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Madame de Mauves

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Madame de Mauves first appeared in The Galaxy magazine for February—March 1874. It was reprinted a year later as part of James’s first book, The Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales, published by Osgood in Boston, 1875.

Saint-Germain Spring

Saint-Germain in Spring – by Alfred Sisley

Madame de Mauves – critical commentary

This is an astonishingly mature work for such a young writer. James was only slightly over thirty years old at the time of the tale’s publication, and he had just come to the end of a ten year apprenticeship in writing reviews and short stories. He had yet to write any major work, but Madame de Mauves certainly points to his potential ability to do so. The theme of people entombed in unhappy relationships and solving their problems by renunciation is something he would explore in The Portrait of a Lady written only a few years later.

The international theme

As someone who had lived on both continents, James made the juxtaposition of America and Europe into one of his favourite subjects. Here the contrast is made between the two Americans Longmore and Euphemia de Mauves, and the Europeans (French) Count Richard de Mauves and his sister-in-law Madame Clarin.

Mauves belongs to an old aristocratic family which has no money. So he marries the wealthy Euphemia and reverts to family type by ignoring his marriage and indulging in petty affairs almost as a way of life. Madame Clarin explains all this to Longmore, including the fact that the family has a long tradition of suffering wives who have tolerated such behaviour for the sake of the family’s ‘name’ in society.

Count Mauves has noticed Longmore’s interest in his wife, and encourages his attentions, hoping that the two of them will begin an affair which will in its turn justify his own way of life. To contemporary readers this might seem like an improbably melodramatic plot device, but in fact it is based on the historically sound observation that amongst the upper classes, sexual fidelity has never been a high priority.

So long as the appearance of propriety was maintained and no scandal allowed to sully a family’s name (a collective responsibility) adulteries of all kinds could be incorporated into the practices of upper-class life. Husbands did not have to give any reasons for being absent from their families. Wives could amuse themselves with any number of married or single men (as Euphemia does with Longmore).

The prime objective was to consolidate the family unit as a symbol of accumulated capital and property – which is why Count Mauves’ eventual suicide has been criticised by some commentators as somewhat improbable. There is no reason why he should not merely revert to his previous adulteries and keep the family and its name intact and unsullied.

Of course all this throws French society into a very dubious light compared with the upright behaviour of the two principal Americans. Longmore and Euphemia clearly love each other, but she manages to persuade him to adopt the honourable route of renunciation and self-denial. Madame Clarin on the other hand offers Longmore a ‘devil’s pact’ argument that the family traditions provide an open pathway to socially sanctioned adultery. The two Americans take the honourable way out, at the expense of their own personal happiness.

Madame de Mauves – study resources

Madame de Mauves The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Madame de Mauves The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Madame de Mauves Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Madame de Mauves Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Madame de Mauves Madame de Mauves – eBook formats at Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

Madame de Mauves

Madame de Mauves – plot summary

Part I. Rich American Longmore has been in Saint Germain for six months when his fellow American acquaintance Mrs Draper introduces him to Madame Euphemia de Mauves. She is a rich American woman married to a Frenchman who is intent on spending all her money. She is domestically unhappy, and Mrs Draper encourages Longmore to ‘entertain’ her.

Part II. Euphemia has been educated in a convent and has generated a romantic ambition to marry an aristocrat. Her childhood friend Marie de Mauves invites her to the ancestral home in the Auvergne, where old Madame de Mauves advises her to ignore moral niceties and act pragmatically.

When Richard de Mauves arrives, Euphemia sees him as the epitome of an aristocratic gentleman – although he is in fact a wastrel with unpaid bills. When he proposes marriage, Euphemia is very happy. But her mother imposes a two-year ban on the relationship – but at the end of it she marries him.

Part III. Longmore visits Madame de Mauves and marvels at her resignation. Euphemia’s sister-in-law is married to a wholesale pharmacist who gambles and loses on the stock exchange, then commits suicide. The widow pays court to Longmore, who dislikes her.

He ought to join his old friend Webster in Brussels for a holiday, but feels obliged to ‘support’ Madame de Mauves in her unhappiness. Her husband absents himself from the family home, but is amazingly polite to Longmore and encourages him to keep visiting.

Part IV. Webster writes to Longmore, asking about their planned holiday. Longmore asks Euphemia if she is happy or not – and she tells him it is an entirely private matter, and encourages him to join his friend on holiday. As he takes his leave he is patronised by the Count. Longmore writes to his friend Mrs Draper with his assessment of Madame de Mauves and her husband.

Part V. Longmore goes to Paris, but instead of going on to Brussels, he lingers there, thinking about Madame de Mauves and wondering if he is in love with her or not. Whilst dining in the Bois de Boulogne he sees the Count with a woman of the streets. He returns immediately to Saint Germain where he and Madame de Mauves discuss her situation and his wish to ‘support’ her – during which the Count casually passes by. Longmore is teased and patronised by Madame Clarin.

Part VI.When Longmore next visits the house, Madame de Clarin recounts to him the family history of faithless husbands and long-suffering wives. She also reveals that because the Count’s latest ‘folly’ has been discovered, he has suggested to his wife that she take Longmore as her lover, to form a social quid pro quo.

Part VII. Longmore takes a bucolic interlude in which he meets a young artist and his lover at a country inn, then falls asleep in the forest and dreams of being separated from Madame de Mauves by her husband.

Part VIII. When Longmore next meets Madame de Mauves she wants him to make a big sacrifice for both of them (by renouncing her) – so that she can continue to have someone to look up to and respect.

Part IX. Lomgmore is deeply conflicted on the issue, and he wonders why Euphemia should be so self-denying and stoical. He retreats to Paris to think about his decision. Once again he bumps into the Count in a compromising situation. Longmore leaves Saint Germain, and the Count is severely discomfited.

