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literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

Old Goriot

June 24, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, web links

Old Goriot (1834) is the second masterpiece to come out of Balzac’s multi-volume project to dramatise the whole of French society – La Comedie Humaine. It tells the story of an old man who is reduced to poverty by the rapacious greed of his own daughters. He loves them dearly, but they spend all his money on lovers and self-indulgent lifestyles.

The novel also covers the rise in society of Eugene de Rastignac, an ambitious young law student from the provinces who is attracted to the glamour of fashionable society. He rapidly acquires a beautiful mistress whom he cannot afford, but he retains sufficient moral integrity to stand by his old friend Goriot in his dying hours.

Old Goriot – critical commentary

The serial novel

This is the first of the Comedie Humaine series in which Balzac introduced the device of recurring characters. A secondary character in one volume might crop up as the principal character in a later novel. Alternatively, a character might appear in several volumes in the series. Balzac was plotting the rise (and fall) of individuals in what is now called ‘serial fiction’. This is roughly the same device that came to be used in twentieth century radio soap operas, or twenty-first century multi-part television drama series.

For instance, the character of Rastignac is introduced into Old Goriot as a young law student from the south of France who has arrived in Paris as a student of law. He becomes caught up in fashionable society and rises (very rapidly) because of social and family connections. In later volumes of the Comedie Humaine Rastignac rises even further and becomes a member of the government and eventually a peer of the realm.

Balzac was exploiting the technological means of distributing his literary product which were available to him at that time. He wrote obsessively, sent his manuscripts off to printers, re-wrote and corrected proofs, sometimes for publication the following day. His work appeared in newspapers, magazines, and printed book formats – often all at the same time. He was immensely productive, became very successful and rich, but lost a lot of his money because of reckless business ventures and an extravagant lifestyle. He was almost like one of the characters in his own novels.

The Napoleonic Code

Following the French revolution Napoleon established a new legal code in 1804. It was designed to replace archaic and over-complex laws relating to people and their property. One of its stipulations (still in force today) is that the inheritance of property and capital must pass through a strictly defined path of family relations

One of the side effects of this requirement (and in common with other countries with monarchies and aristocracies) was that people with money were more inclined to form marriages based on someone’s wealth (and social status) rather than on any romantic attachments.

There was also a dowry system in common usage that required a potential bride to be offered along with a substantial financial incentive to any prospective husband. The marriage was a legal contract between two owners of property or capital. Romantic liaisons were a separate matter, conducted discretely or secretly once the formal marriage had been established.

Balzac’s novels are a clear illustration of this system in practice. Anastasia de Restaud is married, but spends her afternoons with her lover Maxime de Trailles. In fact she is in conflict with him because she is paying off his gambling debts. Rastignac’s cousin Mme de Beauseant makes no secret of her affair with the Portugese nobleman Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto. She too is in conflict with her lover, because he is threatening to marry the rich young woman Berthe de Rochefide.

Delphine de Nucingen is married to the German banker Baron Frederic de Nucingen – but you would hardly think so. She spends her evenings at the theatre with Rastignac, whilst her husband spends his time with a mistress (also from the theatre). Old Goriot eventually pays for a separate apartment where Rastignac can live and where his daughter is free to visit as a lover. Goriot dislikes Nucingen, and feels no qualms at all in facilitating his daughter’s adultery in this way.

Anyone doubting the persistence of this system of hypocrisy and double standards should acquaint themselves with the recent history of the English Prince of Wales who was married to Diana Spencer but was also conducting a long term affair with the married woman Camilla Parker Bowles – whom he eventually married after his wife’s death in what many see as mysterious circumstances.

Narrative compression

Events move very rapidly in this novel. Rastignac arrives in Paris as a humble law student, yet almost immediately via the social connections provided by his aunt, he is circulating amongst fashionable society. And he just as immediately conceives a socially ambitious project to raise his status to that of the young aristocratic blades who are his contemporaries.

His main problem is that he lacks the financial wherewithal to live such a life. He borrows money from his mother and sisters – and repays it; he gambles and has astonishing (barely credible) good luck; and his good looks win him the love of an attractive woman with a rich husband. He also has the protection of the godfather Old Goriot, who supports him and even organises for him a bachelor apartment in a fashionable district of Paris.

This ultra-rapid rise has something of the fairy-tale about it, but it should be kept in mind that in Balzac’s scheme of French society Rastignac had still further to go. In later volumes he becomes a politician, then a minister, and eventually a peer. Balzac was plotting the stages of social advancement, ascents up the greasy pole of social climbing and the careers of arrivistes .

This is not to say that the whole of La Comedie Humaine needs to be taken on board before an appreciation of its individual parts can be made. But it does help in making an assesment of a particular volume that Balzac had other parts of his grand scheme already written or planned which threw light on each other.

Balzac and 19C literature

Balzac was a towering figure in nineteenth century literature, with an influence that stretched across Europe and beyond to America. He himself had been influenced by the pan-European influence of Walter Scott, and he was to influence Charles Dickens and contemporaries such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. He was a great influence on Henry James, whose novel Washington Square (1880) is almost an American version of Eugenie Grandet.

Balzac more or less invented what we now call the ‘serial’ novel. That is, a fictional world in which characters come and go from one episode or novel to another. They might be a minor character in one episode, then the major figure in another. This literary technique was facilitated both by the technical means of production and Balzac’s prodigious creative powers in being able to supply the text for the newspapers, magazines, and books in which his characters made their appearances.

He had a great influence within the realm of French literature, and his style of realistic detail was taken up by Emile Zola in his series of twenty novels called the Les Rougon-Macquart (1871-1893). These novels sought to document society under the Second Empire. Forty years later Marcel Proust created an account of the collapse of the French aristocracy at the start of the twentieth century in Remembrance of Things Past. This has many elements and echoes of Balzac’s work.

Old Goriot and King Lear

It should be apparent to anyone familiar with King Lear that Old Goriot follows a similar plot and is concerned with the same principal theme. Shakespeare’s character King Lear is a rich patriarch who divides his kingdom for the sake of his daughters – only to be then neglected and betrayed by two of them.

In Old Goriot the sisters Anastasie and Delphine behave towards their father exactly like Goneril and Regan do towards their father King Lear. They accept all the money he gives them and demand more, whilst showing him no respect or thanks at all. And similarly to the plot of King Lear their husbands seek control of the daughters’ inherited wealth to support their oiwn ends.

Anastasie squanders huge sums of money paying off her lover’s gambling debts, whilst Delphine’s husband Nucingen wants the money to support his dubious property development schemes. Both daughters pretend to be respectful but shamelessly neglect their father. Neither of them can be bothered to be present when he is dying, and even at his funeral they send token empty carriages

The parallels with King Lear are neatly completed by the minor figures of Taillefer and his daughter Victorine. The dubious Taillefer is a fabulously wealthy man who has unjustly disowned his daughter. She loves him with unquenchable devotion, and represents the third daughter Cordelia in the Shakespeare tragedy. Cordelia is rejected by Lear throughout the drama, but then is reunited with him only in death. Victorine too is ultimately re-united with her father on his death bed, but she does inherit his wealth.

Henry James however, in his extended essay on Balzac, casts doubt on the novelist’s acquaintance with the Shakespeare text:

Balzac’s masterpiece, to our own sense, if we must choose, is Old Goriot. In this tale there is most of his characteristic felicity and least of his characteristic infelicity. Shakespeare had been before him, but there is excellent reason to believe that beyond knowing that King Lear was the history of a doting old man, buffeted and betrayed by cruel daughters, Balzac had not placed himself to be in a position to be accused of plagiarism. He had certainly not read the play in English, and nothing is more possible than that he had not read it in such French translations as existed in 1835.

The accusation of plagiarism simply does not arise. Shakespeare himself took the plot outline of his play from an earlier source (Holinshed’s Chronicles) and even if Balzac was intimately acquainted with the Lear text, he transforms and re-imagines the story line completely, making it into something quite different – which he describes as ‘this obscure but appalling Parisian tragedy’.

Old Goriot – study resources

Old Goriot – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Old Goriot – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Pere Goriot – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Pere Goriot – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Old Goriot – Everyman – Amazon UK

Old Goriot – Everyman – Amazon US

Cambridge Companion to Balzac – Cambridge UP – Amazon UK

Old Goriot – plot synopsis

A Family Boarding House

The Maison Vauquer is a seedy boarding house in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Run frugally by the widow Madame Vauquer, its principal inhabitants are Pere Goriot, a retired pasta merchant, Eugene de Rastignac, a law student, and Vautrin a shady character of unknown occupation.

When Goriot first arrives he is quite prosperous and Mme Vauquer has designs on him. She tries to allure him but fails, and so turns against him. Later, Goriot’s fortunes begin to decline, and malicious rumours are circulated about him. He is visited by young women, but he explains they are his two daughters.

The ambitious student Rastignac is provided with an entree into fashionable society by his aunt. Goriot is selling off his silver plate to the money lender Gobseck. Mysterious fellow boarder Vautrin seems to know everybody’s business. Rastignac visits Anastasia de Restaud where he is snubbed by both her husband and her lover Maxime.

Rastignac then goes to see his cousin Mme de Beauseant who is engaged in a dispute with her Portugese lover. There he learns the history of Goriot’s two daughters and their rejection of their father. Rastignac vows to enter fashionable society, and writes to his mother and sisters for money.

Entry on the Social Scene

Rastignac’s mother and sisters send him money. Vautrin outlines to him the difficulties of professional success and lists the vices and corruption underlying fashionable society. Vautrin reveals his plans to become a rich plantation owner and proposes a devil’s pact with Rastignac. He will find him a rich wife in exchange for a lump sum. He has in mind fellow boarder Victorine, whose father is a wealthy man.

Rastignac gets new clothes and is introduced to Delphine de Nucingen at the theatre. He flatters her unashamedly. He reports the meeting to Goriot , who deceives himself about the devotion of his daughters.

Rastignac gambles at roulette for Delphine and wins money which she owes to her former lover, who has just left her. Rastignac indulges himself in fashionable society and gets himself into debt. He borrows money from Vautrin, gambles successfully again, and pays off his debts.

Vautrin is revealed as an ex-convict (‘Death Dodger’) whose real name is Jacques Collin. Rastignac is frustrated by Delphine, so he pays court to Victorine Traillefer. Goriot reveals his scheme to house Rastignac in an apartment that his daughter Delphine can visit. Vautrin has meanwhile arranged for Victorine’s brother to be killed in a duel.

