19C Authors

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

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The Illustrious Gaudissart

July 2, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, plot summary, study resources

The Illustrious Gaudissart (1833) features a character who will crop up in a number of Balzac’s later novels – Scenes from the Life of a Courtesan (1838-1846), Cesar Birotteau (1837), and Cousin Pons (1846-1847). Gaudissart goes on later to become the owner of a theatre, but is here put forward as the epitome of the travelling salesman.

The Illustrious Gaudissart – commentary

The story offers a wonderful example of Balzac as a satirical, ironic sociologist. He astutely identifies a new social type and pours mockery onto him as a vulgar parvenu, a man who (to quote Oscar Wilde) ‘knows
the price of everything and the value of nothing’.

The first part of the story is a detailed analysis of everything Balzac sees as meretricious and shoddy in this ‘hail fellow, well met’ type with his jokes, his sales patter, and his lack of social or ethical depth.

Balzac was a staunch conservative, royalist, and Catholic. He sees this new style of seedy entrepreneur as an example of the declining civic values following the revolution. Yet Balzac was himself an ambitious and hard-working provincial – with social aspirations. He cannot but partly admire Gaudissart’s persistence and enterprise – peddling newspaper subscriptions and life insurance policies, plus selling hats and the ‘article Paris‘ at the same time.

He takes from the luminous centre a handful of light, and scatters it broadcast among the drowsy populations of the duller regions. This human pyrotechnic is a scholar without learning, a juggler hoaxed by himself, an unbelieving priest of mysteries and dogmas, which he expounds the better for his want of faith. Curious being! He has seen everything, known everything, and is up in all the ways of the world.

The story is essentially an episode in which this vain, boastful, and over-confident con man is duped by wily provincials. The narrative peters out with a rather farcical conclusion, but leaves behind an interesting study in ‘enterprise’ which sits comfortably within the grand scheme of La Comedie Humaine.

Gaudissart II

In a later story by this title, published in 1846, the name Gaudissart is used as a generic term to describe all cunning salesmen. The story centres on a fashionable Parisian store in which the manager sells an Englishwoman an expensive shawl. He does so by a mixture of subtle sales techniques, psychological insight, flattery, and boastfulness mixed with a dash of sharp practice. Balzac sees this example of ‘Gaudissart’ as a social force.

The Illustrious Gaudissart – study resources

The Human Comedy – NYRB Classics – Amazon UK

The Human Comedy – NYRB Classics – Amazon US

Cousin Pons – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Cousin Pons – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

All characters in La Comedie Humaine

Cambridge Companion to Balzac – Cambridge UP – Amazon UK

The Illustrious Gaudissart – plot summary

Ch.I The commercial traveller as a new social type. He moves between the city and the provinces but belongs to neither. His task is to extract commissions by persuasion. Gaudissart is a successful example who is living in Paris in semi-retirement – all things to all men. He is approached to sell life insurance, and thinks to promote newspaper subscriptions at the same time – to both a Monarchist and a republican publication.

Ch.II Gaudissart promises to bring home wealth to his mistress Jenny Courand. He also plans to sell subscriptions to a children’s newspaper – and he nurtures secret political ambitions. He writes Jenny a letter from the provinces, boasting of his commercial success.

Ch.III He arrives in Tours, a city which prides itself on hard-headed realism. When Gaudissart tries his vague salesmanship on M. Vernier, the Tourangian as a joke steers him towards Margaritis, the local lunatic, pretending that he is a banker.

Ch.IV Gaudissart tries to sell life insurance to Margaritis, who in his turn tries to sell wine (which he doesn’t have) to Gaudissart. In the end Gaudissart buys the wine, and Margaritis buys subscriptions to the children’s newspaper.

Ch.V Gaudissart discovers that he has been duped and complains to Vernier. The two men quarrel and a duel is arranged. It turns out to be a farce, with Vernier shooting a cow in a nearby field. They call a truce, and Vernier takes out twenty subscriptions to the children’s newspaper. Gaudissart later brags about killing a man in a duel.

The Illustrious Gaudissart – characters

Felix Gaudissart	a 38 year old boastful travelling salesman
Jenny Courand	Gaudissart’s mistress in Paris, a florist
Vernier	a retired dyer in Tours
Margaritis	a lunatic in Tours who thinks he owns vineyards

More on Honore de Balzac
More on literary studies

The Invisible Man

June 10, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study resources, plot summary, web links

The Invisible Man was first published as an abridged serial version in Pearson’s Weekly in 1897. It then appeared in single volume book format later the same year in England and America. It is worth noting that the ‘Epilogue’ that follows the end of the main story was added after the first edition. This does not significantly alter the ‘facts’ of the main narrative, but it does introduce a shift in tone after the dramatic finale to the tale.

The Invisible Man – critical commentary

The structure

The story is split into three parts, which are presented out of their chronological sequence. If the actual order of events as they happened is represented by 1- 2 – 3, they are revealed to the reader in the order 2 – 1 – 3. In other words the novel begins part way through the story.

The Invisible Man is on the run when he arrives in the village of Iping at the start of the novel, causing havoc amongst the Sussex locals. This is the start of Part 2 in the events of the narrative. After a lot of high jinx amongst the villagers, he locates his friend Dr Kemp, to whom he then reveals the origins and the scientific basis of his experiment, and the reasons he has had to escape from London. His account to Kemp is Part 1 of events, or the ‘back story’.

When Kemp alerts the police to the possible danger posed by the Invisible Man, this leads to the attack on Kemp’s house then to the pursuit of the Invisible Man. These events constitute Part 3 of the novel, which culminates in his being killed by a man with a shovel.

As a structure it has a lot of potential – because as readers we are as puzzled as the hapless residents of Iping by the strange events at the start of the novel. In Part 1 we do not know why the man is invisible or how he has got into such a state. Then in Part 2 we are given a quasi-scientific ‘explanation’ of how this experiment has been brought about. Finally, in Part 3 we are invited to witness some of its social and personal consequences.

But the problem is that there are huge differences of tone and content in the three different parts – and very little in the way of a common thread holding them all together.

The first part of the novel reads like a third rate farce, or the story line in a children’s comic. There are stock yokel figures baffled by events they do not understand – which include disappearing clothes, moving furniture, interfering vicar and local doctor, doors mysteriously opening and closing, and a melee at the Whit Monday festival, with people actually crying out “Stop thief!”. There is nothing remotely serious in these events.

Yet when the Invisible Man explains the origins and development of his experimental investigations to Kemp, we are expected to take the narrative seriously. And maybe we do – up to a point. But there are major shifts in tone and substance which disrupt the coherence of the text.

Suddenly in the second part of the novel the Invisible Man runs out of money and robs his own father, who in turn commits suicide, because his money belonged to somebody else. Then the Invisible Man sets fire to the house where he lodges (which just happens to be owned by a Jew). These are events of a different kind that belong to a different literary genre from the events in the first part of the novel.

In the final part of the story we are expected to believe that the Invisible Man becomes a homicidal maniac and suddenly develops a desire to establish a ‘Reign of Terror’. There is no credible psychological explanation offered for this sudden megalomania. None of this presaged by what we know of him from the earlier parts of the story, and the switch from farce to what purports to be a sort of existential terror is just not credible.

Is it a novel?

H.G. Wells classified the books of the 1890s that catapulted him to fame as ‘scientific romances’. The term ‘romance’ had originally been a literary genre for works that were set in non-real or imaginary worlds. Wells was following the trend set in France by Jules Verne with works such as Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in 80 Days (1873). All of these (including Wells’ own stories) are what we now call ‘science fiction’.

But The Invisible Man is set in the very real worlds of London and the Sussex downs and seacoast, so it does not fall into the ‘romance’ category. The events of the narrative centre almost exclusively on one character – the Invisible Man. Only the character of his friend Dr Kemp is in any way psychologically developed, and the narrative makes no attempt to develop secondary themes or the social texture of a realistic fiction.

It is less than 50,000 words long – yet it does not have any of the thematic density and intellectual coherence of a novella – so perhaps the safest classification would be to call it a ‘short novel’.

One good idea

The Invisible Man is one of H.G. Wells’ earliest works, and it can hardly be called a literary success. The writing is clumsy and full of cliches; his characterisation is amateurish; he makes lots of mistakes in the chronology of events (even describing scenes twice); and the novel seems to change its purpose as the story progresses. Yet just as in his novel of the previous year (The Island of Doctor Moreau) he created a work with lasting appeal because it based on one good idea.

We know that even the cleverest research scientist cannot really make himself invisible. (Just as we know that Doctor Moreau cannot really make half-human creatures out of animals and teach them to speak.) But we are prepared to suspend our disbelief in exchange for literary entertainment and maybe some thought-provoking ideas.

The idea of somebody making himself invisible is one of those good single ideas that have struck home, endured, and spread – especially in the realms of popular media. There have been several screen adaptations of the novel, and lots of spin offs. This is the 1933 version directed by James Whale, with screenplay by R.C. Sherriff. Starring – Claude Rains (Dr Jack Griffin, The Invisible Man), Gloria Stuart (Flora Cranley), William Harrigan (Dr Arthur Kemp), and Henry Travers (Dr Cranley). Filmed in Universal Studios, California.

The Invisible Man – study resources

The Invisible Man – Penguin Classics- Amazon UK

The Invisible Man – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

H.G. Wells Classic Collection – five novels – Amazon UK

H.G. Wells Biography – Amazon UK

The Invisible Man – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

The Invisible Man – chapter summaries

1 A man arrives at the Sussex village of Iping during winter. Mrs Hall the landlady of the Coach and Horses is puzzled by his bandaged face and secretive manner. She assumes he has been in an accident.

2 The man claims to be making ‘experimental investigations’, and impatiently demands isolation and quietness.

3 Next day the man’s luggage arrives, consisting largely of bottles and books. When he is bitten by a dog, no flesh shows through the rent in his trousers.

4 The villagers are baffled, curious, and hostile. The local doctor challenges the man and cannot understand his ’empty sleeve’ which seems to contain something solid.

5 There is a burglary at the vicarage, but nobody can be seen in the house when the vicar goes to inspect.

6 Mr and Mrs Hall are snooping in the man’s room when he surprises them by entering – first invisibly, then reappearing fully dressed.

7 When challenged by Mrs Hall over an unpaid bill, the man takes the bandages off his head to prove that he is invisible. This creates a skirmish in the pub, from which he escapes.