Part X. Two years pass, then Longmore learns from Mrs Draper that the Count repented and begged to be re-accepted by Madame de Mauves. She refused to accept him, so he committed suicide. Longmore returns to America and remains there.

Principal characters
Longmore a rich young man from New York
Mrs Maggie Draper his American friend in England
Madame Euphemia de Mauves a rich American (née Cleve)
Count Richard de Mauves her philandering husband
Marie de Mauves Euphenia’s young friend
old Madame de Mauves Marie’s grandmother
Mrs Cleve Euphenia’s mother
Madame Clarin Euphemia’s sister-in-law
M. Clarin wholesale druggist and gambler

Madame de Mauves - Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other works by Henry James

Henry James The BostoniansThe 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.

Madame de Mauves Buy the book at Amazon UK
Madame de Mauves Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James What Masie KnewWhat 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.
Henry James What Masie Knew Buy the book at Amazon UK
Henry James What Masie Knew Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James The AmbassadorsThe 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.
Longstaff's Marriage Buy the book at Amazon UK
Longstaff's Marriage 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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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Madame de Treymes

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

Madame de Treymes was published in 1907. It was Edith Wharton’s first major work after the success of The House of Mirth which had been published two years previously. The tale features American expatriates living in France, and contrasts new world simplicity and individual freedoms with old world family traditions and manipulation.

Madame de Treymes

Paris: Rainy Street – Gustave Caillebotte 1848-1894

Madame de Treymes – critical commentary

This is a story straight out the mould of Henry James – with hints of Balzac. Democratically open but young and maybe naive American honesty is pitted again tradition-bound European guile with its money-centric and snobbish exclusivity hiding behind a hypocritical veil of religious values. The situation also has a slightly Gothic tinge: an unhappy young woman, trapped in a loveless marriage to a corrupt husband, with very little chance of escape, is hounded by ruthlessly devious relatives.

The central conundrum with which one is left at the end of the tale is Madame de Treymes’ possible motive(s) for deceiving Durham? She understands and explains the family’s traditional and tightly controlled attitudes (fuelled by religious belief) towards divorce. This would be entirely in keeping with social conventions at the time, when the Catholic church frowned upon divorce with a force which was a de facto prohibition.

But this apparently religious objection to divorce has a much more material basis in French society, which was governed by the Napoleonic Code that kept inherited wealth and property concentrated into family units rather than freely distributed amongst individuals. This explains the reason why the Malrive family wish to trade Fanny’s son in return for the divorce. She can exercise her rights to a divorce under civil law, but they keep the son, theoretically united with his father, and thereby prevent any wealth passing out of the family.

The other possible source of her ambiguous motivation is that she is attracted to Durham. After all, she is unhappily married herself (like Fanny) although she does have a lover. But she keeps Durham guessing in a rather flirtatious manner. There is also the fact that Durham certainly spends far more time in the story discussing matters with Madame de Treymes than he does with his purported love object, Fanny de Malrive. But there is no substantial evidence in the text to support this notion, and the potential romantic connection between the two of them is not developed in any way.

Novella?

This is a long story – which leads a number of commentators to consider it as a novella. Edith Wharton was certainly attracted to and proficient in the novella as a literary genre, as her early work The Touchstone (1900) and more famous Ethan Frome (1911) demonstrate.

And the clash between American individualism and French family tradition is certainly a unifying factor amongst the various elements of the story. But there are too many loose ends and unresolved issues in the narrative to qualify it as a novella.

Monsieur de Malrive’s misdeeds are left unexamined, as are those of Monsieur de Treymes. Durham’s attempts to help Madame de Malrive presumably come to nothing (because of the stranglehold the Malrive family has over the conflict) and the potential relationship between Durham and Madame de Treymes fizzles out with everyone going their own way. There is simply not a sufficiently powerful enough resolution to events. It is a reasonably successful story, but it lacks the compression of theme, structure, events, and place which is common to successful novellas.

Madame de Treymes – study resources

Madame de Treymes The Works of Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Madame de Treymes The Works of Edith Wharton – Amazon US

Madame de Treymes Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Madame de Treymes Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Madame de Treymes The Descent of Man and Other Stories – Project Gutenberg

Red button A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Madame de Treymes

Madame de Treymes – plot summary

Part I.   In Paris, American bachelor John Durham pays court to unhappily married Fanny de Malrive, his friend from childhood. She expresses a great enthusiasm for the simplicity and openness of her native America, as distinct from the constricted and rule-bound society into which she has married. But she lives in France for the sake of being near her son.

Part II.   She argues that French society and her husband threaten to corrupt the boy. Durham offers to marry her after she has been divorced. She thinks her husband’s family will not agree to a divorce, but that her sister-in-law Madame de Treymes might help.

Part III.   Durham has been a childhood friend of Fanny, but meeting her again in France he finds her much more sophisticated. Visiting her a few days later with his mother and sisters, he first meets Madame de Treymes, who he also finds fascinating.

Part IV.   Durham applies to his cousin Mrs Boykin for information about the mysterious Madame de Treymes. But she and her husband are comically xenophobic, and very critical of Madame de Treymes, whose lover is a Prince with gambling debts.

Part V.   By giving money at a charity event, Durham is invited to the Hotel de Malrive, the austere family home of Fanny’s in-laws. There he realises the stifling forces of cold and hostile tradition he will be up against. However, Madame de Treymes is sympathetic to his case and agrees to dine with him.

Part VI.   At Durham’s suggestion, the Boykins are suddenly flattered to invite a French aristocrat to dinner. Madame de Treymes tells Durham that the family will not consent to a divorce, and reveals that she has borrowed family money which she cannot repay. Durham believes that this to repay her lover’s gambling debts, and she is offering to trade her influence in exchange for his money. He refuses her offer.