There is an impromptu party at Maison Vauquer where Vautrin drugs Rastignac and Goriot – but next day he is betrayed to the police and arrested. The woman who betrayed him is forced to leave.

Goriot takes Rastignac to the bachelor apartment he has arranged and paid for. Mme Vauquer is upset at the loss of boarders. Rastignac receives an invitation to a grand ball. Anastasie has money problems. Delphine has kept Rastignac dangling for almost two years.

The Father’s Death

Nucingen’s property schemes are in trouble, and he needs control of his wife’s money. Anastasie has sold her husband’s family diamonds to pay off her lover’s gambling debts – but she still needs more money Rastignac gives her a bill of exchange for twelve thousand Francs. The sisters quarrel and harass their ailing father.

Goriot is dying, but both sisters go to Mme de Beauseant’s ball. The old man is nursed by Rastignac and young doctor Bianchon, neither of whom have any money. When Goriot dies, he is given a pauper’s funeral.

Old Goriot – principal characters

This is a quick guide to the main players in Old Goriot. For a comprehensive survey of all the characters in La Comedie Humaine, see the excellent compilation of notes by Anatole Cerfberr and Jules François Christophe at Gutenberg.org. They give an alphabetical list of potted biographies of all the main characters in the whole series of novels

Given any single Balzac novel as a starting point, you can trace where a character has come from and what happens to them in subsequent parts of the great work.

Madame Vauquer	widowed boarding house keeper
Eugene de Rastignac	an ambitious law student from the South
Old Goriot	a retired and impoverished pasta merchant
Vautrin	a celebrity convict (‘Death Dodger’) real name Jaques Collin
Marquis Ajuda-Pinto	a Portugese nobleman, Claire de Beauseant’s lover
Horace Bianchon	a medical student and friend of Rastignac’s at Maison Vauquer
Monsieur de Trailles	Anastasie’s lover, a playboy and gambler
Monsieur Taillefer	a rich but heartless father
Victorine Taillefer	his devoted but neglected daughter
Anastasie de Restaud	Goriot’s elder daughter
Delphine de Nucingen	Goriot’s younger daughter
Baron de Nucingen	corrupt German banker and speculator

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Omega and After

May 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Bloomsbury and the decorative arts

The Bloomsbury Group was largely composed of writers and intellectuals, but there were lots of artists and designers within their ranks too. This well illustrated guide focuses on the highpoint of their endeavours – the Omega Workshops which flourished in the period 1913—1919. This venture was the brainchild of Roger Fry, who recruited Vanessa Bell (his lover at the time) and Duncan Grant as co-directors for an opening in Fitzroy Square in 1913, deep in the heart of Bloomsbury.

That was not an auspicious date for the debut of an enterprise which sought to bring Post-Impressionist design to the general public. But in fact it survived throughout the whole of the first world war, even though it was never commercially successful. Fry organised painters, designers, and ceramicists to supply goods which were colourfully and playfully made to bring Modern Art into the home – of those who could afford it. Although the works were produced by people we now see as influential members of the modernist movement in the arts, individual productions were made anonymously, signed only with the letter omega.

A number of famous names were associated with the workshop: at one time or another Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Paul Nash, David Bomberg, Dora Carrington, William Roberts, and Mark Gertler all had connections with the Omega.

At the launch of the project, artist and writer Wyndham Lewis was also a member; but he quickly split away from the group in a dispute over Omega’s contribution to the Ideal Homes Exhibition. Lewis circulated a letter to all shareholders, making accusations against the company and Roger Fry in particular, and pouring scorn on the products of Omega and its ideology. This subsequently led to his establishing the rival Vorticist movement and the publication in 1916 of its two-issue house magazine, BLAST.

The Omega workshops produced everything, from furniture and paintings to rugs, wallpaper, and children’s toys. All of these are wonderfully illustrated in this collection of photographs which are rarely seen anywhere else.

The text recounts the story of the enterprise and its shaky beginnings. A somewhat amateurish co-operative; the introduction of modernist clothes via Nina Hamnet (the Queen of Bohemia); and the tortured love triangle which existed between its directors.

Isabelle Anscombe devotes an entire chapter to Vanessa Bell, studiously avoiding for as long as she can the fact that she was Roger Fry’s lover; but she is forced to eventually concede that Fry was replaced by Duncan Grant. Her husband Clive Bell, who was friendly with all three of them, is kept out of the picture altogether.

The latter part of the book (the ‘After’ of her title) follows the fortunes of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant as they continued their work in decorative arts, at the same time as tracing developments in contemporary design taste in Britain. Both of them continued to put all their decorative efforts into their house at Charleston – which is now a museum to Bloomsbury and its visual culture.

But ultimately, it is the wonderful illustrations which are the centre of interest here: interiors, ceramics, fabrics, book jackets, and portrait photographs of the principal artists. This book is well worth tracking down for anybody with an interest in the decorative arts and the visually creative side of Bloomsbury.

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Isobelle Anscombe, Omega and After: Bloomsbury and the Decorative Arts, London: Thames and Hudson, 1984, pp.176, ISBN 0500273626

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Twentieth century literature

On Being Ill

January 26, 2013 by Roy Johnson

poetic meditations on illness and consciousness

On Being Ill (recently re-issued) is a timely reminder that not only was Virginia Woolf a great novelist and writer of short stories, she was also an essayist of amazing stylishness and wit. Her models were the classical essayists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century – Addison, Steele, Hazlitt, and Lamb – all of whom she had read during her literary apprenticeship, which took place in the library of her father, Sir Leslie Stephen.

It is worth remembering that Woolf was largely self-educated, didn’t attend school, and certainly did not go to university. Even so, she knew French, Greek, and Latin, and was intimately acquainted with the canon of English Literature to an extent which would give today’s undergraduates (and tutors) occasion to blush.

On Being Ill starts from the simple but interesting observation that although illness is a common, almost universal experience, it is surprisingly absent from literature as a topic of interest. This is rather like her similar observation about the absence of women in the annals of literature which led to her epoch-making study A Room of One’s Own. From this starting point she then spins out an extraordinary display of reflections on a series of related topics including solitude, reading, and language. And, as Hermione Lee observes in her excellent introduction to this edition, she also throws in ‘dentists, American literature, electricity, an organ grinder and a giant tortoise’ plus lots, lots more.

Much of her reflections are conveyed in long, rococo sentences in which disparate elements are yoked together by her associative thought processes and her majestic command of English. Musing on the fact that illness renders people horizontal, giving them the unusual opportunity to look up into the sky, she observes:

Now, lying recumbent, staring straight up, the sky is discovered to be something so different from this that really it is a little shocking. This then has been going on all the time without our knowing it!—this incessant making up of shapes and casting them down, this buffeting of clouds together, and drawing vast trains of ships and wagons from North to South, this incessant ringing up and down of curtains of light and shade, this interminable experiment with gold shafts and blue shadows, with veiling the sun and unveiling it, with making rock ramparts and wafting them away—this endless activity, with the waste of Heaven knows how many million horse power of energy, has been left to work its will year in year out. The fact seems to call for comment and indeed for censure. Ought not some one to write to The Times? Use should be made of it. One should not let this gigantic cinema play perpetually to an empty house.

The style is deliberately playful, the attitude arch, and yet those two references, to ‘horse power’ and ‘cinema’ show how acutely aware she was of the technology and media which were shaping the twentieth century.

The essay is accompanied in this very attractive new edition by Notes from Sick Rooms, written by her mother Julia Stephen in 1883. The juxtaposition of the two texts is very telling. It is usually assumed that the major literary influence on Virginia was her father, the biographer (and explorer and editor). But you can certainly see where the daughter inherited the fancifulness and lightness of touch in her mother’s essay on the annoying effect of crumbs in the bed of a sick person.

Among the number of small evils which haunt illness, the greatest, in the misery it can cause, though the smallest in size, is crumbs. The origin of most things has been decided on, but the origin of crumbs in bed has never excited sufficient attention among the scientific world, though it is a problem which has tormented many a weary sufferer.

The inflation (‘evil’) and comic hyperbole were alive and well in her daughter’s work, written forty-three years later.

The essay even has an interesting history. It was first published by T.S.Eliot in his magazine The Criterion in 1926, alongside contributions from Aldous Huxley, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, and D.H.Lawrence’s The Woman Who Rode Away. Then it was republished as a single volume by the Hogarth Press in 1930. This new edition reproduces the original with its idiosyncratic capitalisation, and is nicely illustrated with chapter dividers and inside covers by Vanessa Bell. Both essays have scholarly introductions, and the book even has an afterword on the relationship between narrative and medicine.

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Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill. Massachusetts: Paris Press, 2012, pp.122, ISBN: 1930464134

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – web links
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
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On the Western Circuit

June 15, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

On the Western Circuit appeared simultaneously in Harper’s Weekly in November 1891 and The English Illustrated Magazine in December 1891. The magazine versions were considerably bowdlerised by Hardy himself before publication of the full text in Life’s Little Ironies in 1894.

Thomas Hardy – portrait by W. Stang

On the Western Circuit – critical commentary

The sexual impulse

This is one of many Hardy fictions in which someone’s (usually a man’s) prospects for career and social advancement are fatally blighted by a impulsive sexual dalliance. Raye is only a junior counsel, but at least he is the member of a profession (the law). He is London-based, but at the start of the story is temporarily in a provincial location where he can understandably indulge himself.

He locates Anna by careful selection from amongst a number of possibilities on the merry-go-round, and then the significant connection between them is made, which Hardy underscores with his mordant sense of world-weary and tragic pre-destination:

Each time she approached the half of her orbit that lay nearest him they gazed at each other with smiles, and with that unmistakable expression which means so little at the moment, yet so often leads up to passion, heart-ache, union, disunion, devotion, overpopulation, drudgery, discontent, resignation, despair,

There’s the whole plot of a novel in one sentence. And it is also a summary of the story. For despite his basic decency, Raye is drawn into a passion for Anna that leads to their sexual union. A pregnancy is the natural result, and although he is prepared to do the decent thing and marry the girl, he feels his career prospects will be thwarted because she is from a lower class.

Irony

Of course the principal dramatic irony in the story is the fact that the letters that pass from Anna to Raye are actually written by Edith Harnham. It’s a fact Raye emphasises in the denouement: “Why—you and I are friends—lovers—devoted lovers—by correspondence.”

And even the magnetic attraction that seems to exist between them is flagged up by a very Hardyesque incident at the opening of the story at the merry-go-round. When Edith, Anna, and Raye are squashed together by the crowd, Raye thinks he has hold of Anna’s hand, when it is in fact Edith’s.