8 Out on the Sussex downs, a local naturalist hears somebody sneezing nearby, but can see nothing.

9 The Invisible Man comes across a tramp, Thomas Marvel, whose help he seeks to acquire clothes and shelter.

10 The tramp goes into Iping during the Whitsuntide festival to obtain clothes.

11 At the Coach and Horses, the doctor and vicar are looking through the Invisible Man’s diaries when he enters and threatens them.

12 The Invisible Man and the Tramp steal clothes and cause mayhem amongst their pursuers.

13 The tramp Marvel complains about the way he is being treated, but the Invisible Man dominates and threatens him.

14 At Port Stowe Marvel is in conversation with a sailor who tells him about a newspaper report of events at Iping.

15 Dr Kemp in Burdock sees Marvel running across the fields, raising an alarm about the possible appearance of the Invisible Man.

16 Marvel seeks refuge in the Jolly Cricketers. When the Invisible Man arrives, the pub clientele attack him.

17 An injured Invisible Man breaks into the house of Dr Kemp, who gives him food and drink. They are former university contemporaries.

18 Whilst the Invisible Man sleeps, Kemp reads newspaper reports of the incidents at Iping and wonders what he should do. He sends a note to the police.

19 Next day the Invisible Man explains his invisibility to Kemp. It is based on the reflective power of human tissue. He has worked in secret for more than three years on the experiment, but having run short of funds he has robbed his own father. The money belonged to somebody else, and his father has committed suicide.

20 The Invisible Man recounts the early stages of experimenting to Kemp, including making a cat (almost) invisible. Threatened by his landlord in London with eviction, he makes himself the subject of experimentation. He sets fire to the house, and leaves invisibly.

21 The man mixes amongst crowds in Oxford Street but realises he is leaving a trail of wet footprints.

22 The man goes to hide in a department store, where he steals food and clothing. But he is discovered next morning and gives up the idea of staying there.

23 The man goes to hide in the house of a theatrical costumier in Drury Lane He knocks out the owner and robs the shop.

24 The man explains to Kemp his vague plans to escape to North Africa, but first he wants Kemp to be an accomplice in establishing a Reign of Terror. When the police arrive he escapes again.

25 Kemp and the police make plans for recapturing the Invisible Man.

26 A widespread manhunt is organised, and the murder of an estate steward with an iron bar is attributed to the Invisible Man.

27 Next day Kemp receives a death threat. He sends his housekeeper with a note to the police, but she is attacked b the Invisible Man. The police chief is also attacked and killed. The invisible Man breaks into Kemp’s house but is attacked by two policemen.

28 Kemp escapes from the house and runs downhill into town, pursued by the Invisible Man. Eventually, a crowd forms in pursuit, and the Invisible Man is caught and killed.

Epilogue The tramp Marvel has become a pub landlord and has the Invisible Man’s three notebooks in his possession, the contents of which he does not understand.

The Invisible Man – principal characters

The Invisible Man	Griffin, a former scientist
Dr Kemp	his contemporary at university
Mrs Hall	landlady of the Coach and Horses
Adye	local police chief
Thomas Marvel	a tramp, later a publican

More science fiction by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine (1895) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Wheels of Chance (1896) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The War of the Worlds (1898) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The First Men in the Moon (1901) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Shape of Things to Come (1933) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

More on H.G. Wells
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Island of Doctor Moreau

June 3, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study resources, plot, and web links

The Island of Doctor Moreau was first published in 1896 in London by William Heinemann. The novel was successful in England and America, and a French edition was produced in 1900. There were later, slightly revised editions in 1913 and 1924. It is worth observing that the note explaining the origins of the narrative (written by the narrator’s nephew) appears in some editions as an introduction, and in other editions as an appendix to the main text.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – commentary

The background

The late nineteenth century was a period of considerable social anxiety. Many intellectuals had lost the consolation of religious belief, and following Darwin’s theories of ‘natural selection’ many people imagined that the human race was destined for nothing other than a brutal survival of only the fittest.

There were popular theories of eugenics (selective breeding) based on the presumption that the world was overcrowded and would only become more so unless checked. Scientific discoveries and industrialisation were also seen in a threatening light. H.G.Wells was aware of these developments. He had studied science and would participate actively in the public debates on all these issues.

He launched his literary career with a series of novels that he called ‘scientific romances’ and we now classify as science fiction. The term ‘romance’ had originally been a literary genre for classifying works that were set in non-real or imaginary worlds. Wells was following the trend set in France by Jules Verne with works such as Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in 80 Days (1873).

The horror

The Island of Doctor Moreau certainly fits comfortably within the category of ‘Gothic horror’ that was popular towards the end of the nineteenth century – alongside works such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Dracula (1897).

The element of horror in Wells’ novel is all the more effective for being understated. It begins with the repeated sounds of animals or beings in torment – all of which are recounted from Prendick’s point of view. He is disturbed and mystified, but he sees nothing .

As readers, we too see nothing, but are bound to suspect that Moreau, by his very absence, must be engaged in some activity he wishes to conceal. We are also told that he is a notorious vivisectionist who has been hounded out of England. Even when Prendick is pursued by some of the Beast People, they are not at first described, but exist as menacing presences.

Prendick eventually seizes a brief glimpse of Moreau’s laboratory – but the horror is still impressionistic, not specific:

There was blood, I saw, in the sink, brown and some scarlet, and I smelled the peculiar smell of carbolic acid. Then through an open doorway beyond in the dim light of the shadow, I saw something bound painfully upon a framework, scarred, red, and bandaged.

Even later, when Prendick is mixing with the Beast People, they are given names such as Dog Man and Swine Woman, not described in any detail. The reader is provided with general outlines, and left to imagine the worst.

They were naked … and their skins were of a dull pinkish drab colour, such as I had seen in no savages before. They had fat heavy chinless faces, retreating foreheads, and a scant bristly hair upon their heads Never before had I seen such bestial-looking creatures.

Intertextuality

The Island of Doctor Moreau makes reference to several other texts, without labouring the connections or drawing particular attention to them.

The term ‘intertextuality’ is used when discussing one text that makes reference to another. The reference may be slight and trivial, such as a brief quotation or the name of a character, or it might be something on a larger scale such as a setting or an entire plot.

There is a fine line between intertextual references and stealing another writer’s ideas – but the history of Western literature is full of texts that echo or refer directly to texts which preceded them. Most people are aware that Shakespeare took the basic stories of many of his plays from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. The practice is usually acceptable so long as the second author is doing something new with the material and is not relying too heavily on the original.

The first is Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610). This drama takes place on an island where a single man (Prospero) has pronounced himself lord of the island. He has also enslaved two non-human creatures (Ariel and Caliban) to do his bidding. Ariel has very little substance, but Caliban is actually described as half-beast and half-man. The parallels between Prospero and Doctor Moreau should be quite clear.

The tensions in Prospero’s situation are not resolved until a boat appears at the island and gives them the opportunity to leave it – just as Prendick is only able to leave when the two dead men turn up in a dinghy. Prospero ‘frees’ Ariel and Caliban and leaves them behind – just as the remaining Beast People are left on the island when Prendick finally departs.

The second major ‘influence’ on Wells’ novel is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). This is the story of an ambitious and unscrupulous scientist who pursues experiments using animal body parts to create a new quasi-human creature – all of which he does in secret. Doctor Frankenstein, like Doctor Moreau, also rationalises this step beyond what is acceptable behaviour with a dubious theory of moral superiority.

Victor Frankenstein’s monster eventually feels degraded by his lowly status and rebels against his creator. He takes revenge by murdering Victor’s bride-to-be Elizabeth, and Victor dies in pursuit of his own creation. Similarly, Doctor Moreau’s creations the Beast People strain against the simplistic Rule of Law he has imposed upon them, and they begin to defy its strictures. Eventually, Moreau is killed by one of his own creations – the. puma or Leopard-woman.

The third influence is Defoe’s Robnson Crusoe (1719) who establishes dominance over his desert island because he has the advantage of tools and material supplies rescued from his shipwreck. When the island becomes ‘populated’ by others, he turns Man Friday into his slave, and holds him in submission because he is in possession of a gun – just as Moreau, Montgomery, and Prendick keep the Beast People in submission with their firearms. Ironically, the Beast people are the more ‘natural’ inhabitants of the island, because they have been created there.

The parallels between the two texts become more obvious when Prendick is eventually stranded ‘alone’ on his island following the deaths of Moreau and Montgomery. He constructs an escape device (a raft) just as Crusoe constructs a boat, only to find that he has built it inland, and cannot get it to the sea.

Prendick and Moreau

Prendick is the innocent and lone survivor of a maritime accident in the south Pacific Ocean and is at first relieved to be rescued and taken to the island. He is mystified by what he finds there, and then horrified when he discovers the truth about Moreau’s experiments.

He feels antagonistic towards Moreau, and attacks him – even though technically Moreau is his protector and host. But then Prendick gradually begins to assume the role Moreau has established on the island. As soon as he is in possession of a gun, Prendick starts shooting the Beast People.

When Moreau is killed by the puma, Prendick demands that the Beast People obey the Law that Moreau created – ‘Is the Law not alive?’ He also tells them that Moreau is not really dead, so that they regard him as ‘The Master’ instead. ‘Salute’ he tells them. ‘Bow down!’

As soon as the Beast People are under his command, Prendick immediately downgrades them: ‘I dismissed my three serfs with a wave of my hand’. And he hands out summary ‘justice’: ‘The wretched thing was injured so dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once’.

Once this wave of slaughter gets under way, Prendick accelerates it, even though the Beast People have let him live amongst them: ‘Presently … I will slay them all’. But more than that, he also commands his slave the Dog Man to kill his fellow creatures.

Moreau is presented as the archetypal ‘mad scientist’ who has pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable practice. He has used non-anaesthetised surgery on live creatures to create hybrids – creatures who are half human, half animal. But at least he has been creative in a perverse sort of way. Prendick on the other hand eventually does nothing but destroy life – and he destroys the very creatures that allow him to live amongst them when he has nothing else left.

His motivation is summed up in an admission that clearly echoes The Tempest even down to the image of Prospero’s symbol of power: Prendick reflects, ‘I might have grasped the vacant sceptre of Moreau, and ruled over the Beast People’. Instead he goes home and lives as a recluse.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – study resources

The Island of Doctor Moreau – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Island of Doctor Moreau – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

H.G. Wells Classic Collection – five novels hardback- Amazon UK

H.G. Wells Biography – paperback- Amazon UK

The Island of Dr Moreau – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

The Island of Doctor Moreau – chapter summaries

Introduction Charles Prendick explains the origin of his uncle’s written narrative.

