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tutorials, commentaries, and study guides on nineteenth century authors, biographical notes, and literary criticism

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Complete Critical Guide to Jane Austen

June 28, 2009 by Roy Johnson

biography, guidance notes, and critical essays

This complete critical guide to Jane Austen comes from a new series by Routledge which offers comprehensive but single-volume introductions to major English writers. They are aimed at students of literature, but are accessible to general readers who might like to deepen their understanding. The approach taken is quite straightforward. Part One is a potted biography of Austen, placing her life and work in a socio-historical context. This takes into account the role of women in the early nineteenth century; the position of a female author in the world of book publishing at the time; the social conventions surrounding women and marriage; and the sheer political fact that she was living at the time of the French revolution and war between Britain and France.

Guide to Jane AustenPart Two provides a synoptic view of Austen’s six great novels – from Northanger Abbey to Persuasion. The works are described in outline, and then their main themes illuminated. This is followed by pointers towards the main critical writings on these texts and issues.

Part Three deals with criticism of Austen’s work. This is presented in chronological order – from contemporaries such as Walter Scott to critics of the present day, with the focus on feminist and gender criticism, Marxist, and psychoanalytic criticism. Some of the readings Irvine outlines will be quite provocative and surprising to many readers – particularly those dealing with such issues as slavery in Mansfield Park and both sexual and homosexual readings of Sense and Sensibility.

The book ends with a commendably thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Austen journals. There is also a separate chapter which deals with Austen on screen. This discusses the controversial issue of Austen’s work as it has been appropriated to project modern notions of English nationalism and the ‘heritage industry’.

This will be an excellent starting point for students who are new to Austen’s work – and a refresher course for those who would like to keep up to date with criticism. And it certainly is up to date – with references to publications only just over a year old at the time of publication.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Robert P. Irvine, The Complete Critical Guide to Jane Austen, Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, pp.190, ISBN 0415314356


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Filed Under: Jane Austen Tagged With: Complete Critical Guide to Jane Austen, English literature, Jane Austen, Literary studies, Study guides

Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy

June 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Biography, guidance notes, and criticism of Hardy

This comes from a new series by publishers Routledge which offers comprehensive but single-volume introductions to major English writers. They are aimed at students of literature, but are accessible to general readers who might like to deepen their understanding. The approach taken by the Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy could not be more straightforward.

Complete Critical Guide to Thomas HardyPart one is a potted biography of Hardy, placing his life and work in a relatively neutral socio-historical context. Thus we get his early influences and ambitions, his rise to fame as a novelist, and then his switch to poetry in later life. The study does not shy away from the difficulties he had in his first marriage and his second marriage to a woman forty years younger than himself.

Part two provides a synoptic view of Hardy’s stories, novels, plays, and poetry. The works are described in outline, and then their main themes illuminated. This is followed by pointers towards the main critical writings on these texts and issues.

Hardy is not an easy writer to categorise. We think of him mainly as a novelist – but he is equally influential (if not so highly regarded) as a poet and a writer of novellas and short stories.

Part three deals with criticism of Hardy’s work. This is presented in chronological order – from contemporaries such as D.H. Lawrence to critics of the present day, with the focus on feminist and gender criticism, Marxist, and psychoanalytic criticism.

The book ends with a commendably thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Hardy journals.

An excellent starting point for students who are new to Hardy’s work – and a refresher course for those who would like to keep up to date with criticism.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Geoffrey Harvey, The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge, 2003, pp.228, ISBN 0415234921


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Filed Under: Thomas Hardy Tagged With: Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy, English literature, Literary criticism, Literary studies, Thomas Hardy

Confidence

August 3, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Confidence was Henry James’s fifth novel. It first appeared as a serial in Scribner’s Monthly from August 1879 through to January 1880. This was a magazine which James actually disliked, but it paid high rates for work published. The novel first appeared in book form in two volumes published by Chatto and Windus in December 1879, and it was published in America by Houghton, Osgood & Company in February 1880.

It is worth noting that the English and American editions differ substantially (and from the Scribner’s serial) in terms of punctuation and wording. The surviving manuscripts and their variants suggest that James was deliberately targeting what he saw as two different audiences – in England and America. And it is just possible that – copyright agreements being rather hazy at that time – he was consciously creating two different ‘versions’ for commercial and legal reasons.

The Muse's Tragedy

cover design by Parish Maxfield


Confidence – critical commentary

This is probably one of the least well known of James’s early novels – indeed, it could almost be counted as completely unknown to most people other than James specialists. It has certainly not been in print recently in any popular or paperback editions – with the honourable exception of the Library of America series. It was not included in the New York Edition published in 1907-1909, which suggests that James himself did not consider the novel worthy to stand alongside his more substantial achievements.

The novel was written in between two early novels which have generally remained popular with the reading public – The Europeans of 1878 and Washington Square of 1880. Like The Europeans there is very little action or dramatic tension in the story, just a great deal of conversation between the principal characters. This is James developing his interest in what we now call the psychological novel. His principal concerns are with the ways his characters understand, mis-understand, and interact with each other.

This is highlighted in the central character of Bernard Longueville. James creates a clever account of Longueville’s psychological processes in dealing with Angela Vivian. He cannot understand her shifting attitudes yet feels drawn to seek explanations and cannot fathom why he finds her so fascinating. It is quite clear to the reader that he is falling in love with her – but this is not apparent to Bernard himself. As the narrator eventually remarks on the dawning of his self-knowledge half way through the narrative:

a great many things had been taking place in his clever mind without his clever mind suspecting them

But although this oblique presentation is successful, the novel lacks the sharpness and the depth of interest of his more successful works published around this time. Events are very slow-moving and schematic, and for all its subtleties, the final resolution is quite unconvincing. We are told (via Angela’s letters to Bernard) that she has succeeded in converting Gordon’s wounded pride and jealous rage into a calm acceptance, but the events are not dramatised – we are not shown any of this process taking place.

There is also a problem of characterisation when compared with James’s more successful novels. Angela Vivian is certainly an intriguing figure – intelligent, witty, yet mysteriously contrary. But it is difficult to take the central character Bernard Longueville seriously at all – a man of endless wealth and a complete lack of purpose. Even the narrator describes him as ‘culpably unoccupied’.

However, there are two further possible readings of this spindly and makeshift plot. The first is that Bernard’s initial report to Gordon of finding Angela to be a flirt and not suitable for marriage, represents another unconscious stratagem on his part – a smokescreen to deter Gordon, so that Bernard himself can stake a claim in a woman he finds so fascinating.

The advantage of this reading is that it would fit neatly alongside his being unconsciously in love with her at that stage in the narrative. However, there is very little direct evidence in the text to support this idea. If James had this possibility in mind, he makes no mention of it in his notes for the story or in the novel itself.

But a second reading, made possible in the light of many texts from James’s later work, is that the story is a thinly veiled study in homo-eroticism – written unconsciously it should be added. In his notes for the story, James stresses the bond between the two men, as well as emphasising their different personalities:

The two men are old friends – closely united friends. The interest of the story must depend greatly upon this fact of their strong, deep friendship and upon the contrast of their two characters. They are in effect, singularly different [Bernard] must be represented as the (roughly speaking) complex nature of the two – the subtle, the refined, the fanciful, the eminently modern … [Gordon] is simpler, deeper, more masculine more easily puzzled, less intellectual, less imaginative. He is greatly under the influence of his friend and has a great esteem for his judgement.

Gordon summons Bernard to Baden-Baden, wishing to both display the woman he has fallen in love with and asking for Bernard’s critical approval of her. Bernard promptly falls in love with the same woman. It does not take a brass plaque on anyone’s front door to realise that when two people share the same love object, it is often a psychological displacement of their attraction to each other.

And this also proves to be the principal plot denouement. The story is not resolved by Gordon’s being reunited with his scatty wife Blanche, nor does it end with Bernard’s marriage to Angela (which is given no dramatic substance at all). It ends when the two men are reunited with each other – and concludes (literally) with Gordon writing Bernard “the longest letter he had ever addressed to him”, and then even more pointedly the narrative ends with these words: “The letter reached Bernard in the middle of his honeymoon.” Gordon has actually re-united himself with Bernard during the consummation of his friend’s marriage.


Confidence – study resources

Confidence Confidence – Library of America – Amazon UK

Confidence Confidence – Library of America – Amazon US

Confidence Confidence – Tark Classics – Amazon UK

Red button Confidence – Tark Classics – Amazon US

Red button Confidence – Kindle edition

Confidence Confidence – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James – biographical notes

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

Confidence


Confidence – plot summary

Chapter I.   A young American Bernard Longueville is touring Italy when he meets a woman and her daughter in Siena. He includes the attractive daughter in a landscape picture he paints, which she regards as presumptuous.

Chapter II.   Two months later he is in Venice when he receives a letter from his friend Gordon Wright imploring him to come to Baden-Baden to give his opinion on a woman with whom he is in love.

Chapter III.   On arrival in Baden-Baden Longueville meets Mrs Vivian and her charge, the talkative Blanche Evers. Then they are joined by the Englishman Captain Lovelock and Miss Vivian, who refuses to acknowledge their earlier meeting in Siena.

Chapter IV.   Bernard discusses with Gordon his being in love, which he is finding a painful experience. Bernard conceals from his friend the fact that he has already met Angela Vivian in Siena.

Chapter V.   Gordon explains his love for Angela, who moves home from one place to another in Europe with her widowed mother. Gordon has followed them from Dresden to Baden-Baden.

Chapter VI.   Bernard spars conversationally with Angela Vivian, who will still not refer to their earlier meeting in Siena. He finds her puzzling but fascinating.

Chapter VII.   Next evening they continue to argue and flirt verbally. She is concerned that Captain Lovelock is a penniless trifler, leading on the gullible Blanche Evers. Bernard challenges her directly about their Siena meeting.

Chapter VIII.   She refuses to explain, but Bernard spends more time in her company than Gordon, whom she treats politely but indifferently. Gordon reveals that he proposed to her some weeks earlier, but was turned down. He is now perplexed by her.

Chapter IX.   Bernard wonders why Mrs Vivian seems to disapprove of him, and discusses Angela with Miss Evers and the Captain.

Chapter X.   Bernard decides to ‘interview’ Mrs Vivian, who reveals that she thinks Gordon is very rich and therefore a suitable match for Angela.

Chapter XI.   Gordon has to go to England to see his sister. He leaves Bernard with a request that he study Angela closely during his absence.

Chapter XII.   Bernard visits Mrs Vivian and Angela where there is further intellectual sparring between them, and a hint that Angela is concealing something about her recent past.

Chapter XIII.   Bernard’s thoughts are increasingly taken up with Angela, who correctly guesses that George has asked him to keep an eye on her. Bernard thinks she might marry George for his money, even though she does not love him.

Chapter XIV.   Gordon’s return is delayed. Bernard impulsively decides to leave Baden-Baden, but when he mentions it to Angela she asks him to stay – which he does.

Chapter XV.   When Gordon returns Bernard reveals his reservations about Angela’s intentions – and then uncharacteristically goes to the casino, where he wins lots of money. Next day Gordon suddenly leaves Baden-Baden, but does not say why. Bernard fears he might have misjudged Angela and done the wrong thing.

Chapter XVI.   Suddenly the Vivians and Blanche Evers leave Baden-Baden and travel to Lausanne. Captain Lovelock cannot leave Baden-Baden because of debts he has run up, so Bernard, feeling uneasy about his winnings, lends him money – which he promptly loses in the casino. Bernard then leaves to go round the world alone.

Chapter XVII.   Two years later Gordon writes to Bernard to say that he is getting married to Blanche Evers. Bernard travels to New York, where he finds them both very happy with each other.

Chapter XVIII.   However, Bernard thinks that Blanche might have married Gordon for his money, and he wonders how his friend can be happy with such a frivolous and garrulous wife. When social gossip about Bernard and Blanche begins to circulate because of the time they are spending together, he decides to leave, whereupon Blanche claims that Gordon does not care for her at all.

Chapter XIX.   Bernard goes to California, finds nothing to keep him there, then decides to go back to Europe. As he leaves, Captain Lovelock arrives to stay at Gordon’s house.

Chapter XX.   Bernard goes to Normandy where he meets Angela again on the beach. He feels that he has wronged her by spoiling her chances of a marriage to Gordon. They spar with each other again, as in the past.

Chapter XXI.   Bernard finds Angela as remote as ever, yet he feels that she does not bear any grudge against him. He takes Mrs Vivian and Angela to the local casino – then suddenly realises that he is in love with Angela.

Chapter XXII.   In fact he realises that he has been in love with her for the past three years – and the idea frightens him. He decides to leave immediately, but the next day goes for a long walk instead. When he goes to pay his respects to the Vivians, they have suddenly left for Paris.

Chapter XXIII.   Bernard follows the Vivians to Paris, where Mrs Vivian is welcoming and Angela is as polite yet as indifferent as ever.

Chapter XXIV.   Visiting frequently, Bernard eventually tells Angela that he has been in love with her since they first met. She accepts his declaration, and Mrs Vivian gives her blessing to them. Bernard apologises for ‘wronging’ her in Baden-Baden, and she explains that she was angry at being a pawn in Gordon’s ‘assessment’ of her.

Chapter XXV.   A wedding is planned, but then Gordon, Blanche, and Captain Lovelock suddenly arrive from New York. Blanche is as silly and flirtatious as ever, and Lovelock is a pompous bore, acting as if he is Blanche’s lover.

Chapter XXVI.   Bernard and Gordon go for a private walk to resume their close friendship – but they meet Mrs Vivian and Angela, which results in Bernard’s revelation that he is engaged to marry Angela. Gordon does not like the news, and walks off.

Chapter XXVII.   When Bernard reports Gordon’s annoyance to Angela she reveals that Gordon asked her for a second time to marry him – even after Bernard had filed his critical report on her. However, she refused him, so Bernard need no longer feel that he had misled either of them.