Part VII.   Durham accepts the defeat of his hopes, but then suddenly Madame de Treymes arrives with the news that the Marquis de Malrive has decided not to oppose the divorce. She claims it was Durham’s honourable and sensitive approach which has changed things. Durham is slightly sceptical.

Part VIII.   Durham goes to Italy, but returns to the news that a money scandal has engulfed Prince d’Armillac, the lover of Madame de Treymes. Durham tries to thank and repay Madame de Treymes for the good services she has rendered him, but she claims that she has already been repaid – without saying in what form.

Part IX.   Durham goes to England with his mother and sisters whilst the legal process of divorce takes its course. However, on a business trip back to Paris he meets Madame de Treymes at the Hotel de Malrive. She explains her admiration for his having refused to gain Fanny by paying for influence with the family. She also reveals that it was not her influence which changed the family’s attitude to the divorce.

Part X.   She confesses that the family want to claim Fanny’s son which they can do under French law, which puts the family first, before individuals. Her earlier offer of assistance was a deceit, because the decision had already been taken. Durham realises that even telling Fanny all this will destroy his chances of marrying her. But then Madame de Treymes takes pity on Durham and his plight and reveals that even her last argument about possession of the boy was a deceit as well. Durham leaves to tell Fanny the whole story, knowing his chances of marrying her are gone.

Madame de Treymes – Principal characters
John Durham an American in France (40)
Marquise Fanny de Malrive his childhood friend, neé Fanny Frisbee
Madame Christiane de Treymes Fanny’s sister-in-law
Mrs Bessie Boykin Durham’s cousin
Elmer Boykin her husband
Prince d’Armillac Madame de Treymes’ lover, a gambler

Edith Wharton's house - The Mount

Edith Wharton’s 42-room house – The Mount

Further reading

Louis Auchincloss, Edith Wharton: A Woman of her Time, New York: Viking, 1971,

Elizabeth Ammons, Edith Wharton’s Argument with America, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1982, pp.222. ISBN: 0820305138

Janet Beer, Edith Wharton (Writers & Their Work), New York: Northcote House, 2001, pp.99, ISBN: 0746308981

Millicent Bell (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp.232, ISBN: 0521485134

Alfred Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit (eds), Edith Wharton: New Critical Essays, New York: Garland, 1992, pp.329, ISBN: 0824078489

Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, ISBN: 0810927950

Gloria C. Erlich, The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton, California: University of California Press, 1992, pp.223, ISBN: 0520075838

Susan Goodman, Edith Wharton’s Women: Friends and Rivals, UPNE, 1990, pp.220, ISBN: 0874515246

Irving Howe, (ed), Edith Wharton: A collection of Critical Essays, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986,

Jennie A. Kassanoff, Edith Wharton and the Politics of Race, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.240, ISBN: 0521830893

Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton, London: Vintage, new edition 2008, pp.864, ISBN: 0099763516

R.W.B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography, New York: Harper and Rowe, 1975, pp.592, ISBN: 0880640200

James W. Tuttleton (ed), Edith Wharton: The Contemporary Reviews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.586, ISBN: 0521383196

Candace Waid, Edith Wharton’s Letters from the Underworld, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991,

Sarah Bird Wright, Edith Wharton A to Z: The Essential Reference to Her Life and Work, Fact on File, 1998, pp.352, ISBN: 0816034818

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton, New York: Perseus Books, second edition 1994, pp.512, ISBN: 0201409186

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton - The Custom of the CountryThe 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.

Edith Wharton - The Custom of the Country Buy the book from Amazon UK
Edith Wharton - The Custom of the Country Buy the book from Amazon US

 

Edith Wharton - The House of MirthThe 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.

Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth Buy the book from Amazon UK
Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth Buy the book from Amazon US

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

© Roy Johnson 2014

More on Edith Wharton
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Malte Laurids Brigge

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tutorials, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) is a ‘work’ in prose written by the Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke. It is commonly regarded as a novel, but as a work of radical modernism it breaks all the rules commonly underpinning a sustained work of fiction. It pre-dates other major works of modernism by more than a decade, but has never become as well known as novels such as James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) or D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1924). The reasons for this may become apparent from the critical comments that follow.

Malte Laurids Brigge

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – commentary

Modernism

The most striking feature of Malte Laurids Brigge is that it marks a radical departure in terms of the presentation of fictional narrative. It also embraces just about every characteristic of what became known as literary modernism. The dates of the book’s composition (1906-1910) coincide with the development of modernism in general.

Although the subject is largely a young man’s recollections of his childhood, there is a complete fragmentation of the narrative, with no attempt at chronological progression. There is very little indication of a sequence of events or any indication of the relationship of one notebook entry to another. The result is a mosaic of episodes, held together only by the personality of the narrator.

The same radical departure is true of the other main feature of traditional fiction – characterisation. There are thumbnail sketches of characters known to Malte – his relatives or people who feature in his anecdotes. But none of them are developed, and people he sees in the street (or doesn’t see in the next room) are given just as much importance as close relatives

There is no sense of dramatic tension in the narrative at all – no story, plot, or psychological development to engage a reader’s interest in the manner of conventional fiction.

The subject matter and the form of the individual notebook entries are radically heterogeneous. They begin with anguished accounts of living in reduced circumstances in Paris. They pass on to childhood memories of life in Denmark. They include quasi-philosophic reflections on sometimes bizarre topics – such as feeding pigeons and the noise made by the lid from a tin can. There are impressionistic accounts of paintings and some tapestries. And one entry is a critical essay on the works of Henrik Ibsen.

