English literature Archives - Page 9 of 44

Doing English

June 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

preparing for literary studies at undergraduate level

This book is designed to make students of literature think more deeply about the subject. It explains the development of English Literature as an academic discipline and poses fundamental questions about the activity – such as ‘What is English [Literature] and what is studying it supposed to mean?’ Robert Eaglestone’s book aims to help students prepare for studying literature at undergraduate level. He offers a gentle introduction to literary theory – but without lots of jargon.

If students read what he has to say, they will certainly be more confident in confronting some of the challenges and contradictions which exist in literary studies in universities. For instance, tutors commonly deduct marks from students for poor written expression – and quite right too. Yet why do so many literary critics get published when their work is almost unintelligible? These are questions worth asking. He explains the rise in ‘Eng Lit’ and uncovers some of the hidden assumptions which lie beneath the surface of traditional attitudes to it. This is in fact an explanation of the ideology of ‘Eng. Lit.’ – but he cleverly avoids even using the term.

He unpacks the concept of the literary canon and looks in detail at Shakespeare studies as a prime example. This is followed by issues of interpretation which are summed up in the expressions ‘the intentional fallacy’ and ‘the death of the author’.

The latter parts of the book are devoted to considering the relationships between English Literature and cultural identity, politics, and educational policy. His consideration of these larger strategic issues make me think that this book will be as valuable to teachers as to students. It will help them clarify their ideas about their objectives and teaching strategies in the classroom.

There is an excellent and deeply annotated bibliography. Any student [or teacher] reading even a few of the titles he recommends will be well prepared to put their own approach to literary studies into a well-informed ideological context. [But they don’t have to mention the term.]

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Robert Eaglestone, Doing English: A guide for literature students, London: Routledge, 3rd edition 2009, pp.192, ISBN: 0415284236

More on literature
More on the novella
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Dombey and Son

October 23, 2015 by Roy Johnson

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

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

monthly serial cover

Dombey and Son – critical commentary

Title

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

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

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

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

Educating the child

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

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

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

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

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

Point of view

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

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

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

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

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

The main theme

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

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

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

Characterisation

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

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

Dombey and Son – study resources

Dombey and Son – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Dombey and Son – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Dombey and Son – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Dombey and Son – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Dombey and Son – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Complete Works of Charles Dickens – Kindle edition

Charles Dickens – biographical notes

The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK

Dombey and Son – plot summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul and Mrs Pipchin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Major Bagstock is delighted to have the opportunity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Carker introduces himself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Florence and Edith

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

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

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

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

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

A Chance Meeting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Let him remember it in that room’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dombey and Son – principal characters

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

Mont Blanc – 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.
Buy the book here

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.
Buy the book here

Charles Dickens – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on Charles Dickens
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Dracula – a study guide

February 10, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

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

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

Bela Lugosi as Dracula (1931)

Dracula – critical commentary

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

The New Woman

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

West Vs East

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

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

The Rise of Science

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

Sex, blood, and sublimation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dracula – study resources

Dracula – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Dracula – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Dracula – York Notes for students – Amazon UK

Dracula – York Notes for students – Amazon US

Dracula – Spark Notes for students – Amazon UK

Dracula – Spark Notes for students – Amazon US

Dracula – Cliffs Notes for students – Amazon UK

Dracula – Cliffs Notes for students – Amazon US

Dracula – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Dracula – full cast dramatisation BBC audioBook – Amazon UK

Dracula – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon US

Dracula – encyclopedia entry at Wikipedia

Dracula – scan of the first edition

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

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

Buffy the Vampire Slayer – complete boxed set – Amazon UK

Dracula – plot summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dracula – film version

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

Principal characters

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

Literary criticism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trivia and parallels

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

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

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

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

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

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Edith Sitwell

January 1, 2018 by Roy Johnson

modernist poet and English eccentric

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was an English poet, and an upper-class eccentric renowned for her exotic clothing and over-sized jewellery. She was prolific as a writer, and in the 1920s and 1930s was classed as an avant-garde modernist. Her work was praised by critics and fellow poets, but she is now known almost exclusively for her poems Parade which were set for music-theatre performance by the composer William Walton.

She was born into an aristocratic family at Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, the eldest of three children who remained close throughout their adult lives. She disliked both her parents, never married, and spent much of her life living with her childhood governess.

Her remote and snobbish parents would only issue instructions to a butler and private servant. Other staff in the household were not permitted to speak to the masters. She developed a youthful love for Chopin, Brahms, and Swinburne- and when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up answered “A genius”.

Her father disapproved of education for women, so Edith was largely self-taught. However, her governess Helen Rootham was a powerful influence and provided an introduction to the world of modern art – Rimbaud in particular.

When Edith was twenty her famously beautiful mother was put on trial for fraud, and having been convicted, served a short jail sentence. The family never spoke about this incident – even to each other.

In 1913 at the age of twenty-five Edith was given her freedom and moved to live at Pembridge Mansions in Bayswater, London. By upper-class standards, this was quite a Bohemian location. It was at this point that she began writing poetry. The rooms at Pembroke Mansions became a cultural salon that attracted figures such as Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, and Cecil Beaton.

Like many other artists and intellectuals of the modernist period she was opposed to the First World War. In 1916 she established a magazine Wheels that published the work of young unknown poets, including in its 1919 edition six pieces by Wilfred Owen, who had been killed in action the year before.

She fell in love with a handsome young Chilean painter called Alvaro Guevara. He however was infatuated with the heiress and left-wing activist Nancy Cunard. Edith consoled herself with the fame which followed her early success. It is assumed by her biographers that she remained a virgin for the rest of her life.

