordinariness of Holllingford life. What power does he have over Cynthia? She is clearly not free to reject him completely, even if she tosses his nosegay into the fireplace at home. Does he have some knowledge about her school days in France? I also enjoy how Gaskell aligns the reader with Molly here in reading Cynthia's discomfort, something no one else seems to notice.

For next week: chapters 27-29.

Serially submitted,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #8 (chaps 21-23) March 1865

2009-11-29T08:58:00.010-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Terrific conversation among our serial readers group this week! I too noticed that exchange between Cynthia and Molly (the one Reader Ann comments on)--yes, a rather bold but bitingly true assertion that love for one's mother is cultivated rather than natural. Cynthia's ability to speak in such a candid way seems the flipside of her waffling, untrustworthy mother. I agree with Kari that Gaskell seems to wrap her critique of Mrs G/Hyacinth/Clare with a humorous even burlesque flair that transpose such moments into domestic comedy. Does this treatment compare with, say, Austen's rendering of Mrs. Bennett? Cynthia, as Josh points out, is also morally compromised (something she pins on the inadequate mothering she receives), something we see, but Molly doesn't--yet. Finally, I agree too with Daun that even a novel like Middlemarch is threaded with sensational plot lines, large or small.

See the illustration included with this installment--the magazine provided the caption: "Roger is introduced and enslaved." Was Roger's infatuation with Cynthia predictable? We know he's an acute reader of nature outdoors, and he was a competent reader of Molly herself when she was distressed about her father's new marriage. But what of his reading of Cynthia? I find her intriguing as a sensation heroine (see my comment last week) in a realist novel: she's "put on her armour of magic that evening--involuntarily as she always did," we're told, but then: "she could not help trying her power on strangers." So her power to bewitch is both beside herself and something that amuses herself. Yet her indifference to Roger, to what he has to say (the details of the senior wrangleship which Molly longs to hear), is also striking. There's something oddly jaded about her--too old beyond her seventeen years. The revelation of her backstory should be interesting! By the way, did anyone else notice that Roger calls Cynthia "Miss Gibson" (Molly is only eavesdropping on the conversation, so it's not likely she's being addressed) and then refers to Cynthia as "Miss Kirkpatrick" to Molly, at the end of chap. 21? Gaskell has been criticized for carelessness (or lack of originality) with names. But this made me wonder about the naming of a daughter who seems to have both her dead father's and her stepfather's surnames.

Gaskell reveals more about Osborne's secret marriage and his French wife through O's private meditations about how to support himself and his wife. Gaskell places this novel in the 1820s when Catholic Emancipation was the subject of national debate, but also clarifies that Aimee's religious and national differences aren't the only difficulties in Osborne's mind in order for her to be accepted by his father. Her class background too would "shock" the squire's "old ancestral pride." I found poignant Gaskell's attention to the hopes and expectations this parent places in his son, to somehow improve upon his own life course, to have a distinguished higher education, to marry well and so "restore the ancient fortunes of the Hamley family." Perhaps Hyancinth's wishes for Cynthia to marry Osborne is the comic version of all this.

So, back to suspense again. What is brewing, do you think? The consequences of revelations--Osborne's secret marriage, Cynthia's amorous past (something about Preston), what else?

Somewhat serially suspended,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #7 (chaps 18-20) February 1865

2009-11-23T08:26:00.002-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

You'll notice I added two images taken from the Feb. 1865 installment in The Cornhill. Typically there is a full-page drawing by George du Maurier before the first page of the installment, and then an embellished first letter of that installment. The drawing pertains to a scene in the segment--in this case "First Impressions" pictures Molly and Cynthia (although Cynthia's beauty is difficult to read here, although her greater height is evident). Du Maurier was a regular cartoonist for Punch and provided illustrations for serials until he himself turned to fiction--he illustrated his 1894 novel Trilby (which was serialized in Harper's Weekly).

If nothing else, the drawing does accentuate a moment in the installment, in this case "first impressions" between these step-sisters. While there were plenty of hints to suggest these girls might not be compatible, it seems that they are establishing a bond of affection (rather than the competition that has been set up, and perhaps will enter later into the plot). I found Cynthia most appealing in her appreciation of Molly. She also is wiser than her own mother, but (as Julia pointed out with the inversion of roles) perhaps that's not saying much!

This portion of the novel again reminded me of the popular sensation novels of the day, although different too in Gaskell's toned-down "every-day" version. First, Osborne's "secret" marriage and all the allusions to France (sensation novels almost always turn on a secret marriage or illegitimate birth or sexual liaison of some sort, and France is the prime location in Victorian novels for licentiousness). Then Cynthia enters, and my "first impression" is that she resembles a sensation heroine with her "power of fascination" and her "power of adaptation" (shades of Darwinian evolution here) and her flexible morals--my favorite line is when she tells Molly, "I must be a moral kangaroo!" This phrase rings nicely with Eliot's depiction of Lydgate as "an emotional elephant" (and I agree with Betsy about Mr. Gibson's obtuseness, much like Lydgate's in Middlemarch). Cynthia is an appealing character to me not only because she admires Molly, but also because she does have some self-awareness (in contrast to her mother) and a sense of humor too about her shortcomings.