The main themes

Despite the varied nature of the notebook entries, there is a general theme that emerges from them. They have in common the decline of the aristocracy, the collapse of an empire, and the narrator’s regret for the passing of a grand way of life. Malte’s first-person account of his childhood reveals a family background of a rich, land-owning aristocracy.

His memories revolve around two grand estates at Ulsgaard and Urnekloster, the family seats of the Brigges and Brahes in Denmark. He takes a lofty pride in describing his ancestral homes, with their portrait galleries, the number and size of their rooms, and the long and distinguished history of their land-owning families.

His re-telling of historical events and the details of his personal reading all feature aristocratic dignitaries, plus their levels of rank and social status. He deals with kings, knights and people who died either in battle or in gruesome circumstances. His anecdotes are littered with images of crowns, swords, flags, and the paraphernalia of the ruling class – all presented sympathetically, with profound regret for the passing of their influence.

It is significant that in the narrative present of the notebook entries, the protagonist Malte’s inherited furniture is in storage, and he is living in temporary accommodation in Paris. He is clearly unable to cope psychologically with the change in his circumstances.

The book is rather like Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901) in plotting the decline of a way of life which was to be swept away forever by the events of the first world war which took place only a few years later. The whole of the Hapsburg empire which then encompassed Austro-Hungary and beyond was in a morbid bureaucratic decline which 1914-18 put an end to forever.

Kafka and Wittgenstein

There are amazing similarities between Rilke and two other writers with Hapsburg origins. Like Rilke, Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883, wrote in German, and died within two years of his fellow countryman. Although Kafka is known as a novelist, the vast majority of his work consists of fragmentary writings in notebooks and diaries – very similar to Malte’s notebook entries. His subject matter, like Rilke’s, is expressed in the study of very unusual states of being, psychological tension, and neurotic attention to the trivial detail of everyday life.

There is very little dramatic tension in Kafka’s writings, which are sometimes philosophic meditations on everyday topics, sometimes elaborate metaphors spun out of a startling image, and often quasi-mystic or semi-religious beliefs stated in gnomic aphorisms or ambiguous mantras.

The other writer with whom Rilke has distinct similarities is Ludwig Wittgenstein – who was also a product of the fin-de-siecle Hapsburg Empire. Wittgenstein was from Vienna, and was born into a rich aristocratic family in 1889. He too was riven by self doubt (like Malte and all Kafka’s protagonists) and like Rilke he wrote his ideas in the form of numbered paragraphs in notebooks. He also expressed himself in the form of philosophic reflections and quasi-religious meditations.

Is it a novel?

Rilke himself never referred to Malte Laurids Brigge as a novel: he used the terms ‘book’ or ‘work’ – and the bulk of Rilke’s writing was poetry. Nevertheless, the book is commonly discussed as if it were a novel, and in the one hundred years since its publication readers have become accustomed to all sorts of experimental prose fictions.

But it certainly does not tell a story, and it does not have memorable characters or show anybody’s psychological development. Its parts or episodes are not coherently linked; there is no dramatic tension at all; and the un-coordinated switching from one topic to another makes it very difficult to read. The critic and novelist A.N. Wilson captured some of this problem in his review of the book – which he admits took him a month to read:

It is, in fact, barely 200 pages long, but it is, among other things, an autobiography, a travelogue (Russia, Venice, Paris, Denmark), a fantasy about the twilight of the old European aristocracy, a series of historical sketches, with vignettes as various as those of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Ivan the Terrible and Eleanora Duse, and a poet’s notebook, attempting to come to grips with such everlasting questions as the nature of consciousness, our need for love, and whether or not we could ever love God.

Rilke delivers re-imagined historical scenes from the lives of fourteenth and fifteenth century French kings – but does not identify who they are. These passages would be incomprehensible without the addition of explanatory footnotes and endnotes supplied by the editor. And even with the glossary material it is very difficult to see their relevance to the rest of the narrative – except to reinforce the impression that Malte is obsessed with royalty, aristocratic status, inheritance, and death – either by disease, regicide, or battlefield slaughter.

He also recounts in minute detail the lives of people he has never met or even seen. There is a lengthy account of a poor news vendor in Paris during which Malte speculates about the man’s state of mind from his shabby appearance. Having done that he then confesses that his account is invalid:

I knew at once that my mental image of him was worthless. The abjectness of his misery, not mitigated by any wariness or pretence, was beyond anything I might be able to convey. I had grasped neither the angle of his posture nor the horror with which the inside of his eyelids seemed continually to imbue him.

It is bad enough that two pages of detailed description are suddenly declared ‘worthless’. If that is the case, why retain them as part of the narrative? But to then pretend knowledge of the psychological effect produced by the inside of a stranger’s eyelids is nothing short of ridiculous. The only possible justification for such statements is that they reveal Malte’s deranged state of mind – a topic which is not consistently addressed.

In the first of the notebook entries, when Malte describes his life in Paris, he is mentally unhinged and paranoid. But as further entries are added, this presentation of madness recedes, and there is every reason to believe that the content of the memoirs and anecdotes should be taken seriously, at face value.

There is therefore a difficulty presented to the reader – reconciling these disparate states of mind and perception within one consciousness. But this fracturing of subject and point of view is all part of what makes the Notebooks an essentially modernist work. It is rather like a prose equivalent of Eliot’s The Waste Land, though it should be noted that it precedes it by more than a decade.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – resources

Malte Laurids Brigge The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – OUP – Amazon UK

Malte Laurids Brigge The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – OUP – Amazon US

Malte Laurids Brigge The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – Penguin – Amazon UK

Malte Laurids Brigge The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – Penguin – Amazon US

Malte Lurids Brigge

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – synopsis

Following the death of his parents a Danish aristocrat Malte Laurids Brigge is living in reduced circumstances in Paris. He is in a neurotic state of mind and appears to be suffering from paranoia. In a series of fragmentary notebook entries he recaptures his past and makes observations on life.