In 1923 her poems Facade were set to music by the young William Walton who Sitwell and her brothers had decided to champion. The result was a surrealist entertainment in which the poems were declaimed through a megaphone from behind a decorated curtain, accompanied by jagged and heavily syncopated music. It caused public outrage at the time, yet ironically it is the work by which she is now best known.

Her controversial social success, eccentric costume, and poetic experiments also generated a great deal of rivalry and animosity. Noel Coward lampooned Edith and her brothers as The Swiss Family Whittlebot, and F.R. Leavis observed that the Sitwells ‘belonged to the history of publicity’ – which in retrospect seems largely true.

She went to live in Paris with Helen Rootham, where she was introduced by Gertrude Stein to the second great love of her life – the Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. She devoted herself to him, became his muse and patroness, and travelled extensively with him, all the time seemingly unaware that he was a homosexual.

In 1930 Helen Rootham was diagnosed with cancer, which suddenly transposed Edith into the role of carer. She was living on a modest allowance from her father, and supplemented this by turning to journalism. She wrote articles for the newspapers in which she articulated her controversial views on issues of the day.

But on Helen Rootham’s death she also suffered another blow – Pavel Tchelitchew decided to emigrate to America. This was an emotional low point for Edith, and she was persuaded to return to the family’s ancestral home by her brother Osbert. (Her father had gone to live in a castle in Tuscany he spent thirty years restoring.)

1959 Interview with John Freeman

This move brought on a fresh lease of poetic life and further critical acclamation from the likes of Kenneth Clark and Cyril Connolly, who predicted that her work would outlive that of T. S. Eliot and W.H. Auden (in which he has so far been proven wrong). There was also an invitation to make a celebrity lecture tour in the United States. Further public accolades were heaped upon her, and even though she was regarded as something of a professional eccentric, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1954.

But fame did not bring her happiness. She became financially dependent on her brother, and she felt herself the poor relation. She imagined herself to be a ‘working woman’ but in fact ran up enormous debts in the family name.

Osbert was able to offer her summer residence in the Derbyshire stately home and winters in the Tuscan castle he inherited from his father – so she was not exactly slumming it. There was also the ‘season’ in London, when she lived at the Sesame Club in Mayfair, driven around in a chauffeur-driven Daimler of gigantic proportions. In her later years she became infirm and was confined to a wheelchair. She died in 1964, suffering from alcoholism and paranoia.

Facade – Buy the book at Amazon UK
Facade – Buy the book at Amazon US

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Edith Wharton criticism

May 9, 2015 by Roy Johnson

annotated bibliography of criticism and comment

Edith Wharton criticism is a bibliography of critical comment on Wharton and her works, with details of each publication and a brief description of its contents. The details include active web links to Amazon where you can buy the books, often in a variety of formats – new, used, and as Kindle eBooks and print-on-demand reissues. The listings are arranged in alphabetical order of author.

The list includes new books and older publications which may now be considered rare. It also includes versions of older texts which are much cheaper than the original. Others (including some new books) are often sold off at rock bottom prices. Whilst compiling these listings a hardback copy of Hermione Lee’s biography Edith Wharton was available at Amazon for one penny.

Edith Wharton (Writers and their Work) – Janet Beer, Northcote House Publishers, 2001. An introduction to the whole range of Edith Wharton’s work in the novel, short story, novella, travel writing, criticism and autobiography. The major novels are discussed as are: contemporary reception of her work, American responses to her expatriation, her friendships with the leading artists of her day, and the influence of the First World War on her work.

Edith Wharton: Sex, Satire and the Older Woman – Janet Beer and Avril Horner, London: Palgrave , 2011. Wharton’s late and critically-neglected novels are reclaimed as experimental in form and radical in content in this study, which also suggests that her portrayal of older female characters in her last six novels anticipates contemporary unease about the cultural nationalization of the older woman in Western society.

The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton – Millicent Bell, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Essays covering Wharton’s most important novels as well as some of her shorter fiction, and utilise both traditional and innovative critical techniques, applying the perspectives of literary history, feminist theory, psychology or biography, sociology or anthropology, or social history.

Edith Wharton and the French Riviera – Elizabeth Collas, Flammarion, 2002. This is a study of the area when Edith Wharton arrived, and how the region developed from then on. Richly illustrated with both contemporary and vintage photographs, and completed with an extensive bibliography, it is a hugely evocative portrait of the Golden Age of the Riviera.

Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life – Eleanor Dwight, Harry N. Abrams, 1994. This study portrays Wharton the writer, traveller, socialite, gardener, architect, interior designer, art scholar, expatriate, war worker and connoisseur of life. A wealth of photographs provide a visual survey of the life and times of this multifaceted woman.

The Gilded Age: Edith Wharton and Her Contemporaries – Eleanor Dwight, Universe Publishing, 1996. A portrait of the dynamic era in America, from the 1870s to the early twentieth century.

Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton – Kathy A. Fodorko, The University of Alabama Press, 1995. This study shows how Wharton, in sixteen short stories and six major novels, adopts and adapts Gothic elements as a way to explore the nature of feminine and masculine ways of knowing and being and to dramatize the tension between them.

Edith Wharton’s Inner Circle – Susan Goodman, University of Texas Press, 2011. Drawing on unpublished archival material by and about members of the circle, this study presents an intimate view of this American expatriate community, as well as the larger transatlantic culture it mirrored.

Edith Warton’s Women: Friends and Rivals – Susan Goodman, University Press of New England, 1990.