Not content with holding her hand, he playfully slipped two of his fingers inside her glove, against her palm. Thus matters continued till the pressure lessened; but several minutes passed before the crowd thinned sufficiently to allow Mrs Harnham to withdraw.

This charged erotic gesture (an invitation to and a symbolic act of intercourse) probably slipped by the censors of the time, but it nevertheless cements very emphatically the other side of the story – the fact that the unfulfilled Edith Harnham ends up yearning for the child by Raye that Anna has begot so naturally.

The subconscious

At another level, it might be possible to argue that Hardy is subconsciously creating a little authorial wish fulfilment here – creating a male character who has erotic connections with two women at the same time – one physical, the other spiritual and intellectual. It is certainly true that he explored these issues in his major works such as Jude the Obscure and elsewhere.

Raye does not emerge very well from this particular reading of the story. He has known close up and at first hand the nature of Anna’s sensibility. They have been sexually intimate, and he is hoping to hear from her when he returns to London. The subsequent revelation that the letters have been written by somebody else should be no excuse for his snobbish disparagement of her.

He claims his life (his prospect for a successful career) is ruined because she is not literate. And he sees his true lover as Edith – with whom an imaginary relationship has been conducted on paper. Even though he has married Anna, he is choosing to revere the intellectual bond he has with Edith over the sexual bond he has with Anna – just as Jude does in choosing between Arabella and Sue Brideshead.

Of course in the context of the collection’s title, that’s why it is one of ‘life’s little ironies’. He is stuck with the woman towards whom he was physically attracted, but is meanwhile imaginatively engaged with someone else who facilitated their relationship.

On the Western Circuit – study resources

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – eBook version at Project Gutenberg

Life’s Little Ironies – audiobook version at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

On the Western Circuit – plot summary

Part I. Charles Raye, a junior council from a London law firm, arrives in Melchester (Salisbury) as part of the Western Legal Circuit. Whilst viewing the cathedral he is drawn into the vibrant activities of the town’s market fair. Whilst there he meets Anna on a merry-go-round.

Part II. At the same time her employer Mrs Edith Harnham goes out to search for Anna. She finds her with Raye and, caught up in the crowd, he squeezes her hand thinking it is Anna’s. Next morning Mrs Harnham sees Raye in the Cathedral and is obviously attracted to him.

Part III. In the ensuing days Raye meets Anna repeatedly, and she gives herself up to him completely. However his work eventually takes him back to London, where he is bored and restless, wondering why she has not written to him. He drops her a short notes and receives in reply and eloquent and enthusiastic letter which rather surprisingly makes no special demands of him.

Part IV. The truth is that Anna cannot read or write. On receiving his note she showed it to Edith and asked her to write back in reply. A regular correspondence is established in this way, and Edith (an unhappily married woman) even writes to Raye in secret in Anna’s name when she is absent. Eventually it transpires that Anna is pregnant. Edith honourably composes letters designed to keep Raye romantically connected and she wishes Anna’s child were her own.

Part V. Anna is forced to go back to live on Salisbury Plain, so Edith continues the correspondence for her, eventually taking it over without consulting Anna. Ray offers to marry Anna, based on his admiration for her powers of sensitive expression.

Part VI. They marry in London with Edith and a friend of Raye’s as witnesses. Immediately afterwards Raye feels a ‘gravitation’ towards Edith and a dissatisfaction with Anna. When he asks Anna to write a note to his sister the true nature of her literacy emerges. Raye feels his life has been ruined and regards his true lover and wife to be Edith. He parts from her with a passionate kiss, then goes on his honeymoon with Anna, meanwhile reading Edith’s letters.

Principal characters

Charles Bradford Raye	a young lawyer from London
Anna	a young country girl from Salisbury plain
Mrs Edith Harnham	a romantic wine-merchant’s wife
Melchester	Salisbury
Wintoncester	Winchester
Casterbridge	Dorchester
Knollsea	Swanage

Hardy’s WESSEX

Criss-cross writing

The correspondence between the characters that forms such an important part of this story is at one point described thus;

Four sides were filled; and a few lines written across, after the fashion of former days; the paper, too, was common and not of the latest shade and surface.

This is an example of what’s called ‘criss cross’ writing. To save paper, and because the postal service once charged by the sheet, many people in the nineteenth century wrote their letters in two directions on the page, perpendicularly to each other. It was not unusual to use both sides of the page, and thus get four pages of writing onto one sheet of paper.

The writing is not so difficult to read as you might imagine. We are accustomed to reading English language from left to right and from top to bottom on the page. Writing going in another direction becomes like ‘wallpaper’ in the background. The example shown is from a letter written by Henry James.

Criss Cross Writing

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) was the first of Hardy’s novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. Heroine and estate-owner Bathsheba Everdene is romantically involved with three very different men. The dashing Sergeant Troy, who is handsome but unreliable; Farmer Boldwood, who is honourable but middle-aged; and man-of-the-soil Gabriel Oak, who is worthy and prepared to bide his time. The conflicts between them and the ensuing drama has lots of plot twists plus a rich picture of rural life.
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The Return of the Native (1878) It’s often said that this is one of the most Hardyesque of all the novels. There are some stand-out characters: Eustacia Vye, a heroine who patrols the moors looking out for her man through a telescope; Clym Yeobright, a hero who can’t escape his mother’s influence; and Diggory Ven, an itinerant trader who wanders in and out of the story covered in red dye. Improbable coincidences and dramatic ironies abound – and over it all presides the brooding presence of Egdon Heath. But underneath the melodrama, there are profound psychological forces at work. You need to be patient. This is one for Hardy enthusiasts – not beginners. This edition, unlike any other currently available, retains the text of the novel’s first edition, without the later changes that substantially altered Hardy’s original intentions.
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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. 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 dramatic and psychologically revealing scenes in all of Hardy’s work.
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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
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Orlando

March 9, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, video, resources, further reading

Orlando (1927) is one of Virginia Woolf’s lesser-known novels, although it’s critical reputation has risen in recent years. It’s a delightful fantasy which features a character who changes sex part-way through the book – and lives from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Using this device (which turns out to be strangely credible) Woolf explores issues of gender and identity as her hero-heroine moves through a variety of lives and personal adventures.

Virginia Woolf

Orlando starts out as an emissary to the Court of St James, lives through friendships with Swift and Alexander Pope, and ends up motoring through the west end of London on a shopping expedition in the 1920s. The character is loosely based on Vita Sackville-West, who at the time was Woolf’s lover. The novel itself was described by Nigel Nicolson (Sackville-West’s son) as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’.

Orlando – plot summary

The novel tells the story of a young man named Orlando, born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, who decides not to grow old. He is briefly a lover to the decrepit queen, but after her death has a brief, intense love affair with Sasha, a princess in the entourage of the Russian embassy. This episode, of love and excitement against the background of the Great Frost of 1683, is one of the best known, and is said to represent Vita Sackville-West’s affair with Violet Trefusis.

Following Sasha’s return to Russia, the desolate, lonely Orlando returns to writing The Oak Tree, a poem started and abandoned in his youth. This period of contemplating love and life leads him to appreciate the value of his ancestral stately home, which he proceeds to furnish lavishly and then plays host to the populace. Ennui sets in and a persistent suitor’s harassment leads to Orlando’s appointment by King Charles II as British ambassador to Constantinople. Orlando performs his duties well, until a night of civil unrest and murderous riots. He falls asleep for a lengthy period, resisting all efforts to rouse him.

Upon awakening he finds that he has metamorphosed into a woman—the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a woman’s body. For this reason, the now Lady Orlando covertly escapes Constantinople in the company of a Gypsy clan, adopting their way of life until its essential conflict with her upbringing leads her to head home. Only on the ship back to England, with her constraining female clothes and an incident in which a flash of her ankle nearly results in a sailor’s falling to his death, does she realise the magnitude of becoming a woman; yet she concludes the overall advantages, declaring ‘Praise God I’m a woman!’

Orlando becomes caught up in the life of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, holding court with the great poets (notably Alexander Pope), winning a lawsuit and marrying a sea captain. In 1928, she publishes The Oak Tree centuries after starting it, and winning a prize.

Study resources

Orlando – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Orlando – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Orlando – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Orlando – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Orlando – Vintage Classics edition – Amazon UK

Orlando – free eBook editions

Orlando – audio book (abridged) – Amazon UK

Orlando – a film screenplay = Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – biographical notes

Orlando – Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation – Amazon UK

Selected Essays – by Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links,

Virginia Woolf at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

Orlando – film version

1992 film adaptation by Sally Potter

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Orlando – principal characters

Orlando	the protangonist – a man, then a woman
Sasha	a Russian princess, who Orlando loves
Shel	a gallant seaman, in love with Orlando
Archduke Harry	a cross-dresser who is in love with Orlando
Sir Nicholas Greene	a 17C poet then later a 19C critic
Alexander Pope	himself – an 18C poet
Rustum	an old Turkish gypsy
Queen Elizabeth I	English monarch, in love with Orlando
Rosina Pepita	a Spanish gypsy dancer
Clorinda	a mamber of St James’s court
Favilla	the second of Orlando’s loves at court
Euphrosyne	Orlando’s ‘intended’ before he runs off with Sasha

Original inspiration

Vita Sackville-West

Knole – Kent, UK

365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a tryptich of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
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The Complete Shorter Fiction contains all the classic short stories such as The Mark on the Wall, A Haunted House, and The String Quartet – but also the shorter fragments and experimental pieces such as Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street. These ‘sketches’ (as she called them) were used to practice the techniques she used in her longer fictions. Nearly fifty pieces written over the course of Woolf’s writing career are arranged chronologically to offer insights into her development as a writer. This is one for connoisseurs – well presented and edited in a scholarly manner.
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The Bloomsbury Group is a short but charming book, published by the National Portrait Gallery. It explores the impact of Bloomsbury personalities on each other, plus how they shaped the development of British modernism in the early part of the twentieth century. But most of all it’s a delightful collection of portrait paintings and photographs, with biographical notes. It has an introductory essay which outlines the development of Bloomsbury, followed by a series of portraits and the biographical sketches of the major figures.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of the novels The Voyage Out, Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, and the collection of stories Monday or Tuesday in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Virginia Woolf – a timeline in phtographs
A collection of well and lesser-known photographs documenting Woolf’s life from early childhood, through youth, marriage, and fame – plus some first edition book jackets – to a soundtrack by Philip Glass. They capture her elegant appearance, the big hats, and her obsessive smoking. No captions or dates, but well worth watching.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – web links
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
More on the Bloomsbury Group

Osborne’s Revenge

July 13, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

Osborne’s Revenge first appeared in The Galaxy magazine for July 1868. Its next appearance was many years later as part of Eight Uncollected Tales of Henry James published by Rutgers University Press in 1950.