Metaphysical reflections on dying and death – including the idea that people have ‘ownership ‘ of their own death.

Childhood memories of living in a castle amongst eccentric and aristocratic relatives.

A detailed account of a visit in the dining room from the beautiful Cristina Brigge – who has been dead for some time.

Malte hides from his poverty by reading poetry in the Biblioteque Nationale – but is still possessed by paranoid fears.

He pays a visit to a psychiatric hospital, but his neurotic childhood fears return to haunt him.

He describes in great detail his attempts to help a man suffering from St Vitus’ Dance, then writes an oblique appreciation of the works of Henrick Ibsen

Childhood memories of illness and isolation, including the uncanny incident of meeting a disembodied hand under a table.

He becomes seriously ill with a fever, and is nursed by his mother, with whom he has an especially close bond.

Exploring the castle as a child, he dresses up in carnival costume, feels that he loses his own identity, and faints with fear.

He inspects the portraits of aristocratic relatives in the castle, then recalls the cold and remote behaviour of his relatives, even at the family dinner table.

He finds his aunt Abelone very attractive and describes to her in detail a series of heraldic tapestries.

He visits a neighbouring estate where the grand house has burned down and family are forced to live in in a few remaining rooms.

He recalls the death of his father and the medical ritual of piercing the heart as a precaution against premature burial.

Following the death of his father, he prepares to leave Copenhagen. He contemplates various examples of dying, then the story of a neighbour who thinks he can accumulate saved time like money deposited in a bank account.

He describes the activity of his next-door neighbour in Paris – without any evidence that what he is saying is true. This is followed by philosophic reflections on the ‘life’ of material objects, including the lid from a tin can.

He recalls books he has read and treasured, and goes on to re-tell the story of the death of Dmitry I, the false Tsar.

He presents his theory of the Duke of Burgundy’s blood and a detailed account of his death in battle.

He describes the genesis of his attitudes to reading, and then delivers a psychological critique of Goethe’s letters to young Bettina von Arnim.

He gives a detailed account of a news vendor in Paris, including the inside of his eyelids – and then reveals that his account is flawed.

He re-tells the personal history of a nineteenth-century French king who went mad, and describes yet another scene of slaughter on a battlefield.

Trivial episodes from his own childhood suddenly become further episodes in the lives of French kings and the Pope at Avignon.

A visit to the Roman amphitheatre in Orange leads to a meditation on drama and the acting career of Eleanora Duse.

He posits an elderly man reading poetry alone late at night. He believes that because the work is ancient it can express a state of completeness.

In Venice he encounters an attractive Danish girl who sings very beautifully.

He offers a meditation on the parable of the prodigal son, and wonders how it might be possible to draw nearer to God.

© Roy Johnson 2017

Man and Wife

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Man and Wife (1870) was one of the novels in which Wilkie Collins undertook to expose social injustice – in this case the absurdities which existed in British marriage laws. It was his ninth published novel. As someone who had briefly studied law himself, Collins took a keen interest in legal matters, particularly how they applied to domestic life. He himself never married, even though he maintained two separate families who lived quite close to each other in London’s fashionable West End. The novel explores both the social and legal problems which arise from bad law and the cruelties inflicted on women trapped in abusive marriages.

Man and Wife

Man and Wife – a note on the text

Man and Wife first appeared as a serial in Cassell’s Magazine between January and June 1870. It was simultaneously serialized in the United States by Harper’s Weekly and then published as a novel in three volumes by F.S. Ellis, to which Collins added a preface, a dedication, and an appendix. He often felt that he needed to explain and justify the subjects he chose for his novels, because they were considered slightly scandalous at the time, and many critics doubted the realistic validity of his subject matter.

Man and Wife – critical commentary

Principal issues

Readers will have no difficulty in appreciating that the main elements of the novel are the legal problems surrounding ‘irregular’ marriage, the social status of women, and irregularities and differences between the laws of England and of Scotland.

There are several long discussions between characters on the subject of the ‘irregular’ Scottish marriage. The essence of this is that a marriage did not need to be announced in advance (by the issuing of ‘banns’) did not need to take place in a place of worship, and did not need to be solemnised by a member of the church. A marriage could be legally established by mere assertion of the two parties concerned – with no scrutiny of the validity of their claim.

The problems and anomalies to which this arrangement might give rise are fully explored in the events of the novel, and full recognition is given to the fact that differences of legal opinion could arise on the status of a particular union.

Arnold Brinkworth marries Blanche Lundie in a perfectly orthodox manner in England – but is then shocked to discover that he is considered to have previously married Anne Silvester. This is because he merely announced himself as her husband and stayed overnight in the same remote inn where she was waiting for Geoffrey Delamayn.

Anne Silvester has a verbal agreement with Geoffrey Delamayne that they will marry in secret. She writes to him asserting their understanding, and he replies in agreement. And that letter alone is later regarded as ‘proof’ of their marriage.

Even though she later hates Delamayne, Anne agrees to respect the agreement and thereby sacrifices herself so that no shadow of scandal will blemish the marriage of her friend Blanche to Arnold. The tragic consequence of her action is that on the strength of this Delamayne eventually imprisons her (which the law permits) and plans to murder her so that he can marry the rich Mrs Glenarm.

Add to these instances the sad story of Hester Dethridge’s marriage to an abusive husband from which she cannot escape, and the reader is presented with a whole range of complexities arising from bad law and the uncertain outcome of marriage (at any time). Wilkie Collins was obviously sceptical of the institution, as he reveals rather satirically when describing the wedding ceremony:

Thus, the service began—rightly-considered the most terrible surely of all mortal ceremonies—the service which binds two human beings, who know next to nothing of each other’s natures, to risk the tremendous experiment of living together till death parts them—the service which says, in effect if not in words, Take your leap in the dark: we sanctify but we don’t insure it!