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Pamela Knights (ed), Cambridge University Press, 2009. An accessible and stimulating introduction to Wharton’s life and writings, to help map her work for new readers, and to encourage more detailed exploration of her texts and contexts.

Edith Wharton – Hermione Lee, London: Chatto and Windus, 2007. This critical biography displays Wharton as a tough, erotically brave, and startlingly modern writer.

Edith Wharton: A Biography – R.W.B. Lewis, Vintage Editions, 1993. Pulitzer Prize-winning biography paints a vivid picture of Wharton’s rich and varied life: her writings and travelling, her friendships with luminaries of the period such as Henry James and Kenneth Clarke, and the great, all-consuming love affair of her middle age.

Student Companion to Edith Wharton – Melissa McFarland Pennell, Greenwood Press, 2003. Provides an introduction to Wharton’s fiction, beginning with her life and career, plus in-depth discussion of her writing, along with analyses of thematic concerns, character development, historical context, and plots.

Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton’s New York – Maureen E. Montgomery, London: Routledge, 1998. This study argues for a reconsideration of the role of women in the bourgeois elite in turn-of-the-century America. By contrasting multiple images of women drawn from newspapers, magazines, private correspondence, etiquette manuals and the New York fiction of Edith Wharton, it offers an antidote to the tendency in women’s history to overlook women whose class affiliations have put them in a position of power.

Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts – Emily J. Orlando, University of Alabama Press, 2009. Explores Edith Wharton’s career-long concern with a 19th-century visual culture that limited female artistic agency and expression.

The End of the Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton and the First World War – A. Price, Robert Hale Ltd, 1996. The study draws on unpublished letters and archival materials in Europe and the US, to document Wharton’s activities as a fund-raiser, philanthropist, propagandist and political activist during this period.

Edith Wharton in Context – Laura Rattray, Cambridge University Press, 2012. This volume provides the first substantial text dedicated to the various contexts that frame Wharton’s remarkable career. Each essay offers a clearly argued and lucid assessment of Wharton’s work as it relates to seven key areas: life and works, critical receptions, book and publishing history, arts and aesthetics, social designs, time and place, and literary milieux.

Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit – Carol J. Singley, Cambridge University Press, 1998. This study analyzes the short stories and seven novels in the light of religious and philosophical developments in Wharton’s life and fiction. It situates Wharton in the context of turn-of-the-century science, historicism, and aestheticism, reading her religious and philosophical outlook as an evolving response to the cultural crisis of belief.

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Carol J. Singley, Oxford University Press, 2003. Provides scholarly and general readers with historical contexts that illuminate Wharton’s life and writing in new ways. Essays in the volume expand the sense of Wharton as a novelist of manners and demonstrate her engagement with issues of her day.

Edith Wharton in Context: Essays on Intertextuality – Adeline R. Tinter, University of Alabama Press, 2015. A detailed analysis of the complex interplay between Wharton and Henry James – how they influenced each other and how some of their writings operate as homages or personal jokes. Plus essays on Wharton’s response to Italian renaissance painters.

Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture – Gary Totten, University of Alabama Press, 2007. Essays in this collection address issues such as parallels between Wharton’s characters and the houses they occupy; dress as a metaphor for the flux of critical fashion; the marketing of Wharton’s work to a growing female readership; her relationship to mass culture industries such as advertising, theater, and cinema; the tableaux vivant both as set piece and as fictional strategy; the representation of female bodies as objets d’art; and her characters’ attempts at self-definition through the acquisition and consumption of material goods

Edith Wharton and the Art of Fiction – Penelope Vita-Finzi, Continuum International Publishing, 1994. Explores Edith Wharton’s concept of the artist and shows how her views about the education and environment necessary for the writer were rigid and consciously rooted in 19th century thought rather than being influenced by contemporary literary and intellectual debates.

Edith Wharton’s Letters From the Underworld: Fictions of Women and Writing – Candace Waid, University of North Carolina Press. Presents an innovative reading of the work of Edith Wharton. Waid examines Wharton’s lifelong preoccupation with the place of the American woman writer, which she locates in the context of Wharton’s ambivalent reaction to America.

Edith Wharton at Home: Life at the Mount – Richard Guy Wilson, Monacelli Press, 2012. Presents Wharton’s life at the house she designed and built in vivid detail, with authoritative text and archival images, as well as new colour photography of the restoration of The Mount and its spectacular gardens.

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Edith Wharton short stories

March 13, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorials, critical commentary, and study resources

Edith Wharton published more than eighty short stories during her writing career. The exact number is debatable, because some are so long (such as the early tale, The Touchstone) that they can be counted as novellas. She certainly produced stories regularly from 1900 until her last collection Ghosts in 1937. During that time she also wrote a number of full length novels, as well as works of non-fiction, such as her travel writing, her war memoirs, and books on the design of house interiors and gardens. The following are tutorials and study guides which offer plot summaries, characters, critical commentaries, and suggestions for further reading on each story. The list will be updated as new stories are added.

After Holbein
Afterward
Autres Temps
Bunner Sisters
Confession
Diagnosis
His Father’s Son
Kerfol
Pomegranate Seed
Roman Fever
Sanctuary
Souls Belated
The Angel at the Grave
The Last Asset
The Long Run
The Muse’s Tragedy
The Other Two
The Portrait
The Pretext
The Reckoning
The Touchstone
The Triumph of Night
The Verdict
Xingu

Video documentary

Study resources

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Edith Wharton – biography

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Edith Wharton at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Edith Wharton’s Short Stories – publication details

Edith Wharton’s writing

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
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The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.