Newport Rhode Island – 19th century

Osborne’s Revenge – plot summary

Part I. Philip Osborne’s friend Robert Graham has fallen in love with Henrietta Congreve who then rejected him for someone else. To take his mind off the pain of rejectionOsborne sends him on a business errand to Minnesota, but when he gets there Graham shoots himself. Osborne is very distressed by the loss of his close friend, and he feels that Henrietta ought to be taught a lesson for what she has done. He follows her to Newport for the summer holidays.

Part II. Osborne rescues Henrietta’s nephew from a rock on the shore, and thereby meets Henrietta, who he finds very charming, despite the nature of his mission to avenge Graham’s hurt feelings. Yet he somehow feels that his friend is more of a positive presence than he was when alive. Osborne is enjoying his holiday, and he drops his plan of revenge.

He sees Henrietta acting successfully in a play she has herself translated from the French. Then he meets her on a boating party outing, and finally broaches the subject of his friend Graham. Henrietta asks him not to talk about the subject, and Osborne returns to feeling hostile towards her. He discusses her talents with an admirer Reverend Stone. He tries once again to engage Henrietta on the subject of Graham, but she rebuffs him.

Part III. Mrs Dodd arrives at Newport, supporting the cause for Graham’s memory – but Osborne finds her silly. However, she guesses correctly that Osborne is infatuated with Henrietta. Osborne feels deeply conflicted, torn between loyalty to his dead friend and his accelerating appreciation of Henrietta’s talents and virtues. He nevertheless believes that he is attracting Henrietta with a view to rejecting her as a punishment for what she did to Graham. Hoping to make her jealous, h acquires a photograph of a pretty girl he doesn’t know, and invents an identity for her when Henrietta sees the photograph.

When he is called back to his office in New York, he regrets all the time he has spent on his fruitless campaign. He goes to say goodbye to Henrietta, and at that very moment Mr Holland (Henrietta’s lover) arrives. The two men discuss Graham, and Holland reveals that his death was suicide (though Henrietta that it was a natural death).

On the ship back to New York, Osborne talks with Mrs Dodd’s cousin Major Dodd, who knew Graham. The major claims that Graham had become deranged, and that Henrietta hardly knew him. Osborne later marries – to a girl who looks exactly like the girl in the photograph.

Principal characters

Philip Osborne	a large, handsome American lawyer
Robert Graham	his small, sickly close friend
Mrs Dodd	a widow, friend of Osborne’s
Henrietta Congreve	a talented and attractive young woman
Mr Holland	Henrietta’s fiancé
Mrs Wilkes	Henrietta’s sister, an invalid
Reverend Stone	an admirer of Henrietta’s

Study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Other works by Henry James

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

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Ottoline Morrell biography

September 20, 2009 by Roy Johnson

society hostess and patron of the arts

Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) features in the history of the Bloomsbury Group largely as a hostess and patron of the arts. From 1908 onwards, she entertained a wide circle of political and literary celebrities at her Thursday evening gatherings in Bedford Square, and at her country retreat at Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire. She was born Ottoline Violet Anne Cavendish Bentinck in 1873, acquiring the title of ‘Lady’ when her half-brother inherited the duchy of Portland in 1879, and the family moved into Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. Ottoline was a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later to become queen to George VI. She was educated at home and at Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied politics and history.

She married Philip Morrell in 1902 and the marriage lasted for the rest of her life, even though like many members of the Bloomsbury Group, their relationship was far from conventional. They had one child, a daughter, Julian. She had affairs with Bertrand Russell and the painter Augustus John, as well as with Aldous Huxley’s wife, Maria Nijs.

Her husband became a Liberal MP (for Blackburn) following the general election in 1906. He was critical of the government’s position on the First World War. They sheltered a number of conscientious objectors on their farm estate at Garsington near Oxford, including Duncan Grant, Clive Bell, and Mark Gertler. It was there that Siegfried Sassoon, recuperating after a period of sick leave, was encouraged to go absent without leave in a protest against the war.

Her friends and guests included Henry James, Lytton Strachey, Bertrand Russell (who was her lover for a number of years), D.H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf, John Middleton Murry, and Aldous Huxley. Not all of these guests were appreciative, and some of them made fun of her behind her back. There are satirical portraits of her as Hermione Roddice in in Lawrence’s Women in Love (1916) and Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow (1921). She was also the inspiration for Lady Caroline Bury in Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield, and for Lady Sybilline Quarrell in Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On (1968).

Despite all the scoffing about the luxury and extravagance of Garsington – the truth is that the Morrells were sailing close to the financial edge, and eventually they had to sell the entire Garsington estate. This was because Philip Morrell had two illegitimate sons by his previous mistresses, and the boys needed to be educated – privately of course. Because Ottoline Morrell had a brief relationship with one of her members of staff, it’s assumed by some critics that this provided the creative spark for D.H.Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Bloomsbury Group – web links

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, featuring designs by Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and others.

The Omega Workshops
A brief history of Roger Fry’s experimental Omega Workshops, which had a lasting influence on interior design in post First World War Britain.

The Bloomsbury Group and War
An essay on the largely pacifist and internationalist stance taken by Bloomsbury Group members towards the First World War.

Tate Gallery Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Mini web site featuring photos, paintings, a timeline, sub-sections on the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant, and biographical notes.

Bloomsbury: Books, Art and Design
Exhibition of paintings, designs, and ceramics at Toronto University featuring Hogarth Press, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Quentin Bell, and Stephen Tomlin.

Blogging Woolf
A rich enthusiast site featuring news of events, exhibitions, new book reviews, relevant links, study resources, and anything related to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search the texts of all Woolf’s major works, and track down phrases, quotes, and even individual words in their original context.

A Mrs Dalloway Walk in London
An annotated description of Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from Westminster to Regent’s Park, with historical updates and a bibliography.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Annotated tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square, University College, Bedford Square, Doughty Street, and Tavistock Square.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
News of events, regular bulletins, study materials, publications, and related links. Largely the work of Virginia Woolf specialist Stuart N. Clarke.

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
A charming sound recording of a BBC radio talk broadcast in 1937 – accompanied by a slideshow of photographs of Virginia Woolf.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephens’ collection of family photographs which became known as the Mausoleum Book, collected at Smith College – Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury at Duke University
A collection of book jacket covers, Fry’s Twelve Woodcuts, Strachey’s ‘Elizabeth and Essex’.

More on biography
More on the Bloomsbury Group
Twentieth century literature

Our Mutual Friend

July 14, 2014 by Roy Johnson

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

Our Mutual Friend is the last novel Charles Dickens completed. It first appeared in nineteen monthly installments between May 1864 and November 1865, published by Chapman and Hall. These booklet-sized publications were priced at one shilling (1s) which was not exactly cheap in the 1860s – and of course a second profit was made when the novel was printed in book form (in one or three volumes) a much higher price. Each issue featured thirty-two pages of text and two illustrations by Marcus Stone.

a mothly instalment

Our Mutual Friend – critical commentary

Characters

Dickens generates his usual gallery of characters and caricatures – some of them serious portraits of human psychology (such as Wrayburn and Headstone) others vivid and memorable but two-dimensional figures such as Jenny Wren (real name Fanny Cleaver) and Sloppy, the foundling who is summarised by his buttons and a gigantic laugh.

Wrayburn is not unlike Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities – a depressed and slightly misanthropic barrister who has no clients. He is listless and without purpose – until he encounters Lizzie Hexam, with whom he falls in love. Although she too is in love with him, they think there is too wide a gap in their social class to permit marriage. At the end of the novel he commits the selfless act of marrying her on his death bed, to give her social status. But in fact he recovers.

Headstone is an interesting study in erotic fixation and obsessive jealousy. He too falls in love with Lizzie Hexam, but is entirely consumed by his jealous hatred of Wrayburn, his rival for her affections. This obsession drives him to a savage act of attempted murder, and when Riderhood threatens to expose his identity as the attacker, he kills both his blackmailer and himself in the Weir.

There is a great deal of social satire focused on the nouveau-riche Veneerings, people who not only display their wealth in a vulgar and ostentatious manner, but who establish around themselves a social circle of ‘friends’ characterised by the fact that in fact nobody knows anybody else.

There is a great deal of critical commentary on one of the less successful characters in the novel – Mr Riah the Jew. Dickens was criticised by a number of people for his anti-Semitic depiction of Fagin, the Jewish gangmaster in Oliver Twist. Mr Riah is almost like an apology and a compensation – a figure of unalloyed goodness, patience, and sympathy who is obliged to enforce the ruthless debt-collection service owned by the villainous Fledgeby.

Plot

It has to be said that the story line of the novel is way below the normal level of invention and credibility one expects in a Dickens novel. First of all there are the complications of John Harmon’s multiple aliases in Julius Handford and John Rokesmith, and his barely-credible motivation for keeping his identity secret. Fortunately, the secrets of these maneuvers are revealed half way through the novel, so the reader can participate in the development of Harmon’s later ambitions.

But a great deal of the second half of the novel is based upon a cheap trick whereby Dickens conceals vital aspects of the plot from the reader, and has his characters acting out a charade of pretence to support the deception.

The prolonged concealment of Boffin’s knowledge of Harmon’s true identity is a literary sleight of hand which cheats the reader to an unacceptable degree. This is because the plot device violates essential conventions of a realist narrative. The reader is given no possibility of knowing or working out the truth of the matter.

It is also bad literary faith because so many of the events of the novel rest upon the deception. Boffin’s obsession with misers and apparent ill-treatment of Harmon as his secretary, plus Bella’s own drift towards mercenary life, are important elements of the narrative, and most readers are likely to feel have a sense of anti-climax bordering on feeling cheated when the truth is revealed at the end of the novel.

The same is true in the case of Mr Venus in his secret pact with Boffin against the scurrilous Wegg. Even the most attentive reader has no opportunity to see this in advance, and since these two plot revelations come in rapid succession they undermine the logic and persuasiveness of the narrative. In terms of story telling, they are cheap and vulgar devices, hardly worthy of a great novelist.

Symbol

The novel is dominated by the central symbol of the River Thames. The story begins and (more or less) ends there – with death a common feature of both scenes. In the first, Gaffer Hexam drags a dead body from the river at night, which sets the whole events of the novel in motion. And and in the final drama of the narrative Headstone drags Riderhood to their deaths at the Weir on the upper reaches of the Thames.