The sensation novel

Man and Wife is often seen as the opening work of Wilkie Collins’ ‘later period’ in which he took a ‘moral and didactic’ approach to social issues of the day. This is most evident in the close relationship of his marriage law subject matter and the constitutional changes taking place at the time, notably the Married Women’s Property Act (1870).

But the novel also contains many elements of the sensation novel which had made his earlier works of the 1860s so popular – notably secret marriage, bigamy, blackmail, domestic violence, incarceration, and murder.

The main plot gets under way with two non-marriages which assume legal status. The first is Anne’s proposal of a secret marriage to Geoffrey Delamayne. This takes place purely on paper – in a letter from Anne asserting their union which also contains Geoffrey’s affirmative reply.

The second occurs when Arnold visits Anne at the inn pretending to be her husband. This leads directly to what Collins presents as the absurdity of the ‘irregular Scottish marriage’. They are deemed to be married merely because they spend the night together under the same roof.

More seriously, because of this innocent accident Arnold later becomes guilty of bigamy when he marries Blanche. The whole of the second part of the novel is driven by attempts to unravel this Scottish marriage and to counter its social ramifications.

Part of the plotting and counter-plotting involves blackmail. The scurrilous waiter Bishopriggs gains possession of the vital letter of understanding between Anne and Geoffrey Delamayne. When Bishopriggs threatens to reveal its contents unless he is well compensated, Anne counter-threatens the same thing, which will make the letter worthless. (However, it is a serious flaw in the plot that he parts with it for the measly sum of five pounds.)

The mysterious figure of the dumb cook Hester Dethridge is eventually revealed as a victim of domestic violence. She is married to a man who is a drunkard, who takes and squanders all the money she earns, and who beats her savagely. Her written confession which presents this catalogue of abuse is clearly offered by Wilkie Collins as a polemical illustration of the lack of women’s rights at the time.

The abuse is so severe that Hester feels she has no alternative but to remove its source – so she eventually murders her husband. She rather improbably escapes detection – but she is ever afterwards haunted by a recurrent homicidal impulse.

This finds its ultimate outlet when she is forced to assist Geoffrey Delamayne in his attempt to murder Anne using the same method she has used. But instead of helping him, she strangles him – though he appears to have a stroke at the same moment. It is not altogether clear if she is the actual killer – but she is nevertheless incarcerated as a result – in a mental asylum from which she will not be released for the rest of her life.

Dramatic structure

Wilkie Collins produced the novel as a prose narrative for serial publication in Cassell’s Magazine. As such it sits alongside literary works in the novel genre produced by his contemporaries Dickens, Gaskell, Braddon, and Trollope. But it is quite clear that there is a strong sense of a stage drama underpinning the structure of the work.

The fact is that he first conceived the story as a play, and one of its principal weaknesses is that the narrative is comprised of a series of rather long-winded ‘conversational’ interludes sewn together by episodes of a quite different pace and style.

The main scenes in the unfolding of the plot are very static, and they take place usually in the drawing room, dining room, summer-house, library, or some other location easily rendered under the proscenium arch of a traditional stage.

There are lots of comings and goings in and out of doorways, and lots of situations packed with dramatic irony. It is closer in tone and genre to a country house comedy of manners than to the serious and dark melodrama into which the novel turns during its third and final volume.

Perhaps the most surprising structural weakness occurs at the end of the novel. Just as the story is being brought to its climax and the main theme of the story (the Anne-Geoffrey non-marriage) is being resolved – Collins interrupts the dramatic tension by inserting the potted biography of Hester Dethridge. This is a blatant passage of propaganda on the subject of women trapped in abusive relationships – and as such it completely disrupts the tone of the main narrative.

Moreover it culminates in Hester’s murder of her abusive husband in a scene which is very badly explained in terms of dramatic invention. We are asked to believe that Hester puts her hands through a lath and plaster wall, suffocates her husband with a wet towel, then somehow repairs the wall leaving ‘nothing disturbed or altered’. Geoffrey then plans to murder Anne in a gimcrack reprisal of the same method in the final scene, which is as rushed as it is far-fetched.

Man and Wife – study resources

Man and Wife Man and Wife – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Man and Wife Man and Wife – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Man and Wife Man and Wife – Facsimilie Publisher – Amazon UK

Man and Wife Man and Wife – Facsimilie Publisher – Amazon US

Basil The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins – Kindle eBook

Basil Man and Wife – eBook formats at Gutenberg

Man and Wife 1875

1875 edition

Man and Wife – plot synopsis

Prologue

I. Ambitious John Vanborough feels that his wife is holding back his chances of rising socially. He discovers that his marriage is technically invalid and throws himself at rich widow Lady Jane Parnell.

II. He marries her, enters parliament, and becomes famous. Delamayne enters parliament and becomes solicitor general. Vanborough commits suicide, leaving his daughter Anne Sylvester to be raised by Lady Julia Lundie, where she is governess to Blanche her step-daughter.

The Story

There is a garden party at the estate of Sir Patrick Lundie. Anne Sylvester is at odds with the termagant Lady Lundie. Sir Patrick discusses inheritance with young Arnold Brinkworth, who proposes to Blanche Lundie. Anne bullies Geoffrey Delamayne into a secret marriage because he has been paying court to her. News arrives that Delamayne’s father is ill, so he deputes his friend Arnold to explain his absence to Anne.

