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
5 comments:
I'm so glad that Susan quoted that wonderful line about Lucilla's "grand design of turning the chaotic elements of society in Carlingford into one grand unity," because reading this post alongside these chapters gave me an idea I'd like to put out there. Here's what occurred to me: what sort of role requires developing a grand design for transforming chaotic elements into a unified whole? There are probably lots of roles in the world that can be described that way, but in the context of a novel, I think there's an answer we're being led to -- an author, right? After all, isn't Oliphant orchestrating the novel in just this way, bringing in a number of "chaotic" elements, letting them interact with one another in a carefully controlled fashion, and producing some sort of unity out of the mess?
I mention this not because these chapters have drawn that parallel explicitly -- though Rose's "designs" are worth considering in this context, I think -- but because I was wondering about some of the plot threads that seem to have gone missing. After the first installment or two, the novel felt like a domestic comedy where Tom and Dr. Marjoribanks would play major roles. Now, both of them have been absent or barely present for so long that we might as well put them on milk cartons with the label "Have you seen me?" And instead, we're seeing different characters become increasingly central to the novel; it looked for a while like Barbara and Cavendish might be paired off early, but it seems like there's a mysterious role for Cavendish to play instead, and then there's the newly arrived Archdeacon to consider. Will Oliphant be able to work all her own "chaotic elements" into a grand unity? Or are some of those elements going to quietly disappear?
So funny: I had a very similar thought to Josh's! Lucilla knows more than almost everyone else about the Cavendish mystery, doesn't care much about her own personal fate, and wants most of all to keep her cast of characters running along according to her own plans--sounds a lot like an omniscient narrator, or as Josh says, an author. Even in her relations to Barbara's singing she's more like a director, trying to produce a musical whole, than like a conventionally egocentric character, trying to accomplish personal aims. That's why there's no vengefulness and no animosity towards her detractors and competitors: she's above it all, the puppeteer (or writer or narrator or director)!
I enjoyed Rose-the-artist’s infusion of principles to still her beating heart. She need not worry “what to put on,” since artists are exempt from rules of the common world. She reminded herself that artists have “a rank of our own.” By the end of Chapter 17 it dawns on Lucilla that Rose is another “instrument lying ready to her hand.” Does that make Rose one of the friends Lucilla will “always stand by”? In any case, to hell with people who don’t stand by Lucilla. She knows herself, we’re told, so she can afford to be magnanimous. What all that has to do with anything, I don’t know. But I think we did gain a little more access to Lucilla’s interior in these two chapters (and I think of interior complexity not as gendering but as humanizing). The girl was nearly round the bend over the possibility that an imposture had invaded Grange Lane. On her watch? How could her minions continue to place confidence in her? By the end of 18, prudence had restored her senses, and self-restraint prevented her from errant thinking about Cavendish. Now that the rooms are properly furnished, Lucilla seems to have ample time to tend to her own interior.
huh. I thought I posted a comment the other day, but I don't see it--I'm having trouble with the visual verification.
I said that I love the image of Lucilla as author/artist, but it seems to me none of the images seems to entirely encompass her grand design.
And I also noted every interior point, but was struck that the self-restraint Reader Ann notices allowed Lucilla to control her deepest inner thought, so she doesn't even name Cavendish to herself as she thinks about that potential impostor in her own drawing room, but she clearly knows who it would be. I love the subtlety of that section. I was thinking "can't they figure out who this is?" when the Archdeacon was speaking, and then it became obvious that at least Lucilla could.
I find this novel so funny, but I'm not sure I think it ridicules social life, at least, not more than anything else. But then, I find parties a great gift.
I'm so intrigued by Lucilla's apparent lack of curiosity. On the one hand, she does very much resemble Plotaholic's omniscient narrator. But on the other hand, she really doesn't *want* to know more about Mr Cavendish; she simply wants to ensure that her own grand designs remain beautiful, coherent, and benificiently delimited. Here, too, the narrative is moving in ways that counter our conventional expectations as readers--and especially as novel readers. Fascinating.
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