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
6 comments:
Chapter 41 ends with a tease: “But the time was approaching when she would know all.” It seems only right to begin the next installment with an immediate pay off, and it came in the form of an illustration that, at the same time, must have also served to get serial readers reading for the details.
Secrets, secrets. The illusion of control they give. I’m afraid that Cynthia is finding out she must sleep in the bed she makes. Like Susan, I doubt that Molly would have behaved in the same way, given her stepsister’s straits. Cynthia is nothing if, like her mother, not consistent to the nature Gaskell created in her. Chapter after chapter, she has claimed that her values are shallower than Molly’s. “I like pretty things and pretty people,” comes to mind. In other words, she can be bought. So schoolgirl folly and impetuousness, yes—in keeping with her character, whether it’s nature- or nurture-wrought, or some of each. (Sorry, Cynthia.)
Meanwhile, there are many instances of Mrs G. staying true her ironic self. Speaking to Molly: “…it is so difficult to teach you delicacy, child.”
Will Osborne die? Will Roger return? Will Cynthia marry anyone? How will she get rid of Preston? I’m sorry Gaskell wasn’t able to finish the novel.
I was also struck by the presence of material things in this installment--letters, so much writing going on including a little note written and folded up by Molly according to OSbourne's wishes at the last scene, and money that should be folded inside Cynthia's apprent letter to Preson, even the twenty-pounds on which Preston claims Cynthia's body and soul, etc. So,letters, money, body and all the writing activities seemed so combined in one form to me. This materiality of body is revealed through weather, furniture and illness, too, as Mrs. G's claim that she "gets quite sick of the very sight of the chairs and tables that [she] know so well" and Molly's low spirits related with bad weather, and ending with Osbourne's ailing body. Interesting to see how we encounter materiality of text and body in this way!
I like this image very much, and I"m struck with how free-flowing Molly's dress is, while Cynthia's seems so properly fitted. Molly's hat, her cloak, and her dress are all bigger and looser than Cynthia's. To some extent, this could make her seem less sexualized, or more rural. In part, it does make me see her is more rural, but she also seems part of a different genre from Cynthia--something significantly more romantic while Cynthia is in the daily life novel. I don't find that difference really in the descriptions of the two, but this picture makes me see them that way.
And that somewhat leads to the main observation that sunk in as I read this section: there's just no sex in this novel. For a sensation heroine, my goodness but this is tame! Isn't it? I haven't read all that many sensation novels, but it seems tame to me. Yes, 20 pounds worth of clothes (now increased to 23 pounds odd shillings), and warm friendship, but no desire or passion, except sort of on Preston's part. I guess Prestion flirts with folks, but he's trying to force marriage, not sex, and he never really gets anywhere with anyone.
And on top of that, Cynthia's motivations are primarily to protect her mother: first she realizes she doesn't want Preston because he's mocked her mother to others, and then she needs the letters back not so much because she pledged herself to Preston, but because she said unkind things about her mother in the letters.
I was struck, as Susan pointed out, that recipients paid for the letters they received, and I loved the commonly agreed sense that more than two letters in one week would be too expensive and fewer than two would not be appropriately loving. The letters are great in this book.
I do dislike the deeper deceit that Molly is getting herself into by also conveying the money to Preston--but I'm also struck by how today that level of deceit would seem so harmless to just about any narrative.
Reading on!
I loved this installment. It was quite fun to see Molly get a moment to shine, when her quiet integrity and thoughtfulness really proves to be the remarkable character that it is. Gaskell twice describes Molly's character as something like "fearless innocence" -- and that's what's so interesting to me about her actions here. She's able to act so boldly because her ethical behavior has provided a solid defense (though we shall see if that holds up, I guess). Molly's goodness is not some insipid, moralizing goodness -- it's the source of her strength. Even Preston seems to be impressed.
I was also amused by Molly's shrewd response to Mrs. Gibson's blathering about how her heart is a harp-string "vibrating to the slightest breeze." Molly, thinking on her feet, points out that this windy language isn't accurate. Of course, she earns the derisive comment "you've no more poetry in you than your father," but Molly's prosaic mind certainly seems to be serving her well.
And I want to follow up on a really perceptive comment that Daun made on the last post, comparing this novel to Villette -- I'd been thinking along similar lines myself. Molly is nowhere near as hostile to our expectations of what a protagonist should be as Lucy Snowe, who dares us all through the novel to dislike her. But there is something interesting about how both characters seem to stand apart from the action in their own narrative. Here, it seemed like plain innocence (until we now see it as fearless innocence). With Lucy Snowe, it springs from an incredible sense of deliberate distancing and chilly observation.
I will be sad to see this novel end, but I'm looking forward to the last few segments, and to whatever we'll be reading next.
Hi Josh, Thanks for expanding on my last comparison between Molly and Lucy Snowe! I just wanted to add that I didn't dislike Lucy Snowe at all despite her deliberate and rather hostile distancing narrative techniques. I think such narrative techniques make reading experience more suspenseful and curious, as we go along wondering about her motivation in constructing narratives. I love its ambiguous ending, too! I just wanted to make a quick comment about my own reading experiece of Villette:)
Oh, I totally agree with you, Daun. In fact, I think that the risky narrative strategy is what makes Villette such a moving and powerful novel. The emotional investment I felt in Lucy Snowe's story was far greater because of how distant she was early in the novel.
I think there might be something of that with Molly in the middle of this novel -- as she recedes a bit into the background of her own narrative -- but since we get to see a very endearing Molly before her father remarries, we're never really as perplexed as I think we are with Lucy. But I think both characters do share a similar leaning toward passive behavior that can be intriguing and challenging for us as readers.
Post a Comment