Second Scene

Arnold takes the news to a distraught Anne at a nearby inn. They unwisely pass themselves off as newlyweds. Arnold misses his train and is forced to stay overnight. When Blanche arrives, Anne hides Arnold and gives Blanche a partial explanation.

Third Scene

Delamayne is in London. His father wishes him to marry, and his brother Julius presents an attractive alternative in rich widow Mrs Glenarm.

Fourth Scene

Blanche, Arnold, and Geoffrey assemble at Windygates to discuss Anne, who is in hiding . There are lots of dramatic ironies and much consideration of irregular Scottish marriages. A visiting surgeon makes a case against physical exercise, and predicts that Geoffrey is internally flawed. Anne suddenly returns to the house and is rejected by Geoffrey. Anne disappears again, and is pursued by Sir Patrick and Blanche. Anne sends Blanche a letter of terminal farewell. Sir Patrick urges marriage as a solution for Arnold and Blanche, to which Arnold agrees. Anne is traced to Glasgow.

Fifth Scene

In Glasgow Anne receives contradictory advice on her legal status under Scottish law. She then collapses at the hotel.

Sixth Scene

Geoffrey jousts verbally with Mrs Glenarm to whom he is secretly engaged. He trains for a running race – and shows signs of weakness. Blanche questions the waiter Bishopbriggs about Anne’s letter which he plans to use in blackmailing Geoffrey and Mrs Glenarm.

Seventh Scene

On the evening of his wedding Arnold is questioned by Sir Patrick about Geoffrey’s secret – which he feels he cannot honourably reveal. Arnold and Blanche marry and go on honeymoon. Letters arrive from Anne sacrificing herself and revealing the truth about her meeting with Arnold. Geoffrey’s marriage to Mrs Glenarm is announced in the newspapers, as is the attempted blackmail of Mrs Glenarm. Anne moves to London.

Eighth Scene

Anne confronts the blackmailer Bishopriggs and pays him five pounds for her letter.

Ninth Scene

Anne confronts Mrs Glenarm and they dispute the veracity of Geoffrey’s claim that Anne is married to Arnold.

Tenth Scene

Lady Lundie intervenes and interrogates the inn-keeper Mrs Inchbare. She then plots further with Mrs Glenarm.

Eleventh Scene

Lady Lundie confront’s Blanche and convinces her that Arnold was already married to Anne, her closest friend. She then takes her away to London.

Twelfth Scene

Anne visits Geoffrey in Fulham, and is rejected anew. But Sir Patrick interprets Anne’s letters to and from Geoffrey as proof that they were married under Scottish law.

Thirteenth Scene

Geoffrey loses the running race in Fulham and collapses after the event.

Fourteenth Scene

There is a meeting of lawyers to consider the legal status of the disputed marriage. Sir Patrick argues the case for Arnold and Blanche. He produces Anne’s ‘marriage’ letter which proves the case – and Anne chooses to sacrifice herself for Blanche’s sake.

Fifteenth Scene

Sir Patrick visits Lord Holcome who is dying. He has made a new will with provision for Geoffrey (and possibly Anne) but dies before the codicil can be signed.

Final Scene

Geoffrey Delamayne takes his ‘wife’ Anne to the lodgings run by Hester Dethridge. He plans to sue for a ‘divorce’ but cannot make a legal case. When his father dies, he imprisons Anne in the cottage. His brother Julius proposes to honour the unsigned codicil to his father’s will if Geoffrey will agree to a separation. Geoffrey refuses. and becomes ill. Hester sees an apparition of some kind and tells Geoffrey he must leave. Geoffrey reads Hester’s confession of how she killed her abusive husband. He prepares to murder Anne in the same way, but when he makes the attack through a bedroom wall he has a stroke, whilst Hester has another homicidal vision and kills him.

Epilogue

Six months later Hester has been placed in a mental asylum, Mrs Glenarm is in the process of becoming a nun, and Anne has become Lady Lundie by marrying Sir Patrick.

Man and wife – principal characters
Delamayne an ambitious lawyer who becomes Lord Holchester
Julius Delamayne his elder son, who inherits the title
Geoffrey Delamayne his profligate younger son
Lady Julia Lundie a proud Scottish widow
Blanche Lundie her young step-daughter
Sir Patrick Lundie a retired lawyer
Anne Silvester governess and friend to Blanche
Arnold Brinkworth friend of Geoffrey, suitor to Blanche
Hester Dethridge a dumb cook and landlady
Mrs Glenarm a rich young widow
Samuel Bishopriggs a crusty old Scottish waiter
Man and Wife – further reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2017

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Manhattan Transfer

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tutorial, critical commentary, plot, and study resources

Manhattan Transfer was first published in 1925. It was the sixth literary work by John Dos Passos. Although he belonged to the same ‘lost generation’ as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, he established a reputation as a literary modernist who incorporated documentary material into his fictions. He presented a vision of American society which was rich in sociological and political significance, and he was also radically expressive in delivering narratives that were dense with literary experimentation.

Manhattan Transfer

Manhattan Transfer – critical commentary

The novel has as its principal focus the city of New York and its development in the early years of the twentieth century, running from the period pre-1910 to the early 1920s (the ‘jazz age’) with its flappers and prohibition. Its characters are what D.H.Lawrence described as “the vast loose gang of strivers and winners and losers which seems to be the very pep of New York.”

New York is an American state (like Texas, California, or Nebraska) whose capital city is Albany – hence the term New York City, which distinguishes the city from the state. New York City is also located on Manhattan Island in the Hudson River, and has always been the gateway for immigration to the United States. Manhattan Transfer reflects the rich cultural and linguistic mix of this population influx, and Dos Passos reproduces speech, patois, and accents from French, Italian, Yiddish, English, and Irish to reflect the cosmopolitan nature of the city and its culture.