And about suspense: it's evident there's some history between Cynthia and Preston. Could there be another secret marriage or secret engagement? Clearly Preston is keen on Cynthia, but her mother wants her daughter to marry up into the squire's family--hence Mrs. Gibson's interest in Osborne for Cynthia. Yet Gaskell allows for the dramatic irony here since we we know at least one secret marriage will thwart that desire, and if not, why then, there would be a bigamy plot, another staple of popular sensation novels! Preston is seeming more like a melodramatic villain to me--before, several characters sniffed at his class pretensions, but this time the narrator also finds him suspect and conniving. More suspense, but not the page-turning variety?

I've mentioned links to Middlemarch, and Julia suggests that Gaskell might have Eliot's earlier novel Silas Marner in mind too in her portrait of the two Hamley brothers. I should mention another possible companion text, a very interesting short story about two brothers--"Brother Jacob"-- by Eliot that appeared in this same magazine in July 1864, so just two months before the first installment of this novel.

Next week: chapters 21-23.

Serially yours,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #6 (chaps 15-17)-- Jan. 1865

2009-11-14T17:13:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Just as we expected, the "New Mamma" has brought discontent, unhappiness, and even loss of employment to the Gibson home, yet she seems installed there--redecorating and all (of course she deplored the changes done for her)--for the long haul. Her clash with the servants is another class-laced portrait, especially interesting since she'd been a paid domestic employee herself at the Towers. It's difficult to find one shred of appealing quality about her, isn't it? And yet, Clare's shortcomings are really "everyday" ones, so terribly petty. I find compelling Gaskell's everyday ethics about the small stuff--like Gibson taking his meal quickly so he can get to the bedside of a dying patient or like Molly wishing to bring comfort to Mrs. Hamley.

I also am struck by all the fine details of class markers Gaskell explores. Where her earlier novels Mary Barton and North and South explore class conflict between "masters" and "men" in the realm of factory work, this one also has quite a bit to say about the gradations of social class in Hollingford, England. For instance, Clare (or, "Mrs. Gibson" now) claims her new name is a "sad come-down after Kirkpatrick." And there's the classing of food again--this time, it's not just cheese that offends the new Mamma, but also the early dinner hour. How interesting too that the Methodist cook seems to prefer a diet that follows Leviticus restrictions against pork and "swine-flesh" of Jewish dietary laws.

And speaking of Hollingford, I can't help thinking of Middlemarch. I'm finding parallels between these novels, most sharply between the doctors (Gibson, Lydgate) and their unsuitable, selfish, and conspicuously consuming wives (Clare and Rosamond). But Gibson is a different kind of doctor--he's not "Dr Gibson" but "Mr Gibson" in the novel, a title which implies his training. He's a practitioner who treats disease and by doing so cares for the ill, but he does not have the prestige of a physician who actually diagnoses the disease--that's why Dr. Nicholls, "the great physician of the county," is called in to confirm Gibson's fear about Mrs Hamley. (By the way, another proper name with real-life echoes: "Nicholls" was the name of Charlotte Bronte's husband, someone Gaskell wrote about in her biography of Bronte). Eliot's novel has much to say about medical reform, but I find that Gaskell seems to focus on palliative care--"to make the last struggle easier" as Molly puts it--or bringing comfort at the end of life not just to the dying but to the family.

Kari made a comment last time that suggests that Gaskell is rather gentle with her handling of suspense. I am interested in this question because suspense seems also a technical necessity for a serialized novel--what else would compel readers to go for the next issue of the magazine? What is the nature of suspense in this novel, then? We know that Mrs. Hamley is going to die before long. And we know that Cynthia will return and there will be some complications here between her and her mother and possibly Preston's interest in her, which of course Clare will dislike immensely. And the Hamley brothers will return now from Cambridge--Osborne a big disappointment, but also what's up with him? There are hints that there's more going on with his life than his parents know. He's turned into more of an adventurer than a scholar, with his knowledge of London entertainment and Continental travels. And Roger, the second son, who we can guess will increasingly become the hero? So what kind of suspense is this? How is your curiosity piqued or fed within and between installments?

Next time, chapters 18-20.

Serially yours,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #5 (chaps 12-14) December 1864

2009-11-08T19:58:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I agree that there are hints afloat to suggest that the domestic reign of Hyacinth (aka Mrs Gibson, by the end of this installment--I think I counted FOUR different proper names for her this time) will not be especially pleasant for Molly. I also think that when Cynthia does appear from France it's likely there will be some battling wills between this mother and daughter.