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EM Forster and Cinema

May 16, 2016 by Roy Johnson

film adaptations of E.M. Forster’s novels

The novels of E.M. Forster have proved a very fruitful source for writers and directors adapting his work for the cinema. All his major works have been turned into very successful films which capture the spirit and the atmosphere of Edwardian England in which they are set. They have also profited from first rate actors, some of whom (such as Helena Bonham Carter) have made their names via performances in these films.

Where Angels Fear to Tread (novel 1902 – film 1991)

This film version is not a Merchant-Ivory production, although it’s done very much in their style. But it is accurate and entirely sympathetic to the spirit of the novel, possibly even stronger in satirical edge, well acted, and superbly beautiful to watch. Much is made of the visual contrast between the beautiful Italian setting and the straight-laced English capital from which the prudery and imperialist spirit emerges. The lovely Helena Bonham-Carter establishes herself as the perfect English Rose in this production, and she carried it through to several more. Helen Mirren is wonderful as the spirited Lilia who defies English prudery and narrow-mindedness and marries for love – with results which manage to upset everyone.

1991 Charles Sturridge film adaptation

Director: Charles Sturridge. Screenplay: Tim Sullivan. Starring – Rupert Graves (Philip Herriton), Helen Mirren (Lilia Herriton), Barbara Jefford (Mrs Herriton), Judy Davis (Harriet Herriton), Helena Bonham Carter (Caroline Abbott), Giovanni Guidelli (Gino Carella). Filmed in London and San Gimignano and Montepulciano, Italy.

Where Angels Fear to Tread – film adaptation on DVD – Amazon UK

Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

Where Angels Fear to Tread – a tutorial and study guide

Where Angels Fear to Tread – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Where Angels Fear to Tread – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Howards End (novel 1910- film 1992)

The novel is arguably Forster’s greatest work, and this film adaptation by Merchant-Ivory lives up to it as an achievement. It is well acted, with very good performances from Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter as the Schlegel sisters, and Anthony Hopkins as the bully Wilcox. Veteran luvvie and Trotskyist Vanessa Redgrave plays the mystic Mrs Willcox. The locations and details are accurate, and it gives an accurate rendition of the critical, poignant scenes in the original – particularly the conflict between the upper middle-class Wilcoxes and the working-class aspirant Leonard Bast. This is an adaptation I have watched several times over, and always been impressed.

1992 Merchant-Ivory production

Director: James Ivory. Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Starring – Anthony Hopkins (Henry Wilcox), Vanessa Redgrave (Ruth Wilcox), James Wilby (Charles Wilcox), Helena Bonham Carter (Helen Schlegel), Emma Thompson (Margaret Schlegel), Prunella Scales (Aunt Juley), Samuel West (Leonard Bast). Filmed in Henley-on-Thames and central London

Howards End – Merchant-Ivory film on DVD – Amazon UK

Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

Howards End – a tutorial and study guide

Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon UK

Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon US

A Room with a View (novel 1905 – film 1985)

This is a production which takes one or two minor liberties with the original novel. But it’s beautifully acted, with the deliciously pouting Helena Bonham Carter as the heroine Lucy, plus Denholm Eliot as Mr Emerson, Daniel Day-Lewis as a wonderfully pompous Cecil Vyse, and Maggie Smith as the poisonous hanger-on Charlotte. The settings are delightfully poised between Florentine Italy and the home counties stockbroker belt. I’ve watched it several times, and it never ceases to be visually elegant and emotionally well observed. This film was nominated for eight Academy awards when it appeared, and put the Merchant-Ivory team on the cultural map.

Merchant-Ivory 1985 film adaptation

Director: James Ivory. Screenplay: Ruth Prawver Jhabvala. Starring – Maggie Smith (Charlotte Bartlett), Helena Bonham Carter (Lucy Honeychurch), Denholm Elliott (Mr Emerson), Julian Sands (George Emerson), Judi Dench ((Eleanor Lavish), Daniel Day-Lewis (Cecil Vyse) Rupert Graves (Freddy Honeychurch), Simon Callow (Reverend Beeb). Filmed in Florence and Fiesole, Italy, East Sussex, and London.

A Room with a View – Merchant-Ivory film on DVD – Amazon UK

Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

A Room with a View – a tutorial and study guide

A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

A Passage to India (novel 1924 – film 1984)

This was David Lean’s last film, and possibly his most successful. It received eleven nominations at the Academy Awards. At seventy-seven years of age, Peggy Ashcroft became the oldest actress to win Best Supporting Actress award, and Maurice Jarre won his third Academy award for the original music score.

After more than a quarter of a century, one aspect of the film will strike contemporary viewers as controversial if not politically incorrect. That is the casting of Alec Guinness as Godbole, the Indian mystic. This sort of racial insensitivity was fairly common at that time. The film also lacks some of the anti-Imperialist bite that is present in Forster’s original text, though Lean compensates with spectacular pro-India visuals.

1984 David Lean film adaptation

Director: David Lean. Screenplay: Santha Rama Rau and David Lean. Starring – Judy Davis (Adela Quested), Victor Banerjee (Dr Aziz), Peggy Ashcroft (Mrs Moore), James Fox (Fielding), Alec Guinness (Godbole), Nigel Havers (Ronny), Richard Wilson (Turton). Filmed in Kashmir and Bangalore, India, and Shepperton and Pinewood studios, England.