Chapter XXVIII.   Blanche suddenly arrives with Captain Lovelock in tow and gushes indiscreetly about herself and Gordon, claiming to be ‘unwell’. She is eventually surprised to learn about Angela’s impending marriage to Bernard.

Chapter XXIX.   On the next day Bernard visits Angela and finds Gordon there. Gordon is angry, feels betrayed, claims his wife is about to leave him, and wants Angela to postpone her marriage so as to give him another chance. She agrees to do so.

Chapter XXX.   Angela argues to Bernard that Gordon is actually in love with his wife but doesn’t realise it. She plans to get rid of Captain Lovelock and reconcile Gordon and Blanche. Bernard is exiled to London, where Angela writes to him each day with news of progress. After just over a week, she has persuaded Gordon that all is well.

Chapter XXXI.   Angela’s plan works, and Bernard returns to Paris, where he and Gordon are happily reconciled. Gordon takes Blanche to Cairo, and Bernard marries Angela.


Confidence

Baden-Baden – the Kurhaus


Confidence – principal characters
I an un-named narrator who makes occasional appearances
Bernard Longueville a rich American with no purpose
Gordon Wright his equally rich friend, who dabbles in chemistry
Mrs Vivian a Bostonian widow
Angela Vivian her attractive, spirited, and intelligent daughter
Captain Augustus Lovelock a penniless English hanger-on and bore
Blanche Evers a featherbrained and garrulous young woman in the care of Mrs Vivian

Henry James's study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

 

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

 

Henry James Daisy MillerDaisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2014


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Cousin Bette

July 12, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, web links

Cousin Bette (1846) is often regarded as the greatest of Balzac’s many novels and stories. It is an action-packed story that deals with all his favourite themes – financial greed, sexual desire, and the drive for social status – plus some spectacular examples of successful and failed revenge. The setting is upper-class society in Paris, most of whose inhabitants are ruthless social climbers, wallowing in financial corruption, adultery, and a world of polite hypocrisy.

Cousin Bette


Cousin Bette – background

La Cousine Bette (full French title) was first published as a serial in La Constitutionnel in 1846. This was a newspaper featuring commerce, politics, and literature. In 1847 the novel appeared in book format, published by Chlendowski. A year later it appeared as Volume XVII in the definitive Furne edition of Balzac’s collected works, given the title La Comedie Humaine.

The novel began life as a long story called Le Parasite (an ironic reference to Bette’s role in the family) and from the start it was seen as a companion novel to Cousin Pons which appeared the following year. Balzac wrote the whole of Cousin Bette in only two months – an astonishing rate of literary production, even by his normal standards.

In fact he abandoned his usual practice of editing his work on printers’ proof copy. Instead he sent his instalments directly to the newspaper editor. He never saw his work until it was published, and he had to write feverishly in order to stay ahead of the daily instalments. These are still available at Le Constitutionnel online archives (in the original French). See entries for 8 October to 3 December 1846.

It is worth noting that his original text was split into short scenes, each of which was given a descriptive and sometimes ironic title (‘A third father for the Marneffe child’). These titles were removed in later editions in order to save space – but they make the novel much easier to read, and offer an additional level of entertainment.


Cousin Bette – commentary

Sex and money

It is quite clear from this novel that Balzac sees the principal forces driving his characters as their desire for sex and money, quite apart from their social climbing and a taste for sumptuous living. The main character Hulot is an example of sexual obsession, who ruins his family in his pursuit of courtesans and young girls. His counterpart Valerie Marneffe uses her sexual allure to achieve a rich and comfortable life in the upper echelons of society. The two items – sex and money – are often directly related.

But it is interesting to note the differences in the ways these two topics are treated Whilst there is no shortage of desperation, dramatic irony, and social ruin into which characters are prepared to put themselves in their pursuit of sex – the female characters passively and the males actively – there is remarkably little explicit mention of any sexual activity.

This can be explained by the literary conventions of the period. It would simply not have been possible to publish descriptions of explicit sex in the early nineteenth century – either in France or any other European country. In fact novels produced in France were considered dangerously racy for even hinting at sexual desire.

Yet the reverse is true of the financial connections that dominate the characters’ lives. Everybody seems to be aware to the last Franc how much people are worth, how much they spend on their homes, how much it costs to maintain a mistress or furnish an apartment, and how big some daughter’s dowry will be.

Characters such as Crevel and Hulot offer quite clearly defined sums of money in return for sexual favours from their mistresses – sometimes in the form of regular incomes. Crevel offers to pay a specific dowry for Adeline’s daughter Hortense if Adeline will become his lover. When she refuses, his similar offer to Valerie Marneffe makes even clearer the business-like nexus between cash and sex:

Be all mine. You won’t regret it. To start with, I’ll give you a share certificate with eight thousand Francs a year, but as an annuity. I won’t give you the capital until you’ve been faithful to me for five years.

The separation of sexual desire from conventional marriage might strike many readers as rather surprising, if not shocking. But there are legal and socially structural reasons why this was prevalent. For an explanation of the French establishment of the Napoleonic Code and its effects on marriage and inheritance, see my comments on Balzac’s earlier and equally powerful novel Old Goriot (1834).

Baron Hulot

From the opening of the novel until its very last sentence, Baron Hulot is obsessed by his pursuit of sex. He disgraces and ruins his family by his behaviour, he spends (squanders) thousands and thousands of Francs on keeping one mistress after another, and he neglects his saintly wife who dies with shock when she overhears him propositioning a kitchen maid when he is eighty years old: ‘My wife hasn’t got long to live, and if you like you can be a baroness’. For good measure, he is also guilty of embezzlement. He sets up a fraudulent operation in government military supplies to Algeria, and when the crime is exposed his elder brother has to repay the debt in order to save the honour of the family.

Valerie Marneffe
Hulot spends much of the novel in thrall to the young and attractive Madame Marneffe, until he is displaced by Crevel – who has more money. She is adept at sustaining multiple simultaneous relationships, extracting money from her admirers, and living in luxury at secret locations. Even though she is married to the seedy clerk Marneffe, she counts Hulot, Crevel, Steinbock, and Montes amongst her lovers. When she becomes pregnant she manages to persuade all five men that they are the father of her child. Her success appears unstoppable, until she and Crevel are poisoned by the jealous Montes – both of them dying in a gruesome and lingering manner.

Cousin Bette
Bette is the ‘poor relation’ of the novel. She is a cousin of the Hulot family, and bitterly resents their patronising attitude to her. She is motivated entirely by revenge – in a series of psychologically complex manoeuvres. First she takes Steinbock under what is supposed to be her maternal wing; but she is intensely jealous when he marries Hortense and becomes a member of the family. She allies herself with Valerie Marneffe in order to extract money from the Hulots, and she gradually becomes obsessed with the idea of marrying Hulot’s elder brother and being a countess. But none of her schemes are successful, and she dies of tuberculosis, taking her secret hatred of the family to her grave.


Cousin Bette – study resources

Cousin Bette – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Cousin Bette – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Cousin Bette – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Cousin Bette – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Cousin Bette – Everyman – Amazon UK

Cousin Bette – Everyman – Amazon US


Gobseck

Honore de Balzac


Cousin Bette – plot summary

Monsieur Crevel calls on Adeline Hulot to pay court to her. He reveals his illicit relationship with the singer Josepha, whom Adeline’s husband Hector Hulot stole to be his own mistress. Crevel predicts that Hulot will ruin himself with expenditure on women, and he offers to supply a dowry for Adeline’s daughter Hortense in exchange for her ‘favours’ as a lover. She flatly refuses his proposal.

Cousin Bette is a ‘family parasite’ who remains stubbornly unfashionable. She secretly has under her protection Count Steinbock, a young sculptor, but as his patroness, not his lover. She files legal papers to record the financial support she has given him.

Josepha leaves Hulot for a much richer man. Adeline consoles her husband for this loss, and he promptly takes up with Madame Marneffe. Their daughter Hortense meets Steinbock, who immediately falls in love with her. Hulot promotes Steinbock, who immediately rises to fashionable success.

Mme Marneffe reveals the relationship between Steinbock and Hortense to Bette, who is furious. The two scheming women become accomplices. Bette vows to avenge herself on Steinbock and the Hulots. Crevel seeks revenge on Hulot as a sexual rival.

Bette has Steinbock arrested for debt so that he cannot marry Hortense, but he is released the same day. Hulot engages in fraudulent business deals to fund his daughter’s marriage and his own expenses in keeping a mistress. He moves his wife into a smaller apartment to save money.

Crevel is envious of Hulot’s possession of Mme Marneffe. Bette accumulates money from Crevel and Hulot, both of whom think she is working on their behalf. She also ingratiates herself with Adeline. Hulot incurs further debts which the family cannot meet. Bette schemes to marry into the family as an act of revenge.

Tbe young Brazilian Montes suddenly appears as Mme Marneffe’s youngest lover. She hides him in her bedroom whilst Hulot rages jealously about Crevel. Valerie then tricks Crevel into deposing Hulot as her ‘protector’. Crevel reveals his hidden love nest to Hulot and pretends that they are both better off without her. Next day they all meet at Valerie’s where she is deciding between Crevel and Montes as her ‘protector’.

Steinbock’s reputation declines and he lives extravagantly. Bette persuades him to borrow money from Mme Marneffe Steinbock flirts with Valerie and asks her to pose for a sculpture. He lies to his wife Hortense, and they quarrel, but are reconciled by Adeline. Valerie becomes pregnant with Hulot’s child.

Hortense leaves Steinbock and goes to live with her mother. Montes, Crevel, Hulot, and Steinbock all believe they are the father of Valerie’s child – and Monsieur Marneffe pretends to be. Hulot’s fraud in Algeria is uncovered. He continues to meet Valerie Marneffe in Crevel’s love nest, until there is suddenly a police raid. This is exposed as a trap set by Mme Marneffe herself. The official report of Hulot’s Algerian fraud is silently quashed by his young boss as a favour.

But Hulot must find money to cover up the Algerian swindle. His wife Adeline offers herself to Crevel in exchange for the money. Crevel turns her down – but is touched by her piety and offers to lend her the money.

Hulot’s brother pays the missing Algerian money in order to protect the family’s good name – but he then dies. Adeline seeks to ‘rescue’ her husband morally, but he runs away and hides in secret, pursued by debtors.

He visits Josepha, who sets him up in an embroidery shop with money and a sixteen year old mistress. Valentin Hulot and his mother Adeline are also given money and jobs. Valerie Marneffe bears a stillborn child, and her husband dies.

Adeline visits Josepha where they both learn that Hulot’s embroidery business has gone into debt and he has run off with another young girl. Josepha promises to help her find Hulot. Bette finds Hulot and lends him money to set up another business with the girl.

At a courtesan’s dinner party it is revealed to Baron Montes that Valerie Marneffe is about to marry Crevel and has Steinbock as a lover. Crevel vows to kill her, but even when confronted in the love nest with Steinbock, she bluffs her way out

Crevel and Valerie Marneffe both become infected with the deadly disease Montes has threatened to use as a revenge. They both die, leaving money to the Hulots.

Adeline meets the fifteen year old Atila who is living with Hulot in hiding. She takes her husband back home, and the whole family is re-united. Cousin Bette dies, along with her secret hatred of the family. Adeline discovers Hulot seducing the young kitchen maid and dies of shock, after which Hulot, now eighty years old, marries the maid.


Cousin Bette – principal characters
Baron Hulot a 60 year old rake, ex-army administrator
Count Hulot his honourable older brother
Adeline Hulot the Baron’s attractive and saintly forgiving wife (48)
Hortense Hulot their daughter, who marries Steinbock
Victorin Hulot the son, who becomes a successful lawyer
Lizbeth Fischer their cousin, an old maid at 41
Celestin Crevel a wealthy rake, mayor in Paris, former perfumier
Celestine Crevel his daughter, married to Victorin Hulot
Josepha (Mirah) young Jewish singer, mistress to Crevel and Hulot
Valerie Marneffe young and attractive, with multiple lovers
Jean-Paul Marneffe her seedy and depraved husband
Wenceslas Steinbock a young Polish count and sculptor
Baron Montes de Montejanos a rich Brazilian, lover to Valerie Marneffe

© Roy Johnson 2017


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Filed Under: Honore de Balzac Tagged With: Balzac, Cousin Bette, French Literature, Literary studies, The novel

Daisy Miller

November 4, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Daisy Miller is one of Henry James’s most famous stories. It was first published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1878 by Leslie Stephen (Virginia Woolf’s father) and became instantly popular. It was reprinted several times within a couple of years, and it was even pirated in Boston and New York. On the surface it’s a simple enough tale of a spirited young American girl visiting Europe. She is a product of the New World, but her behaviour doesn’t sit easily with the more conservative manners of her fellow expatriates in Europe. She pushes the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to the limit, and ultimately the consequences are tragic.

Colosseum in moonlight

the Colosseum in moonlight


Daisy Miller – critical commentary

Story or novella?

Daisy Miller represents a difficult case for making distinctions between the long short story and the novella. Henry James himself called it a ‘short chronicle’, but as a matter of fact it was rejected by the first publisher he sent it to on the grounds that it was a ‘nouvelle’ – that is, too long to be a short story, and not long enough to be a novel.

It should be remembered that the concept of the novella only emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, and publishers were sceptical about its commercial appeal. This was the age of three-volume novels, serial publications, and magazine stories which were written to be read at one sitting.

If it is perceived as a long short story, then the basic narrative line becomes ‘a young American girl is too forthright for her own good in unfamiliar surroundings and eventually dies as a result’. This seems to trivialize the subject matter, and reduce it to not much more than a cautionary anecdote.