I liked how the actual wedding is pushed to the background in this installment which introduces two new characters--Preston and Osborne. Like the attention to cheese eating last time, these chapters too are filled with the fine distinctions of social class: (1) Roger not imagining his romantic ideal could possibly be a surgeon's daughter, (2) the narrator, with that startling intervention ("Attend, Phoebe, to the present moment..."), chiding this character for even fancying that Gibson would consider marrying her, (3) Lady Harriet's unkind condescension of the Browning sisters as "Pecksy and Flapsy"--and Molly's offense that Harriet would treat this "class of people" as "a kind of strange animal," and (4) Lady Harriet's disdain for Preston as "that underbred fop." To Lady H's credit, she takes Molly's offense to heart and pays a visit to the Brownings. To what extent will the novel critique class snobbery or promote some mild cross-class affiliations? Not sure. Gaskell pairs class and gender in interesting ways--the different kinds of femininity (Lady Cumnor, Mrs. Hamley, Miss Browning, Mrs Kirkpatrick) and masculinity (see below) that each seem shaped by material circumstances.

There seems to be a new romance plot brewing via Preston, the land-agent--his muscular manliness contrasts strongly with Osborne's delicate and "effeminate" appearance. Yet he seems conniving too--his lavish attention to Molly perhaps meant to stir jealousy in someone else, Miss Kirkpatrick, I'd guess, from his comments about her beauty. By the way, this issue of The Cornhill includes an illustration before the installment titled "Unwelcome Attentions" with Preston hovering over the dark-haired Molly. I've included it in the sidebar.

Osborne seems a Keatsian kind of guy--"beautiful and languid-looking." Molly tries to sort out her imagined or "ideal" Osborne with "the real" Osborne who clashes with the ideal that is drawn from literary models. The same might apply to Roger who also doesn't measure up to an ideal (or conventionalized) notion of masculinity, but perhaps represents a new version of manliness. I agree with you (Kari, I think) that Roger is the most pleasing of the male characters so far, especially in his kind attention to Molly. And she's already learning about the bees (if not the birds) from him! Roger introduces Molly to a different set of books, not fiction or poetry, but the natural historian Huber on bees.

Briefly, on the contents of the Dec. 1864 issue of the magazine: I didn't find these items to be particularly relevant to the chapters, as I did last month/week. The issue began with the installment from *Armadale* and then an article about the improving relations between England and France through "the bar" or convening of English and French lawyers in London; another item about a popular artist who had recently died; and an article about "Salvers," or those who dredge up salvage from shipwrecks.

Next time: chapters 15-17 for January 1865. Happy New Year! (and a new marriage....)

Serially yours,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #4 (chaps 10-11) November 1864

2009-11-02T19:46:00.003-06:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Two chapters this time, both about the second marriage plot--Gibson's proposal to Clare (aka "Hyacinth" and "Mrs. Kirkpatrick") and Molly's reaction to this news. Were you surprised at all the attention and care lavished on these three characters and their various perspectives on this impending marriage? I thought Molly's heart-wrenching reaction to the news of this stepmother on the horizon was wonderfully detailed and varied in the wide range of confused feelings--anger, hurt, fear, surprise, worry, shy curiosity. Gaskell doesn't reduce Clare to a caricature of the wicked stepmother, but clearly she's not an idealized angel either, but rather human-scale in this "every-day" slice of realism, with her own interest in relinquishing the drudgery of schoolteacher. But what did you make of the proposal scene itself, in chap. 10? I loved the narrator's shifting between his and her viewpoints in this proposal that seems overdetermined, Gaskell suggests, by the social attitudes that dictate a second marriage is the best solution for Mr G's domestic woes, for Mrs K's hard lot as a schoolteacher and single mother, and for Molly as unmothered in a house of men. Yet there's much to suggest discomfort too with this overscriptedness.

It occurs to me that Victorian novels are loaded with second marriages of one sort or another, although at what point in the narrative the second marriage enters varies (late, for instance, in Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre). Any thoughts about this second marriage, at least the preview we get in these chapters through the shifting focus on Molly, Clare, and Mr. G? My favorite bit of class comedy was when Clare asks Molly to report on her father's pet likes and dislikes, and discovers to her dismay that he eats cheese! Cheese apparently was a food associated with unrefined tastes, with a strong smell, according to Clare! I also loved Roger Hamley's attempts to comfort Molly either directly (in his awkwardness with words) or indirectly as her "Mentor," leading her out of her misery through distractions. That passage reminded me of Gaskell's preface to her first novel, Mary Barton where she mentions that she turned to fiction writing as a distraction from "circumstances"--she doesn't clarify this, but biographical accounts attribute fiction writing as her husband's suggestion after the death of her very young son.