A Passage to India – David Lean film on DVD – Amazon UK

Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Maurice (novel 1913 – film 1987)

This is the coming out as gay novel that E.M. Forster wrote in 1913-1914 but that remained unpublished during his own lifetime. He had reservations about its literary merits, feelings shared by Kings College Cambridge, who owned the rights to the novel. The College was eventually persuaded to give permission for the film adaptation by the powerful advocacy of its producer, Ismail Merchant.

1987 Merchant-Ivory film adaptation

Director: James Ivory. Screenplay: Ivory and Kit Hesketh-Harvey. Starring – James Wilby (Maurice Hall), Hugh Grant (Clive Durham), Rupert Graves (Alec Scudder), Denholm Elliott (Doctor Barry), Simon Callow (Mr Ducie), Billie Whitelaw (Mrs Hall), Barry Foster (Dean Cornwallis), Ben Kingsley (Lasker-Jones). Filmed at Kings College Cambridge and various locations in London.

Maurice – film on DVD – Amazon UK

Maurice – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Maurice – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

More on E.M. Forster
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Eugene Pickering

July 12, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

Eugene Pickering first appeared in magazine form in The Atlantic Monthly for October—November 1874. Stories by popular writers William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Oliver Wendell Holmes appeared in the same magazine, as well as poetry by Bret Harte and Henry W, Longfellow, The tale was then reprinted in book form amongst A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales the following year.

Bad Homburg – Germany

Eugene Pickering – critical commentary

Eugene is not only naive in the ways of the world, having been isolated and cosseted by his father for twenty-seven years, but he is also symbolically short-sighted. He is unable to ‘see’ Madam Blumenthal as the rogue female seductress. She is glamorous, experienced, bohemian, an author, and (according to Niedermeyer) something of an adventuress. What this tale represents then is yet another warning to men about the dangers of forming romantic relationships with women.

Reinforcing this ‘fear of engagement’ element in the first part of the story is the pre-arranged contract of marriage which has been created by Pickering’s father. Eugene Eugene refuses to open the letter (thinking it is a summons to the altar) and wishes to ‘live’ freely before he submits himself to what he clearly sees as the negative experience of Matrimony. This ‘fear of marriage’ motif is a theme to which James turned again and again in his tales – from The Path of Duty to Owen Wingrave

Eugene Pickering – study resources

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

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

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

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

Eugene Pickering – Kindle edition

Eugene Pickering – Paperback edition – Amazon UK

Eugene Pickering – eBook versions at Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Eugene Pickering – plot summary

Part I At Bad Homburg in Germany an un-named narrator sees an old acquaintance Eugene Pickering rather shyly gambling at the tables with an attractive woman who wins money. The two men meet next day, and the narrator recalls how they were schoolboy friends. Pickering has been sheltered and cosseted by an over-protective father who has recently died. He now feels liberated and full of potential, but lacking in strength.

Shortly before his death, his father has made him promise to marry Isabel Vernon, the daughter of an old business associate – a promise he feels obliged to honour. He has received a letter he has not opened, believing it to be a summons to the altar: he asks the narrator to keep it for him for a month whilst he explores his desire to live freely. He also reveals that he has an appointment to meet the glamorous Madam Blumenthal. The narrator advises him to leave Homburg immediately, but he refuses. The next day Pickering has been bowled over with enthusiasm for Madam Blumenthal and feels he has dispelled all his previous diffidence.

Part II The narrator’s friend Niedermeyer warns him against Madam Blumenthal, saying that she is bohemian, raffish, is critical of marriage, and has been left with little money by her deceased husband. He recounts the story of a strict officer who fell in love with her , but was rejected when he asked her to give up writing novels. She claimed motives of pure art, flings her manuscript into the fire, but publishes it shortly afterwards nevertheless.

The narrator meets her at a concert and finds her very attractive. She claims to be a democrat and a ‘revolutionist’. She asks him to tell her all about Pickering. The narrator realises that Pickering is hopelessly in love with her. He has made a full declaration of love to her, but she says she will respond to him after he has more experience of life and women.

The narrator visits Madam Blumenthal in order to assess her motives and her sincerity. She asks him again about Pickering, because she fears that he is holding something back. The ‘something’ is his engagement to Isabel Vernon, which the narrator then reveals to Madam Blumenthal.

When the two men meet next day, Pickering reveals that he has renounced the promise made to his father, has told Madam Blumenthal about it, and asked her to marry him. She wants three days to decide, and goes to Wiesbaden. Niedermeyer predicts that she will turn the episode into a little romance and then drop Pickering. But Pickering sends a note from Wiesbaden saying that she has accepted him

Some days later however, the narrator visits Pickering in Cologne, where he reveals that Madam Blumenthal has gone back on her word. She was merely testing him to see how far he would go. The narrator then returns the sealed letter he has been keeping for Pickering. It turns out not to be a summons but a dismissal: the girl refused to be bound by her father’s arrangement.

The two men then travel on in Europe, Pickering recovers his spirits, and when they finally reach Venice he is planning to visit Isabel in Smyrna. Six months later he reports that she is a very charming woman.

Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator
Eugene Pickering	his old school friend
Mr Pickering	Eugene’s father, a widower
Mr Vernon	business friend of Mr Pickering in Smyrna
Isabel Vernon	his daughter
Madam Anastasia Blumenthal	a glamorous bohemian widow
Mr Blumenthal	her poor Jewish husband
Niedermeyer	an Austrian ex-diplomat, friend of the narrator

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Other works by Henry James

The Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man from the South to whom Verena becomes more and more attracted. The dramatic contest to possess her is played out with some witty and often rather sardonic touches, and as usual James keeps the reader guessing about the outcome until the very last page.