It is on the river that Lizzie goes into hiding, and it is there that Betty Higden goes to die in retreat from the Workhouse. The river is repeatedly emphasised as a source of trade and commerce, but it also acts as a metaphor for rebirth and renewal. Wrayburn is savagely attacked on the riverbank by Headstone and left in the water for dead: but he miraculously recovers. Even the villainous Riderhood is apparently drowned when his boat is rammed by a steamship: but he too recovers, to boast that he is a man who cannot be drowned.

Concealment

There is a repeated motive of concealment in the novel – all instances of which are instrumental in providing the element of suspense which has led many critics to describe the novel as a riddle or an elaborate puzzle. But of course an element of suspense is natural in a serial narrative. The commercial necessity of publishing in this format of monthly episodes requires that readers should be induced to purchase successive volumes to know what is coming next.

John Harmon conceals his identity more than once. First he exchanges clothes and identities with his shipmate George Radfoot. This is designed to enable him to escape the burden of inheritance, but it results in the murder and mutilation of his comrade. Immediately following the crime, he adopts the first of two aliases – Julius Handford, under which name he deals with Mortimer Lightwood and the police. Following this he adopts the alias of John Rokesmith, under which name he seeks employment with the Boffins.

Eugene Wrayburn even conceals his good motives from himself. He starts out as the cynical and unsuccessful barrister-friend of Lightwood, and then finds it difficult to understand his own motivation once he has met Lizzie Hexam – when it is clear to the reader that he has fallen in love with her. His is a case of ‘concealment; across a very wide class divide, which is only bridged when he makes the self-sacrificing gesture of marrying her when he is on what he thinks will be his death bed.

In her turn, Lizzie has concealed her love for Wrayburn for the majority of the narrative – because she believes there is no possibility of bridging the class divide between them. Headstone (also besotted with love for Lizzie) conceals his identity and actually disguises himself as Riderhood to make his murderous attack on Wrayburn.

Wegg wants to conceal his dust-sifting and his intention to expropriate his employer Boffin. At the same time, Mr Venus conceals from Wegg the fact that he is acting as a sort of double-agent on behalf of Boffin (which is one of the factors which makes the conclusion of the novel so unsatisfactory). The Lammles first of all conceal from each other the fact that they have no money, and in order to continue living in upper middle-class society they then conceal their intentions towards Georgiana Podsnap and Bella Wilfer, hoping to use them as pawns in their career of self-advancement

Narrative style

Despite weaknesses in the plot and structure of the novel, there is one feature of the manner in which the narrative is presented which remains as impressive as Dickens at his greatest (as in Bleak House, Dombey and Son, and Great Expectations. That is the narrative voice – the compelling, passionate, infinitely flexible, and endlessly inventive manner in which Dickens operates as the teller of the tale.

The narrative is written in (technically) third-person omniscient mode: that is, the author remains (theoretically) outside the story, but reveals the thoughts and feelings of the characters. However, Dickens operates almost like a circus ringmaster, dipping in and out of his own narrative in an oblique (almost concealed) first person mode.

He introduces his characters, and will even address them, speculate about them, and ask them questions. He introduces a subject (say, the Veneerings’ arriviste social climbing) and speculates about the topic, thinking aloud as part of the story, rhetorically asking the reader’s opinion – sometimes even addressing society in general, as he does when ironically punctuating old Betty Higden’s criticism of the Poor-house system:

“Kill me sooner than take me there. Throw this pretty child under cart-horses feet and a loaded wagon, sooner than take him there. Come to us and find us all a-dying, and set a light to us all where we lie and let us all blaze away with the house into a heap of cinders sooner than move a corpse of us there.”

A surprising spirit in this lonely woman after so many years of hard working and hard living, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards! What is it that we call it in our grandiose speeches? British independence; rather perverted? Is that, or something like it, the ring of the cant?

It is also worth noting from a stylistic point of view that he is also much given to sudden switches in tenses – particularly from the past tense into the vivid present; to the use of verbless and subjectless sentences; and the use of extended metaphors, some of which he even addresses as if they were characters, instead of the things for which they stand.

Our Mutual Friend – study resources

Our Mutual Friend – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon UK

Our Mutual Friend – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon US

Our Mutual Friend – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Our Mutual Friend – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Our Mutual Friend – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Charles Dickens – biographical notes

Our Mutual Friend – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Our Mutual Friend – audioBook at LibriVox

Our Mutual Friend – complete Marcus Stone illustrations

The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK

Our Mutual Friend – York Notes at Amazon UK

Our Mutual Friend – Brodie’s Notes at Amazon UK

Our Mutual Friend – Naxos audio book – Amazon UK

Charles Dickens’ London – interactive map

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK

Our Mutual Friend – plot summary

Book The First – The Cup and the Lip

Chapter I. Poor river worker Gaffer Hexam and his devoted daughter Lizzie are scavenging on the Thames when they locate a corpse and are challenged by a rival, Rogue Riderhood, a desperate riverside character.

Chapter II. A comic dinner takes place at the Veneerings, where guest solicitor Mortimer Lightwood recounts the story of Harmon (the Dust King) and his will in which he left his empire to son John on condition that he marry Bella Wilfer, a woman he has never met. But it is John Harmon who has recently been reported drowned.

Chapter III. Charley Hexam reports the finding of John Harmon’s body to Mortimer Lightwood. They visit the body at the police station , together with stranger Julius Handford. Next day the coroner reports the unsolved crime as murder.

Chapter IV. John Rokesmith takes up lodgings with the Wilfer family and their now ‘widowed’ daughter Bella who was due to marry John Harmon.

Chapter V. Nicodemus Boffin (the Golden Dustman) employs Silas Wegg to read Gibbon’s Decline of the Roman Empire to him. Wegg goes to Boffin’s Bower (formerly known as Harmony Jail) which is Harmon’s old house.

Chapter VI. Rogue Riderhood spreads malicious gossip about Gaffer Hexam in the pub to the landlady Abbey Potterson. She questions Lizzie, who thinks Riderhood himself might be the murderer. Abbey bars both men from her pub. Lizzie sends her brother Charley away to be a trainee teacher, and he departs with his father’s curse.

Chapter VII. Mr Wegg calls on Mr Venus the melancholy taxidermist regarding his leg bones. Venus confirms Harmon’s great wealth, and reveals that he has been taking an interest in the murder case. Venus is unhappy because his lady friend objects to his trade.

Chapter VIII. Mr Boffin reluctantly inherits the Harmon estate. He instructs Lightwood to issue a large reward on the river for information about the murder, and wants a ‘tight’ will drawn up in favour of Mrs Boffin. He then has an offer of being unpaid secretary from John Rokesmith

Chapter IX. Childless Mrs Boffin wants to adopt a male orphan and the ‘widowed’ Bella Wilfer to make up for her loss of a husband. The Boffins apply to Reverend and Mrs Milvey, then persuade Bella to live with them. Whilst there they meet John Rokesmith. There is rivalry between Lavinia and Bella Wilfer, and the first signs of attraction between Bella and Rokesmith.

Chapter X. Social adventuress Sophronia marries Alfred Lammle in a lavish ceremony hosted by the Veneerings where nobody actually knows anybody else. Afterwards on honeymoon they discover that neither of them has any money at all. They are both deceived, but decide to form a pact against society.

Chapter XI. Pretentious Mr Podsnap decides to throw a lavish birthday party for his very shy daughter Georgiana. Mrs Lammle sets out to ‘befriend’ Georgiana, egged on by her husband who hopes to profit from the connection.

Chapter XII. Lightwood and Wrayburn join forces in a business and take a house on the river. Roger Riderhood visits and accuses Gaffer Hexam of the murder, claiming that Hexam has confessed it to him. They all go to the police station where Mr Inspector takes Lightwood and Wrayburn into the Followships pub.

Chapter XIII. They drink mulled wine and wait for Hexam to reappear. Wrayburn spies on Lizzie. Riderhood goes out to look for Hexam, but reports back that he has found his boat empty and adrift.

Chapter XIV. When the search party goes out to the boat, Mr Inspector eventually reveals that Gaffer Hexam was drowned, apparently caught up in his own ropes. Lightwood is delirious with fatigue and stress. Wrayburn suddenly disappears from the scene.

Chapter XV. Mr Boffin is overwhelmed by his paperwork at the Bower, so he gladly accepts Rokesmith’s offer of being an unpaid secretary. He also asks Wegg to move into the Bower and look after it when he moves to a more fashionable address.. Mrs Boffin starts to see the ghosts of previous occupants of the Bower (the Harmons).

Chapter XVI. Rokesmith looks after all Boffin’s affairs, but does not wish to deal with Lightwood. He takes Mrs Boffin to visit Betty Higden to see about adopting a child, where they meet Sloppy and the child Johnny. Rokesmith meets Bella and announces that she will soon be welcome at the new Boffin residence in town.

Chapter XVII. The Boffins move into their new aristocratic house in town – and are immediately bombarded with visiting cards, invitations, and begging letters.

‘The Bird of Prey’ – Marcus Stone

Book The Second – Birds of a Feather

Chapter I. Six months later Charley Hexam and headmaster Bradley Headstone go to meet Lizzie Hexam, where she is living with spirited invalid Fanny Cleaver (Jenny Wren) the doll’s dressmaker. Charley and Lizzie disagree about their relationship to a poor upbringing. Lizzie is romantically attached to the river. Headstone seems interested in her, but Wrayburn is lurking.

Chapter II. Eugene Wrayburn arrives at Lizzie’s to report that he has no fresh news on Riderhood, who he has been watching. He wishes to help Lizzie and Jenny, and eventually persuades them to accept his offer. Jenny’s father returns home drunk and abject; so she scolds and reproaches him like a parent.

Chapter III. Veneering decides to enter parliament, and sets up a network of ‘agents’ amongst people he knows to curry influence and favour for him. He also puts up a £5,000 bribe, and is selected by Pocket Breeches where he has never even been before.

Chapter IV. Mr and Mrs Lammle continue to cultivate the gullible Georgiana Podsnap. They introduce her to the rich booby Fledgeby, and there is no rapport between the two young people at all, despite a dinner party and a trip to the opera.

Chapter V. Next day Lammle visits Fledgeby at the Albany to ask him about Georgiana, but Fledgeby refuses to answer any of his questions. Fledgeby then goes to see his ’employee’ at Pudsey & Co, Mr Riah, who introduces him to Lizzie Hexam (who he is teaching) and Jenny Wren who buys his waste fabrics.