I The narrator Edward Prendick survives a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean and is picked up alone by a passing schooner.

II The former medical student Montgomery helps to revive Prendick, who is worried by strange animal noises on board.

III On deck, amongst filth and animals, Prendick sees an ugly man with a black head whom he thinks he has seen somewhere before. A drunken captain abuses the black-headed man.

IV Late at night on deck, Montgomery reveals to Prendick that he was driven out of his medical studies in London because of a brief indiscretion.

V Next morning the animals are being offloaded for transit to the island. The drunken captain throws Prendick off the ship and sets him adrift in his own old dingy.

VI Prendick is rescued by Montgomery and the evil-looking islanders who speak a language Prendick thinks he has heard before but cannot understand. Rabbits are released onto the island to breed.

VII Prendick is given a room but forbidden to enter the enclosure. He recalls the case of Moreau, a notorious vivisectionist who was hounded out of England.

VIII Prendick and Montgomery have lunch served by the assistant with a black face and pointed ears. Montgomery refuses to acknowledge the man’s strangeness. Next door the puma screams during a vivisection.

IX Prendick escapes the horrible sounds by exploring the island, where he spots a half-savage creature then a trio of bestial like people whose language he cannot understand. At sunset he retreats, pursued by a creature whom he fights off.

X On Prendick’s return to the enclosure, Montgomery gives him a sleeping draught. Next day he hears the sounds of a human being in torment, but when he goes to inspect, Moreau expels him from the compound..

XI Fearing that he is in great danger, he attacks Montgomery then runs away and hides on the island. He meets another Beast Man and follows him to a ravine.

XII He is taken into the squalid camp of the Beast People, where they chant their ritual of beliefs. Moreau and Montgomery arrive to capture Prendick, but he escapes again.

XIII He thinks to drown himself in the sea, but is ‘too desperate to die’. Moreau and Montgomery corner him and offer to parley.

XIV Moreau claims that the creatures he creates are all animals that have been surgically turned into semi-human forms. He rationalises the pain and torment involved. But the results are not entirely successful: some creatures ‘revert’ to their bestiality.

XV The Beast People are programmed to be obedient, but their animal instincts sometimes emerge at night. Montgomery’s assistant M’ling is more humanised than the others. Prendick becomes accustomed to their ugliness.

XVI Montgomery and Prendick discover that some Beast has killed a rabbit and tasted blood. Moreau calls an assembly at which he is attacked by the Leopard-Man, who is then chased down by the Beast People and shot by Prendick.

XVII Some weeks later Prendick is attacked by the escaped puma which breaks his arm. Moreau pursues the animal and disappears. Montgomery shoots some rebellious Beast People.

XVIII Montgomery and Prendick go in search of Moreau, and find him killed by the puma. Prendick threatens some rebellious Beast People, and tells them that Moreau is not really dead. He destroys Moreau’s current experiments.

XIX Prendick argues with Montgomery, who gets drunk and goes off with the Beast People. Prendick plans to escape, but Montgomery burns the boats then is killed in a fight. Prendick accidentally burns down the enclosure.

XX Prendick commands the Beast People on the beach, where they take all the dead people into the sea. Prendick is unsure of his power, and has run out of food and shelter.

XXI Prendick lives amongst the Beast People and assumes command over them. The Dog Man becomes his assistant. But the the Beast People begin to revert to their animal state. Prendick builds a raft, but it falls to pieces. A dinghy approaches, but it contains two dead men.

XXII Prendick sets himself adrift in the dinghy and is picked up by a passing ship three days later. On return to England he looks on his fellow men as animals and he lives in isolation.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – adaptations

The novel has given rise to a number of film adaptations. The first was in 1913, a French silent film called Ile d’Epouvante which was later re-named The Island of Terror. Most of the film versions take minor liberties with the original text – but there are two interesting features they all have in common. First, the introduction of a glamorous female character – of whom there is no trace in the novel. And second, they all change the character of Prendick to someone with a different and less awkward name.

This is 1932 version called Island of Lost Souls. Directed by Erle C. Kenton. Screenplay by Waldemar Young and Philip Wylie. Starring – Charles Laughton (Dr Moreau), Richard Arlen (Edward Parker) Julia Hyams (Ruth Thomas), and Bela Lugosi (Sayer of the Law). Filmed in the Channel Islands, California, and Paramount Studios, Hollywood.

The Island of Doctor Moreau (1977). Directed by Don Taylor, Screenplay by Al Ramus, John Shaner, and Richard Simmons. Starring – Burt Lancaster (Dr Paul Moreau), Michael York (Andrew Braddock), Nigel Davenport (Montgomery), Richard Baseheart (Sayer of the Law), Nick Cravat (M’Ling), Barbara Carerra (Marie). Filmed in St Crois, the US Virgin Islands.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). Directed by John Frankenheimer. Screenplay by Richard Stanley and Ron Hutchinson. Starring – Marlon Brando (Dr. Moreau), Val Kilmer (Montgomery) David Thewle (Edward Douglas), Fairuza Balk (Alssa), Ron Perlman (Sayer of the Law). Marco Hofschneider (M’Ling). Filmed in Queensland, Australia.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – principal characters

Edward Prendick	the author of the narrative
Charles Edward Prendick	his nephew, who presents the narrative
Montgomery	a former medical student
Doctor Moreau	a disgraced vivisectionist
M’Ling	black-faced assistant to Montgomery

More science fiction by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine (1895) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Wheels of Chance (1896) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Invisible Man (1897) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The War of the Worlds (1898) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The First Men in the Moon (1901) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Shape of Things to Come (1933) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

More on H.G. Wells
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Mayor of Casterbridge

January 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, criticism, video, study resources

The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) is probably Hardy’s greatest work – a novel whose aspirations are matched by artistic shaping and control. It is the tragic history of Michael Henchard – a man who rises to civic prominence, but whose past comes back to haunt him. This is not surprising, because he sells his wife in the opening chapter. When she comes back unexpectedly, he is trapped between present and past.

Thomas Hardy

He is also locked into a psychological contest with an alter-ego figure with whom he battles both metaphorically and realistically. Henchard falls in the course of the novel from civic honour and commercial greatness into a tragic figure, a man defeated by his own strengths as much as his weaknesses. There are strong echoes of King Lear here, and some of the most powerfully dramatic and psychologically revealing scenes in all of Hardy’s work.

Hardy is one of the few writers (Lawrence was another) who made a significant contribution to English literature in the form of the novel, poetry, and the short story. His writing is full of delightful effects, beautiful images and striking language.

He creates unforgettable characters and orchestrates stories which pull at your heart strings. It has to be said that he also relies on coincidences and improbabilities of plot which (though common in the nineteenth century) some people see as weaknesses. However, his sense of drama, his powerful language, and his wonderful depiction of the English countryside make him an enduring favourite.

The Mayor of Casterbridge – plot summary

At a country fair near Casterbridge, a young hay-trusser named Michael Henchard gets drunk and quarrels with his wife, Susan. He then auctions off his wife and baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to a sailor, Mr. Newson, for five guineas. Remorseful at his stupidity and loss, he next day swears not to touch liquor again for as many years as he has lived so far (twenty-one). Nineteen years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant, has become Mayor of Casterbridge, known for his staunch sobriety. He is well respected for his financial acumen and his work ethic, but he is not well liked. Impulsive, selfish behaviour and a violent temper are still part of his character.

The people in Casterbridge believe he is a widower. He himself finds it convenient to believe Susan probably is dead. While travelling to the island of Jersey on business, he falls in love with a young woman named Lucette de Sueur. They have a sexual relationship, and Lucetta’s reputation is ruined by her association with Henchard.

When Henchard returns to Casterbridge he leaves Lucetta to face the social consequences of their fling. Yet just as Henchard is about to send for Lucetta, Susan unexpectedly appears in Casterbridge with her daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, who is now fully grown. Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are both very poor. Newson appears to have been lost at sea.

Just as Susan and Elizabeth-Jane arrive, so does an amiable Scotsman, Donald Farfrae, who has experience as a grain and corn merchant, and is on the cutting edge of agricultural science. He befriends Henchard and helps him out of a bad financial situation by giving him some timely advice. Henchard persuades him to stay and offers him a job as his corn factor. He also makes Farfrae a close friend and confides in him about his past history and personal life.

Henchard is also reunited with Susan and the fully grown Elizabeth-Jane, setting them up in a nearby house. He pretends to court Susan, and marries her. Both Henchard and Susan keep their past history from their daughter. Henchard also keeps Lucetta a secret. He writes to her, informing her that their marriage is off. Lucetta is devastated and asks for the return of her letters. Henchard attempts to return them, but Lucetta misses the appointment.

The new state of affairs sets in motion a decline in Henchard’s fortunes. His relationship with Farfrae deteriorates gradually as Farfrae becomes more popular than Henchard. In addition to being more friendly and amiable, Farfrae is better informed, better educated, and everything Henchard himself wants to be. Henchard feels threatened by Farfrae, particularly when Elizabeth-Jane starts to fall in love with him.

The competition between Donald Farfrae and Henchard grows. Eventually they part company and Farfrae sets himself up as an independent hay and corn merchant. Henchard meanwhile makes increasingly aggressive, risky business decisions that put him in financial danger. The business rivalry leads to Henchard standing in the way of a marriage between Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane.

At this point Susan dies and Henchard learns he is not Elizabeth-Jane’s father: she is Newson’s daughter. Feeling ashamed and hard done by, Henchard conceals the secret from Elizabeth-Jane, but grows cold and cruel towards her.

In the meantime, Henchard’s former mistress, Lucetta, arrives from Jersey and purchases a house in Casterbridge. She has inherited money from a wealthy relative. Initially she wants to pick up her relationship with him where it left off. She takes Elizabeth-Jane into her household as a companion thinking it will give Henchard an excuse to come visit, but the plan backfires.

The details of how Henchard sold his first wife become public knowledge when a man who witnessed the sale makes the story public. Henchard does not deny the story, but when Lucetta hears a little bit more about what kind of man Henchard really is she no longer particularly likes what she sees.

Donald Farfrae, who visits Lucetta’s house to see Elizabeth-Jane, now becomes completely distracted by Lucetta, having no idea that Lucetta is the mysterious woman who was informally engaged to Henchard.