The case for regarding it as a novella is much stronger. Quite apart from the element of length (30,000 words approximately) it is a highly structured work. It begins with Winterbourne’s arrival from Geneva, and it ends with his return there. It has two settings – Vevey and Rome. Daisy travels from Switzerland ‘over the mountains’ into Italy and Rome, one of the main centres of the Grand Tour. And it has two principal characters – Winterbourne and Daisy. It also has two interlinked subjects. One is overt – Winterbourne’s attempt to understand Daisy’s character. The second is more complex and deeply buried – class mobility, and the relationship between Europe and America.

Class mobility

Daisy’s family are representatives of New Money. Her father, Ezra B. Miller is a rich industrialist. He has made his money in unfashionable but industrial Schenectady, in upstate New York. Having made that money, the family have wintered in fashionable New York City. This nouveau riche experience has given Daisy the confidence to feel that she can act as she wishes.

But the upper-class social group in which she is mixing have a different set of social codes. They are in fact imitating those of the European aristocracy to which they aspire. In this group a young woman should be chaperoned in public, and she must not even appear to spend too long in the company of an eligible bachelor because this might compromise her reputation.

Daisy has the confidence and the social dynamism provided by her father’s industrial-based money back in Schenectady, but she is denied permanent entry into the upper-class society in which she is mixing because she flouts its codes of behaviour.

Conversely, Winterbourne is attracted to Daisy’s frank and open manner, but he does not understand her – until it is too late. In fact he fails to recognise the clear opportunities she offers him to make a fully engaged relationship, and as she rightly observes, he is ‘too stiff’ to shift from his conservative attitudes. The text does not make clear his source of income, but he obviously feels at home with the upper-class American expatriates, and his return to Geneva at the end of the novella to resume his ‘studies’ underscores his wealthy dilettantism.

He is trapped in his upper-class beliefs in a way that Daisy is not in hers. She has the confidence of having made a transition from one class into another at a higher level. She has a foot in both camps – but her tragedy is that she fails to recognise that she cannot enjoy the benefits of the higher class without accepting the restrictions membership will impose on her behaviour.


Daisy Miller – study resources

Daisy Miller The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Daisy Miller Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller – Cliff’s Notes – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller – DVD film version – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Daisy Miller


Daisy Miller – plot summary

Part I. Frederick Winterbourne, an American living in Geneva is visiting his aunt in Vevey, on Lake Leman. In the hotel garden he meets Daisy Miller via her young brother Randolph. He is much taken with her good looks, but puzzled by her forthright conversation. He offers to show her the Castle of Chillon at the end of the lake.

Henry James Daisy MillerPart II. Mrs Costello, his rather snobbish aunt warns him against the Miller family on the grounds that they lack social cachet. When he visits the castle with Daisy she teases him, offers to take him on as tutor to Rudolph, and is annoyed when he reveals that he must leave the next day. Nevertheless she invites him to visit her in Italy later that year.

Part III. Some weeks later on his arrival in Rome, Winterbourne’s friend Mrs Walker warns him that Daisy is establishing a dubious reputation because of her socially unconventional behaviour. Daisy joins them, and Winterbourne insists on accompanying her when she leaves to join a friend alone in public. He disapproves of the friend Signor Giovanelli who he sees as a lower-class fortune hunter, and Mrs Walker even tries to prevent Daisy from being seen alone in public with men.

Part IV. The American expatriate community resent Daisy’s behaviour, and Mrs Walker then snubs her publicly at a party they all attend. Winterbourne tries to warn Daisy that she is breaking the social conventions, but she insists that she is doing nothing wrong or dishonourable. He defends Daisy’s friendship with Signor Giovanelli to her American critics. Finally, Winterbourne encounters Daisy with Giovanelli viewing the Colosseum by moonlight. Winterbourne insists that she go back to the hotel to avoid a scandal. She goes under duress, but she has in fact contracted malaria (‘Roman Fever’) from which she dies a few days later. At the funeral Giovanelli reveals to Winterbourne that he knew that Daisy would never have married him. Winterbourne realises that he has made a mistake in his assessment of Daisy, but he ‘nevertheless’ returns to live in Geneva.


Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant


Daisy Miller – principal characters
Frederick Forsyth Winterbourne a young (27) American expatriate of independent means who purports to be studying in Geneva
Ezra B. Miller a wealthy American industrial businessman (who does not appear in the story)
Mrs Miller his wife, who is a hypochondriac
Annie P. (‘Daisy’) Miller their spirited daughter
Randolph C. Miller her outspoken nine-year-old brother
Eugenio tall and distinguished courier and factotum to the Millers in Europe
Mrs Costello Winterbourne’s snobbish aunt in Vevey – a ‘widow of fortune’
Mrs Walker Winterbourne’s friend in Rome
Sig Giovanelli Daisy’s friend in Rome – a solicitor

Daisy Miller – film adaptation

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1974)

Starring Cybill Shepherd and Barry Brown


Daisy Miller – further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James, London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button William T. Stafford (ed), James’s Daisy Miller: The story, the play, the critics, New York: Scribner, 1963.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2012


Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James web links The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

Henry James web links The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

Red button A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.


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Filed Under: Henry James, James - Tales, The Novella Tagged With: American literature, Daisy Miller, Henry James, The Novella

Desperate Remedies

November 3, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, further reading

Desperate Remedies (1871) was Thomas Hardy’s first published novel. He wrote it following the disappointment of having his first work The Poor Man and the Lady rejected for publication by Chapman and Hall. To court commercial success he cast his second work in a genre that was very popular at that time – the sensation novel. These were tales which in the words of critic John Sutherland were ‘designed to jolt the reader’. They did this by the inclusion of topics considered very daring at that period – such as bigamy, sex outside marriage, fraud, disputed wills, and crime of all kinds.

Desperate Remedies

Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon had written amazingly successful novels which we might now class as ‘thrillers’ – The Woman in White (1861) and Lady Audley’s Secret (1861) both exploited subjects such as dark family secrets, bigamy, and imprisonment.

Hardy was to have plenty of trouble with the censorship of his later and more famous novels, but even here in his first, he manages to include suicide, attempted rape, lesbianism, and murder.


Desperate Remedies – a note on the text

The novel was first published anonymously by Tinsley Brothers in 1871 in the three-volume format which was common at the time. There was an American edition in 1874, a ‘New Edition’ in 1889, and a further edition for the first collection of Hardy’s work, the ‘Wessex Novels’ published by Osgood, MacIlvaine in 1896. This definitive edition was then superseded by the ‘Wessex Edition’ of 1912.

Hardy made many revisions to the original text of Desperate Remedies for these later editions, but they were largely minor issues concerned with distinctions of social class, the use of dialect amongst rural characters, and the topographical integration of the setting into what by the latter part of the nineteenth century had become known as ‘Wessex’.

For a full discussion of these textual revisions, see the bibliographical essay by Patricia Ingham that is part of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the novel, which reprints the 1871 version of the text.


Desperate Remedies – critical commentary

The very nature of the sensation novel is to introduce mysteries and withhold crucial information to create suspense and drama in the narrative. The following commentary contains what are called ‘plot spoilers’ – that is, revelations about the secrets and concealed details in the story. These comments assume that you have read the novel – so if you have not, ‘look away now’ as they say in television sports reporting.

The sensation novel

This novel quite deliberately exploited the conventions of the sensation novel which had become very popular in the 1860s under the influence of writers such as Wilkie Collins and May Elizabeth Braddon. Yet Desperate Remedies was not a big success at the time of its publication, and it remains even now one of Hardy’s lesser-known works.

However, it throws a very interesting light onto his later, darker, and more tragic works. These more famous novels quite clearly use the elements of sensationalism, but are rarely recognised as doing so, because Hardy embedded these ingredients into a heavily sculpted world of pastoral realism that he made his own and called ‘Wessex’.

The sensation novel was called ‘a novel with a mystery’ and usually included elements of irregular sexuality, hidden relationships, deviant behaviour, and crime. These novels pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in the literary novel at the same time as appealing to a popular audience – in much the same way that television soap operas and serial dramas do today.

The very foundation of the central mystery in the novel is one of illegitimate birth. Miss Aldclyffe was seduced as a young girl by her older cousin. She gave birth to a son, and then abandoned the child – who grew up to be Aeneas Manston – the central character and villain in the novel. The secret relationship between them is hinted at but not revealed until the very last pages of the narrative.

Manston blackmails his own mother into persuading Springrove to marry his cousin Adelaide rather than Cytherea. Blackmail was another favourite topic in sensation novels.

There is a hint of bigamy when Manston falls in love with Cytherea and asks her to marry him. He does this whilst he is still married to Eunice Manston – though nobody else knows about her at the time. Ironically in dramatic terms, Eunice suddenly reappears and is thought to die in the fire – but the truth is that she is murdered by Manston when she threatens to expose him,

It is therefore a double irony that as a result of this murder Manston becomes technically free to marry Cytherea, which he does – only to be thwarted in his attempts to consummate the marriage.

He then lives with a prostitute (Anne Seaway) whom he passes off as his wife Eunice – which is technically illegal and called personation. Finally, when his crimes are exposed, he commits suicide.

There is also what we would now call an attempted rape when Manston escapes capture and goes to the house where Cytherea is living. However, the incident is problematic in terms of interpretation across a time gap of one hundred and fifty years.

First it should be noted that technically he is married to Cytherea, and legitimately married, since his first wife is now dead. Second, he is well aware of his legal rights: “let me come in” he symbolically demands – “I am your husband”.

The interpretive difficulty here is tha he is not acting illegally. At that time in the mid nineteenth century the concept of rape within marriage would not be recognised, so Manston is acting within ‘rights’ that he is very keen to pursue.

Hardy is clearly exploring the boundaries of marriage, legality, sexuality, and moral behaviour, as he was to do in his later novels which often had similar elements of ‘false’ and unconsummated marriages, as well as perverse relationships – up to his very last novel Jude the Obscure.

If the legality of this incident seems amazing, so is the curious scene of lesbianism between Miss Aldclyffe and Cytherea on the girl’s arrival at Knapwater House. This episode is noteworthy for a number of reasons.

First, the abruptness of its occurrence. Miss Aldclyffe has met her new chamber maid Cytherea only two hours previously, on her retirement after dinner. Second, the very explicit nature in which it is described: Miss Aldclyffe actually gets into bed with Cytherea, where there is undressing and demands for more passionate kissing. Third, this burst of homosexuality has almost no bearing on what follows in the plot: there is no further evidence of any Sapphic inclinations on Miss Aldclyffe’s part.

But there are two further points worth making about the scene. At the time that Hardy was writing, there was hardly any public consciousness of sexual desire between women. When parliament made sex between two people of the same gender a crime (1885) the bill only included males, who would be accused of ‘gross indecency’. Women were not included because (it is now thought) to do so might draw their attention to it as a possible activity. The well-known story about Queen Victoria not being able to understand lesbianism is a myth generated during the 1970s.

Consequently, this now-famous passage in the novel passed without comment or outrage in 1871, but when Hardy came to revise the novel later in the century, he toned down the scene. Mrs Aldclyffe’s Sapphic lunges were made more ‘maternal’ – to fit with the vaguely protective behaviour she exhibits towards Cytherea during the later parts of the novel.

Hardy packs a number of sensation novel elements into Desperate Remedies, and it is worth noting how topics such as sex before marriage, bigamy, ‘false’ marriages, rape, and murder crop up in later works such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874>, The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891).

Letters

It is amazing what a large part written communications play in the plot of the novel. Letters are written, stolen, forged, hidden, and in general form important links in the communications shared by the participants.

Miss Aldclyffe sets two major strands of the story in motion when she places advertisements for a house-maid and then a land steward. This brings both Cytherea and Manston into her household and under her influence – though it could also be argued that both Miss Aldclyffe and Manston (mother and son) fall in love with Cytherea.

Miss Aldclyffe also sends Manston a bogus letter which purports to come from the Society of Architects, to make sure that he applies for the job of steward.

A casual note written by Cytheria to Manston is used by Miss Aldclyffe to persuade Springrove that Cytherea is in love with the steward, and possession of the note is a crucial element in its persuasiveness.

A copy of a poem found in Eunice Manston’s sewing box written by her husband turns out to be significant. It mentions the colour of her eyes as ‘azure’, whereas the woman masquerading as Eunice (Anne Seaway) has black eyes. This helps to expose Manston’s guilt and duplicity.

Later, Manston himself places bogus adverts in London newspapers asking for news of his wife Eunice – whom he knows is dead, because he has killed her. He then composes fake replies to those adverts which purport to come from Eunice, but he has Anne Seaway transpose them into an imitation of his wife’s handwriting.

Manston also intercepts a letter written by Springrove to Owen Gaye. Manston changes some of the incriminating information it contains, then re-inserts it into the postal system. (It is worth noting that the credibility of the plot becomes rather strained at this juncture.)

Finally, Manston’s last contribution to written information is his prison confession. In this he explains the exact circumstances of murdering his wife and how he concealed the body. This is a neat resolution to the mystery – because this is information only he could know.

Sex in the novel

During the mid to late nineteenth century it was not possible to depict scenes of explicit sexual behaviour in English novels. There were unwritten conventions prohibiting the mention of such subjects, and these unofficial forms of censorship were most severely enforced by circulating libraries such as Mudie’s who accounted for a large proportion of book sales.

But like most skilful and inventive novelists, Hardy found a way round such prohibitions by writing about sex using symbolism and metaphor Two scenes from Desperate Remedies illustrate this point – and both involve Cytherea and the two men who wish to possess her.

In the first, Edward Springrove takes Cytherea rowing in the bay at Creston Harbour. They have only just met, and it is the first time they have been alone together.

They thus sat facing each other in the graceful yellow cockle-shell, and his eyes frequently found a resting place in the depths of hers. The boat was so small that at each return of the sculls, when his hands came forward to begin the pull, they approached so near to her bosom that her vivid imagination began to thrill her with a fancy that he was going to clasp his arms around her. The sensation grew so strong that she could not run the risk of again meeting his eyes at those crucial moments, and turned aside to inspect the distant horizon; then she grew weary of looking sideways and was driven to return to her natural position again.