Reading these two chapters I became curious about what else appeared in the pages of The Cornhill in November 1864. I was quite astonished to see how several items seemed tooled to this novel's interests! Here are the contents of that issue, in order:
1. The lead item is the Prologue (first 3 chapters) of Wilkie Collins's sensation novel Armadale (the only one he published in this magazine)
2. "Middle-Class Education in England" by Harriet Martineau--this article is on female education and begins with this sentence: "If the education of middle-class Boys is a vague and cloudy subject to treat in writing, what is that of Girls?"
3. "A Tête á Tête Social Science Discussion"--complementing the above article is this story told by a father whose wife has just given birth to their ninth daughter--no sons. The narrative takes the form of a discussion by the narrator/father and his friend on the Woman Question, especially about how and whether a woman can support herself outside of marriage. There is also discussion of women's higher education.
4. "The New Mamma"--a drawing presumably referring to the scene between Molly and Clare (see sidebar)
5. The installment of this novel occurs here, in the center of this issue
6. "The Scottish Farm Labourer"--an informative article on this topic. Mr. Gibson is Scottish by background, and this subject of farm labour might figure later in the novel.
7. "At Rest"--consolation poetry about the death of a child, signed B.R.
8. "Col. Gordon's Exploits in China"--a travelogue/imperial adventure account by this explorer
9. "The Public Schools Report"--this item in the form of a letter responding to a report on boys public schools, especially Eton, printed in the July issue.

So, here you have the full context for this slice of our serial novel! Next time: chapters 12-14.

Serially Seconding,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #3 (chaps 7-9) October 1864

2009-10-25T08:44:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

To respond briefly to comments from last week: yes, reading books seems showcased early on in this novel, with Molly's reading Scott, Mrs. Hamley reading Hemans, the squire reading newspapers and journals, Gibson's more eclectic reading diet, and Roger reading "scientific books" in contrast to Osborne's poetry. "Reading" also means studying, in the scholastic sense used at British universities, and at that time "reading" natural history was certainly less common and supported than reading poetry, which I think was probably aligned more closely with philosophy and theology as a fitting course of study for young men at Cambridge preparing to enter the Anglican clergy. The squire mentions to Molly that "they don't take honours in Natural History at Cambridge," an indication of its lower academic status at this time (late 1820s perhaps). I do love the attention to the pleasures of reading immersion--whether Molly being "deep" into Scott's novel or even the pleasures of reading the flora and fauna of the gardens outdoors.

To continue now with this week's installment: while we meet Roger Hamley, we don't see much evidence of his reading nature; the narrator insists that he would not even notice Molly as a "formed beauty" because she is in "a state of feminine hobbledehoyhood." This word jumped out at me, since those of us who read an earlier serial in The Cornhill, namely Trollope's The Small House at Allington, heard much about Johnny Eames's "hobbledehoyhood." And now, the feminine version!

But if Molly at seventeen seems unripe for that romance plot, we have two middle-aged widowed characters, the former governess at the Towers and Molly's father who is primed for a second marriage to untangle "the Gordian knot of domestic difficulties," which include the averted "calf-love" incident. Gaskell gives lots of details of the converging circumstances of, on the one hand, this single father who can't manage his household, and, on the other, Clare Kirkpatrick, the struggling single mother schoolmistress who's already lost several governess positions. While marriage might promise solutions to their respective problems, there are ample hints that other forms of knottiness might lurk on the horizon of such an alliance. Clare's character is not particularly encouraging despite her early kindness when Molly visits the Towers at age 12, and Gibson, we know, is shortsighted in the realm of human complexities not of a medical nature. I do find the subject of second marriages in Victorian novels surprisingly common--"every-day" as the subtitle suggests.

On "invalid" women, I was interested in an implied comparison of Mrs. Hamley and Lady Cumnor, the first, truly ailing from some disease (as well as from inactivity and longing for her beloved son), the second, perhaps hypochondrical due to her social position as a pampered woman of wealth with grown children and little to engage her. Those passages reminded me of Gaskell's treatment of Mrs. Carson as a "do-nothing" lady in her first novel Mary Barton.

Finally, the character who really intrigued me this time is Lady Harriet, the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Cumnor, who delivers a wry and sharp assessment of the current status of elite female education at home through governesses and masters. I hope to see much more of Lady H. in installments to come!

Next time, only two chapters--10 and 11.

Serially signing off for now,
Susan

Wives and Daughters: #2 (chaps 4-6) September 1864

2009-10-18T12:32:00.002-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

I'm also intrigued by the direct or indirect attention to education so far in this novel you've noted--Julia's comments on the Cumnor charity school in contrast to Lowood in Jane Eyre and Joshua's on Mr. Gibson's attitude toward literacy. Then there's quite a bit here about the public school educations of the two Hamley sons (perhaps in contrast to Molly's meagre education by Miss Eyre).