Henchard, although he was initially reluctant, now gradually realizes that he wants to marry Lucetta, particularly since he’s having financial trouble due to some speculations having gone bad.

He bullies Lucetta into agreeing to marry him – but by this point she is in love with Farfrae. The two run away one weekend and get married. Henchard’s credit collapses, he becomes bankrupt, and he sells all his personal possessions to pay creditors.

As Henchard’s fortunes decline, Farfrae’s rise. He buys Henchard’s old business and employs Henchard as a journeyman day-laborer. Farfrae is always trying to help the man who helped him get started, whom he still regards as a friend and a former mentor. He does not realize Henchard is his enemy even though the town council and Elizabeth-Jane both warn him.

Lucetta, feeling safe and comfortable in her marriage with Farfrae, keeps her former relationship with Henchard a secret. But this secret is revealed and the townspeople publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta. Lucetta, who by this point is pregnant, dies of an epileptic seizure.

Suddenly Newson, Elizabeth-Jane’s biological father, returns. Henchard is afraid of losing her companionship and tells Newson she is dead. Henchard is once again impoverished, and as soon as the twenty-first year of his oath is up, he starts drinking again. By the time Elizabeth-Jane, who months later is married to Donald Farfrae and reunited with Newson, goes looking for Henchard to forgive him, he has died and left a will requesting no funeral and that no man should remember him.

Study resources

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – York Notes – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – 1978 BBC TV version on DVD – Amaz UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – 2003 BBC TV version on DVD – Amaz UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – CD-ROM and audio pack – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – audioBook version at LibriVox

The Mayor of Casterbridge – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Thomas Hardy: A Biography – definitive study – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Thomas Hardy’s Complete Fiction – Kindle eBook

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

Principal characters

Michael Henchard	the Mayor of Casterbridge, a corn-dealer
Susan	his wife, who he sells at auction
Elizabeth-Jane	their daughter, who dies in infancy
Richard Newson	a sailor who ‘buys’ Henchard’s wife
Elizabeth-Jane	Susan’s second daughter, with Richard Newsom
Donald Farfrae	a scientific corn merchant, who also becomes the Mayor of Casterbridge
Lucette Le Sueur	French-speaking woman from Jersey

Film version

opening of 2003 BBC TV version

music by Adrian Johnston

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Tess 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.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
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Jude the Obscure is Hardy’s last major statement before he gave up writing novels for good. Hero Jude is intellectually ambitious but held back by his work as stonemason and his dalliance with earthy Arabella. When he meets his spiritual soulmate Sue Brideshead, everything seems set fair for success – except that she is capricious and sexually repressed. Jude struggles to do the right thing – but the Fates are against him. The outcome is heart-rendingly bleak and tragic. This novel reveals the deep-seated social and sexual tensions in Hardy – himself a self-made man from a humble background.
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Buy the book at Amazon US

Wessex 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.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Thomas Hardy – web links

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

More on Thomas Hardy
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The Moonstone

November 28, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Moonstone (1868) is often regarded as the first great detective novel. It is certainly a great novel of mystery that sustains both its central puzzle and the solution to it over a very long narrative. The book is also a ‘sensation novel’ – one that sets out to deliberately shock the reader. This was a genre of fiction in which Wilkie Collins excelled. He was a friend and a collaborator of Charles Dickens, and one of the most commercially successful novelists of the mid nineteenth century.

The Moonstone – a note on the text

The Moonstone first appeared as weekly instalments in All the Year Round, the literary magazine owned and edited by Charles Dickens, the friend and sometimes collaborator of Wilkie Collins. Before the serialization had reached its conclusion, it was published in what was then the conventional three volume format by William Tinsley, and in single volume format later the same year.

Although the book did not at first sell well in novel format, it eventually became Collins’ second most successful work, after The Woman in White.

For a full account of the composition, publication and reception of the novel, see the bibliographic essay by John Sutherland in the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Moonstone.

The Moonstone – critical commentary

The narrative

Wilkie Collins adopted the same narrative strategy as he had for his previous big success The Woman in White – a multiplicity of voices. They are multiple both in their literary style and their various points of view. This makes the reader’s task more difficult in assembling a ‘truth’ of what happens in the story, but it offers more entertainment as a compensation.

The narrators include Gabriel Betteredge a longwinded house steward,;Franklin Blake the apparent hero of the novel; Drusilla Clack an interfering spinster; Sergeant Cuff a Scotland Yard detective who guesses the identity of the villain; and Ezra Jennings, a curious medical assistant who actually solves the mystery.

Gabriel Betteredge’s narrative is styled as a combination of his favourite reading – Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – and another eighteenth century monologuist, Laurence Sterne. Betteredge goes into enormous detail over inconsequential trivialities, and he offers long irrelevant digressions, meanwhile passing flattering comments on his own approach as a raconteur of events.

His explanations of what has taken place mean that the story often goes backwards to fill inn the provenance of characters and what has already happened. He is driven to address the reader, pleading for patience, and offering promises that before long the story will be going forwards to get to the point he has been tasked with addressing.

Betteredge also changes his written style to suit the events he is describing. For instance, he gives an account of his daughter Penelope’s police interview in the form of a constable’s abbreviated notes – lapsing comically into longwinded irrelevancies and self-reference. (Betteredge frequently compliments himself as a gifted sleuth: he describes himself as being overcome with ‘the detective fever’.)

Penelope examined. Took a lively interest in the painting on the door, having helped to mix the colours. Noticed the bit of work under the lock, because it was the last bit done. Had seen it some hours afterwards, without a smear … dress recognised by her father as the dress she wore that night, skirts examined, a long job from the size of them, not the ghost of a paint-stain discovered anywhere. End of Penelope’s evidence – and very pretty and convincing too. Signed, Gabriel Betteredge.

Multiple narrators

Collins’ strategy of using multiple narrators produces some other amusing characters – such as the appalling shrew Drusilla Clack, who tyrannises the other characters with her ‘improving’ religious tracts on Satan in the Hair Brush. But this approach does have its weaknesses. There is sometimes unnecessary repetition when one character gives an account of events which are already known to reader, without adding anything new.

A larger weakness is that there is sometimes no explanation given for the source of the information. When Godfrey Ablewhite is exposed as the Diamond thief, Sergeant Cuff gives an account of his villainous embezzlement, his lavish villa in the suburbs, and his secret mistress – but there is no explanation of how he has obtained this information or why it could not have been known before.

Added to that, there are minor problems of scrappiness generated by the number of different narrators towards the end of the story, and unexplained issues such as the identity of the author of the prologue, and no really convincing justification for Murthwaite’s final missive describing the restitution of the Diamond in India.

The sexual interpretation

It is not difficult to see that the central incident of the Diamond theft has distinctly sexual overtones. The moonstone has been given to Rachel on her eighteenth birthday – acting as both a symbol of her virginity and an emblem of her ‘coming-of-age’ at the same time. As the literary critic John Sutherland observes, in eastern religions, gemstones were often placed in the ‘Yoni’ (the vagina) of female statues.

Franklin and Rachel are amorously attracted to each other, and (controversially for that period) are both in her bedroom late at night when the Diamond disappears. Franklin takes the stone from a drawer in her cabinet, with the result that he has a stain (semen? hymenal blood?) on his nightgown. Both parties are awake at the time – though he has been drugged.

The stained nightgown is then confiscated by the maid Susanna Spearman, who is passionately in love with Franklin and quite rightly sees Rachel as rival for his affections. Not only that, but she inspects his bedroom and finds further stains on the inside of his dressing gown: As she writes to him later:

My head whirled round, and my thoughts were in a dreadful confusion. In the midst of it all, something in my mind whispered to me that the smear on your nightgown might have a meaning entirely different to the meaning which I had given to it up to that time.

She is conflicted over her possession of the soiled nightgown, unsure if it will be useful for her love or her revenge. In the end she buries the nightgown in an effort to protect Franklin from detection. But this symbolically blots from her consciousness the evidence of his sexual connection with another woman. She replaces it with a new, unsullied nightgown of her own making, thus preserving an unstained image of him in her own mind. Shortly afterwards she commits suicide.

The detective novel

The poet T.S.Eliot once described The Moonstone as ‘the first and the greatest of English detective novels’ – an endorsement which has been blazoned across the covers of many paperback editions ever since. Yet it is not the first detective novel: Dickens published Bleak House sixteen years previously in 1852, which included his famous sleuth figure, the sardonic Inspector Bucket. Whether it is the ‘greatest’ detective novel is open to debate – a debate for which Eliot does not offer any evidence or make a case.

Moreover, it is not really a detective story, so much as a mystery story – and this despite featuring not one but two detectives amongst its characters. The first of these, local officer Superintendent Seegrave, misinterprets the situation, makes a hash of gathering evidence, and fails to solve the problem. The second detective, Sergeant Cuff from Scotland Yard, is more perceptive and he does eventually predict the identity of the villain correctly – but he fails to recover the Diamond.

The mystery is actually solved by an outsider – the tragic and piebald medical assistant Ezra Jennings, who is an opium addict. It is he who correctly ‘interprets’ the delirious ramblings of his employer Thomas Candy. He then proposes the experiment of unlocking Franklin’s memory of exactly what happened the night the Diamond was stolen by repeating the dose of laudanum he had secretly been given. Jenning’s surmise and his experiment are both successful – and the remainder of the novel is a frantic pursuit to re-capture the Diamond, which fails completely.

The double

In her biography of the author, Catherine Peters observes that ‘All his life, Wilkie Collins was haunted by a second self”:

When he worked late into the night, another Wilkie Collins appeared: ‘… the second Wilkie Collins sat at the same table with him and tried to monopolise the writing pad. Then there was a struggle … when the true Wilkie awoke, the inkstand had been upset and the ink was running over the writing table. After that Wilkie Collins gave up writing at nights.

There is certainly a very striking example of what we now call ‘the double’ at work in The Moonstone. When the assistant doctor Ezra Jennings is introduced, the description of him (given by Franklin) emphasises his peculiar appearance. He has a ‘gypsy complexion’, ‘fleshless cheeks’, and appears simultaneously old and young. Most peculiar of all, he is piebald – with hair that is distinctly black and white.

Yet he and the handsome Franklin are immediately and inexplicably drawn to each other. Franklin finds that ‘Ezra Jennings made some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it impossible to resist’. Jennings for his part confesses ‘There is no disguising, Mr Blake, that you interest me’.