In the second scene Cytherea is sheltering from a thunderstorm in the house occupied by Aeneas Manston, who is masquerading as an eligible bachelor. He entrances her by playing music on his home-made organ:

She was swayed into emotional opinions concerning the strange man before her, new impulses of thought came with new harmonies, and entered into her with a gnawing thrill. A dreadful flash of lightning then, and the thunder close upon it. She found herself involuntarily shrinking up beside him, and looking with parted lips at his face.
He turned his eyes and saw her emotion, which greatly increased the ideal element in her expressive face. She was in the state in which woman’s instinct to conceal has lost its power over her impulse to tell; and he saw it. Bending his handsome face over her till his lips almost touched her ear, he murmured without breaking the harmonies – “Do you very much like this piece?”

In both cases a young single woman is alone and unsupervised in the company of a man. Victorian conventions of protection and chaperoning went to elaborate lengths to prevent such situations. Cytherea is noticeably disturbed in both scenes. In fact Hardy brings his heroine into a state of almost orgasmic excitement just because her clothes are touching those of Manston. Hardy even theorises about it, as narrator:

His clothes are something exterior to every man; but to a woman her dress is part of her body. Its motions are all present to her intelligence if not to her eyes; no man knows how his coat-tails swing. By the slightest hyperbole it may be said that her dress has sensation. Crease but the very Ultima Thule of fringe or flounce, and it hurts her as much as pinching her. Delicate antennae, or feelers, bristle on every outlying frill. Go to the uppermost: she is there; tread on the lowest: the fair creature is there almost before you.
Thus the touch of clothes, which was nothing to Manston, sent a thrill through Cytherea, seeing, moreover, that he was of the nature of a mysterious stranger. She looked out again at the storm, but still felt him.


Desperate Remedies – study resources

Desperate Remedies Desperate Remedies – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Desperate Remedies Desperate Remedies – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Desperate Remedies Desperate Remedies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Desperate Remedies Desperate Remedies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Desperate Remedies The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Desperate Remedies


Desperate Remedies – chapter summaries

I.   Ambrose Graye falls in love with Cytherea, who turns down his offer of marriage for reasons she cannot explain. Eight years later he marries a woman who dies, leaving him a son Owen and a daughter also called Cytherea. She sees her father fall to his death, which leaves the siblings in debt. They move to the West Country to start new lives.

II.   Owen works in an office, and Cytherea asks him about the young head clerk Springrove, who she meets on a boat excursion.

III.   Owen recounts a tale of the old Cytherea’s meeting with an older woman in Hammersmith. Springrove takes Cytherea rowing and declares his love for her – but there is something he will not tell her.

IV.   Cytherea is interviewed by Miss Aldclyffe who is attracted to her and employs her in the position of lady’s maid.

V.   Cytherea arrives at Knapwater House where Miss Aldclyffe reveals a locket containing the portrait of Cytherea’s father Ambrose Graye. They share the same first name, but they quarrel,

VI.   Miss Aldclyffe gets into bed with Cytherea and tries to seduce her. She rails against men, then reveals that Springrove is already engaged to be married. Her father Mr Aldclyffe dies the same night and Cytherea stays on as companion to Miss Aldclyffe/

VII.  Miss Aldclyffe decides to make improvements to the estate and wishes to appoint a steward. She advertises, but then writes to Aeneas Manston, who she appoints against the judgement of her solicitor.

VIII.   Relations between Cytherea and Miss Aldclyffe improve. Cytherea meets Adelaide Hinton who is engaged to Springrove. The locals perceive a connection between Manston and Miss Aldclyffe. Cytherea is enraptured when Manston plays his organ during a thunderstorm.

Volume II

I.   Manston is enamoured of Cytherea, who wonders at all the coincidences linking her and Miss Aldclyffe, who receives a letter from Manston’s estranged wife which is a threat and a plea. She confronts Manston and he agrees to take his wife back.

II.   Manston misses his wife’s train. She goes to the Three Tranters Inn where a fire breaks out at night and she is killed. Springrove and Manston arrive late and meet in the church as rivals for Cytherea.

III.   Next day Manston asks Miss Aldclyffe to help him win Cytherea by persuading Springrove to marry Adelaide. An inquest concludes that Mrs Manston’s death was accidental. However, old Springrove is obliged to rebuild the cottages his fire destroyed. Miss Aldclyffe argues with Edward Springrove that he has a duty to marry Adelaide. She produces evidence that persuades him.

IV.   Cytherea continues to pine for Springrove. Manston proposes to her, but she refuses. Her brother Owen has medical problems but Manston is kind to him. Miss Aldclyffe argues the case for Manston. When Manston proposes moving Owen into his house to recuperate, Cytherea agrees to marry him.

V.   On the eve of the wedding Adelaide suddenly marries a rich farmer. Springrove arrives at the wedding – but is too late. Cytherea loves him as much as ever, even though he appears to be dying. A railway porter then confesses to seeing Eunice Manston on the night of the fire. Edward jumps on a train to pursue the newlyweds. He locates Cytherea in Southampton. Owen arrives and takes his sister to a separate hotel.

Volume III

I.   Manston goes home, procrastinates, and then places an advert in London newspapers for his wife Eunice. She eventually replies, appearing to think he still loves her. Manston takes her back.

II.   Owen is promoted, and moves with Cytherea to a different town. Springrove proposes to Cytherea, but she refuses because ‘scandal’ is now attached to her name. Springrove believes Manston knew his wife was still alive. Owen wants to find proof.

III.   Owen and Cytherea make enquiries about Eurnice Manston at her former address in London. Springrove tracks down her sewing box and posts the contents to Owen, unaware that he is being followed by Manston.

IV.   Manston intercepts Owen’s letter and substitutes a photograph then posts it on. When the letter reaches Owen, he thinks a third party might be involved in the mystery.

V.  Owen checks the colour of Mrs Manston’s eyes, which are not the same as those mentioned in a poem found in the box. They seek the rector’s advice, but he is baffled. Springrove arrives from London with news that Mrs Manston is an impostor. Manston and his lover Anne Seaway fear that their plot will be exposed if the real Mrs Manston returns.

VI.   Anne breaks into Manston’s desk and reads complaining letters from Eunice. The rector presents the evidence on Manston to Miss Aldclyffe, but she refuses to accept it. Anne eavesdrops on Manston and Miss Aldclyffe. He is desperate for her help. He tries to give Anne a sleeping draught, but she follows him to an outhouse where he retrieves a sack and is then watched by a detective and Miss Aldclyffe, followed by Anne. He buries the sack then runs off. Anne and the detective dig up the sack, which contains the body of Eunice Manston.

VII.   Manston evades capture and goes to Cytherea where he attempts to ‘rape’ her, but she is rescued by Springrove. Manston is arrested.

VIII.   In prison Manston writes a confession of how he killed Eunice, then hangs himself. Miss Aldclyffe sends for Cytherea and reveals that Manston was her illegitimate son. Next morning she dies.

Epilogue.   Miss Aldclyffe leaves all her estate to Manston’s wife – so Cytherea inherits Knapwater House and marries Springrove fifteen months later.


Desperate Remedies – principal characters
Ambrose Graye an architect
Owen Graye his son, also an architect
Cytherea Graye his daughter
Edward Springrove handsome head clerk
Miss Aldclyffe mistress of Knapwater House
Mrs Morris housekeeper at Knapwater
Aeneas Manston estate steward at Knapwater
Eunice Manston an American actress, his wife
Adelaide Hinton engaged to Springrove
Mr Raunham the rector at Knapwater
Anne Seaway Manston’s mistress, a prostitute

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'UrbervillesTess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbervilles Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbervilles Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The WoodlandersThe Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Wessex TalesWessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.
Thomas Hardy Wessex Tales Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy Wessex Tales Buy the book at Amazon US


Thomas Hardy – web links

Hardy at Mantex Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Thomas Hardy complete works The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Hardy eTexts Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Hardy at Wikipedia Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

Thomas Hardy web links The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

Thomas Hardy web links The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Hardy at IMDB Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy web links Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Red button Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

© Roy Johnson 2016


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Filed Under: Thomas Hardy Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The novel, Thomas Hardy

Dombey and Son

October 23, 2015 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Dombey and Son was first issued in monthly instalments by Bradbury & Evans between October 1846 and April 1848. It was then published in a single volume with original illustrations by Hablot Knight Brown (‘Phiz’). The full description on the title page reads Dealings with the firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation.

Dombey and Son

monthly serial cover


Dombey and Son – critical commentary

Title

The title of this novel is particularly apt, because it incorporates principal aspects of its two major themes. The term ‘Dombey and Son’ is obviously the name of a commercial firm. It conveys the notion of a business enterprise which has passed through at least two generations and is therefore effective and reliable.

But in fact the enterprise has this name before the birth of his son. He already has a daughter, but he does not consider her adequate to represent his dynastic ambitions. So all his hopes are pinned on his son Paul

But he has put so much of his energy and enterprise into his commercial endeavours, he has lost the ability to love even his own offspring. So the term ‘Dombey and Son’ also encompasses the second major theme of the novel – which is the gulf that separates parent from child.

Dickens’ primary meaning in his title is the commercial establishment. This is signalled by his full description of the novel on its title page – Dealings with the firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation.. But the secondary meaning coexists without any doubt.

Educating the child

Much of the first part of the novel is about the poor raising, the neglect, and the false education of children. Paul Dombey (senior) has his expectations set on a son who will inherit the commercial success of Dombey and Son and promote its good name into the future. The father ignores and neglects his firstborn child Florence because she is female. He sees her as insignificant in the paternalistic dynasty of business and inheritance. As he says to her: “Girls … have nothing to do with Dombey and Son”.

Dombey and Son Yet when his wife bears him a male child (Paul junior) the son is immediately removed from his primary sources of emotional comfort – first of all from his mother because she dies, then from his beloved nurse, Polly Toodles, because Dombey fires her. Dombey then submits his son to the dubious care of his stupid sister Mrs Chick and her friend Miss Tox. Even worse, he subsequently sends Paul to the appalling establishment run by the fraudulent Mrs Pipchin in Brighton. She neglects the children placed in her care to an almost criminal extent.

Following this ruinous beginning, Paul is sent to a boarding school owned by Dr Blimber, who is obsessed with teaching ‘classics’ (Latin and Greek language and history). Blimber runs the establishment on the Spartan and cheerless lines of an English public school (that is, a fee-paying, private school) where Paul is miserably unhappy. It is significant that the only real learning he imbibes is delivered to him by his elder sister Florence, whom he loves dearly and acts as a substitute mother to him.

Dombey péreis a cold, unloving and distant father who wants a son who will continue the commercial enterprise he has created – but he has no love for that child as a human being. He is more interested in the idea of Dynasty than his own flesh and blood.

Paul is intensely aware that he has lost his mother, and he clings to his sister Florence as a means of emotional support.

Point of view

Dickens often appears in his own novels commenting on events, characters, and the situations he has created. But in terms of ‘point of view’ he does something very interesting in the case of young Paul Dombey. It is quite clear to the reader that Paul is a weak and sickly child. He is fragile and enervated; he has been emotionally neglected; and he leads an intense inner life frequently immersed in thoughts about his mother – of whom he has no conscious recollection, since she died immediately following his birth. These thoughts are often bound up with images of the sea and the stars.

The actual nature of his disability is never made clear. [Given Paul’s precocious and philosophic turn of mind, we might today think he was autistic] But Dickens’s masterstroke is that he gives an account of Paul’s demise and eventual death – entirely from the boy’s own point of view. Paul does not want to be a trouble to anybody, and keeps repeating ‘Tell my papa I am quite well’ (this to the father who has essentially neglected him). Paul merely wishes to be surrounded by the people he loves and who have been kind to him – his sister ‘Floy’, his old nurse Polly, and his friend Walter Gay.

Given that Dickens is often accused of being sentimental, his rendering of Paul’s death is wonderful piece of pathos – because Paul feels that he is quite happy to be drifting in and out of fantasies of his mother and the sea, whilst it is clear to the reader that the child is dying:

Sister and brother wound their arms around each other, and the golden light came streaming in, and fell upon them, locked together.
“How fast the river runs, between its green banks and the rushes, Floy! But it’s very near the sea. I hear the waves! They always said so.”
Presently he told her that the motion of the boat upon the stream was lulling him to rest. How green the banks were now, how bright the flowers growing on them, and how tall the rushes! Now the boat was out at sea, but gliding smoothly on. And now there was a shore before him. Who stood on the bank! —

As Dickens wrote in his own notes for the novel: ‘His illness only expressed in the child’s own feelings – Not otherwise described’.

The main theme

Unlike the other major novels of Dickens’ mature period – Bleak House (1852-53), Great Expectations (1860-61), and Little Dorrit (1855-57)- Dombey and Son is mainly focused on family and personal matters, even though there are similarly larger political and financial issues in the background to the events of the narrative.

Dombey is the head of a commercial enterprise, and he invests his trust in his villainous manager Carker – who betrays him by bad business practices and attempting to steal his beautiful wife. But the actual mechanisms of commercial deceit are never examined in any detail.

Dombey is rich and powerful. He is proud, emotionally guarded to the point of being a psychopath towards his own daughter (and others). His empire eventually collapses, and he realises that he has no friends and no family as comforts against the catastrophic nature of his downfall. He is psychologically injured by the shock of events, but he recovers, supported by the unstinting devotion of his daughter, and he ends in a tranquil old age devoted to his two grandchildren.