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

What Masie Knew (1897) A young girl is caught between parents who are in the middle of personal conflict, adultery, and divorce. Can she survive without becoming corrupted? It’s touch and go – and not made easier for the reader by the attentions of an older man who decides to ‘look after’ her. This comes from the beginning of James’s ‘Late Phase’, so be prepared for longer and longer sentences. In fact it’s said that whilst composing this novel, James switched from writing longhand to using dictation – and it shows if you look carefully enough – part way through the book.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

The Ambassadors (1903) Lambert Strether is sent from America to Paris to recall Chadwick Newsome, a young man who is reported to be compromising himself by an entanglement with a wicked woman. However, Strether’s mission fails when he is seduced by the social pleasures of the European capital, and he takes Newsome’s side. So a second ambassador is dispatched in the form of the more determined Sarah Pocock. She delivers an ultimatum which is resisted by the two young men, but then an accident reveals unpleasant truths to Strether, who is faced by a test of loyalty between old Europe and the new USA. This edition presents the latest scholarship on James and includes an introduction, notes, selected criticism, a text summary and a chronology of James’s life and times.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe

April 24, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

Europe first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine for June 1899, and later the following year in the collection of stories The Soft Side published by Methuen.

Europe – critical commentary

This is a black comedy, in a somewhat similar spirit to James’s earlier story Four Meetings (1877) where the magnetic draw of European culture for Americans proves to be beyond the reach of Caroline Spencer, a New England schoolteacher. In her case she is defrauded of her life’s dream by her unscrupulous cousin.

Here too there is a family connection – but one much closer, of mother and daughters. Old Mrs Rimmel has had a successful earlier life with her celebrated husband, enjoyed her own European tour, and only had her three daughters late in life.

Now the implication is that the puritanical sense of duty that rules in their Boston household grinds the lives of the daughters into prematurely aged drudges, attending to the needs of their increasingly disoriented mother.

Europe as symbol

Europe functions as an idea, a dream of cultural riches – perhaps like some atavistic draw for the American descendents of European settlers for what might be, what could be. Certainly as someone who had lived on both contents throughout his life, James was very conscious of the European—American polarity and what it meant for both groups of people, and he frequently contrasted Europe with all types of Americans – sophisticated New Yorkers, puritannical Bostonians, gentlemanly southerners, and robust Californians.

The more suave New York narrator is able to pass between the two continents with ease, whereas the group of four Bostonian ladies are locked in an ethos of self-denying austerity. This is a strain of American culture which James had explored in greater depth before in works such as The Bostonians.

It is emphasised that the Rimmels are typical New Englanders – old Puritan stock – whereas the narrator is from New York. They have become trapped in a life-denying cycle of emotional inter-dependency. The narrator is particularly scathing about the old woman’s psychological grip on her daughters. She has had the pleasures and benefits of a European tour of her own when (much) younger, but is denying them the chance of the same experience. Only one of her daughters is able to make the break – and she never goes back

Europe – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Europe – HTML New York edition

Europe – HTML version at Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Europe – plot summary

Part I. After many years living in Boston as spinster ladies, Becky and Jane Rimmel are finally due to visit Europe, leaving their elderly widowed mother to be looked after by their sister Maria. Old Mrs Rimmel visited Europe many years before (in the early nineteenth century, it would seem) and the continent has been held up to the three daughters ever since as a sort of cultural Nirvanah. The ‘girls’ (who are in fact elderly) tease the story’s narrator about his knowledge of Europe and discuss the possibility of meeting up there.

Part II. However, just before their departure, their mother has a seizure, and the trip is postponed. The narrator discusses Mrs Rimmel’s immense age with his sister-in-law who is a friend of the family. Years pass by in which the narrator himself twice visits Europe, which the Rimmels claim is ‘waiting’ for them. The narrator feels angry that the three sisters are growing old, and that their mother is selfishly denying them valuable life experiences. Then suddenly Jane, the youngest daughter makes the break and travels to Europe with some friends the Hathaways. Old Mrs Rimmel begins to lose sense of time.

Part III. The Hathaways return from the European tour later that year – but they have left Jane behind, because she insists on seeing more of Europe. She has become self-assertive and rebellious, refuses to be chaperoned, and has taken to ‘flirting’. Her sister Becky is supporting her financially. The narrator is delighted by what he sees as the development of the sisters’ potential. When the narrator next visits Boston he is amazed to find Becky at his sister-in-law’s house, looking as old as her mother. He opines that Jane will never return from Europe, and Becky tells him that their mother is no longer alive.

Part IV. But when the narrator visits their home next day old Mrs Rimmel is corpse-like, but still living. She has persuaded herself that Jane has died in Europe. Becky then dies, having worn herself out with looking after her mother. The narrator visits the house again and finds Maria looking even older than her mother. She ruefully observes that she will now never visit Europe. Then old Mrs Rimmel, in what appears to be her last gasp of life, announces that Becky has gone to Europe – and the narrator agrees with her.

Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator
Mrs Rimmel	an elderly Bostonian widow
Becky Rimmel	her eldest daughter, who dies
Maria Rimmel	her daughter
Jane Rimmel	her youngest daughter, who leaves

Other works by Henry James

The Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man to whom Verena becomes more and more attracted. The dramatic contest to possess her is played out with some witty and often rather sardonic touches, and as usual James keeps the reader guessing about the outcome until the very last page.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at 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
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Falk: A Reminiscence

November 23, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Falk (1903) is not one of Joseph Conrad’s better-known stories, yet it deserves to be. It is just as successful as Heart of Darkness in exploring powerful and extreme situations. It was first published in the collection Typhoon and Other Tales (1903) and is the only one of Conrad’s stories which did not first appear serialized in magazine publication. This was because the editor objected to the fact that the very powerfully evoked central female character never speaks.