Chapter VI. Lightwood asks Wrayburn about the recent movements and mysteries in his life, but Wrayburn denies that any exist. They are visited by Charley Hexam and Bradley Headstone who come to protest against Wrayburn’s interest in Lizzie and his paying for her education. Wrayburn acts contemptuously towards them both. He admits to an interest in Lizzie but can’t say towards what it is heading.

Chapter VII. Silas Wegg resents Rokesmith being put in charge of the Bower, and wonders with Mr Venus if Harmon hid things in his waste heaps.They agree to conduct clandestine searches, hoping to find valuables or papers.

Chapter VIII. Bella is prompted by Rokesmith to visit her old home , but when she arrives there are squabbles with both her mother and sister Lavvy. Rokesmith appears with a gift of £50 from Mr Boffin, which Bella spends on clothes for her father and an afternoon out at Greenwich.

Chapter IX. Rokesmith arranges for the sickly child Johnny (who Mrs Boffin wishes to adopt) to be taken to a children’s hospital, but is too late to save him and he dies, having willed his toys to another sick child.

Chapter X. Mrs Boffin then decides to drop the idea of naming an adopted child after John Harmon, and chooses the awkward Sloppy as Johnny’s replacement.

Chapter XI. Bradley Headstone has fallen in love with Lizzie at first sight. He visits her and makes an embarrassed plea that she give up being educated at Wrayburn’s expense. He wants her to let Charley (and himself) teach her instead. She flatly refuses – because she is secretly in love with Wrayburn and wishes to reform him.

Chapter XII. Riderhood receives a visit from the mysterious ‘Captain’ who is wearing the clothes of George Radfoot, who has been horribly killed. He has knowledge regarding Gaffer Hexam and the Harmon murder. He menaces Riderhood, yet offers to split the reward money with him.

Chapter XIII. The mysterious Captain is actually John Harmon, alias Julius Handford, alias John Rokesmith. He is revisiting the scene of his supposed murder, and the narrative reconstructs his back story through his efforts to reconstruct events.

He and George Radfoot were shipmates and confidants, returning to London. Harmon felt oppressed by his father’s wealth and intentions, so exchanged clothing with Radfoot in order to circulate incognito. Radfoot visits Riderhood; Harmon is poisoned; Radfoot is mutilated and murdered by mistake. Harmon then escapes via the river and hides away, living off money from Radfoot’s coat.

He debates with himself about revealing his true identity, and concludes that since he is amongst true friends and loves Bella, he should remain as Rokesmith. But when he returns home Bella petulantly reproaches him for daring to pay court to her.

Chapter XIV. Betty Higden decides that she must separate herself from Sloppy and approaches the Secretary for a loan to set up as an itinerant worker. The Secretary arranges for Sloppy to be given lessons from Headstone, and writes a letter of recantation for Riderhood to sign.

Chapter XV. The besotted Headstone and Charley visit Lizzie in a churchyard so that Headstone can present his proposal of marriage to her – which she rejects. Charley then pleads his friend’s case, and this leads to an argument between them. Lizzie is escorted home by Mr Riah and the imperious Wrayburn.

Chapter XVI. At a celebratory breakfast to mark the first wedding anniversary of the Lammles, it is reported that Lizzie Hexam is missing, and Mrs Lammle asks Twemlow to warn Mr Podsnap against her own match-making mischief regarding Georgiana.

‘Bella Righted by the Golden Dustman’ – Marcus Stone

Book The Third – A Long Lane

Chapter I. Mr Riah delivers his accounts to Fledgeby, who abuses him with anti-Semitism. Lammle arrives to reveal that the Podsnaps have written to break off relations. Fledgeby orders Riah to buy up some debts on the cheap. Riah then reports that he has offered Lizzie sanctuary, away from her suitors and tormentors.

Chapter II. Mr Riah and Jenny Wren show Riderhood’s recantation to Abbey Potterton (and they make a copy of it). A steamer on the river runs down another boat in the fog, drowning its owner – Rogue Riderhood.

Chapter III. Riderhood is brought into the pub and thought to be dead, whereupon people begin to feel sympathetic towards him. But he is revived, and becomes his nasty self again.

Chapter IV. The Wilfers celebrate their wedding anniversary, which is characterised by under-cooked chicken and Mrs Wilfer’s miserable and lugubrious recollections. Bella then confides to her father the marriage proposals she has received and her fears that Boffin’s wealth is turning him into a mercenary.

Chapter V. Mr Boffin patronises Rokesmith, preaches money values to Bella, and collects books on misers. Mrs Lammle cultivates Bella, who is sceptical and divided in her feelings. Boffin moves Rokesmith into his own house – to save money and have him permanently on hand.

Chapter VI. Boffin has Wegg read to him from lives of the great misers, and then he goes out to extract something from the great dustmounds (observed by Wegg and Mr Venus). He then announces that he has sold off the dust heaps.

Chapter VII. Wegg reveals to Venus that he has found a tin money box containing Harmon’s will, which Venus takes from him. They plan to use it against Boffin and his entourage. Venus also reveals that his inamorata is Riderhood’s daughter, Pleasant.

Chapter VIII. Betty Higden has been out on the roads on the upper reaches of the Thames, selling her wares and getting weaker and weaker. She is determined to stay out of the Workhouse. But eventually, worn down and alone, she runs out of life force and dies supported only by the kindness of a stranger – who turns out to be Lizzie Wexham.

Chapter IX. At Betty’s funeral Rokesmith and Bella discuss Lizzie’s predicament. Rokesmith thinks Lizzie might be suffering some social stigma from the false accusations made against her father. On becoming friends, Lizzie tells Bella about Headstone who frightens her and Wrayburn who she loves but thinks is above her.

Chapter X. Wrayburn is being pursued for his bad debts by Mr Riah (working for Fledgeby). Wrayburn wants to discover where Lizzie is hiding, but Jenny refuses to tell him. He is visited by ‘Mr Dolls’ (Jenny’s drunken father) who offers to find out for a fee. Meanwhile Wrayburn is being followed by Headstone and Charley. Wrayburn takes Lightwood out to lead Headstone on a wild goose chase, following him through the streets. Lightwood is horrified by the desperation on Headstone’s face.

Chapter XI. Headstone is consumed by jealousy and hatred of Wrayburn. Whilst spying on him at his Temple Chambers he meets Riderhood and pays him money as a bribe for information about Lizzie.

Chapter XII. The Lammles are in debt, and think their ‘friend’ Fledgeby is holding off Mr Riah as collector. They plot to undermine Boffin’s confidence in the Secretary. But Fledgeby calls, and despite Mrs Lammle’s pleas, he goes to his office and orders Riah to collect the debts.

Chapter XIII. Fledgeby is still in his office when it is visited by Jenny Wren and Twemlow, who reveals that he has a debt being called in by Mr Riah. When Riah returns, Fledgeby forces him through a grotesque charade of pretending to ask for leniency which Riah is obliged to refuse. The silent witness is left with the impression that Mr Riah is unpleasantly ruthless.

Chapter XIV. Venus has a change of heart and reveals to Boffin that he has Harmon’s will and wishes to end his pact with Wegg. Boffin asks him to delay his decision. Wegg threatens to harass Boffin. Mrs Lammle reveals to Boffin that Rokesmith has made a proposal to Bella.

Chapter XV. Boffin accuses Rokesmith of being a duplicitous schemer who is only after the money he is going to settle on Bella, and he sacks his loyal secretary with scorn and reproaches. But Bella leaps to Rokesmith’s defense, criticises Boffin as a man who has become corrupted by money, and leaves the Bower to go back to her family home.

Chapter XVI. Bella goes immediately to her father’s office in the City, where they are joined by Rokesmith, whose marriage proposal she now accepts. She returns home, where Lavvy defiantly faces down their mother’s disapproval of everything.

Chapter XVII. Mrs Lammle warns Twemlow that Fledgeby is the real power behind Riah’s debt collecting – though she has no proof of her claim. Twemlow then attends a big dinner at the Veneerings, where the ‘smash up’ of the Lammles is discussed. Mr Dolls delivers Lizzie’s address to Wrayburn.

‘Miss Wren fixes her idea’ – Marcus Stone

Book The Fourth – A Turning

Chapter I. Headstone is in disguise, following Wrayburn along the river. He meets Riderhood who is now keeper at the Weir Mill Lock. After locating Wrayburn and Lizzie he returns to the lock, where Riderhood discovers that he is impersonating him visually by wearing similar clothes.

Chapter II. The Lammles, now destitute, try to cultivate the Boffins, who hold them at bay and buy themselves off with a £100 sympathy payment. Georgiana tries to be generous towards the Lammles, but Boffin intercepts her gifts, and the Lammles depart, hoping to live somewhere in Europe on the money they have scrounged.

Chapter III. Wegg and Venus summon Boffin and menace him with their plan to take over the Harmon estate. They humiliate him then split the estate into three parts, with especially stringent penalty clauses for Boffin, who is very anxious that his wife shouldn’t discover their impoverishment.

Chapter IV. Bella gets married in secret to Rokesmith, accompanied only by her father.

Chapter V. Announcement of the marriage causes friction and dissent amongst Mrs Wilfer, Lavvy, and George Sampson, then hysterics, followed by self-congratulatory forbearance. Rokesmith works in the City, and offers Bella wealth, which she declines. They live in a state of domestic bliss.

Chapter VI. Wrayburn pays court to Lizzie by the river, but she refuses his advances, even though she loves him, because of the difference in their social class. Wrayburn is attacked by Headstone (disguised as Riderhood) and left for dead. Lizzie rescues him from the river and takes him to the local Inn.

Chapter VII. Headstone returns to Riderhood at the Lock in a disheveled and bloodied state. Riderhood then follows him and recovers his discarded clothes of disguise. Charley Hexam criticises and renounces Headstone for hindering his rise in society.

Chapter VIII. Fledgeby visits Jenny and tries to bribe her for Lizzie’s place of hiding. When she visits him in his Albany rooms the next day, Lammle is just leaving, having given Fledgeby a thrashing.

Chapter IX. Jenny visits Riah, having guessed that Fledgeby owns Pudsey & Co. Fledgeby fires Riah, who retreats with Jenny, only to encounter her father dying from alcoholism in Covent Garden. No sooner has he been buried than Lightwood arrives with the news that Wrayburn is dying and requests Jenny’s presence.