Characterisation

Two major issues of characterisation haunt the novel. Florence’s devotion to her father and her endless search for his love are stretched almost to breaking point. She has been neglected, ignored, and even beaten by him – yet after her marriage to Walter she comes back to Dombey to beg his forgiveness for deserting him. This is virtue, patience, and devotion taken to an almost masochistic level.

The other major problem is Dombey himself. He spends nine tenths of the novel as a ruthless, cruel, and heartless businessman and father, but when his company collapses we are asked to believe that he suddenly realises the error of his ways and regrets a lifetime of bad parenting to the extent of becoming a devoted father and grandfather. Dickens is clever enough to plant thoughts of Florence into Dombey’s mind even before this spiritual transformation, but this transformation of character takes place too rapidly to be really credible.


Dombey and Son – study resources

Dombey and Son Dombey and Son – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Dombey and Son Dombey and Son – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Dombey and Son Dombey and Son – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Dombey and Son Dombey and Son – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Dombey and Son Dombey and Son – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Dombey and Son The Complete Works of Charles Dickens – Kindle edition

Dombey and Son Charles Dickens – biographical notes

Dombey and Son The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK


Dombey and Son – plot summary

Ch. I.   Mr Paul Dombey (senior) is a proud and severe businessman who thinks his long-awaited and newly born son will fulfil the destiny of the firm Dombey and Son. His sister Mrs Chick gushes with family pride at the event, but Mrs Dombey dies following the birth.

Ch. II   Mr and Mrs Chick argue about the provision of a nurse for young Paul. Their friend Miss Tox arrives with the Toodles family. Dombey reluctantly and suspiciously hires Polly Toodle as a nurse, re-naming her Richards.

Ch. III   Polly comforts Florence Dombey, who has been ignored by her father because he has been waiting for a son who will inherit the firm. Polly tries to bring Dombey and his daughter closer together, and in doing so she encounters the waspish Susan Nipper, Florence’s maid.

Ch. IV   Ship’s instrument maker Solomon Gills questions his nephew Walter about his new job as a clerk at Dombey and Son. His own trade has been failing and he wants to provide Walter with a good start in life. They are joined by Captain Cuttle, with whom they share a bottle of Madeira.

Dombey and Son

Ch. V   Miss Tox assumes more significance in Paul’s upbringing. Paul is christened on a cold and grim day, an event followed by an unappetising and cheerless lunch given by Dombey, who establishes a scholarship for Polly’s eldest son Robin.

Ch. VI   Polly and Susan take Paul and Florence to the Toodle’s house in Camden Town. The two groups mingle affectionately, but on returning Florence gets lost and is abducted by an old hag Mrs Brown. Florence eventually finds her way to the river and meets Walter Gay, who returns her to the Dombey house. Polly is immediately sacked from her job as Paul’s nurse.

Ch.VII   Miss Tox takes up active supervision of young Paul’s welfare and spurns the attentions of her would-be suitor and neighbour Major Bagstock.

Ch.VIII   Paul gets a new nurse Mrs Wickam. He is a sickly and strangely precocious boy who asks his father difficult questions on morbid subjects. Dombey decides to send him to Brighton for the sea air. Paul is placed with Mrs Pipchin, a fraudulent ‘child developer’ who mistreats her charges. Paul is fascinated by her ugliness.

Dombey and Son

Paul and Mrs Pipchin

Ch. IX   Walter has romantically cultivated his connection with Florence Dombey and is worried that his uncle Solomon Grills seems depressed. The reason is that he is in debt after honouring payments to Walter’s dead father. Walter brings in Captain Cuttle who hasn’t enough money to help his friend, but who suggests an appeal to Mr Dombey.

Ch. X   Major Bagstock goes to Brighton and inveigles himself into acquaintance with Dombey, with whom he begins to socialise. Whilst there, they are visited by Walter and Captain Cuttle who make an appeal to Dombey for financial help for Gills. Dombey is reluctant, but he puts the appeal to his son Paul, who approves it

Ch. XI   After a year at Mrs Pipchin’s, Dombey sends Paul as a boarder to Doctor Blimber’s prep school. The establishment is cheerless, uncomfortable, and entirely centred on classical studies. Paul is very unhappy at the prospect of remaining there.

Ch. XII   Paul is supervised by the astringent Cornelia Blimber — that is, given a pile of books and expected to teach himself. The school follows a strict regime imposed by Doctor Blimber. Florence buys copies of Paul’s text books and coaches him privately during their weekend meetings. Paul is a wistful, dreamy, and introspective boy

Ch. XIII   Dombey and Son needs a junior clerk for its Barbados office. Walter is appointed. James Carker the manager humiliates his elder brother John in front of Walter and Dombey. Afterwards John Carker reveals the cause of his shame to Walter (he stole from the firm) and gives him his support and blessing.

Ch. XIV   Cornelia Blimber gives Paul a quasi-mathematical ‘annalysis’ of his character, and concludes that he is ‘too old-fashioned’. Paul merely wants to be liked by others. He hopes they will think kindly of him when he ‘goes away’. He is befriended by the head boy Toots and his tutor Mr Feeder. He has a serious illness which other people seem to regard as terminal. There is a dancing party at the end of term where everyone is kind and conciliatory to him.

Ch. XV Walter seeks advice from Captain Cuttle regarding his concern for his uncle and the new job in Barbados that he feels he cannot refuse. Captain Cuttle is perplexed and decides to appeal directly to Mr Dombey in secret. Paul meets Susan Nipper who is searching for Polly Toodles at Paul’s request. They locate her and hasten to the Dombey House.

Ch. XVI   Paul has been unwell for some time. He drifts in and out of sleep, dreams, and waking fantasies. Finally he calls for Polly and Walter, commends them to his father, then dies.

Ch. XVII   Captain Cuttle’s plan to see Dombey fails, and he is forced to reveal Walter’s West Indian job to his uncle. Then he sounds out his manager Carker instead, but Carker deceives him by pretending to agree with everything he says.

Ch, XVIII   Paul’s funeral and its gloomy aftermath. Dombey retreats into solitude. Florence enviously watches children in a neighbouring house who have a loving father. Mr Toots arrives and presents her with Diogenes, the dog from Blimber’s school. Florence reaches out to her father for some sign of affection, but he rebuffs her.

Ch. XIX   Walter is sadly preparing to leave his uncle when Florence and Susan Nipper appear at the shop. Florence proposes to befriend uncle Solomon during Walter’s absence, and wants to befriend Walter himself – but as a substitute brother. John Carker arrives to say goodbye, and Walter sets sail on the >Son and Heir for Barbados.

Ch. XX   Mr Dombey and Major Bagstock make a railway journey to visit Leamington. Backstock criticises Miss Tox as a wanton jade. Dombey vaingloriously credits himself with a monopoly on loss and suffering following Paul’s death. Thoughts of Florence enter his head for the first time.

Dombey - Major Bagstock

Major Bagstock is delighted to have the opportunity

Ch. XXI   In Leamington they meet the aged coquette Mrs Skewton and her beautiful daughter, the widow Edith Granger. Bagstock flirts with Mrs Skewton, and Dombey takes an interest in Mrs Granger, who paints, sings, and plays the harp and piano. She too has lost a son.

Ch. XXII   James Carker refuses his brother John’s pleas on behalf of their sister Harriet. Carker does not act on Dombey’s written request to recall Walter, and then he places Rob the Grinder as a spy with Solomon Gill. Toots is in love with Florence but is held at bay by Susan Nipper and Diogenes.

Ch. XXIII   Florence lives alone in her father’s house whilst he is absent. She continues to wish he would love her, and wonders if she can eventually win his affection. There has been no news of Walter’s ship for a long time. Florence consults Captain Cuttle, who brings in his friend the ‘oracle’ and ‘philosopher’ Captain Bunsby, who turns out to be an empty windbag.

Ch. XXIV   Florence visits the Skettles at the same time as Dr and Mrs Blimber, and is also approached whilst out walking by James Carker, to whom she feels an instinctive aversion.

Ch. XXV   Solomon suddenly disappears, leaving Captain Cuttle his keys and a note expressing his final wishes. Cuttle searches for him, fearing he might have committed suicide. He moves out of his lodging with Mrs Mac Stinger and takes over Solomon’s place in the shop.

Ch. XXVI   Carker visits Dombey and Major Bagstock in Leamington. He tries to subtly poison Dombey’s mind against both Walter and Florence. Major Bagstock visits Mrs Skewton and they plot a marriage between Dombey and Edith Granger.

Ch. XXVII   Carker encounters Edith on his morning walk. He then joins Dombey and Bagstock for breakfast with Edith and her mother. They all go to Warwick Castle where Carker pursues Edith knowingly whilst she is obliged to demonstrate her artistic skills. Edith explodes with outrage to her mother for being used as a lure to catch Dombey, who will call the following day to propose marriage.

Dombey and Son

Mr Carker introduces himself

Ch. XXVIII   Florence is very suspicious of the attention being paid to her by Carker. Mr Toots continues to make comic visits to her. She and Susan Nipper return home to London where Dombey introduces her to Mrs Skewton and Edith who is to be her new mother. The two young women immediately feel a bond.

Ch.XXIX   Mrs Chick visits Miss Tox and reveals that her brother Dombey is going to take a second wife. Miss Tox faints at the shock of this news – at which Mrs Chick accuses her of secretly scheming to marry into her family. She excommunicates her friend as a result, but receives no sympathy from her husband.

Ch. XXX   Florence is befriended and comforted by Edith, who invites her to stay in her Brook Street house. Florence is apprehensive about meeting her father. Mrs Skewton wants Florence to stay with her during the forthcoming honeymoon, but Edith threatens to call off the marriage if this happens, fearing that Florence will be ‘contaminated’ by Mrs Skewton’s influence.

Ch. XXXI   All the major characters of the novel are involved on the day of the wedding. After the service there is a breakfast at which Cousin Feenix (MP) makes a rambling and incoherent speech and there is much drunkenness both above and below stairs.

Ch. XXXII   Captain Cuttle is hiding away in Sol’s shop , fearing that Mrs Mac Stinger might find him. He is visited by Toots and the Chicken who come from Susan Nipper in search of Solomon. They have news of the Son and Heir being wrecked at sea, with all hands lost. Cuttle checks the news with Carker, who insults him and throws him out of the office.

Ch. XXXIII   James Carker’s luxurious home is contrasted with the poorer dwelling of his sister Harriet and brother John. Harriet is visited by a mysterious stranger who knows John’s story and wishes to help them both. Harriet then helps a destitute and ex-convict woman (Alice) who is on her way to London.

Ch. XXXIV   Good Mrs Brown is living in abject poverty. Her daughter Alice returns from Australia. She has been hardened by the experience of ‘transportation’ and points out the lack of parental care in her upbringing. Her mother hints at some mysterious connections with the Dombey family and Carker. When it appears that there is also a connection with Carker’s sister Harriet, they go to her house, but she defiantly repudiates their offers of help.

Ch. XXXV   Dombey and Edith return home from honeymoon to their lavishly refurbished house. Dombey makes the first signs of recognising his own daughter Florence. Edith and Florence are reunited, but when Florence asks her for help in winning her father’s love, Edith explains that she cannot do so.

Dombey and Son

Florence and Edith

Ch. XXXVI   Dombey initiates a series of doom-laden dinners and soirees. Cousin Feenix tells an embarrassing anecdote about a rich man who marries a beautiful woman who does not love him. The soiree is a disaster, and Dombey reproaches Edith for her coldness to her guests in front of Carker.

Ch. XXXVII   Next day Carker menaces Edith by threatening to reveal Florence’s connections with Walter and Captain Cuttle to Dombey. Mrs Skewton has a stroke and becomes even more selfish and demanding towards Edith.

Ch. XXXVIII   Miss Tox visits the Toodles, where Rob the Grinder is under suspicion of being secretive. She ‘offers’ to become a friend of the family and a regular visitor – because she wants any news of the Dombey family.

Ch. XXXIX   Mr Toots requests a formal friendship with Captain Cuttle. Rob the Grinder announces that he is leaving the shop. Feeling alone, Captain Cuttle thinks of himself as Robinson Crusoe. He reads Solomon’s will with Commander Bunsby, then is invaded by Mrs Mac Stringer, who Bunsby charms away from the shop and takes back home.

Ch. XL   Dombey blames Florence for the lack of feeling that exists between them. He demands of Edith that she respect and obey him in a deferential manner. She offers to compromise with him for the sake of peace between them, but he scornfully refuses. Dombey orders the transfer of Florence, Edith, and her mother to Brighton, under the supervision of Mrs Pipchin. They encounter Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice, with whom Edith feels a strange instinctive kinship.

Dombey and Son

A Chance Meeting

Ch. XLI   Florence meets Mr Toots, who takes her to revisit Dr Blimber and their old school. Toots and Mr Feeder share romantic confidences. After her stroke, Mrs Skewton gets steadily worse, finally dies, and is buried in Brighton.

Ch. XLII   Rob the Grinder goes to work directly for James Carker. Dombey makes Carker his confidential agent in dealing with his wife. He demands that she obey him, and he forbids her to befriend his daughter Florence. Dombey falls off his horse, and Carker takes the news home to Florence and Edith.

Ch. XLIII   Florence feels increasingly conflicted because of the hostility between her father and her step-mother. She visits their rooms late at night. Edith is in a period of black despair, but she comforts Florence.

Ch. XLIV   Susan Nipper finally delivers a critical broadside to Dombey because of his appalling treatment of Florence. Mrs Pipchin is brought in to fire her. Susan leaves the house under the protective custody of Mr Toots.

Ch. XLV   Edith is confronted by Carker who flatters her, pretends to have her interests at heart, and presses his intimacy upon her. But he also warns her about Dombey’s threats regarding her obedience and her attitude to Florence.

Ch. XLVI   Rob the Grinder is accosted by Good Mrs Brown and interrogated regarding Carker and Dombey. Carker taunts and insults his brother John, and he feels conscious of having gained closer access to Edith.

