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.
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