Chapter X. Wrayburn is close to death, but asks of Lightwood that his attacker should not be brought to justice – because it will damage Lizzie’s reputation. He claims that it was not Riderhood. Believing that he is certain to die, he wishes to be married to Lizzie as an act of atonement.

Chapter XI. Lightwood arrives at the Rokesmiths to take them to the ceremony, but John Rokesmith refuses to attend because he does not want to be recognised. A group is assembled, and en route they encounter Headstone, who collapses in a fit when he hears that Lizzie is to be married. The wedding takes place, and Wrayburn begins to revive.

Chapter XII. A few months later, after Bella has had a baby girl, the Rokesmiths bump into Lightwood in London. John Rokesmith is forced to admit to his Julius Handford alias. He is explaining one part of his implication in the Harmon affair to Bella when they receive a visit from Mr Inspector. He takes Rokesmith to the pub, where he is identified. Rokesmith quits his job and moves Bella to live at the Boffins’ house.

Chapter XIII. The Boffins then reveal to Bella how they guessed John Harmon’s true identity and have been acting out a charade of becoming miserly as a negative lesson for Bella. Even the ill treatment of Rokesmith was all an act. Harmonious relations are restored.

Chapter XIV. Mr Venus announces to Wegg that he is to be married to Pleasant Riderhood. He and Wegg go to settle accounts with Boffin, but it transpires that Venus has secretly been on Boffin’s side all along. They have Harmon’s will, and were leading on Wegg to a greater downfall. John Harmon has his inheritance, but has given Boffin the Dust Heaps. Sloppy throws Wegg out into the street.

Chapter XV. Headstone feels guilty and realises his plan has failed. Riderhood visits him at school and reveals his knowledge of the attack on Wrayburn. When Headstone visits him at the lock he demands money and threatens to bleed him dry. Headstone tries to leave, but in the end kills them both by dragging Riderhood into the weir.

Chapter XVI. The Wilfers visit the Harmons, still arguing amongst themselves. Sloppy is becoming a cabinet maker. He visits Jenny Wren and pays court to her. Wrayburn visits Harmon and they discuss the problem of mixing Lizzie in polite society.

Chapter XVII. Lightwood goes to dinner at the Veneerings, who are about to ‘crash’ and plan to live in Calais. Lady Tippings taunts him snobbishly about Wrayburn’s marriage to Lizzie. He is surrounded by prejudice and nastiness.

Postscript Dickens comments personally on the composition of his novel – on its plot and credibility, perhaps unconsciously acknowledging that he had dropped below his usual standards.

‘The Wedding Dinner at Greenwich’ – Marcus Stone

Our Mutual Friend – principal characters

Harmon	original creator and owner of the ‘dust’ empire
John Harmon	his son, alias Julius Handford, alias John Rokesmith, alias the Secretary, true heir to the Harmon estate
Nicodemus (‘Noddy’) Boffin	alias ‘The Golden Dustman’. former servant to Harmon Snr, who inherits his wealth and house
Mr Fledgeby	a pompous dandy, who owns Pudsey & Co
Bradley Headstone	the headmaster in a school, obsessed with Lizzie Hexam
Jesse (‘Gaffer’) Hexam	a rough Thames waterside man
Lizzie Hexam	his devoted and attractive daughter
Charley Hexam	his headstrong but clever son, apprenticed to Headstone
Roger ‘Rogue’ Riderhood	a desperate and unpleasant riverside character
Pleasant Riderhood	his daughter, an unlicensed pawnbroker
Mr Inspector	a police officer
Betty Higden	keeper of a ‘minding school’ and a mangle
Our Johnny	an orphan great-grandson of Betty Higden
Sloppy	an awkward foundling, adopted by Mrs Higden ‘He do the police in different voices’
Alfred Lammle	a socialite and fortune-hunter
Mortimer Lightwood	a solicitor and attorney with only Harmon as his one client
Eugene Wrayburn	his friend, a barrister without a brief, an indolent and unambitious misanthrope
Silas Wegg	a ballad seller with a wooden leg who reads to Boffin
Mr Venus	a taxidermist who is disappointed in love
Rev Frank Milvey	a curate with a large family
Mr John Podsnap	a member of society, a pompous self-satisfied man
Mr Riah	a venerable Jew, of noble and generous nature, Fledgeby’s employee at Pudsey & Co
Fanny Cleaver	a doll’s dressmaker, referred to as ‘Jenny Wren’
Mr Cleaver	Jenny Wren’s drunken father, referred to as ‘Mr Dolls’,
Miss Emma Peacher	a teacher in love with Headstone at his school
Miss Abbey Potterson	landlady of The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters
Reginald Wilfer	‘The Cherub’ – a henpecked clerk
Mrs Wilfer	his wife, an angular and dyspeptic misery
Bella Wilfer	their elder pretty daughter, protege of the Boffins
Lavinia ‘Lavvy’ Wilfer	their younger sharp-tongued daughter
George Sampson	a feeble young man, engaged to Lavvy

Mont Blanc – Charles Dickens special edition

Other works by Charles Dickens

Pickwick Papers (1836-37) was Dickens’ first big success. It was issued in twenty monthly parts and is not so much a novel as a series of loosely linked sketches and changing characters featured in reports to the Pickwick Club. These recount comic excursions to Rochester, Dingley Dell, and Bath; duels and elopements; Christmas festivities; Mr Pickwick inadvertently entering the bedroom of a middle-aged lady at night; and in the end a happy marriage. Much light-hearted fun, and a host of memorable characters.
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Oliver Twist (1837-38) expresses Dickens’ sense of the vulnerability of children. Oliver is a foundling, raised in a workhouse, who escapes suffering by running off to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of thieves controlled by the infamous Fagin. He is pursued by the sinister figure of Monks who has secret information about him. The plot centres on the twin issues of personal identity and a secret inheritance (which surface again in Great Expectations). Emigration, prison, and violent death punctuate a cascade of dramatic events. This is the early Victorian novel in fine melodramatic form. Recommended for beginners to Dickens.
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Charles Dickens – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Owen Wingrave

December 26, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Owen Wingrave (1892) is often classed as one of James’s ghost stories, and it functions in that capacity very well, along with examples such as the light-hearted Sir Edmund Orme and the altogether more sinister classic, The Turn of the Screw. It also deals with an issue that is a common feature of Gothic horror stories – the weight of hereditary expectations. The Wingrave family believe Owen’s duty is to become a soldier, just like his forebears. Owen thinks otherwise and decides to resist this social pressure, with consequences that are tragic for both himself and the family as well. It is also a dark variation on The Path of Duty which James had published almost a decade earlier in 1884.

Owen Wingrave – opera adaptation

Opera by Benjamin Britten 1970

Benjamin Luxon (tenor) as Owen Wingrave, Janet Baker as Kate Julian. Film commissioned by BBC television, with Benjamin Britten conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. Libretto by Myfanwy Piper.

Owen Wingrave – critical commentary

The force of tradition

Owen is the second son in a family steeped in military tradition which has also suffered violence. His ancestor Colonel Wingrave has killed one of his own children in a fit of passion with a blow to the head, and has died himself by the following day after visiting the corpse. This is the incident which has given the room its macabre reputation.

For more than three hundred years the family has served ‘king (or queen) and country’. Owen’s father has been killed fighting the Afghans, and the eldest son of the family is an ‘imbecile’ who has been ‘relegated to a private asylum’ and cannot become a soldier. All the family’s hereditary future therefore rests on Owen. He is expected to follow the tradition of military service and is put under a great deal of pressure to do so. First by his tutor, then his aunt, his grandfather, and finally by Kate

It is interesting to note that this sense of military duty is shared by both males and females. Owen has been raised by his aunt, who has uppermost in her whole being ‘the paramount valour of her family’, and Kate Julian too ‘adore[s] the army’ and has ‘quite set [her] heart’ on the idea of Owen becoming a soldier.

Thus the family’s history of violence (and the story itself) begins and ends with the death of a Wingrave son. Owen also dies in the same room and the same manner as his ancestor. And although nobody mentions it, the fact is that the family itself (in its male line) comes to an end with Owen’s death. So violence ultimately kills itself.

The psychological threat

In addition to being under pressure to ‘serve his country’ Owen is also expected to marry and produce male offspring who will continue this family tradition. Spencer Coyle reflects on the fact that this is the normal sequence of events for his pupils. He is even a little rueful about coaching them for what often turns out to be a fateful profession.

It is worth noting that Owen has spent the previous night in the ‘white room’ without any ill effects, but Kate Julian both accuses him of cowardice and locks him into it. So Owen escapes both his family’s wishes and the pressure of the rather predatory Kate Julian and the ‘future’ that she represents of perpetuating the male Wingrave lineage. But he escapes it only by the route of his own death.

At a deeper level of course the story is a version of the threat of marriage, heterosexual sex, and the responsibilities of reproduction as perceived by a homosexual author. This is one amongst many of James’s stories around this time that explore this theme, and it is surely no accident that it appealed to another gay artist (Britten) as the subject for one of his operas.

Owen Wingrave – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon US

Owen Wingrave – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

Owen Wingrave – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

Owen Wingrave – Collector’s Library edition

The Ghost Stories of Henry James – Wordsworth edition

Owen Wingrave – read the book on line

Owen Wingrave – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Owen Wingrave – BBC film version DVD

Owen Wingrave – 2001 film version

Owen Wingrave – the music score

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Owen Wingrave – plot summary

Part I. Owen Wingrave, the second son of a military family is being coached for entry into Sandhurst and a career as a soldier. He is surrounded by relatives with a fierce loyalty to the traditions of duty, public sacrifice, and death in conflict.

Part II. But he decides that war is ‘barbaric’ and refuses to join the army. His grandfather and maiden aunt are deeply shocked and threaten to disinherit him. They believe that he is merely rationalising his own cowardice.

Part III. A group of people assemble at the old family home with a view to persuading him to change his mind. They include his private tutor, his aunt, and Kate Julian a young woman who expects to marry him.

Part IV. The old house has a macabre history including a room in which a former Wingrave died after killing a young boy. Owen resists the pressure put on him, but when Kate Julian accuses him of cowardice, he offers to spend the night in the room. She locks him in, and the next morning he is found dead on the same spot as his ancestor.