Franklin is rich and handsome: Jennings is an outcast with a guilty secret in his past. Both of them are burdened by a misdemeanour, and neither of them are capable of proving their innocence. Jennings has a stain on his reputation as a human being, and Franklin a stain on his clothes that brands him as a thief. Moreover, both of them are drug addicts.

Franklin is addicted to tobacco. When he stops smoking cigars he cannot sleep and is reduced to a nervous wreck, grappling with the temptation of his cigar cabinet. Jennings is an opium addict – a habit originally taken up to ease the pain of some unspecified ailment, but now a simple dependence on the narcotic.

The two characters, as with many examples of the double, are like two parts of the same being, twins yet opposites. Franklin is rich, handsome, and rising in society. Jennings is broken, haunted by his past sin (which is not specified) and sinking fast under the effects of his addiction.

Yet Jennings is sinking in a noble manner. Knowing that he will soon die, he is working hard to leave money to someone he loves. He feels grateful for the mere fact that Franklin shows him toleration and friendship:

You, and such as you, show me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me with the world that I am leaving, before I go … I shall not forget that you have done me a kindness in doing that.

Jennings saves Franklin’s social reputation by proving his innocence. In doing so he restores the relationship between Franklin and Rachel. His interpretation of events is superior to that of the professional sleuths, Seegrave and Cuff. And in the end he dies a tragic hero, wishing to be forgotten in an unmarked grave.

The sensation novel and its credibility

The sensation novel was ‘a novel with a secret’ and for the first three quarters of The Moonstone the secret of the whole drama is that the person who stole the Diamond from Rachel Verinder’s bedroom is none other than the apparent hero of the novel – Franklin Blake.

This incident sets in train a whole host of sub-mysteries and red herrings about who the guilty person might be, and how the mysteries can be unravelled, the crime solved, and the Diamond recovered.

But it has to be said that Wilkie Collins, for all his inventiveness, puts a great strain on the reader’s credulity in forging the links in his plot. The fact that Franklin was acting under the influence of a secretly administered dose of opium when he stole the Diamond is difficult enough to accept as an explanation of three hundred pages of mystery and drama.

But then we are asked to believe that whilst in the act of taking the Diamond (all the time observed by his lover Rachel) he then unconsciously gives the Diamond to the villain of the piece (Godfrey) who has been watching him secretly from a room next door. This pushes the plotting of the novel into the realms of over-contrived melodrama.

These events concern what the novel’s contents page describe as ‘The Loss of the Diamond’ but in the latter part of the novel (‘The Discovery of the Truth’) there are similar demands made of the reader’s credulity. First the opium experiment proposed by Ezra Jennings manages to miraculously repeat the exact sequence of events that took place on the night of the theft – thus proving Franklin’s innocence.

Well – that might be explained as an essay in ‘released memory’ or ‘the workings of the unconscious’ – a quasi-scientific approach to interpretation reflecting the mid-nineteenth century understanding of psychology. But when the location of the Diamond is discovered (which rounds off the story quite nicely) Collins pushes the levels of contrivance to unacceptable lengths. We are expected to believe the following sequence of events.

First, that the Indian vigilantes are able to gain access to the roof of “The Wheel of Fortune” tavern where Godfrey is hiding, disguised as a sailor. Fortunately for dramatic purposes, a builder’s ladder has been left conveniently available nearby. Next, once on the roof, they are able to cut through a trapdoor (using an ‘exceedingly sharp instrument’) then drop into the room – without once disturbing the occupant. They then kill the thief (Godfrey) without making any sound, and are able to climb back out through the trapdoor, which is seven feet above them. How do they manage this? By using yet another ladder which is kept under the bed – for regular use by customers.

It’s fortunate that The Moonstone has many other successful features of characterisation, narration, and design; because without these literary qualities, the improbabilities and unconvincing elements of ‘sensation’ plotting would sink the novel completely.

The Moonstone – study resources

The Moonstone – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Moonstone – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Moonstone – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Moonstone – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Moonstone – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Moonstone – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Moonstone – Study Notes – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins – Kindle eBook

The Moonstone – 2009 BBC film

Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone – plot summary

Prologue

1799 – The Moonstone is looted by Colonel John Herncastle during the storming of Serangapatan in India.

First Period – The Loss of the Diamond

1848 The aged house steward Gabriel Betteredge is asked to begin the narrative concerning the loss of the diamond. There is a visit to the house by three Indian ‘conjurers’. Betteredge talks to the morbid maid Rosanna on the Shivering Sand. Spendthrift Franklin Blake returns home from his education in Europe – in possession of the diamond, which has been left to Rachel Verinder in the Colonel’s will.

The Colonel has visited Lady Verinder on Rachel’s birthday, but has been turned away from the house. Franklin Blake reports the Colonel’s arrangements for his will and goes to put the Diamond in a local bank until Rachel’s next birthday.

Franklin and Rachel go in for decorative door painting. The maid Rosanna is in love with Franklin. Philanthropist and ladies’ man Godfrey Ablewhite is invited to Rachel’s party. The Diamond is presented to Rachel, who then refuses an offer of marriage from Godfrey. During dinner there is a visit from the Indians. By next morning the Diamond has disappeared.

Superintendent Seegrave arrives to interview staff and guests, with no result. Rosanna has the vapours over Franklin and behaves strangely. Franklin sends to London for more experienced help.

Sergeant Cuff arrives from Scotland Yard, establishes the paint smear on a door as an important clue, and then claims the Diamond has not been stolen. Cuff wishes to inspect everyone’s clothes in pursuit of the paint smear – but Rachel refuses to comply.

Cuff pays special attention to Susanna because of her erratic behaviour. Betteredge and Cuff visit the Shivering Sand, then Susanna’s friends in a fisherman’s cottage. Cuff believes Susanna has sunk something in the sands.

When they get back to the house, Rachel wants to leave. Cuff has a theory that she has the Diamond. Susanna seems on the edge of making a confession, but doesn’t. Cuff thinks that Susanna has made a new nightdress and hidden the one with a paint smear. Rachel leaves the house and Susanna seems to be plotting to retrieve her hidden nightdress.

When Susanna disappears a fruitless search is made of the Shivering Sand, followed by the discovery of her suicide note. Lady Verinder thinks to dismiss Cuff, who argues that Rachel probably has secret debts and has engaged Susanna as an accomplice in selling the Diamond. Lady Julia challenges Rachel with these claims, but she denies all the charges – so Cuff is paid off.

Lady Verinder takes Rachel to London. Franklin leaves for Europe, and Limping Lucy Yolland accuses him of ruining Susanna’s life. Cuff’s three predictions regarding the Yollands, the Indians, and the money-lender all come true.

Second Period – The Discovery of the Truth

Miss Clack gives an account of Godfrey Ablewhite being decoyed in London and searched by three Indians. The same thing happens to Mr Luker. Rachel is upset by the news. She interrogates Godfrey and insists on his innocence against rumours that he is in league with Luker.

Lady Verinder reveals that she has heart problems. Clack and lawyer Bruff discuss Rachel, Godfrey, and Franklin as possible suspects. Clack leaves improving books with Julia, all of which are returned unread – so she posts letters containing quotations. She overhears Godfrey proposing to Rachel, who is conflicted but accepts. Lady Verinder suddenly dies.

The Ablewhites and Rachel move to Brighton accompanied by Clack who vows to ‘interfere’. Rachel retracts her engagement to Godfrey, who accepts the rejection, but his father reproaches Rachel and refuses to be her guardian. Clack wants to read sermons and is rejected by everyone. Rachel leaves under the protection of family lawyer Bruff.

Bruff reveals that Godfrey has asked to see Sir John Verinder’s will, which limits Rachel’s inheritance. Godfrey has accepted Rachel’s rejection because he needs a ‘large sum of money’. Bruff is visited by the suave Indian who has also been to see Luker, asking how soon a loan must be repaid. Murthwaite advances a theory that explains the Indians’ plot to retrieve the Diamond, which has been handed to Luker.

Franklin returns to England on the death of his father (having inherited a substantial fortune). Rachel refuses to see him. He thinks it’s because of the Diamond, so he goes to Yorkshire to take up the search where it was left off. Betteredge helps him to recover the letter left for him by Susanna. The letter gives him instructions for recovering the nightgown hidden in the Shivering Sand.

Rosanna has also left a long letter, explaining her love for Franklin and how she found the paint stain on his nightgown. She kept it, believing that he had stolen the Diamond to pay off heavy debts.

Franklin takes the evidence to Bruff in London, who agrees to arrange a meeting with Rachel. She reveals to Franklin that she saw him stealing the Diamond, and has concealed the fact ever since out of love for him. They part in great bitterness. Franklin goes to Yorkshire in search of the birthday dinner guests. Mr Candy wants to tell him something, but cannot remember what it is.

Ezra Jennings relates how he has nursed Mr Candy, and how his life has been ruined by a stain on his reputation. He is saving his small inheritance for a loved one and surviving the threat of death by taking opium. When Franklin reveals his own problem Jennings claims that his transcriptions of Candy’s delirious statements will prove Franklin was unconscious at the time the Diamond was stolen..

The notes reveal that Candy gave Franklin a dose of opium on the night of the party. Jennings also suggests that the Diamond might have been stolen from Franklin, so he proposes a repeat opium experiment to prove Franklin’s innocence.

Jennings writes to Rachel explaining the party trick on Franklin and asking for permission to use the Hall for a re-enactment. Rachel agrees and forgives Franklin. Bruff disapproves but agrees to attend. Betteredge gives reluctant consent.

The principals assemble at the Hall and the experiment is successful. Franklin takes the opium and removes a fake diamond from Rachel’s cabinet, but falls into a stupor before placing it in his own room.

Bruff and Franklin return to London where they see Luker at the bank. People who might have the Diamond are followed. A sailor is traced to a pub, but is dead next morning and turns out to be Godfrey Alblewhite.

Epilogue

Sergeant Cuff reports on the secret life of Ablewhite. He has stolen another man’s inheritance and spent it on a lavish villa where he keeps his mistress. Cuff reveals that Ablewhite was in the room adjacent to Franklin on the night of the party. Franklin, who had been drugged, asked Ablewhite to take the Diamond to his father’s bank for safe keeping.