Joseph Conrad

Falk – critical commentary

Inter-textuality

Falk (1903) is composed of many elements Conrad used in his other novels and novellas. The story begins with a group of mariners dining in a small river-hostelry in the Thames estuary discussing seafaring matters – a situation he had already used in Heart of Darkness, which was written the year before. He even uses a similar comparison of the narrative present with a distant past – not that of the Roman invasion, but of primeval man telling tales of his experience.

An unnamed outer-narrator sets the scene, and then the story is taken up by a second and equally unnamed inner-narrator – a type rather like Marlow, the inner-narrator of Heart of Darkness and other Conrad tales. He is recounting events which took place when he was a younger man.

The young man is taking up his first assignment as a captain – a plot device Conrad had used in Heart of Darkness and was to use again in both The Shadow-Line and The Secret Sharer. The location of events is not specified, but it corresponds in many details to Bangkok, which appears in the two later novellas. He is also taking over from a rather dubious previous captain who has died, and his ship is held up in port with a sickly crew.

Characters from other Conrad tales appear in the story: Schomberg the gossipy Alsatian hotel owner who appears in Lord Jim (1900) and Victory (1915); Gambril, the elderly sailor who also appears in The Shadow-Line. And of course Falk’s dreadful experiences drifting powerless on a doomed ship towards the South Pole carries unmistakable echoes of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and The Flying Dutchman legend.

A Darwinian reading

It’s possible to argue that Falk is concerned with the elemental forces which man needs in order to survive. In the animal world there are three basic instincts which combine to form a will to prevail – that results in ‘the survival of the fittest’. These are the hunt for food, the urge to procreate, and the fight for territory.

Falk himself embodies all of these forces to a marked degree. He fights to stay alive, and he is even prepared to confront one of society’s most sacred taboos – he will kill and eat human flesh in order to endure and prevail.

His yearning for Hermann’s niece is a powerful, all-consuming physical passion. Despite all his sufferings on board the Borgmester Dahl, his unfulfilled desire for her hurts him more deeply. It is a more painful feeling to endure. ‘This is worse pain. This is more terrible’ he exclaims. It’s interesting to note that when Falk tows away Hermann’s ship by force, the narrator observes ‘I could not believe that a simple towing operation could suggest so plainly the idea of abduction, of rape. Falk was simply running off with the Diana‘.

He gets what he yearns for in the end. And it’s interesting to note that he also asserts his dominance in terms of territory. With his tug boat on the river he has a monopoly over navigation, and can charge whatever he wishes for piloting ships to the open sea. He does a similar thing in the struggle for survival on the stricken Borgmester Dahl by siezing control of the last firearm on board. The young captain reflects ‘He was a born monopolist’.

Falk endures the most extreme conditions imaginable – hunger, deprivation, and the threat of death. As the Borgmester Dahl drifts aimlessly towards the south pole, he inhabits a microcosm of a Hobbesian world. His life is nasty, brutish, and is likely to be short. And he is surrounded by cowards and incompetents. Yet he wills himself to endure; he takes control of the ship; and he is prepared to fight back against man’s inhumanity to man when the carpenter attacks him. He triumphs and survives. ‘They all died … But I would not die … Only the best man would survive. It was a great, terrible, and cruel misfortune.’

The food and eating leitmotif

Imagery of food and eating occur repeatedly throughout the story. The narrative begins with men of the sea ‘dining in a small river-hostelry. And they are compared with their primitive counterparts telling ‘tales of hunger and hunt – and of women perhaps!’amongst gnawed bones.

The young captain dines on chops at Schomberg’s table d’hote and listens (whilst the hotelier eats ‘furiously’) to his complaints against Falk. These complaints are based of food an cooking. Falk refuses to dine at Schomberg’s hotel because he is a vegetarian. He has also stolen Schomberg’s native cook.

Schomberg regards Falk as unnatural because he does not eat meat: ‘A white man should eat like a white man … Ought to eat meat, must eat meat.’ But Falk even bans meat-eating from his own ship, and pays his crew a supplements to their wages for the inconvenience. The young captain reflects ruefully on the state of affairs:

I was engaged just then in eating despondently a piece of stale Dutch cheese, being too much crushed to care what I swallowed myself, let alone bothering my head about Falk’s ideas of gastronomy. I could expect from their study no clue to his conduct in matters of business, which seemed to me totally unrestrained by morality or even by the commonest sort of decency.

This is a wonderful example of the sort of ironic prolepses Conrad embeds in his text. Falk’s ideas of gastronomy have been formed by exactly the same extreme experiences which have influenced his moral attitudes to business and society. He has seen and endured the Worst, and he has survived in the most primitive struggle for existence. And his shock at finding himself forced to eat a fellow human being leads to his choice of vegetarianism. There is therefore a direct link between his gastronomy and his morality. But the young captain does not know that at this point of the narrative.

Falk’s final descent into cannibalism is reinforced by understatement. He tells his bride-to-be and father-in-law: “I have eaten man”.

Story or novella?

There is no clear dividing line between a long story and a novella – in terms of length. At approximately 20,000 words it would be possible to argue that Falk is a long story: The first part deals with a young captain and his experiences on shore in Bangkok: the second part recounts the shocking details of Falk’s experiences on board the Borgmester Dahl.