Ch. XLVII   Florence is puzzled by Edith’s remoteness, but her stepmother (acting under orders from her husband) says the separation is necessary. On Dombey’s second wedding anniversary Edith refuses to attend a celebration party. Dombey instructs her via Carker whilst they are sitting at the same dinner table. Edith explodes and demands a separation. Carker intervenes (unsuccessfully) on her behalf. Later that night Edith leaves the house and elopes with Carker. Florence commiserates with her father, who responds by striking her in a rage – so she too runs away from home.

Ch. XLVIII   Florence escapes to Gills’ shop where Captain Cuttle looks after her and puts her to sleep upstairs. Mr Toots arrives with a garbled story that Cuttle is required at Brogley’s the Brokers, to which he immediately repairs.

Ch. XLIX   Captain Cuttle repeatedly alludes to Walter’s death at sea, and then eventually reveals that he was a survivor in the shipwreck. Walter enters and is reunited with Florence ‘in a brotherly way’.

Ch. L   Walter and Captain Cuttle discuss finding Susan as a companion to Florence. Toots appears and goes off in search of her. Florence and Walter engage in contorted discussions regarding their relationship, but in the end she proposes marriage to him.

Dombey and Son

‘Let him remember it in that room’

Ch. LI   Dombey is in a state of denial and does not want to discuss the scandal of his wife’s elopement. Feenix and Bagstock offer their services to challenge Carker – but nobody knows where he is.. The staff at Dombey and Son enjoy drunken celebrations.

Ch. LII   Dombey arrives at the hovel where Mrs Brown and Alice have access to news of Carker and Edith’s whereabouts. They hide Dombey in an adjacent room then threaten Rob the Grinder, who reveals that Carker and Edith have arranged to meet in Dijon.

Ch. LIII   Dombey sacks John Carker because of his association with his brother. Mr Morfin arrives to explain the history of Carker’s secret mismanagement of the company and his own offer of help. Alice visits Harriet and explains her own grudge against Carker, which is that she has been ‘sold’ to Carker as his mistress by her own mother.

Ch. LIV   Edith is in a Dijon apartment where dinner is being served. Carker joins her, but she turns on him, unleashes a torrent of criticisms, and threatens to murder him. She runs off, and he tries to follow her as Dombey arrives at the front door.

Ch. LV   Carker suddenly panics and feels he will only be safe back in England where he can hide. He has a fear of being followed and has no plans or even purpose in his flight. He travels non-stop, and arriving back in England he travels by rail to a remote village. But he cannot escape from his tortured thoughts and fears. Finally, fearing that he has been tracked down by Dombey, he falls in front of an approaching train and is killed.

Ch. LVI   Florence is reunited with Susan Nipper, and Walter prepares for both marriage and a naval commission to sail to China. Toots attends the final reading of the banns. Solomon Gills suddenly reappears, and the Chicken dismisses himself as companion to Toots.

Ch. LVII   Florence and Walter get married in a small, dusty, and obscure church, then set off on their sea journey. Captain Cuttle and Solomon postpone celebrating with the last bottle of Madeira.

Ch. LVIII   A year later Dombey and Son crashes and goes bankrupt. Dombey ruins himself repaying his debts. Harriet and John Carker inherit their brother James’ wealth, but arrange with Morfin to secretly pay most of it back to Dombey. Harriet visits Alice who is dying and learns that she is the illegitimate daughter of Dombey’s brother.

Ch. LIX   The bailiffs and loss adjusters move into Dombey’s house; staff are paid off by Mrs Pinchin; and the contents of the house are sold at auction. Mrs Pinchin goes back to Brighton. Miss Tox lays siege to Dombey, who realises he has no friends or family. He wanders round the empty house late at night, bitterly regretting the loss of Florence – who then suddenly appears to beg his forgiveness and announce the birth of her son, Paul.

Ch. LX   Mr Feeder marries Cornelia Blimber and takes over the prep school. At the wedding. they are joined by Toots, who has married Susan Nipper. Commander Bunsby is reluctantly married to Mrs Mac Stinger.

Ch. LXI   Florence looks after her father, who is very ill and haunted by his past. Cousin Feenix arrives and takes Florence to meet Edith, who he has rescued from France and is taking to live in Italy. Tentative forgiveness is offered from Edith to Dombey, but she parts from Florence ‘forever’.

Ch. LXII   Dombey recovers and is devoted to his two grandchildren – Paul and Florence. Captain Cuttle joins Solomon in the business. Mrs Toots has another child, and Harriet marries Mr Morfin.


Dombey and Son – principal characters
Mr Paul Dombey (senior) a cold, proud, snobbish, and imperious business man
Paul Dombey (junior) his frail and visionary son
Florence Dombey his neglected daughter
Mrs Louisa Chick Dombey’s foolish sister
Mr John Chick her husband, a compulsive singer
Miss Lucretia Tox friend to Louisa Chick
Mr Toodle an engine fireman
Polly Toodle his fecund wife, who becomes Paul’s nurse
Robin (Biler) Toodle ‘Rob the Grinder’, their wayward eldest son
Susan Nipper caustic-tongued nurse to Florence Dombey
Solomon Gills a ship’s instrument maker
Walter Gay Solomon’s nephew, who works for Dombey and Son
Captain Edward (Ned) Cuttle Solomon’s friend with a hook for a hand
John Carker prematurely aged office ‘junior’ at Dombey and Son
James Carker John’s brother, the malicious office Manager with white teeth
Mrs Pipchin a fraudulent child ‘developer’
Major Jack Bagstock windbag neighbour and suitor to Miss Tox
Doctor Blimber prep school principal, obsessed with classics
Cornelia Blimber his spinsterish and pedantic daughter
Mr Toots head boy, who writes letters to himself from famous people
Mr Feeder B.A. teacher who befriends Paul and Toots
Mrs Skewton an ancient coquette who develops palsy
Edith Granger Mrs Skewton’s daughter, a beautiful young widow
Commander Jack Bunsby empty windbag ‘philosopher’ and friend of Cuttle
Sir Barnet Skettles a social climber, who claims to know people but doesn’t
the Chicken a low life bruiser and friend of Toots
Good Mrs Brown a derelict who steals from children
Alice Marwood her daughter, a former convict
Mr Morfin an employee at Dombey and Son

Mont Blanc pen

Mont Blanc – Charles Dickens special edition


Further reading

Biography

Red button Peter Ackroyd, Dickens, London: Mandarin, 1991.

Red button John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, Forgotten Books, 2009.

Red button Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, Little Brown, 1952.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Red button Frederick G. Kitton, The Life of Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality, Lexden Publishing Limited, 2004.

Red button Michael Slater, Charles Dickens, Yale University Press, 2009.

Criticism

Red button Malcolm Andrews. Dickens and the Grown-~Up Child London: Macmillan, 1994.

Red button Philip Collins, Dickens and Education, London: Macmillan, 1965.

Red button Philip Collins (ed), Dickens: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge & Keegan POaul, 1971.

Red button Steven Connor, Charles Dickens, Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.

Red button Peter Coveney, The Image of Childhood, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.

Red button G.H. Ford, Dickens and His Readers, New York: Norton, 1965.

Red button Barbara Hardy, The Moral Art of Charles Dickens, London: Athlone Press, 1970.

Red button Dirk den Hartog, Dickens and Romantic Psychology, London: Macmillan, 1987.

Red button Donald Hawes, Who’s Who in Dickens, London: Routledge, 2001.

Red button F.R. and Q.D. Leavis, Dickens the Novelist, London: Chatto and Windus, 1970.

Red button John Lucas, Charles Dickens: The Major Novels, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.

Red button Steven Marcus, Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey, London: Chatto and Windus, 1965

Red button Amy Sadrin, Parentage and Inheritance in the Novels of Charles Dickens, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Red button Andrew Sanders, Authors in Context: Charles Dickens, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Red button Hilary M. Schor, Dickens and the Daughter of the House, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Red button F.S. Schwarzback, Dickens and the City, London: Athlone Press, 1979.

Red button Alan Shelston (ed), Dickens: Dombey and Son and Little Dorrit, London: Macmillan, 1985.

Red button Jeremy Tambling, Dickens: Violence and the Modern State, London: Macmillan, 1995.

Red button Jeremy Tambling, Going Astray: Dickens and London, London: Longman, 2008.

Red button Dennis Walder, Dickens and Religion, London: Allen and Unwin, 1981.

Red button Raymond Williams, The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence, London: Paladin, 1974.

 


Other works by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens Pickwick PapersPickwick Papers (1836-37) was Dickens’ first big success. It was issued in twenty monthly parts and is not so much a novel as a series of loosely linked sketches and changing characters featured in reports to the Pickwick Club. These recount comic excursions to Rochester, Dingley Dell, and Bath; duels and elopements; Christmas festivities; Mr Pickwick inadvertently entering the bedroom of a middle-aged lady at night; and in the end a happy marriage. Much light-hearted fun, and a host of memorable characters.
Charles Dickens Pickwick Papers Buy the book here

 

Charles Dickens Oliver TwistOliver Twist (1837-38) expresses Dickens’ sense of the vulnerability of children. Oliver is a foundling, raised in a workhouse, who escapes suffering by running off to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of thieves controlled by the infamous Fagin. He is pursued by the sinister figure of Monks who has secret information about him. The plot centres on the twin issues of personal identity and a secret inheritance (which surface again in Great Expectations). Emigration, prison, and violent death punctuate a cascade of dramatic events. This is the early Victorian novel in fine melodramatic form. Recommended for beginners to Dickens.
Charles Dickens Oliver Twist Buy the book here


Charles Dickens – web links

Charles Dickens at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews, tutorials and study guides, free eTexts, videos, adaptations for cinema and television, further web links.

Charles Dickens at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary techniques, his influence and legacy, extensive bibliography, and further web links.

Charles Dickens at Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts of the major works in a variety of formats.

Dickens on the Web
Major jumpstation including plots and characters from the novels, illustrations, Dickens on film and in the theatre, maps, bibliographies, and links to other Dickens sites.

The Dickens Page
Chronology, eTexts available, maps, filmography, letters, speeches, biographies, criticism, and a hyper-concordance.

Charles Dickens at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of the major novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages

A Charles Dickens Journal
An old HTML website with detailed year-by-year (and sometimes day-by-day) chronology of events, plus pictures.

Hyper-Concordance to Dickens
Locate any word or phrase in the major works – find that quotation or saying, in its original context.

Dickens at the Victorian Web
Biography, political and social history, themes, settings, book reviews, articles, essays, bibliographies, and related study resources.

Charles Dickens – Gad’s Hill Place
Something of an amateur fan site with ‘fun’ items such as quotes, greetings cards, quizzes, and even a crossword puzzle.

© Roy Johnson 2015


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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

April 3, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) became very popular as soon as it was first published under its real title of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Since then it has been repeatedly adapted for the stage and the cinema – usually to provide a starring role for a male actor who can deliver a bravura performance playing both major parts. It has also entered popular culture as a symbol of the ‘dual’ nature of the human personality – with the potential for good and evil in a permanent state of tension, battling against each other in the same person.


Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1920 film version


Full length 1920 movie – with John Barrymore


Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde – critical commentary

The Novella

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a narrative of only 26,000 words in length – which is the same as some long short stories. But the composition has all the hallmarks of a novella, based on the usual criteria for distinguishing this literary genre that lies half way between a long story and a short novel.

The story is densely compacted, with all its elements focussed on the single issue of the mystery of the Jekyll/Hyde duality. There are no digressions, no extraneous characters, and not even any lengthy descriptive or atmospheric passages.

There is a consistency of mood and tone throughout the tale which contributes to its unity of effect. Once again, nothing distracts from

There is a unity of location throughout the drama, with particular focus on Dr Jekyll’s house and its symbolic division into quarters which are public and private, open and locked, known and secret. Although the action of the novel moves a little around the locality, almost all of it is centred upon the doctor’s rooms, and in particular his ‘cabinet’, which is an inner sanctum within the ‘dissecting rooms’ where he carries out his practice.

The recurring motifs in the story reinforce its central concern with the duality of human nature. Jekyll has a large cheval mirror in which he inspects his transformations. A mirror is designed to reflect the object before it, but of course it also produces a ‘double’. The austere Utterson is contrasted with his cousin Enfield who is a man about town.

Letters

Much of the plot hinges on documents and letters generated by the principal characters.

1. The story begins with Jekyll’s puzzling will which he has entrusted to Utterson.

2. Hyde writes a letter of reassurance to Jekyll.

3. Lanyon leaves behind a letter revealing what he knows of Jekyll.

4. Lanyon’s letter itself contains a letter written to him by Jekyll

5. Hyde writes letters to both Poole and Jekyll.

5. Jekyll leaves behind a confessional letter.

And almost like a reflection of the doubled and interlocking nature of the main narrative, these letters are sometimes contained within each other.

The Double

Stevenson’s tale is part of the long and honourable tradition of ‘the double’ in fiction. This includes examples such as Shelley’s Frankenstein, Poe’s ‘William Wilson’, Dostoyevski’s The Double, Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, James’ ‘The Jolly Corner’, and Nabokov’s The Eye. In most of these cases there is deliberate ambiguity concerning the second person or identity. The story appears to be about two separate people who are completely unlike each other, or may be very similar. In some cases the first character feels a rivalry with, dislikes, or even wishes to kill the second. But they are in fact one and the same person.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a perfect example of this literary trope. Jekyll and Hyde are polar opposites. Jekyll is tall, upright, honest, and philanthropic. Hyde is small and misanthropic to the extent that he commits murder. They are like representations of the conscious and the unconscious mind – the Ego and the Id.

Almost every element within Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has a parallel or a double. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are two aspects of the same man. Jekyll’s house has two entrances – one the respectable public front entrance, the other a partly hidden, secret, and locked rear entrance. Dr Lanyon leaves behind two letters. And the novella ends with two explanations in two letters for the mystery and how it came about.