Mr Candy reports on the death of Ezra Jennings. Franklin and Rachel are married. Cuff’s man traces the three Hindoos to a ship bound for Bombay. The captain reports that the Hindoos jumped ship whilst it was becalmed off the coast of northern India. Murthwaite’s letter records the return of the Diamond to its place in a shrine dedicated to Vishnu.

The Moonstone – principal characters

Colonel John Herncastle	the original Diamond thief
Lady Julia Verinder	his sister
Rachel Verinder	Julia’s daughter
Franklin Blake	Jukia’s nephew
Matthew Bruff	the Verinder family lawyer
Gabriel Betteredge	elderly house steward to Lady Julia Verinder
Penelope	Betteredge’s daughter
Rosanna Spearman	housemaid, ex-reformatory, with deformed shoulder
Godfrey Ablewhite	a philanthropist and ladies’ man
Thomas Candy	the local doctor
Ezra Jennings	Candy’s piebald assistant
Mr Murthwaite	an explorer
Superintendant Seegrave	the local detective
Seargeant Cuff	a Scotland Yard detective
Drusilla Clack	a pious evangelical Christian
Septimus Luker	a money lender
Octavius Guy	Cuff’s boy detective assistant, ‘Gooseberry’

The Moonstone – further reading

William M. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, London: Ivan R. Dee, 1988.

Tamar Heller, Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Sue Lonoff, Wilkie Collins and his Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship, New York: AMS Press, 1982.

Catherine Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Walter C. Phillips, Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists, New York: Library of Congress, 1919.

Lynn Pykett, Wilkie Collins: New Casebooks, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1998.

Nicholas Rance, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1991.

More on Wilkie Collins
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The Murders in the Rue Morgue

April 27, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is widely regarded as the first modern detective story. It is one of three pieces written by Edgar Allan Poe featuring his super-sleuth the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin. The other two stories are The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) and The Purloined Letter (1844).

Edgar Allan Poe

The term ‘detective’ had not been coined at the time Poe created his gentleman hero, and it is significant that Dupin does not think of himself as such. His general approach is to allow others to do the detection work – the police with their investigations and the newspapers in their reports. He then uses his sharper powers of ratiocination to analyse and re-interpret the information and draw from it more efficacious solutions..

The Murders in the Rue Morgue – critical comment

The locked room mystery

This story establishes a problem and a scenario which has become a stock-in-trade for writers of detective fiction ever since its first publication. That is – how is it possible for a murder to take place in a room which has been locked from the inside? Poe makes the problem even harder by situating the room on the fourth floor at the top of a tall building.

The police are baffled by this situation because they are searching for commonplace explanations: Dupin succeeds because he is prepared to think ‘laterally’ and entertain imaginative solutions. There is a little fictional ‘sleight of hand’ on Poe’s part, because he introduces new evidence to assist Dupin’s efforts – his discovery of hidden springs in the window casements. It’s not entirely clear what function these devices would perform on the fourth floor of a tall building.

It also has to be said that the principal solution to the mystery is rather far-fetched – an escaped Orang-Outang armed with a cut-throat razor who climbs up a lightning rod and murders two people. But the real interest in the story is not these Gothic and rather grotesque events, but Dupin’s method of detection, analysis, and problem-solving.

Dupin’s method

Poe creates a lot of lofty and complicated theorising on Dupin’s part to distinguish his methods of problem-solving from those of the police. But what his procedure boils down to is what Poe calls ‘ratiocination’ – which simply means clear, logical, and exact thinking. What Dupin emphasies in addition to this is his willingness to empathise with his antagonist. He puts himself into the frame of mind of those he is trying to ‘understand’.

It’s worth noting too that Dupin does not engage in lots of conventional crime detection activity. There is no undercover snooping, assuming disguises, or arranging stake-outs to catch culprits red-handed He uses the work of others – police and newspaper reports – and re-interprets the information they contain. This suits his style and manner of detached, aloof, cerebration. It is also where his emphasis on analysis comes into play. He looks at the same details, but puts himself into the frame of mind of someone else (the culprit) and tries to imagine what they might do. As he observes in a later story:

the proper question in cases such as this, is not so much ‘what has occurred?’ as ‘what has occurred that has never occurred before?’

Sherlock Holmes

It is quite clear that Edgar Allan Poe’s character the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin was the original model for Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective Sherlock Holmes. Both characters have upper class origins, but have fallen on hard times. Both of them are forced to share lodgings with the narrator, where they enjoy a slightly reclusive bohemian lifestyle.

Both Dupin and Holmes operate as ‘gentleman detectives’ of an amateur variety, but outwit the police. Both of them are ferociously learned and fanatically concerned with details. They both smoke meerschaum pipes, and they are both single men with refined tastes and a penchant for making witty, sardonic remarks. They also have a habit of rounding off their case summaries with some sort of epigram or quotation.

It is not possible to copyright fictional characters or plot devices, but Conan Doyle comes very close to plagiarism so far as his central character is concerned – and the method of detection he uses.

Conan Doyle elaborated his appropriation of Poe’s original idea to produce an amazingly successful series of stories. Sherlock Holmes was even brought back from the ‘dead’ by public demand when Doyle tried to bring the series to an end. But the original concept of the intellectual super-sleuth belongs to Edgar Allan Poe.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue – study resources

Poe: The Ultimate Collection – Amazon UK

Poe: The Ultimate Collection – Amazon US

Poe: Collected Tales – Penguin – Amazon UK

Poe: Collected Tales – Penguin – Amazon US

Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Kindle illustrated – UK

Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Kindle illustrated – US

The Murders in the Rue Morgue – story synopsis

An un-named narrator discusses the skills required to play chess, draughts, and whist – arguing that true analysis requires powerful observation, acute memory, and a rigorous attention to details.

He meets Auguste Dupin and rents an old house where they live together in a bohemian manner, largely late at night. Dupin is unusually observant and analytic. He demonstrates his his power of tracing a line of connections.

They read in a newspaper an account of the brutal murder of an old woman and her daughter. The room where the murders took place was locked from the inside and all the windows here closed. There appear to be no clues of explanations for the murders. Subsequent witness depositions establish that the old woman owned the building and lived a secluded life.

The witnesses give conflicting accounts of voices overheard and the language used. The woman withdrew 4,000 Francs from her bank three days previously. This was delivered to her in gold coins. by a bank clerk who has been arrested by the police.

Dupin and the narrator visit the scene of the crime, where Dupin makes a detailed examination of the outside and the inside of the house. He then goes into a period of deep reflection and says nothing until the following day.

Dupin then argues that it is the very unusual details of the crime which have baffled the police, but have led him to solve the problem. He then locates hidden springs in the window casements through which the assailants escaped. He also notices unusually wide shutters at the windows and and a lightning rod running down the rear wall.

He points to the fact that the gold was not stolen, the brutal ferocity of the attacks, and the powerful agility required to gain access to the attic rooms. He concludes from the marks of strangulation that the murderer was not human, and then from a detailed scientific description concludes that it must have been an Orang-Outang.

He has also found a fragment of sailor’s ribbon outside the house and has placed an advert in a newspaper offering the return of the Orang-Outang to its rightful owner.

A French sailor appears in response to the advertisement. He explains that he brought the Orang-Outang back from Borneo. It escaped from his lodgings and climbed up to the rooms where the old woman and her daughter lived. The sailor followed and witnessed the murders. All of this is reported to the police; the bank clerk is released; and the sailor sells the Orang-Outang to the Jardin des Plantes.

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The Mystery of Marie Roget

May 1, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) is Edgar Allan Poe’s second story featuring his philosophic amateur detective the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin. This intellectual super-sleuth made his first appearance the year before in The Murders in the Rue Morgue and appeared for the last time in Poe’s 1844 story, The Purloined Letter.

Marie Roget is based on a real-life crime that took place in New York City in 1841 when the corpse of a young girl called Mary Rogers was found floating in the Hudson River. The original murder was never really solved – which is perhaps why Poe leaves his story technically ‘unfinished’.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Mystery of Marie Roget – commentary

The story follows the formula Poe devised for The Murders in the Rue Morgue. An un-named narrator presents the hero-detective Dupin as a somewhat world-weary bohemian with an outstanding intellect. Dupin is then landed with the difficult problem of a crime which the police cannot solve.

The structure of the story then follows in essentially two parts – the presentation of the evidence, then the analysis of the facts.

Marie Roget disappears, then her corpse is found in the Seine – everyone is baffled by the problem
Dupin examines all the evidence related to the crime – then speculates on possible explanations

There is a missing third part to the story which makes itself quite noticeably felt. We do not know if Dupin’s interpretation of events is correct or not. He draws up a list of what might be the solution(s) to the mystery. His conclusion is that further investigations might confirm the veracity of his speculations, but we do not know if these theories are valid or not.

That is the major weakness of this story, and the reason why it is not so successful as its companion pieces, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter.

But in drawing up his explanations for what might have happened, Poe makes some interesting observations which throw light onto the secondary subject of the story, which is the character of Dupin himself. He has a fresh and original way of looking at the evidence:

the proper question in cases such as this, is not so much ‘what has occurred?’ as ‘what has occurred that has never occurred before?’

He also makes plain a scathing critique of the newspapers and superficial journalism which runs through all of the Dupin stories. Not only are the police incompetent in failing to solve the crimes, but the newspapers merely highlight sensational details – to increase their sales.

The irresponsible highlighting of these graphic details actually obscures the truth of what really happened in the crime and impedes its solution. This critique of press irresponsibility was made more than one hundred and fifty years ago – and may be regarded as still valid today..

We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation — to make a point — than to further the cause of truth.

The main problem with this tale as a short story is that it lacks any sense of dramatic movement and it certainly doesn’t have any genuine resolution. There is no active pursuit of a criminal; all activity relating to the crime has already taken place before the story begins; and we do not know if Dupin’s suppositions are valid or not. As the critic Howard Haycraft observed, “The characters neither move nor speak”

These weaknesses arise from the very origins of the story. Poe wrote the tale when the mysterious crime was still fresh in the public’s mind. He also promoted the story as his own original solution to the mystery. It was even published in two parts. But the fact is that the crime had not been solved. Indeed it never has been solved. However, the story does have the distinction of being the first detective murder mystery to be based upon a real life crime.