But the fundamental issues at stake in this story are so profound (the fight for survival – see above) and the concentrated imagery with which the story is articulated is so dense, that this narrative has all the qualities of a novella. It focuses on eating to stay alive, reproducing to continue the human race, and establishing dominance of a territorial space.

It’s true that there are a greater number of named characters in the story than normally appear in a novella – not all of them with important parts to play in the plot. But the focus of attention is largely on Falk, Hermann, and the narrator. Quite astonishingly, Hermann’s niece is also a vital part of the story – even though she is never named, she never speaks, and she does nothing except represent animal magnetism in its most vital form.

Falk – study resources

Falk – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Falk – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Falk – Kindle eBook (annotated)

Falk – Tredition paperback – Amazon UK

Falk – Tredition paperback – Amazon US

Falk – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

Falk – plot summary

A young mariner (‘not yet thirty’) takes charge of a ship in the far east (Bangkok) when the previous captain dies. The crew are sickly and unfriendly, the ship has no provisions, and there are delays in getting under way. He befriends Hermann, the captain of the Diana, a German ship which is moored nearby. Hermann lives on board with his wife, his four children, and his niece – who is a simple but physically attractive young woman. Hermann is planning to sell his ship and go back to Germany to retire. Also passing time with this family is Falk, the captain of a tug with a monopoly of navigation on the river leading out to the coast.

Falk is a remote, taciturn, and rather forbidding figure who is not popular with the local officials and traders. When the young captain’s and Hermann’s vessels are ready to depart, the young captain is annoyed to discover that Falk takes the Diana out first, damaging Hermann’s ship in the process. The captain tries to hire the one possible alternative navigator, but discovers that Falk has bought him off.

It transpires that Falk has taken this precipitate action because he is consumed with a passionate desire for Hermann’s voluptuous niece, and thinks the young captain is a rival. The captain confronts Falk, reassuring him that he has no designs on the girl. Falk asks for his diplomatic assistance in re-establishing good relations with Hermann, so that he can propose to the niece.

The young captain opens negotiations, and Hermann very reluctantly allows Falk to plead his case. But Falk explains that there is one thing the niece should know about him if she is to accept his offer of marriage – the fact that he had once eaten human flesh.

This sends Hermann into a explosion of outraged sensibility. The captain assumes that Falk has been involved in a shipwreck, but Falk explains to him the story of his experiences on a ship which is damaged beyond repair by storms at sea. It drifts helplessly into the Antarctic Ocean, and runs out of provisions. The crew and the captain are feckless, and start to die off or jump overboard. The ship’s carpenter tries to kill Falk, but Falk kills him instead, whereupon he and the remaining crew eat the man before eventually being rescued.

The young captain speaks on Falk’s behalf to Hermann, who eventually consents to the match – motivated partly by saving the cost of an extra cabin (for the niece) on the journey back to Bremen. When the young captain returns to the port five years later, Mr and Mrs Falk are no longer there.

Principal characters

—	the unnamed outer narrator
—	the unnamed inner-narrator
Hermann	a German ship master
Mrs Hermann	his wife
—	his physically attractive niece
Lena, Gustav, Carl, Nicholas	the Hermann children
Falk	a Danish or Norwegian tugboat captain
Schomberg	an Alsatian hotel-keeper
Mrs Schomberg	his grinning wife
Mr Siegers	principal in shipping office
Johnson	former captain, now a drunk who has gone native
Gambril	an elderly seaman

Biography

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Other work by Joseph Conrad

Nostromo (1904) is Conrad’s ‘big’ political novel – into which he packs all of his major subjects and themes. It is set in the imaginary Latin-American country of Costaguana – and features a stolen hoard of silver, desperate acts of courage, characters trembling on the brink of moral panic. The political background encompasses nationalist revolution and the Imperialism of foreign intervention. Silver is the pivot of the whole story – revealing the courage of some and the corruption and destruction of others. Conrad’s narration is as usual complex and oblique. He begins half way through the events of the revolution, and proceeds by way of flashbacks and glimpses into the future.
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The Secret Agent (1907) is a short novel and a masterpiece of sustained irony. It is based on the real incident of a bomb attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1888 and features a cast of wonderfully grotesque characters: Verloc the lazy double agent, Inspector Heat of Scotland Yard, and the Professor – an anarchist who wanders through the novel with bombs strapped round his waist and the detonator in his hand. The English government and police are subject to sustained criticism, and the novel bristles with some wonderfully orchestrated effects of dramatic irony – all set in the murky atmosphere of Victorian London. Here Conrad prefigures all the ambiguities which surround two-faced international relations, duplicitous State realpolitik, and terrorist outrage which still beset us more than a hundred years later.
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Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales

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preparing for literary studies at undergraduate level

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

Dombey and Son – critical commentary

Dombey and Son – study resources

Dombey and Son – plot summary

Dombey and Son – principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens – web links

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Dracula – critical commentary

Dracula – study resources

Dracula – plot summary

Dracula – film version

Principal characters

Literary criticism

Trivia and parallels

modernist poet and English eccentric

annotated bibliography of criticism and comment

tutorials, critical commentary, and study resources

Study resources

Further reading

Other works by Edith Wharton

film adaptations of E.M. Forster’s novels

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

Eugene Pickering – critical commentary

Eugene Pickering – study resources

Eugene Pickering – plot summary

Principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

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

Europe – critical commentary

Europe – study resources

Europe – plot summary

Principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Falk – critical commentary

Falk – study resources

Falk – plot summary

Principal characters

Biography

Further reading

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Other work by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad web links

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