Principal characters

Owen Wingrave	second son of a military family
Spencer Coyle	successful private military tutor
Mrs Coyle	his wife
Miss Jane Wingrave	Owen’s ‘formidable’ aunt
Lechmere	small fellow pupil and Owen’s best friend
Philip Wingrave	Owen’s elder brother, who is an ‘imbecile’
Owen Wingrave Snr	Owen’s father, who died in battle with Afghans
Sir Philip Wingrave	Owen’s grandfather
Mrs Julian	widow of army captain who was once engaged to Jane Wingrave
Miss Kate Julian	her 18 year old daughter
Paramore	the Wingrave’s Jacobean family house

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Ghost stories by Henry James

The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868)

The Ghostly Rental (1876)

Sir Edmund Orme (1891)

The Private Life (1892)

Owen Wingrave (1892)

The Friends of the Friends (1896)

The Turn of the Screw (1898)

The Real Right Thing (1899)

The Third Person (1900)

The Jolly Corner (1908)

Other works by Henry James

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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Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James – web links

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

The 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 tales by James
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Pale Fire

February 5, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, and web links

Pale Fire (1962) is a bizarre and playful ‘novel’ from the master of literary inventiveness, Vladimir Nabokov. It was written at the same time that he was editing his scholarly translation of Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. What Pale Fire offers is a comic parody of the same enterprise. It is a novel comprised of a spoof academic introduction written by the editor, a long poem written by his neighbour which gives the novel its title, and then the editor’s elaborate commentary which purports to explain hidden meanings in the text. All the notes are cross referenced with a scholarly apparatus. He then even adds an index.

Pale Fire – critical commentary

Structure

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the novel is its successful parody of an academic study – complete with bibliographic introduction, cross references, a scholarly apparatus, critical commentary, and index. All of these are brought to bear on the central text – John Shade’s poem Pale Fire – which has absolutely nothing to do with the Boy’s Own adventure story into which it is embedded.

Moreover, as a self-proclaimed ‘editor’, Charles Kinbote is a comic failure in his enterprise. He not only completely fails to understand Shade’s poem; he gets lots of details wrong; he fails to spot things that are obvious; he can’t be bothered to follow up his own ‘researches’; and he sets up links in his commentaries which turn out to be non-sequiturs.

Nabokov also makes Kinbote quite laughable as a character. He misunderstands what is happening around him. He is insensitive to the reactions of the people he encounters. And he is given quasi-absurd opinions – such as his half-baked critique of Proust and A la recherche du temps perdues (which is incorrectly capitalised in the index).

The unreliable narrator

Nabokov was a master of fiction delivered by unreliable narrators. From his earliest works as a writer of short stories such as The Eye (1930) and Spring in Fialta (1936) he created narrators who recount events that the reader is invited to interpret otherwise. Some of these narrators tell lies or attempt to mislead the reader. They play a form of literary hide and seek in which they deliver information which does not seem quite consonant with the rest of the story – and we begin to doubt their judgement. It is a skilful manipulation of point of view on the author’s part, and an invitation to readers to ‘participate’ in creating the ‘true meaning’ of the story.

This literary device can sometimes be stretched over the length of a novel. Henry James used it in The Sacred Fount (1901). But it is usually confined to the short story or the novella – for good reasons. The most important reason is that once the reader has realised that information is coming from an unreliable source, dramatic tension in the tale is put at risk.

It should be immediately apparent to most intelligent readers of Pale Fire that the editor-narrator Kinbote is both unreliable and not who he claims to be. In the Foreward he relates that a certain ‘ferocious lady’ says to him ‘What’s more you are insane’. She is quite right, and most readers will have no trouble realising that his account of the King’s ‘escape’ from Zembla is his own (factitious) autobiography. Shortly afterwards, if not at the same time, they will realise that the whole story is the delusion of a madman.

The problem is that they will realise this quite quickly, when there is still considerable plot-commentary to be revealed – which dilutes the effectiveness of any dramatic tension that follows. To offset this weakness, Nabokov introduces a second plot element in the character of political gangster Jakob Gradus whose role is to pursue and assassinate King Charles.

This too turns out to be part of Kinbote’s delusion – for the man who shoots John Shade is not a foreign political assassin but an escapee from a lunatic asylum seeking to avenge himself on the man (Judge Goldsworth) who has sent him there.

Interpretation

It has to be said that the apparent levels of fictionality in the novel have thrown critics into all sorts of acrobatic interpretations. There are some who believe that the commentary to the poem was written by John Shade himself, and others who think the ghost of Hazel Shade is somehow involved.

Nabokov, as the author of all the mischievous hints and clues scattered throughout the book, muddies the water even further by introducing a character called Professor V. Botkin, whom he describes as ‘an American scholar of Russian descent’. This sends other commentators into analytic raptures, pointing to the fact that the name Botkin is merely Kinbote in reverse. Perhaps Kinbote is the alter-ego of Botkin – or the other way round?

But the multiple levels of fictionality are apparent rather than real. Kinbote is clearly a fictional character, created by the author Vladimir Nabokov. Kinbote is operating as a teacher in a fictional (but credible) American university called Wordsmith College in the Appalachians. Kinbote claims to be the exiled king of a not-so-credible country called Zembla – and his escape from it is related via cardboard and comic operetta sequence of events. He is clearly delusional and his tale is a fantasy-invention. Interpretation of the novel is much simpler than its complicated story.

We know that Nabokov ‘lost his kingdom’ and had to flee Russia following the revolution; we know that he eventually emigrated to America; we know that he taught at a provincial college (Wellesley College) and wrote about the experience in other fictional productions (such as Pnin). We know that Nabokov had been translating and editing a scholarly version of Eugene Onegin – which comprised an introduction, the text of Pushkin’s poem/novel, and two volumes of commentary plus an index.

Pale Fire is nothing more than a literary spoof which re-mixes these biographical elements to offer a playful charade, a jeu d’esprit that is laced with the sorts of in-house jokes, narrative tricks, and literary spasms (wordplay, neologisms, and obsessive alliteration) that mark his later works following the high point of Lolita in 1955.

Extras

It should be clear from a few pages into the novel and everything following that Kinbote is a homosexual. What is not clear is why Nabokov should add this characteristic to his protagonist. The repeated and coy references to young boys and ‘manly behaviour’ become quite irritating – mainly because they are not in any way connected to the rest of the narrative. They eventually assume a sort of schoolboy smuttiness and reinforce other silly elements of the plot.

Pale Fire – study resources

Pale Fire – Penguin – Amazon UK

Pale Fire – Penguin – Amazon US

Pale Fire – Library of America – Amazon UK

Pale Fire – Library of America – Amazon US

Nabokov’s Pale Fire – Princeton – Amazon UK

Celestial Keys to Pale Fire – Sputnik – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov – Amazon UK

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years – Biography: Vol 1

Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years – Biography: Vol 2

Zembla – the official Nabokov web site

The Paris Review – Interview with Vladimir Nabokov

Pale Fire – plot summary

Foreward

The ‘editor’ Charles Kinbote presents a scholarly description giving the provenance of John Shade’s poem Pale Fire. He details the rivalries surrounding ownership and publication of the manuscript. He meets Shade and his wife Sybil when he becomes their next door neighbour whilst teaching at the same institution – Wordsmith College. Kinbote is a figure of fun at the college, and is clearly a homosexual.

Pale Fire

The poem in four cantos is an autobiographical meditation on Shade’s domestic life and his reflections on the borderlines between life and death. His parents die when he is young, and he is raised by his aunt Maude. He loses his religious belief, but searches for a meaning in life and wonders about the possibilities of life beyond the grave.

He meets his wife Sybil at high school, and still loves her forty years later. They have a daughter Hazel who is solitary, dyslexic and unattractive. She goes out with friends as a teenager and is shunned by the group. She pretends to go home, but drowns herself in an icy lake.

Shade meditates on life as a preparation for what will happen after death and the possibilities of reincarnation. He wonders who we might meet in the afterlife. Sybil thinks she receives signals from their dead daughter. After giving a lecture one evening Shade has a minor heart attack and a ‘vision’ of being briefly ‘dead’, when he sees the image of a white fountain. When he reads of a woman who has had the same experience he goes to interview her – but she thinks it is a social call. Nevertheless, he feels he has discovered some hidden pattern in life which gives it meaning.

He reflects on the difficulties of poetic composition and describes shaving whilst in the bath. He thinks about his wife, his dead daughter, and the books of poetry he has written. Finally he finds some comfort in his appreciation of the everyday life that surrounds him.

Commentary

Charles Kinbote examines the poem in close detail and explains meanings hidden in the text. He has forcibly befriended his neighbour the American poet John Shade and recounted to him the amazing story of King Charles II’s escape from a revolution in Zembla. Kinbote hopes that Shade will re-tell this story in a long poem on which he is currently working.

Kinbote’s story is that when a revolution occurs in Zembla, the king is imprisoned in his castle, from which he escapes via a secret passageway. He travels over mountains and eventually reaches the seashore. Zembla is divided politically into supporters of the king (Karlists) and their rival Extremists, including would-be regicides (the Shadows) who elect Jakob Gradus as their assassin.

The king is eventually parachuted into the USA where his friend Sylvia arranges for him to teach at Wordsmith College. He rents a house from Judge Goldsworth, next door to John Shade and his wife Sybil. Although he has only been there a short time, he claims to be close friends with Shade – though it is quite clear that these feelings are not reciprocated.

Kinbote spies on Shade day and night, whilst Sybil makes transparent excuses to protect her husband’s privacy by keeping Kinbote away from the house. Meanwhile the stupid and incompetent Gradus is making his way across northern Europe in search of King Charles. Gradus fails at every point, until he is eventually instructed to go to America.

Kinbote is saving a big surprise for John Shade when he completes his poem. It is quite clear that this is the revelation that he is King Charles. But on the very day the poem is finished and Kinbote has invited Shade for a celebratory drink, Gradus arrives and bungles the assassination, killing Shade in error.

Believing that Kinbote tried to protect Shade from the assassin, Sybil gives him the right to be the poem’s official editor. Gradus turns out to be an escaped lunatic who has gone to kill the person who sentenced him to an asylum – Judge Goldsworth, Kinbote’s landlord. Gradus subsequently commits suicide in jail.

Kinbote confiscates the manuscript of Pale Fire and at first is horrified to realise that it contains no mention of his escape from Zembla. Later he convinces himself that Shade has cleverly hidden the account in minor details of the poem – and so his commentary is designed to squeeze meaning out where none exists.

Pale Fire – principal characters

Charles Kinbote	the deposed King Charles II of Zembla
John Shade	an American poet and college teacher
Sybil Shade	his protective wife
Hazel Shade	their teenage daughter who commits suicide
Jakob Gradus	aka Jack Grey a bungling criminal and lunatic
Judge Goldsworth	the absent owner of Kinbote’s rented house

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