The Mystery of Marie Roget – study resources

Poe: The Ultimate Collection – Amazon UK

Poe: The Ultimate Collection – Amazon US

Poe: Collected Tales – Penguin – Amazon UK

Poe: Collected Tales – Penguin – Amazon US

Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Kindle illustrated – UK

Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Kindle illustrated – US

The Mystery of Marie Roget – story synopsis

Following Auguste Dupin’s success in solving the mysteries of the murders in the Rue Morgue, his fame spreads amongst the Parisian police. The attractive Marie Roget lives with her widowed mother who keeps a pension. Marie works in a perfume shop in Palais Royal owned by M Le Blanc

Marie suddenly disappears for a week, returns home, then disappears a second time, after which her corpse is found floating in the Seine. The Police are baffled. A reward is offered, then doubled a week later. After a month the chief of the Prefecture visits Dupin with a request for help – to save his reputation and honour.

The narrator then gathers depositions and newspaper reports of the crime. Her body was badly mutilated, she was interred, then exhumed for further investigation. Public outrage rose as time passed without results. It is suggested that the body might be that of somebody else.

An outsider M. Beauvais takes a close interest in identifying the body – although a friend of his identifies it sooner. The newspapers throw direct suspicion on M. Beauvais, but he protests his innocence.

Some boys find remnants of clothing in the woods and a handkerchief bearing the name ‘Marie Roget’. The landlady of a nearby tavern reports the appearance of a young man and woman. There are screams later. Then the dead body of Marie Roget’s fianc*eacute;e is found in the same spot, along with a suicide note

Dupin is severely critical of the newspapers and the police. He submits the text of one journalist’s report to close critical examination, and goes into a detailed account of the physics of bodies drowning in water. He is particularly scathing about journalistic generalisations, cliches, and sloppy reasoning.

Dupin thinks it is necessary to look outside the immediate events of the mystery. He digs up several news reports which at first seem unrelated to the mystery. He analyses the garments found at the crime scene and argues that they have been planted there. Then he compares the likelihood of a single murderer with that of a gang.

His analysis of the evidence points to the conclusion that the murderer must be the sailor with whom Marie Roget previously eloped. He suggests that further interviews should be conducted with this in mind. The narrator concludes with a comparison of the real historical crime of Mary Rogers, then further reflections on chance and possibility.

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The Other House

May 6, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Other House (1896) was first conceived as a stage play called The Promise. It was converted into a novel and first appeared in the London Illustrated News, then later as a single-volume novel published by Heinemann in 1896. Almost ten years later it was re-converted into a play. But neither the earlier nor the latest dramatised version ever reached the stage.

The decade of the 1890s was a period in which James suffered from the disappointment of his calamitous experiments with the theatre. But he was nothing if not an efficient housekeeper of the materials he had generated. Dramatic plots he had first created for the stage were turned into prose fiction – even though their origins show through in the volume of dialogue which dominates the text.

The Other House is also unusual in James’s oeuvre in that it is a murder mystery. Many of his other works flirt closely with illegal acts and certainly contain many forms of death – but this novel embeds beneath its welter of conversation the deliberate murder of a child. It’s also a murder which goes unpunished.

The Other House – critical commentary

Literary critics have passed generally unfavourable comment on The Other House on the grounds that the muder of a child is inconsistent with the rest of Henry James’s work, and that the psychological motivation of the characters is rather improbable.

This view has two weaknesses, the first of which is that the governess in The Turn of the Screw (written around the same time) frightens to death the child Miles because of her neurotic obssessions. The second is that the person guilty of the crime in The Other House, Rose Armiger, is quite obviously a ruthless and ‘bad heroine’. She comes from a lower class of society than the other characters (with an income of only £200 per annum) and must remove the one obstacle that stands in the way of her snaring Tony.

She and the ‘good heroine’ Jean Martle are not only in love with the same man but deeply antagonistic to each other. She has every reason for wishing to blame the murder onto her rival, and thus eliminate two impediments at the same time.

The only problem, given such a tightly choreographed series of events, is why she should announce her engagement to Dennis Vidal only a few moments before commiting the murder which she hopes will clear her way to securing Tony.

Presumably, one might argue, that rather like many other unscrupulous villains, she wishes to keep all her options open. One might also argue that in declaring her engagement (which she does before Dennis has actually proposed) she thereby deflects suspicion from herself. She would also certainly have had no compunction in ditching Dennis a second time if her plan had been successful.

Certainly the motivation and behaviour of the other characters is consistent and credible. Dennis is fatally ‘smitten’ with Rose. Jean is heroically devoted to Tony and his child. Paul is a naive young man casting around in an adult milieu, propelled by a controlling mother. Dr Ramage acts entirely unethically in covering up the crime, but he does so in order that the good name of an upper-class family (who are also his employers) should not be sullied.

James is no stranger to ambiguous conclusions in his work. Everyone in this story gets off scott free – except that it is assumed that Rose will have to live out her emigrant existance in China with a heavily burdened conscience.

It only remains to observe that given the circumstances obtaining at the conclusion, Jean is actually free to get her man after all.

Dramatic unity

In 1890 Henry James began his ill-fated attempt to succeed in the theatre. The story is now well known. He wrote several plays which successive producers turned down, and when finally his Guy Domeville was staged in 1895 it was greeted on its first night with a 15 minute curtain call of booing and jeering. James gave up the stage, put his dramatic ambitions behind him, and returned to the novel.

But what is not so well known (or observed) is that he retained the plots of these failures, and some of the novels he produced in the wake of this decision are heavily influenced by theatrical conventions and the mechanics of the theatre. The Awkward Age (1898) for instance is a story almost entirely composed of conversations between characters as they visit each others’ drawing rooms.

The Other House (1896) uses the same technique but focuses dramatic interest even more intensely into three ‘acts’ set in only two adjacent and very similar locations. The characters walk on and off ‘stage’ in carefully choreographed sequences, exchanging the information which constitutes the narrative.

Indeed the whole of the first part of the novel (one hundred pages) follows the Aristotelian ideal of unity of time, place, and action. It takes place in one short period of time in one location. It’s a story made for the theatre, and the strategies for getting the players on and off stage are as creakingly evident as the flapping scenery of a painted backdrop.

It is in fact a three act murder mystery, and was first conceived as the scenario for a stage play in 1883 called The Promise, but was turned down by theatrical producers. James certainly made the best of his opportunities for re-cycling the carefully planned dramatic material with which he filled his notebooks.

The Other House – study resources

The Other House – New York Review Books – Amazon UK

The Other House – New York Review Books – Amazon US

The Other House – Everyman Classics – Amazon UK

The Other House – Everyman Classics – Amazon US

The Other House – Kindle eBook edition

The Other House – (unabridged) audio download edition

The Other House – notes on the text

The Other House – eBook edition

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Other House – plot summary

Book First. A bank is controlled by two families, the Beevers and the Breams who live in two adjacent contry houses separated by a river with a connecting bridge. In Part I of the novel the characters assemble at Bounds, the Bream house. Tony Bream’s wife Julia is ill following the birth of their daughter Effie. She makes her husband promise that in the event of her death he will not re-marry whilst their daughter is still alive. At the same time, Rose Armiage, an impecunious friend of the Breams is due to marry Dennis Vidal, a clerk in the ‘Eastern office’ with prospects, but they quarrel over her attachment to the Breams and break off their engagement. Vidal goes back to China.

Book Second. Events take place four years later at Eastmead, the Beever house, following the death of Julia Bream. Effie’s birthday is being celebrated. Interest is focussed on Paul Beever, a young man who has inherited a half share in the bank and whose mother wishes to see him married – possibly to Jean Martle, Mrs Beever’s cousin. This match is encouraged by both Tony Bream and Rose Armiger in what they claim is Paul’s best interest.

But Jean refuses the offer, saying that she will never be marry anyone. Dennis Vidal on the same day has arrived back from China, much richer, to enquire after Rose, who announces publicly that she will now accept his offer of marriage. During the social flurry of these events the child Effie goes missing, and is discovered dead in the river by Dr Rammage. Her father Tony confesses that he has killed her.

Book Third. Events take place in the same location, immediately following this announcement. A series of characters interview each other, during the course of which it emerges (very obscurely) that Rose has killed the child and tried to put the blame onto Jean, her rival in love for Tony Bream (and as a way of circumventing the promise made to his former wife).

Dr Ramage arranges to cover up the crime, claiming there has been an accident. Dennis takes Rose away to return to China, and Tony is spared any of the scandal for which he was honourably trying to take the blame.

Principal characters

Mrs Adela Beever	the ‘queen mother’ of Eastmead
Paul Beever	her naive but honest son – inheritor of half the bank
Anthony (Tony) Bream	co-owner of the bank
Julia Bream	his wife who dies
Effie Bream	their child
Jean Martle	Mrs Beever’s cousin
Rose Armiger	school friend of Bream – ‘engaged’ to Dennis Vidal
Dennis Vidal	a ‘rising’ clerk in the Eastern service
Dr Ramage	the local physician
Mrs Grantham	Rose’s aunt, Julia’s stepmother
Gorham	Effie’s nurse
Manning	Mrs Beever’s tall parlourmaid
Wilverley	the local town
Eastmead	Mrs Beever’s house
Bounds	the Bream’s house
Plumbury	the local railway station

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The 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.
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Daisy 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.
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The Cambridge Companion to Henry James is intended to provide a critical introduction to James’ work. Throughout the major critical shifts of the past fifty years, and despite suspicions of the traditional high literary culture that was James’ milieu, as a writer he has retained a powerful hold on readers and critics alike. All essays are written at a level free from technical jargon, designed to promote accessibility to the study of James and his work.
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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.

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The Outcry

May 10, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Outcry (1911) was Henry James’s last novel before he died in 1916. It’s quite unlike most of his major works – light, short, and with even a happy ending. In common with some of his other novels from the ‘late period’ (such as The Other House) it’s based on an idea he had for a stage play. In fact the dialogue had already been written. James merely furnished some connecting passages between the highly stylised conversations.

It deals with a theme which was of contemporary interest – the buying up of European art treasures by rich American art collectors and capitalists – something James had touched on earlier in the figure of Adam Verver in The Golden Bowl. And the novel caught the public’s attention. It sold more copies than his other far more serious later works. It has to be said that the possible reason for this is that the novel is shorter and more easily understandable than the long and intellectually demanding works of his late period.

Henry James – by John Singer Sargeant

The Outcry – critical commentary

This is another of the late novels that James’s originally conceived for the theatre, and following the conventions of dramatic structure and narrative devices that it exists in almost a genre of its own, alongside The Awkward Age and The Other House as a novelised drama – what we would now call ‘the book of the play’.

