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
POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins
10 January 2010
03 January 2010
Wives and Daughters: #13 (chaps 37-40): August 1865
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
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
27 December 2009
Wives and Daughters: #12 (chaps 33-36): July 1865
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
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
21 December 2009
Wives and Daughters: #11 (chaps 30-32) June 1865
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
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
13 December 2009
Wives and Daughters: #10 (chaps 27-29) April 1865
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
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
06 December 2009
Wives and Daughters: #9 (chaps 24-26) March 1865
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
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
29 November 2009
Wives and Daughters: #8 (chaps 21-23) March 1865
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
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
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