I must say, though, that I understood Gibson's reluctance for Molly to learn too much as pertaining to his feelings about her growing up. Perhaps because I have a seventeen year old daughter myself who is currently in the process of applying to college, I was struck by the Hamleys and Gibson wrestling with their children's increasing autonomy and departures from home. Around the time Gaskell began working on this novel, her daughter Florence married in 1863. Gaskell handles Gibson's fears about Molly leaving with terrific irony since his concern about the "calf-love" threatened by Edward Coxe compels him to send Molly away from him to Hamley, where, of course, two sons are bound to visit on holiday from school.

Gibson's uneasiness about Molly growing up and leaving him has two other parallels: Mrs. Hamley missing her sons, especially the poetic Osborne (who presumably takes after her in contrast to the outdoorsy, naturalist Roger, more like the father) and then Molly's fear at the end of this installment about the possibility of his father remarrying, an event that would necessarily affect the intimacy of this father and daughter. Rather than "Wives and Daughters" a more inclusive title would be "Parents and Children." These opening segments make evident a focus on changes in parent/child relationships as children move into adulthood. This is especially so for Molly and her father. Yes, the serpent in the Edenic garden of Molly's childhood does emerge as this installment closes with the squire considering, "To be sure, a step-mother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man." How will the next one end, I wonder?

Returning to the theme of literacy, I also noted the attention to reading in these chapters--reading books (poetry, novels, scientific writing), reading human nature, and reading nature.
Characters are sorted by their reading tastes or abilities--Molly reads historical novels (Scott, in this instance), while the squire tells Molly about Roger's remarkable capacity to read natural history through nature--"his eyes are always wandering about, and see twenty things where I only see one." As a doctor, Gibson is an astute reader of nature as it affects human bodies, but (returning to my comment last time) we get the sense that he's not a sharp reader of his own feelings and motivations: "He did not want to lose the companionship of his child, in fact; but he put it to himself in quite a different way." Other observations about reading practices in these chapters?

Finally, I wanted to mention the subtitle of this novel, although I don't know if it appeared with the original magazine serialization: "An Every-Day Story." I like this accent on ongoingness, on commonness, rather than the extraordinary. I'm hoping that one of these weeks some one of us will peak at the original Cornhill appearance of these chapters to see what other everyday stories surrounded segments of the novel. I'll try to remember for next week: chapters 7-9.

Serially submerged,
Susan

Susan

Wives and Daughters: #1 (chaps 1-3) August 1864

2009-10-11T14:04:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Off we go on another Victorian serial adventure--this one with the auspicious beginnings of a fairytale "rigmarole." The fairytale motif is evident and sweet, with allusions to Goldilocks when Molly falls asleep under the cedar tree and later wakes inside the grand house in Clare's bed. But there are other tales suggested in these opening pages--perhaps Cinderella with the ordinary people taken by serial carriage rides to the Towers festival, but also an evident wink at Jane Eyre through Molly's governess's name. I couldn't help seeing echoes in a reverse chronological direction, with Mr. Gibson, the new doctor to Hollingford, who had studied in Paris, as a precursor to Eliot's Lydgate who arrives in Middlemarch near the opening of that novel, and in the days before the passage of the First Reform Bill. I wonder how else Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72) might be compared to this novel.

I also wonder about the role of sleep in building a new fictional world--Molly falls asleep in what appears to her as an Edenic dreamland, although she suffers from the hothouse atmosphere too. I began thinking about sleep and visionary realms in the early pages of novels--this too reminds me of the opening of Eliot's The Mill on the Floss where the narrator falls asleep while looking back in time. Is falling into a new narrative world like the opening of a dream? There is something gently parodic about Gaskell's use of the fairytale motif too in this first segment of the novel, which concludes with an assertion about Molly's "very happy childhood." Is some serpent, some apple, some Eve, to intrude upon this quaint English paradise? Mr Gibson is a fond father, but seems a bit emotionally dense--I recall Eliot's description of Lydgate as "an emotional elephant."

The brief glimpses of the greenery of the Towers as well as Lady Agnes's lecture on orchids and attention to the taxonomy of plants also reminded me of Gaskell's Job Legh, a working-class naturalist in her first novel Mary Barton. Charles Darwin was a distant cousin of Gaskell's, and there's a character, soon to appear, supposedly modeled after the young Charles Darwin who preferred botanising or geologising in the hills to his studies at Cambridge. Botany was also a popular activity for women to pursue as a hobby but also as a way to educate themselves about the natural world.

I look forward to your thoughts about this dreamy opening! For next week, the second installment includes chapters 4-6. There were 18 installments altogether printed in The Cornhill Magazine.