For further discussion of this theme, see our tutorial – The Double

Narrative progression

It is often said that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a story told backwards, and it’s quite true that the novella ends with an account of how Dr Jekyll came to take up his dangerous experiments with drugs. But it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it is a story with a mystery, the explanation for which is delayed. The actual sequence of events is as follows.

1. Jekyll’s behaviour has become erratic and poses a problem for his friend Utterson.

2. Tension and mystery ensue in the search for Mr Hyde.

3. There is a dramatic finale when Hyde commits suicide.

4. The narrative ends with two explanations of the mystery and its origins.

The missing participles

The full title of the novella is Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It is hardly surprising that it has become more widely known in its truncated form as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because the missing definite article (The) creates an unnatural gap or absence in the title. This might be a stylistic quirkiness on Stevenson’s part, because it is repeated in some of the chapter titles which similarly lack a definite article – Story of the Door, Search for Mr Hyde, Incident of the Letter, Remarkable Incident of Dr Lanyon, and Incident at the Window


Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – study resources

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Audiobook CD – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Audiobook CD – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Cliffs (study) Notes – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – York (study) Notes – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Spark (study) Notes – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1932 film version (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Norton Critical edition – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Kindle edition

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 2002 TV version (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1981 film version (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1931 & 1941 film versions (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – audiobook at LibriVox


Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – plot summary

Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeMr Utterson, a lawyer, has the disturbing task of dealing with the will of his friend Dr Jekyll, who in the event of his death or disappearance wishes to leave all his money (a quarter of a million pounds) to his friend Edward Hyde. Utterson learns that Hyde has bought his way out of trouble after attacking a young girl, using a cheque signed by Jekyll. Discomforted by suspicions of possible blackmail and wrong-doing, Utterson tracks down Hyde, but then Jekyll reassures him that all is well.

When another brutal and fatal attack is carried out on one of Utterson’s clients, the circumstantial evidence points to Hyde as the perpetrator, but when sought out he has disappeared. Jekyll reassures Utterson that Hyde will no longer be a problem, and shows him a letter to that effect from Hyde. However, the handwriting is similar to that of Jekyll.

After a period of relative normality, Dr Jekyll begins to cut himself off from Utterson and the rest of society, and their friend Dr Lanyon dies in odd circumstances, leaving behind a letter. Dr Jekyll’s butler Poole reports in alarm to Utterson that something is wrong with Jekyll. Utterson and Poole break into Jekyll’s inner rooms and find Hyde dead from cyanide poisoning.

Utterson then goes home to read both Lanyon’s letter and a signed confession from Dr Jekyll. These explain how Jekyll has experimented with ‘transforming’ drugs which have allowed him to turn at will into Edward Hyde and lead a double existence. Having explored the evil side of his own nature, he has become addicted to the drugs and no longer able to control the transformations. He has therefore committed suicide whilst in the persona of Edward Hyde.


Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – principal characters
John Gabriel Utterson a middle-aged lawyer
Richard Enfield his younger cousin, a man about town
Edward Hyde a savage, rancorous man who commits murder
Dr Henry Jekyll a respected man of medicine
Dr Hastie Lanyon fellow doctor and friend of Utterson
Sir Danvers Carew an MP and client of Utterson’s
Mr Guest Utterson’s head clerk
Poole Dr Jekyll’s butler

Further reading

Fred Botting, Gothic, London: Methuen, 1996.

Jenni Calder, RLS: A Life Study, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1980.

Paul Coates, The Double and the Other: Identity as Ideology in Post-Romantic Fiction, London: Macmillan, 1988.

Linda Dryden, The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles: Stevenson, Wilde and Wells, London: Macmillan, 2003.

Sigmund Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ (1919) Penguin Freud Library vol.xiv, London: Penguin, 1985. 335-376.

Claire Harman, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography, London: Harper Collins, 2005.

Wayne Koestenbaum, Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration, London: Routledge, 1989.

Robert Mighall, A Geography of Victorian Gothic: Mapping History’s Nightmares, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Karl Miller, Doubles: Studies in Literary HistoryOxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siécle, London: Bloomsbury, 1992.


Film version

1931 film starring Frederick March

© Roy Johnson 2011


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Dracula – a study guide

February 10, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Dracula (1897) is not the first novel to deal with the myth of vampyres. It follows a tradition which includes Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764), William Polidori’s ‘The Vampire’ (1819), James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire (1847), Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla‘ (1872), and George du Maurier’s Trilby (1894). But it is undoubtedly the best known, perhaps because it combines just about every aspect and manifestation of the myth – blood lust, sexual deviation, the UnDead, murder, bats, wolves, imprisonment, madness, and infanticide.

It also has the classic settings of Gothic horror stories – a castle in Transylvania, a ruined abbey, dungeons, crypts, graveyards, and a lunatic asylum. To this mixture is added virgins in distress, pseudo scientific experiments, drugs, telepathy, and hypnotism. It also has to be said that the novel is built from a fascinating and complex series of separate narratives and contains memorably vivid scenes and characters. The story lends itself to a number of different interpretations, and its fame was enhanced by the German silent film classic Nosferatu made in 1922 – which you can watch in its full length version below.

Bela Lugosi as Dracula

Bela Lugosi as Dracula (1931)


Dracula – critical commentary

The novel attracts critical commentary on a number of recognisable themes, some of which overlap with each other.

The New Woman

Lucy and her friend Mina can be seen as examples of women who are prepared to take their destiny into their own hands. Mina has an independent career as a schoolteacher, and she is competent in shorthand. She uses a typewriter and can memorise train timetables. Although Lucy is something of a lightweight socialite at the start of the novel, she deals reasonably with her three proposals of marriage on a single day. They enjoy their friendship and dine out in a fashion which Mina actually likens to the appetites of the New Woman. Later in the novel when the gallant brotherhood of four men repeatedly exclude her from the pursuit of Dracula, it is she who not only persuades them otherwise but supplies the information that leads to his capture.

West Vs East

Modern studies of the post-colonial world have encouraged a view of the novel as a Victorian allegory of the Christian west fighting against the corrupt forces of the east. Many of the novel’s details support this view. The four blood brothers are all representatives of the western orthodoxy. Arthur Holmwood actually becomes Lord Godalming during the course of the novel; John Seward is a respected head of a medical institute. Quincy Morris represents the protestant new world, and Van Helsing the equally imperialist Dutch. All of them are Christians and several times swear religiously to overthrow the foreigner, the alien Dracula.

He is not only from what in the late nineteenth century was perceived as the eastern ‘edge’ of Europe (Romania), but he draws his inspiration and heritage from Turkey, which is still further east.

The Rise of Science

Dracula is drenched in references to the latest scientific developments and what we would now call new media. Both John Seward and Van Helsing are neuroscientists; they experiment with drugs, hypnosis, and telepathy in their dealings with both Lucy and Mina. The narrative includes a whole array of what were the latest technical developments at the end of the nineteenth century – the London underground, typewriters, a phonograph, shorthand and dictation, telegrams, and a camera. In the final stages of the chase to catch Dracula, Mina even acquires a portable typewriter in order to transcribe the contents of the various diaries and journals which record events.

Sex, blood, and sublimation

Lucy has three suitors who propose to her on the same day – John Seward, Quincy Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. In the central section of the novel, dealing with the aftermath of Lucy’s encounter with Dracula in Whitby Professor Van Helsing arrives and later mentions that he too is ‘in love’ with her. He proscribes blood transfusions as the only way of saving her. All four men in turn ‘give blood’ in a manner which is distinctly sexual by implication.

On each occasion attention is drawn to Lucy’s red lips, open mouth, pink gums, and white teeth – a clear image of the vagina dentata if ever one was in doubt. The experience of transfusion leaves the men depleted and exhausted, but brings life and colour back to Lucy’s cheeks. Van Helsing also observes that there might be possible jealousy between the suitors if they knew that their rivals had made this connection.

At one point Seward and Van Helsing also put Lucy in a bath of warm water to revive her, and although no reference is made to what she is wearing, it is reasonable to assume that she is not clothed. Moreover, throughout the whole series of treatments, they keep giving her drugs – morphine and opiates – which Van Helsing sometimes injects into her. Dracula takes in the blood of others in order to survive, and so does Lucy, but under medical supervision.

The climactic scene where Arthur takes the lead in killing Lucy is described in unmistakably sexual terms

Arthur took the stake and the hammer … placed the point over the heart … Then he struck with all his might … The Thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions, the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam… Arthur never faltered … his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, while the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it … And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth ceased to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still… Great drops of sweat sprang out on [Arthur’s] forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps. It had indeed been an awful strain on him…

And when Dracula visits Mina, the connection between them is even more sexualised.

With his left hand he held both Mrs Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension, his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast, which was shown by his torn open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink

It was once thought that semen was a condensed form of blood, and the reference to milk in the simile reinforces this connection, as well as suggesting that a form of forced fellatio is taking place in the scene.


Dracula – study resources

Dracula Dracula – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Dracula Dracula – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Dracula Dracula – York Notes for students – Amazon UK

Dracula Dracula – York Notes for students – Amazon US

Dracula Dracula – Spark Notes for students – Amazon UK

Dracula Dracula – Spark Notes for students – Amazon US

Dracula Dracula – Cliffs Notes for students – Amazon UK

Dracula Dracula – Cliffs Notes for students – Amazon US

Dracula Dracula – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Dracula Dracula – full cast dramatisation BBC audioBook – Amazon UK

Dracula Dracula – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon US

Dracula Dracula – encyclopedia entry at Wikipedia

Dracula Dracula – scan of the first edition

Dracula Dracula – Francis Ford Coppola’s film version – Amazon UK

Dracula Dracula – 1931 Tod Hunter film version with Bela Lugosi – Amazon UK

Pointer Buffy the Vampire Slayer – complete boxed set – Amazon UK


Dracula – plot summary

DraculaEnglish solicitor Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to visit Count Dracula, who has bought properties in London. He is hospitably received, but then is held prisoner in the castle, where he encounters three female vampires. Harker writes letters to his fiancée and employer asking for help, but Dracula intercepts them. Dracula then takes a boat journey to England. On the journey the entire crew disappear one by one. The ship is driven ashore at Whitby, Yorkshire during a violent storm.

Meanwhile, Minna Murray, Harker’s fiancee is in Whitby with her friend Lucy Westenra, who has had three proposals from different suitors on the same day. She eventually accepts Arthur Holmwood. The two young women witness the aftermath of the storm, and Lucy begins to sleepwalk, finally making a mid-night encounter with Dracula, who leaves his signature fang marks in her neck.

Dr John Seward, one of Lucy’s suitors, is in charge of a lunatic asylum located in the grounds of one of the properties that Dracula has bought. He is principally occupied with Renfield, a zoophagic patient who is violent and keeps trying to escape.

Word arrives in England that Harker is in a church hospice in Europe, recovering from a nervous collapse. Mina travels to see him and they are married.

Lucy begins to suffer from anaemia, and she is consulted by Dr Seward and Professor Van Helsing, who perform repeated blood transfusions on themselves and Lucy’s fiance Arthur in order to keep her alive. Whilst she is recovering, an escaped wolf from London Zoo attacks the house. Lucy’s mother dies of fright, having left her estate to Arthur.

Despite further blood transfusions, Lucy dies too. Meanwhile Mina and Jonathan return to Exeter where Mr Hawkins makes them his inheritors, then suddenly dies. When Jonathan visits London for the the funeral he sees Dracula in Piccadilly, looking younger, following which there is an outbreak of attacks on young children in the London area. They report being abducted by a beautiful lady.

DraculaVan Helsing reads Lucy’s diaries and letters, then visits Mina and Jonathan in Exeter and reads the typed copies of their journals, which Mina has made. He then recruits John Seward to visit Lucy’s tomb, which turns out to be empty when they visit it at night. On returning in the daylight however, they find her there. He then recruits Arthur Holmwood and Quincy Morris, and the four men confront Lucy in her vampire mode outside the tomb. Next day they return in the daylight and Arthur drives a stake through her heart, following which Van Helsing cuts off her head.

The four men agree that they must locate Dracula and kill him, Van Helsing suggests that they exclude Mina from the group for her own safety. They visit Dracula’s house and locate some of the boxes of Transylvanian earth he has brought to England. Meanwhile, Mina is visited by Dracula at night.

Renfield is savagely attacked and dies, then the four men catch Dracula with Mina, who is now in his thrall. Dracula escapes, and the four men begin to purify the boxes of earth, to block off Dracula’s acces to a secure resting place. They break into his house at Carfax and two other properties on the Thames, and his house in Picadilly. They plan to kill him, but when he returns home he once again escapes.

Mina, still in Dracula’s thrall, is hypnotised by Van Helsin, and reveals that Dracula is on board a ship, presumably on his way back to Transylvania. The Gang of Four swear to track him down. First they once again exclude Mina from their plans for her own safety, but she argues that she will be valuable in the search, However, she makes them promise to kill her if Dracula’s influence over her should get worse. They agree, and embark on along journey which culminates almost where the novel began – on the Borgo Pass close to Dracula’s castle.

Van Helsin and Mina are confronted by the three female vampyres, who are driven away with Christian symbols back to the castle, Van Helsin follows and murders them in their coffins. Finally all the characters converge on the Pass where they intercept the cart containing Dracula in his box of earth trying to reach the castle before sunset. They capture the box, open it, and decapitate him.


Dracula – film version

There have been many film adaptations of the Dracula story – but F.W.Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is the first and most famous. It’s now regarded as a masterpiece of German expressionist cinema, along with works such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Bram Stoker’s widow Florence understandably but foolishly tried to defend her husband’s copyright to the story. She even went to the extent of buying up and destroying copies of the film. Murnau was forced to change the names of the characters, and to transpose the location from England to Germany. Some characters are missed out altogether – but the essence of the story remains the same, and the visuals are spectacular, much enhanced by the performance of Max Schreck as Count Orlok.