Although it deals with the well tried Jamesian themes of New World forcefulness and acquisition pitted against Old Europe’s stiff and cautious traditions, the novel ends on what is for James an unusually light and positive note. Two couples, Lord Theign and Lady Sandgate, then his daughter Lady Grace and Hugh Crimble are happily united. There is none of the usual moral ambiguity and negative resolution of James’s other late work. What triumphs is generosity of spirit and a gesture which puts public good before private advantage. No wonder the novel was popular and a best-seller.

It has to be said however that these very elements may have contributed to The Outcry becoming one of James’s least-known and little-read works today. Because despite the fact of its success on first publication, it is now almost universally ignored.

The Outcry – study resources

The Outcry – New York Review Books edition – Amazon UK

The Outcry – New York Review Books edition – Amazon US

The Outcry – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Outcry – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon US

The Works of Henry James – Kindle eBook edition (60 book anthology)

The Complete Plays of Henry James – Oxford: OUP – Amazon UK

The Outcry – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Outcry – plot summary

Book First. The action takes place at Dedborough, the country house of Lord Theign. He is a wealthy aristocrat with two daughters giving him problems. The eldest, Lady Kitty is a widow with substantial gambling debts owed to a duchess. The duchess’s son, Lord John, is paying court to Theign’s younger daughter, Lady Grace, with a proposal that if it is accepted, means that the debts will be written off as part of the marriage settlement.

Meanwhile Beckenridge Bender, a rich American collector arrives at Dedborough at Lord John’s invitation to buy up any rare and expensive art objects. At the same time Grace has invited Hugh Crimble, a young art connoisseur, to look over her father’s collection. He discovers that a lesser painting might in fact be a rare and undiscovered work by an old master, Mantovano.

He also finds that a Rubens in the collection has been falsely attributed, but agrees not to make his findings public so long as they agree not to let prize pieces from the collection to be sold off and taken out of the country. When he tries to pressure Lord Theign to retain the paintings as part of the national heritage, he is dismissed. But Lady Grace takes on his services instead, which displeases her father.

Book Second. The action takes place three or four weeks later in the Bruton Street home of Lady Sandgate, an old friend of Lord Theign’s. She receives Crimble, who is waiting for news confirming his attribution of the Mantovano. Crimble and Grace agree to urge Bender to seek maximum publicity for his purchases in order that he should fail – by arousing public animosity.

Crimble receives bad news on his attribution from one expert, but seeks a second opinion elsewhere. Lord Theign argues with Grace on the issue of selling paintings from his collection, and he particularly disapproves of her dealings with Crimble, with whom he forbids her to associate. She disobeys him.

Book Third. Events take place in the same location, a fortnight later. Crimble, whilst waiting for the second opinion on his art-detective work, forms a romantic alliance with Grace. Lord Theign spars with Bender over the price he will charge for his painting, and the deal is further complicated when Lady Sandgate also puts one of her own old masters into the equation.

It is confirmed that the Mantovano is a rare and priceless old master. Crimble is vindicated and his reputation as an expert established. Lord Theign and Lady Sandgate finally agree to thwart Bender by giving their family portraits to the Nation, and the deal is sealed with a romantic coupling.

Principal characters

Lord Theign	owner of Dedborough Place – a country estate
Banks	Lord Theign’s butler
Lady Amy Sandgate	an old friend of Lord Theign
Lady Kitty Imber	Lord Theign’s widowed elder daughter who has extensive gambling debts
Lady Grace	Lord Theign’s younger daughter
Lord John	a friend of Lord Theign
The Duchess	Lord John’s mother, to whom the gambling debts are owed
Beckenridge Bender	a rich American art collector
Hugh Crimble	an art conoisseur and scholar
Gotch	Lady Sandgate’s butler
The Prince	(who never appears)

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel – the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian father. She has a handsome young suitor – but 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 town house. Who wins out in the end? You will be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, with a sensitive picture of a woman’s life. Buy the book here

The 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.
Buy the book here

Henry James – web links

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

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.

More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Picture of Dorian Gray

April 1, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Oscar Wilde’s version of the Gothic horror story, has entered popular consciousness even amongst people who have not actually read the novel. His central image of a secret ‘portrait in the attic’ is frequently used as a metaphor in cases where people seem to be rather unnaturally preserving their youthful looks.

The novel is also packed full of witty epigrams and paradoxes (usually expressed by the character Lord Henry Wotton) which Wilde re-used in the stage plays that made him famous. Within twelve months of publishing Dorian Gray he was at the height of his fame as a writer, a wit, and a dandy. And within another three years he was in jail – convicted of having commited acts of ‘gross indecency’ with other men in private – providing a wonderful example of the claim made in his essay The Decay of Lying (1891), that “Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life”.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was first serialised in Lipincott’s Monthly Magazine (Philadelphia) starting in the issue for July 1990. But this version was Bowdlerised by the magazine editors without Wilde’s knowledge. He subsequently revised the text for its publication as a one-volume novel by Ward, Locke and Company in 1891.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – critical commentary

The Double

The ‘double’ theme gets an interesting twist here. Instead of two human beings we have a human and a painting – a work of art. They start out looking identical. The portrait is an accurate record of Dorian’s beauty as an eighteen year old young man. But as time passes, Dorian remains the same, whilst the portrait ages and acts as a reflector of the sins that Dorian commits.

In most instances of the double, one character acts as the alter-ego of the other or commits acts on behalf of the other. But in Dorian’s case, he actually commits the acts himself, whilst the portrait internalises their effects. (It is also interesting that so few of his debaucheries are recorded.)

Structure

The narrative was first published in thirteen chapters as a serial in Lippincott’s monthly magazine, and later as twenty chapters in one volume. The additional matter for the first book publication does not add anything substantial.

The narrative essentially falls into two parts, with a two chapter bridge between them. Part one establishes Dorian’s desire for eternal youth, his relationship with Sibyl which turns out badly, the mysterious changes to the portrait, and his decision to lock it away in the attic.

The bridging section in which almost twenty years pass is filled with an account of Dorian’s cultural tastes for decadent writers and his passion for collecting ornate embroidery and obscure musical instruments. During this period he establishes a social reputation for debauchery.

Part three deals with his downfall. First he commits murder, blackmails his friend, and then is pursued by Sibyl Vane’s brother – but appears to escape justice. But suffering both from a sense of guilt and horror at what his life has become, he decides to rid himself of the the thing that acts as a constant reminder – the portrait.

The title

It is interesting to note that whilst the title of the novel is The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is almost universally referred to amongst the general public as The Portrait of Dorian Gray – and with some justification. Because the painting is a portrait. The term picture is more ambiguous: it could mean ‘the impression created by Dorian Gray’ or ‘the picture owned by Dorian Gray’. Whereas the whole shocking effect of the story is that the portrait ages horribly in the attic whilst Dorian in person retains his youthful good looks.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – study resources

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Penguin CLassics – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Penguin CLassics – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – York Notes (study aids) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Norton Critical edition – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Cliffs Notes (study aids) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – BBC full-cast 2CD audio – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – BBC unabridged audio book – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – eBook versions at Gutenberg

The Picture of Dorian Gray – 2009 DVD film (Colin Firth) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – BBC Oscar Wilde 3 DVDs – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – 1945 DVD (George Sanders) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – plot summary

Lord Henry Wotton meets Dorian Gray in Basil Hallward’s studio where he is having his portrait painted. He is struck by Dorian’s youthful beauty, and preaches to him a philosophy of self-realisation (and self-indulgence) before Time ages him and his appetites wane. Dorian takes up these ideas enthusiastically, and wishes to remain as youthful as he appears in the very successful portrait, which he is given as a gift.

As a result of his desire to live life more fully, Dorian meets and falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress. Her mother encourages the connection, but her brother is jealous of Sibyl’s reputation and suspicious of Dorian’s motives, because he comes from the upper class. However, it is revealed that Sibyl’s father was ‘a gentleman’.

Dorian wishes to show off Sibyl to his friends, but when they visit the theatre her acting is disastrously bad. She now believes that love for Dorian is her true vocation in life. Dorian feels humiliated by the episode and brusquely rejects her. He returns home to find that his portrait has changed for the worse.

Next day Lord Henry reports that Sibyl has committed suicide, and persuades Dorian that he can not be considered responsible for her death. Dorian hides the portrait in his attic and will not let Basil see his own work, knowing that the portrait will age whilst he continues to look young.

Dorian gives himself up to a life of self-gratification and debauchery, based on his reading of the Decadent writers and Lord Henry’s philosophies. As the years go by he develops a scandalous reputation, whilst retaining his youthful looks. His friend Basil implores him to reform before it is too late – whereupon Dorian confronts him with the portrait, then kills him.

Dorian then blackmails an old college friend Alan Campbell to dispose of the evidence, which is successful. He feels free of any suspicion, until James Vane re-appears and threatens to kill him because of Sibyl’s death. Vane pursues Dorian to his country estate, but he is shot by accident during a hunting party.

It is then revealed that Campbell has committed suicide – presumably to avoid some sort of scandal. Dorian feels relieved that he has completely escaped detection, and although other people’s lives have been ruined, he is glad to look as youthful as ever.

Nevertheless he feels oppressed by feelings of guilt and wishes to reform. Feeling that the portrait has somehow cheated or deceived him, he resolves to destroy it – but destroys himself instead. In the final scene the painting has become young again, whilst Dorian is dead with a knife in his heart – a wrinkled, withered, and age-ravaged old man.

Mont Blanc – special Oscar Wilde edition

Principal characters

Lord Henry Wotton	aesthete and wit
Basil Hallward	painter
Dorian Gray	wealthy and good-looking young man
Lady Agatha	Lord Henry’s aunt
Lord George Fermor	Lord Henry’s uncle
Margaret Devereux	Dorian Gray’s attractive mother
Victoria	Lord Henry’s wife
Sibyl Vane	a young actress
Mr Isaacs	Jewish impressario
James Vane	Sibyl’s younger brother
Lord Radley	Dorian Gray’s guardian
Lady Gwendolen	Lord Henry’s sister
Victor	Dorian Gray’s servant
Mrs Leaf	Dorian Gray’s housekeeper
Alan Campbell	chemist friend of Dorian’s
Lady Narborough	society hostess

Film version

1976 TV version – Jeremy Brett and Sir John Gielgud

Film version

1945 Original movie trailer – George Sanders

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