Serially yours,
Susan

Upcoming Serial: Gaskell's Wives and Daughters

2009-09-25T10:22:00.002-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

The results of the poll are clear: Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, serialized monthly in The Cornhill from August 1864 to January 1866, is our next Victorian serial. Yes, this is the same magazine that ran Trollope's Small House of Allington. I recommend the Oxford UP edition (see sidebar) because the table of contents provides the installment divisions. But no matter about this, since I'll indicate each week what group of chapters comprise the next installment. We'll begin in two weeks (to allow time for people to obtain copies), and I'll aim to post on the first installment, chapters 1-3, on Sunday October 11th. Please spread the word! As an added attraction, there is a lovely BBC adaptation of this novel, and I have a copy for anyone nearby to borrow--or perhaps we'll have a serial viewing party!

In the meantime, do share your thoughts on the ending of Romola! You can insert comments at the end of the previous post below!

Serially yours,
Susan

Romola #14--chaps 68-Epilogue (August 1863)

2009-09-20T08:32:00.004-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

We've reached the final installment! I'm eager to hear your thoughts about the ending of this novel. The Epilogue follows a fairly conventional pattern of Victorian fiction by fast-forwarding eleven years from Savonarola's execution to May 1509, but then we see a domestic scene rather uncommon to conclusions of Victorian narratives--not the pared-down nuclear family of mother, father, child as in the closure of Jane Eyre, but instead three adult women and two children! I suppose one could argue that Romola, who finally is able to assert herself, if only provisionally, as scholar where she is Lillo's teacher and evident head of this household, inhabits a typically masculine position. Yet Lillo calls her "Mamma Romola." Tessa is curiously silent in this closing vision which finds her rounder and plumper and "astonished...at the wisdom of her children." Even so, I'm intrigued by this family without men. Two immediate precursors come to mind: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (also set in Italy--perhaps such alternative arrangements only imaginable out of Britain) and Christina Rossetti's fairytale narrative poem, "Goblin Market" where the last stanza imagines a family circle of two women and children, but no mention of men as part of this community. With R's household shrine, Savonarola does hold a place in Romola's moral universe--not as the great prophetic religious leader, but as a human-sized man who had once rescued her in need.

I had wanted to upload one of Leighton's final illustrations for this serial, but I'll describe it instead. There's a very striking image of Romola "Drifting Away." But the only "drifting" I can find in this image is the word in the caption. Her arms are muscular, and she has a firm grasp of the sail rope, and her glance outward looks determined, even stern, and even somewhat like portraits of Savonarola! This visual portrayal seems a bit at odds with Eliot's words, and also looks nothing like her other heroines (Maggie Tulliver and Mirah and Gwendolen H. G.) who appear in boating scenes. Leighton's image (but for the costume and the mountains in the distance) might suit Dickens's Lizzie Hexam, the female waterman of Our Mutual Friend. Despite this seeming disparity, Romola does exert much strength and direction once she wakes up from this drifting away and returns to the land, and this unwavering action continues through the epilogue.

What about Romola's entering (wandering) into that scene of the plague, with the wandering Jews viewed by the ignorant villagers as the source of this pestilence? Eliot next wrote "The Spanish Gypsy," a dramatic poem also inspired by her travels in Italy, and in Spain, in which she contemplates the meanings of racial identity. In this novel, Romola is recalled to life and from the water by the crying "Hebrew" child Benedetto who is eventually converted, while Romola herself is transformed by the villagers into the legendary blessed lady who came over the sea to rescue them. This mode of turning to others, helping others in need, seems the one act of redemption Eliot affirms. Given the novel's skepticism about religious belief and superstition, where does the novel end up on the religion question here? What kind of Christian is Romola, with her household shrine for Savonarola?

Like Kari and Julia, I did find the attention to Savonarola's struggle with ambition and belief fascinating, especially given my temptation to identify Eliot (in her work as novelist) with this character! She was at a pivotal point in her own career, as a widely respected great author (although castigated for her personal relationship with a married man). At the same time, Eliot's own conflicts with conventional religious practice and belief and with public fame are well documented through her letters and journals.

At the same time, I continued to see links between Romola and Sav. In the full spectrum of this historical novel, Romola serves as an important witness of Savonarola's rise and fall. Yet at the moment when Savonarola is led before the crowd to be degraded and executed, the narrator merges the consciousnesses of these two grand characters where Romola sees and hears the crowd just as Savonarola does. Is Romola at the end more a modified, better, version of Savonarola than she is of Bardo, or is she a mixture of both, are both the male models inspiring this very large (tall!) female character?

I was surprised that the Epilogue did not rejoin the work of the Proem, and foreground the reader's passage from 1509 back to the present tense. Instead of the sweep of a historical epic, the narrative ends in this small-scale, domestic realm of Renaissance Florence, perhaps striking for the contrast to the grander strokes of the Proem.