Principal characters
Jonathan Harker a young solicitor
Peter Hawkins an Exeter solicitor, his employer
Wilhelmina (Mina) Murray Jonathan’s fiancee then his wife, an assistant schoolmistress
Count Dracula a Transylvanian aristocrat
Lucy Westrena Mina’s friend, a socialite
Dr John Seward head of a lunatic asylum, suitor to Lucy
Quincy P Morris an American bachelor, suitor to Lucy
Arthur Holmwood
(later Lord Godalming)
engaged to Lucy
Renfield a zoophagic lunatic patient in Seward’s asylum
Professor Abraham Van Helsin a Dutch pysician and lawyer

Literary criticism

Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Glennis Byron, Dracula: New Casebook, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999.

Christopher Frayling, Vampires: Lord Byron to Count Dracula, London: Faber, 1991.

Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire, London: Routledge, 1994.

William Hughes, Bram Stoker’s Dracula: A Reader’s Guide, London:Continuum, 2009.

Rob Lathom, Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs, and the Culture of Consumption, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Clive Leatherdale, Dracula: The Novel and the Legend: A Study of Bram Stoker’s Masterpiece, Brighton: Desert Island Books, 1993.

Sally Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Si&eactue;cle, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.

Roger Luckhurst, The Invention of Telepathy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

David Punter, The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1763 to the Present Day, London: Longmans, 1980.

Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Find Si&eactue;, London: Virago, 1992.

Montague Summers, The Vampire, 1928, London: Studio editions, 1995.


Trivia and parallels

When Harker arrives at the castle, Dracula makes his meals, waits on him as a servant, makes his bed, keeps him up at night talking, and even wears his clothes. Are these hints of the ‘Double’?

Lucy Westrena has three offers of marriage – and Dracula has three ‘brides’. The three suitors all become ‘blood-providers’ in the transfusion experiments on Lucy. The three female vampires are blood-providers for Dracula.

Dracula climbs up and down the wall of the castle to reach Harker’s room – and Harker in turn climbs up and down the wall to reach Dracula’s room.

Harker writes letters asking for help to escape from the castle – but Dracula intercepts the letters, then forces him to write a parallel set of false letters describing his departure from the castle.

Jonathan Harker is a solicitor, and acts as a conveyancer for Dracula’s purchases of property around London. Dracula has his castle, and establishes a property portfolio in England. Arthur inherits his title when his father dies, and then also inherits Lucy’s legacy because of an ‘entailed property’ clause in the family will. Jonathan Harker inherits the solicitor’s business from Mr Hawkins.

© Roy Johnson 2011


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Filed Under: 19C Horror Tagged With: Bram Stoker, Dracula, English literature, Gothic horror, Literary studies, The novel

Eugenie Grandet

June 7, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Eugenie Grandet (1833) was one of the first great works to emerge from Balzac’s grand survey of French society, a collection to which he gave the general title La Comedie Humaine. It’s a short novel, but one that signals all the themes he was to explore in the many volumes that followed. Principal issues include social ambition, thwarted dreams, disappointed love, greed, and underpinning everything else the accumulation of property and the yearning for social status.

Eugenie Grandet

If you have not read Balzac before, this is a good place to start. The story is quite simple. A young provincial girl Eugenie is dominated by her tyrannical father, the miser Felix Grandet. She falls in love with her playboy cousin Charles, and when he is suddenly left penniless she gives him all her money and waits seven years for him to make his fortune abroad. Events do not turn out quite as she hopes – or as the reader might think.


Eugenie Grandet – commentary

Characterisation

This is an early work by Balzac, and some of the characters are not particularly well defined. It is difficult to tell the difference between the members of the Grassins and the Cruchots for instance, the two families who are both hoping to marry a son to the heiress Eugenie. But one character dominates the entire narrative – the miser Felix Grandet. He is relentlessly mean, penny-pinching, acquisitive, and pathologically obsessed with money – gold in particular. His character dominates the entire novel, from first page to last.

He not only apportions the meagre rations for the family meals every day, but he puts out the fire in one room so as to save fuel when going into another. He doles out the lumps of sugar for people’s coffee – and even cuts up the lumps into smaller pieces in his spare time.

This petty domestic tyranny is quite amusing, yet at the level of commercial enterprise he is enormously successful. From his origins as a humble cooper, he acquires vineyards; he sells his wine at a profit; he outsmarts his competitors; he buys and sells commodities at the right time, and he calculates the profitability of his land to maximise its return on investment.

However, the extent of his greed reaches far more serious depths. He eventually defrauds his own daughter by arranging a legal document in which she signs over control of her own inheritance to him. And he remains au fond a study in pathological avarice – obsessed by gold, which he hoards in his closely guarded room and gloats over at night in private. He is memorable because he is so much larger than life figure.

His daughter Eugenie on the other hand is the innocent victim of his psychological sadism and domestic tyranny. Eugenie and her mother suffer his bullying without complaint for the major part of the novel. There is an element of Cordelia and King Lear in their relationship.

But Eugenie’s provincial Calvary is interrupted by a major occurrence in her otherwise uneventful life. She falls in love with her dashing cousin Charles. This at first has all the appearance of a fairy tale – the princess in her metaphorical tower rescued by the arrival of a handsome prince.

Balzac continues to exploit reader expectations in pursuit of this portrayal of virtuous innocence. Eugenie and Charles seal their mutual love with a pact of fidelity, Eugenie gives him all her money to fund his colonial expedition, and she then waits for him patiently for seven years. It is at this point that Balzac reveals his creative genius with a double irony and a dramatic shift in Eugenie’s characterisation.

The double irony

Charles turns out to be a shallow-minded adventurer. He is revealed as an unscrupulous slave trader who on return to Europe seeks to marry into the lower echelons of the aristocracy. His letter to Eugenie renouncing their pact of eternal love strikes her like a hammer blow.

But she does not capitulate to the shock in a conventional manner. Instead, she contracts a marriage of convenience to someone else – on the explicit condition that it is never consummated. She does this still bearing what she calls ‘an inextinguishable love in [her] heart’- for the memory of what Charles once was to her. That is part one of the double irony.

Part two comes in successive phases. First Eugenie marries her wealthy suitor the President de Bonfons. She thereby enhances her social status, and then on his early demise (and because they have by her design no children) she inherits his personal fortune to add to her own. Even after paying off her uncle’s bad debts she is still in possession of seventeen million Francs – a fact whose significance is not lost on the greedy and ambitious Charles.

But a further twist is yet to come – less dramatic, though just as significant in terms of the novel’s major themes. This immensely rich Eugenie, a widow at thirty-three, then lives on in the drab house where she was raised. Furthermore, she voluntarily adopts the frugal lifestyle of her earlier years, even dressing in her mother’s clothes. She becomes, in one sense, not unlike her father.

The Napoleonic Code

There is one feature to the background of events in the novel which may not be immediately apparent to readers unfamiliar with French society and its conventions. Following the revolution of 1793 there was a radical overhauling of the legal system. This included a law that required property and capital to be inherited solely via family connections.

If you are English with a million Pounds in the bank, you can leave this money to whomever you wish by making a will. You can nominate as legatees your children, your friends, or the Battersea Dogs Home. But in France, your money (and property) can only be willed to your children. [This is an over-simplification of a very complex system.]

In Eugenie Grandet the gold-obsessed Felix Grandet has made everyone suffer whilst amassing his considerable wealth. But fortunately for the sake of poetic justice, the entire property and its income from rents and dividends on government bonds reverts to Eugenie following her father’s death. She also increases her net worth by marrying the President – and because it is a marriage of convenience with no consummation and no possible children – she inherits all the President’s wealth on his demise.

The intrusive narrator

This is a term used to describe stories or novels in which the person telling the story (the narrator) intrudes his or her own opinions into the account of events. The narrator might be a fictional character, or it might be the author. Many narratives are presented by neutral or ‘invisible’ narrators who remain absent from the story they are telling.

Balzac on the other hand is one of literature’s most famously intrusive narrators. He pretends to be offering a neutral and unbiased account of events. This is in keeping with his claim that he is acting like a scientist or a professional sociologist, recording the history of French manners in the post-revolutionary epoch.

But he intrudes regularly and quite blatantly into his own stories to deliver his opinions on French history, to give mini-lectures on the workings of the financial markets, and homilies on ‘behalf’ of his own characters. He generalises wildly on the nature of men and women and their ‘place’ in society; he volunteers his opinions on famous works of art; and he proselytises repeatedly on behalf of the Catholic Church and the need to retain a Monarchy

This is a feature of Balzac’s style which some of his critics have found very irritating, but his defenders (and I am one of them) point out that many of his opinions reflect a well-founded knowledge of the way society worked at the time of his writing. His personal beliefs (Catholicism and Monarchism) can safely be ignored, because they do not seriously affect the logic of his narratives. And many of his aesthetic judgements have been substantiated by subsequent commentators and have stood the test of time. If there are occasional infelicities, this is a small price to pay for the entertaining exuberance of his volcanic creativity.

Balzac was a prodigiously productive novelist – but he was also a failed businessman. He knew how the markets worked. He knew that contracts drawn up by lawyers in one generation could influence the destinies of characters in the next. He knew the connections between the law, the stock market, and the lifestyles people could afford.

We read him not just as a great story teller, but also as a perceptive sociologist and even a political philosopher. When he reveals exactly the sources and extent of each character’s income, this is his method of showing how morals and manners were closely related to economics. It is not surprising that Balzac was one of Karl Marx’s favourite novelists.


Eugenie Grandet – study resources

Eugenie Grandet Eugenie Grandet – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Eugenie Grandet Eugenie Grandet – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Eugenie Grandet Eugenie Grandet – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Eugenie Grandet Eugenie Grandet – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Eugenie Grandet Eugenie Grandet – Everyman – Amazon UK

Eugenie Grandet Eugenie Grandet – Everyman – Amazon US

Cambridge Companion to Balzac – Cambridge UP – Amazon UK

Eugenie Grandet


Eugenie Grandet – plot synopsis

Portrait of Bourgeois

An old miser Felix Grandet becomes a wealthy landowner and vine grower in Saumur. The locals speculate enviously on the extent of his wealth and wonder who will marry his daughter Eugenie. Grandet imposes a frugal and cheese-paring regime on the whole household, which is run by his faithful servant Big Nanon.

On Eugenie’s birthday the house is visited by the Grassis and the Grachots who bring presents. Both families are trying to marry a son into the Grandet family. Suddenly, a dashing young cousin Charles Grandet arrives from Paris.

The Cousin from Paris

Charles is a playboy and a dandy. Eugenie is overwhelmed by his charm and novelty. Grandet receives a letter from his brother Guillaume consigning the boy to his care. The brother is bankrupt and about to commit suicide. Charles wonders why his father has sent him to such a wretched and miserable house.

Provincial Love

Eugenie falls in love with Charles. She and Nanon start to break the frugal house rules to provide Charles with some lunch. Grandet arrives and is outraged by their extravagance. Grandet reveals to Charles the fact of his father’s death. He then sells off his wine stock and plans to invest in government bonds. He also devises a scheme to rescue his brother’s honour and the family name – but without spending any money.

A Miser’s Promises and Lovers’ Vows

Grandet pretends he is going to recover his brother’s debts and recruits the Grassins to act for him. He then travels secretly at night to sell all his gold. Eugenie reads Charles’ goodbye letter to his lover Annettte. She then gives him all the gold coins she has saved.

Grandet makes a lot of money from the sale of his gold. Eugenie and Charles enjoy the innocent birth of their love whilst he prepares to depart for the Indes. Grandet buys up all of Charles’s gold and arranges legal papers that renounce any claims Charles has on his father’s estate. Grandet then delays payments of his brother’s debts for the next five years.

Family Sorrows

Grandet discovers that Eugenie has given all her gold to Charles. He imprisons her in her room, and her mother becomes ill with the worry. The town’s people get to know and disapprove of Grandet. The lawyer Gruchot intercedes to point out that if Mme Grandet dies, Eugenie will inherit all her estate, depleting Grandet’s capital and property. Because of this, Grandet lifts his ban on Eugenie, but it is too late to save Mme Grandet, who dies. Grandet then cheats Eugenie out of her inheritance.

For the next five years Grandet instructs Eugenie on the running of his estates, then he too dies. As a result, Eugenie inherits seventeen million Francs, from which she pays Nanon a generous annuity. Nanon marries the gamekeeper, who becomes steward for the whole Grandet estates.

The Way of the World

For seven years Eugenie simply endures her fate. But Charles meanwhile has been a slave trader and an unscrupulous trader in the Indes. He has made his fortune, and is planning a loveless marriage into the fallen aristocracy in order to acquire a name and status. Eugenie receives his letter of dismissal from Paris and is devastated.

With her hopes crushed, she contracts an unconsummated marriage to the President de Bonfons. When he dies shortly afterwards, she becomes a widow at thirty-three, and the heiress to an even greater fortune. She devotes her life to charitable works, and goes on living a frugal life in the house of her father.


Eugenie Grandet – prinipal characters
Felix Grandet a wine-grower, land-owner, miser, dealer in currency and government stocks
Mme Grandet his timid and long-suffering wife
Eugenie Grandet his innocent and virtuous daughter
Guillaume Grandet his brother, who becomes bankrupt and commits suicide
Charles Grandet Eugenie’s dashing and handsome cousin, with whom she falls in love
Big Nanon the tall and strong household servant
Mr Conoillier the gamekeeper who becomes the estate steward
President de Bonfons suitor to Eugenie, who she eventually marries

© Roy Johnson 2017


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Filed Under: Honore de Balzac Tagged With: French Literature, Honore de Balzac, Literary studies, The novel

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