Dear Serial Readers: what will we read next? According to the poll I installed at the bottom of this page, there is a marked preference for Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, with Trollope as second, but not a close second. I am eager to choose something that everyone will be able to keep up with on a weekly basis, and more will join the conversation. The poll will remain open for the next week, and then I'll announce the final winner. But Gaskell seems likely. We'll start in October--I'll post the reading plan in a week. In the meantime, please feel free to email me if you'd like to receive emails each time I've posted on the blog (or alternatively, if you'd like me to remove your address from this forwarding list).

Serially sufficed, (for now),
Susan

Romola #13--chaps 62-67 (July 1863)

2009-09-13T11:57:00.003-05:00

Dear All Serial Readers,

Don't forget to cast your vote for our next serial! At this point, Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is the front-runner, with Trollope's Orley Farm in second place. So far, no votes for Dickens. Even if you're unlikely to read along, don't be shy about asserting your right to vote! You'll find the poll at the very bottom of this page.

And so we're on the home stretch--only the last and fourteenth installment of Romola remains for next time. I'd love to hear about your experiences reading in this serially format, either as a newcomer to this novel or as a re-reader, but this time in these deliberate segments.

This installment, as I'd anticipated, doesn't touch directly on Romola at all, but does mention her briefly toward the end, as Tito reminds himself of his "mistake of falling in love with Romola." But in a way she's in the background with the waterside imagery that ends this part too. As we've all mentioned from time to time, rivers and other watery images abound in Eliot's novels--but this is true for other Victorian writers. I did work out, however, that Romola's water isn't the same as the Arno that brings together Tito and Baldassarre, since Viareggio (where Romola has gone) is on the coast.

What did people make of the coincidence of Tito washing up on Baldassarre's shore? This perverse sense of justice--this scene of the betrayed and the betrayer, the pursued and the pursuer--reminded me of a scene toward the end of Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (Headstone and Riderhood), a novel Dickens would've been working on when this novel was serialized in 1863. And maybe also the last pages of Frankenstein? While Eliot seems critical of Baldassarre's obsession with revenge, she does allow him this fulfillment--after all, Tito is still alive, barely, and so Baldassarre, also barely alive, uses his last strength to accomplish what he has desired for so long, almost since he entered into this novel. Is this really justice, though, in Eliot's moral scheme of things?

I did find it interesting that Tito had planned to bring Tessa and her children with him on his flight out of Florence. This seemed an interesting twist where the "other" secret wife would be elevated to the position of a full-time wife, while Tito has no thoughts for Romola's future (didn't he notice she'd gone missing?). But then, this twist does not work out as Tito had planned. The final installment will surely bring back Tessa and Romola, so stay tuned.

And Savonarola? I found him especially sympathetic in these pages as we find him struggling with an inward collision between belief and knowledge, between faith and facts. He believes in miracles in the abstract, but his "keen perception of outward facts" convinces him that he would not walk through a trial by fire. Not unusual with Eliot, she unfolds an anatomy of faith here which centers on the need for it rather than assessing its validity. How life-like, life-sized, and even modern somehow seems Sav in these scenes. And Tito, well, no question he was happy to sell Sav (or his letter) down the river for his own gain. I do find Tito a kind of moral lesson throughout for Eliot--but since Tito seems incapable of change or productive moral reflection, I also began to see him more as a plot device.

For the last few chapters, I'm also interested in how Eliot will return to the now/then stitching together that was so evident in the first chapters--or will she?

Please vote early and often for the next serial! I'll announce next week, and we'll start the first week of October.

Serially steadfast,
Susan

Romola #12--chaps 57-61 (June 1863)

2009-09-04T08:30:00.006-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Only two more short installments of Romola left after this week! With that in mind, I've installed a new feature on this blog--a poll for our next selection! To see this poll, scroll all the way to the BOTTOM of this screen. The choices are different from my earlier proposals. I should mention that I'm also working on a project analyzing Victorian serials through a digital data instrument my colleague Mike Witmore has been developing called Docuscope. You'll see in the top right sidebar I've linked Mike's blog Wine Dark Sea where he elaborates on docuscoping and how he's used it to identify lexical features that distinguish Shakespeare's genres.

My project, at least for now, will compare Dickens and Gaskell, one writer very attuned to the serial form as a novelist-editor-conductor of periodicals in which he ran some of his novels, the other not an editor-conductor, and very ambivalent about the serial form--the spatial constraints, the need for any breaks at all (apparently Gaskell tended to write with little initial attention to chapter divisions). So I'm proposing for next time either a Dickens novel or Gaskell's last novel Wives and Daughters which was also (like Romola) serialized in The Cornhill. And like Dickens's Drood, which we read here last year, Gaskell died just before she was able to complete the final installment! But she was much much closer than Dickens was with Drood! And for a third choice, I suggest Trollope's Orley Farm, one of his stand-alone novels (not part of a series, like Small House), and published in four-chapter (short) segments. So, please enter your vote on this poll--I've allowed an option for more than one choice!

Mike's "Wine Dark Sea" blog reminds me of the end of this installment--Romola's drifting out to sea. Quite a bit of suspense set up here, and I would predict that Eliot intensifies this suspense by withholding Romola from the next and penultimate installment to insure readers return for the last! Romola's moral and spiritual rudderlessness--and all the dreamily drifting and gliding out to sea--reminds me of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss who finds herself in a similar position on the Floss, although she is not alone like Romola! But it's interesting how Eliot returns to the moral dilemmas of her heroine in this fashion. I loved the mixed images too here--Romola's physical competence getting the boat into the sea and unfurling the sails (showing that she's the ever-quick study of a student!) and at the same time total suspension about what to do, where to go, now that she has no one at all to follow, neither a husband nor a spiritual father nor a godfather. Interesting that she doesn't return to her original idea (on her first flight disguised as a religious sister) to seek out the celebrated woman scholar Cassandra Fedele in Venice. Earlier I was impressed too by her determination to witness her godfather's execution, although the ultimate moment is eclipsed from her--"then she saw no more"-- by a fainting spell? And with the narration focused through her eyes, we also don't see the final moments of Bernardo's beheading.

As Julia mentioned about the ending of #11, the public and private overlap and converge in interesting ways in this installment too. But these "tangled threads" for Romola also sour her sense of clear fellowship and connection--to any man, at least. I also saw a resemblance between Romola and Sav during the "Pleading" chapter, Romola's interview w/ Sav that Tito has manipulated Romola into seeking. Sav's "never-silent hunger after purity and simplicity" is thwarted by a "tangle of egoistic demands, false ideas, and difficult outward conditions." Even if the demands and conditions differ for Romola, to some extent the contours of her dilemma seem parallel to Savonarola. Eliot modeled Romola after Barbara Leigh Bodichon Smith, who was a woman with a striking presence and lofty ideals and who campaigned through public lectures on behalf of women's rights at this time. I've read of at least one Victorian woman who was motivated to start a woman's "philosophical society" (where people discussed articles or presented their own work) after hearing a speech by Smith.

For next time, #13, chapters 62-67--and then one more installment after that. So I would expect we'll start our next serial the week of Sept. 21st. Don't forget to vote!

Serially at Sea,
Susan

Romola #11--chaps 52-56 (May 1863)

2009-08-28T08:09:00.003-05:00

Dear Serial Readers,

Are you reading this? Are you reading Romola? Are you on vacation? Or--more likely--are you NOT on summer schedule anymore? This past week there was not a single comment, the first time since I started the blog. Only three more installments to go. Then what?

This week, I found the opening and closing chapters especially intriguing. In the first, we have Camilla, "chief among the feminine seers of Florence," who has a vision about Romola that she "separate herself from the enemy of God"--while Sav seems the obvious referent here, Tito is also possible. I love the way prophecy shapes this narrative throughout, from its earliest pages. How is the narrator a kind of prophet too, foretelling futures?

"The Other Wife" chapter that closes this May 1863 number brings Romola to Tessa's home where she is able to ascertain, to her keen disappointment, that Tessa is not Tito's lawful wife. The chapter makes clear though that Romola increasingly sees herself as Tessa's and Tessa's children's surrogate mother or guardian by a higher law of human obligation. In this segment, Romola resembles both Tito and Savonarola at different points. Like Tito, she has rescued Tessa from harrassment in the marketplace; but Romola also compares herself to Tito whose great transgression is his "light abandonment of ties" from Baldassarre. But here too Romola is drawn to Sav as a model--not just the "sacredness of obedience" (why she returns to Tito in the first place), but now she also sees the "sacredness of rebellion" and determines to live apart from Tito (and, presumably, in some kind of relationship to Tessa and her children). Again, this segment of the story makes me think of sensation fiction of the 1860s, the bigamy novels and secret wives or husbands that also envision different, more flexible, intimate configurations than monogamous heterosexuality. There are some strong echoes with the domestic arrangements here of Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes (where Marian's earnings from her books help support George's son's from his "lawful" marriage to Agnes).

I also thought about the Pre-Raphaelites and their paintings, such as William Holman Hunt's "The Awakening Conscience," this one of a "kept woman" in her gilded cage in St. John's Wood, London, presumably the man's "other wife" much like Eliot's rendition of Tessa. I also see surprising echoes forward to Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles--this time again with Tessa's account to Romola of her "marriage" to "Naldo"--what Tessa in her childlike innocence thought valid, but clearly it was a false marriage. Hardy had such a marriage scene too between Tess and Alec, one that was published as a separate installment later after the original run of Tess in a magazine; this contrived marriage ceremony was then excised from the full novel. Of course Hardy surely read *this* novel!

Next time, the installment is also short, and I hope to have more company in reading--and more ideas about our next reading project. Or would you like a long vacation? For next week: chaps 57-61.

Serially yours,
Susan