The radical novelist

John Dos Passos was a novelist, a painter, and a political activist. As a young man he was a social revolutionary, with sympathies for both anarchist and communist points of view. It is quite clear in Manhattan Transfer that the radicalism expressed by characters such as Emile and Congo Jack has his sympathy; that the shady dealings in local government are being exposed as political corruption; and that his presentation of American capitalism is as a viciously competitive system that has a dehumanising effect on its citizens.

Joe Harland is a former ‘Wizard of Wall Street’ who has lost everything in one of the many stock market crashes. It’s significant that he is related by family to the relatively secure Jimmy Hersh. But he is now out of money and out of work. And work is not easy to find – partly because times are hard, and partly because of protectionism amongst trade unions (which in America were notoriously associated with organised crime).

Dos Passos’s achievement in this novel (as in U.S.A.) is to incorporate these political elements without sliding into propaganda or overt bias. He sees good qualities in his rich and successful characters, and weaknesses in his down-and-out failures. He presents a wide perspective on American society and its immigrant composition, but neither its working Joe Does or its rich playboys are neglected, and neither are its marginal characters – such as the foreign barmen, occasional sailors and building workers, and even hobos, dropouts, and tragic victims of poverty level existence.

The modern city

It is interesting to note that Manhattan Transfer was written and published in a period within two decades at the beginning of the twentieth century which saw the production of a number of novels that featured the capital city as the symbol of modern industrial and commercial life. Andrei Biely’s Petersburg had appeared in 1916, set in what was then the capital of pre-revolutionary Russia. In 1922 James Joyce’s Ulysses featured the Irish capital Dublin as it was in 1904. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925 is set exclusively in London, and Alfred Doblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) is a portrait of the capital of the Wiemar republic of the 1920s.

All of these novels feature a fragmented literary style, varying points of view, and the use of montage effects which were probably influenced by the cinema, which had become a popular entertainment medium around the same time. In the cases of Joyce, Doblin, and Dos Passos there was also the inclusion of advertising, newspaper reports, and documentary material related to the events of their narratives.

Literary style

The dominant strain in American fiction during the period preceding Dos Passos was naturalism. This was an approach which took its subjects from the lower orders of society and put emphasis on the Darwinian struggle for survival. Influenced by French writers such as Zola and Maupassant, the naturalist school of novelists took a sociological approach to their rendering of social reality, and included topics which had hitherto been largely excluded from serious fiction (with the exception of Dickens) – topics such as crime, poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, disease, racism, violence, and political corruption.

Stephen Crane, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser had been the popular exponents of this tendency in the period 1890-1920, and there are many elements of literary naturalism in Manhattan Transfer. Many of the characters are unemployed, there is no shortage of drunkenness, sexual promiscuity is rife, corruption exists in local politics, and there are deaths by fire, suicide, and motor accident.

But unlike the naturalist school, Dos Passos uses a huge variety of literary styles to create the sense of social multiplicity, cosmopolitanism, and urban development that pervades the world of Manhattan Transfer. This means that there is more emphasis on the novel as a work of art, rather than simply as a social manifesto.

Each chapter is prefaced by a paragraph of what can only be described as a prose poem, which signals the theme of the chapter. The sections and chapters that follow are delivered using a combination of conventional third person narrative mode, interior monologues, shifting points of view, fragments of newspaper reports, snatches of song, encyclopaedia entries, unattributed conversation, and sometimes an absence of conventional punctuation:

She stopped a second to look at the Plaza that gleamed white as motherofpearl … Yes this is Elaine Oglethorpe’s apartment … She climbed up onto a Washington Square bus. Sunday afternoon Fifth Avenue filed by rosily dustily jerkily. On the shady side there was an occasional man in a top hat and frock coat. Sunshades, summer dresses, straw hats were bright in the sun that glinted in squares on the upper windows of houses, lay in bright slivers on the hard paint of limousines and taxicabs.

Montage

The most radical and striking feature of Dos Passos’s literary style is his use of montage – cutting very rapidly from one character or scene to another. No sooner has one mini-drama got under way than the reader is whisked along to a different location and a different set of participants. This technique has a disorienting effect which emphasises the simulteneity of actions in various strata of society and the vibrancy of life in a modern cosmopolitan city.

This disorientation settles down as the text gradually reveals subtle connections between characters and events. But it has to be said that there is a price to be paid for the use of montage. Many of the characters are established as examples of individuals grappling with the problems of modern city life – but they simply do not reappear, so we are not given any account of their destinies.

There is only one character who is present from the beginning to the end of the narrative. That is Jimmy Herf – the artistic and visionary young boy who loses his mother, becomes a newspaper reporter, marries unsuccessfully, and ends by giving up his family and job to become a drifter.

U.S.A.

Manhattan Transfer is the forerunner to what is widely regarded as Dos Passos’s masterpiece, the trilogy U.S.A.. This comprises three separate but interlocking works – The 42nd Parallel published in 1930, Nineteen Nineteen which appeared in 1932, and The Big Money which completed the tryptich in 1936. This later work was even broader in scope, and took in American society at every level – from railroad hobos to Wall Street financiers and politicians.

Dos Passos is a neglected but important figure in the development of American modernism, and U.S.A. is a powerfully insightful representation of western capitalism. The novel also includes a rare depiction of those ideologies – socialism, communism, and anarchism – that offered an alternative to the dehumanising effects of naked market competition.

Manhattan Transfer – study resources

Manhattan Transfer Manhattan Transfer – Amazon UK
Manhattan Transfer Manhattan Transfer – Amazon US

Manhattan Transfer Dos Passos – Early Novels – Amazon UK
Manhattan Transfer Dos Passos – Early Novels – Amazon US

Manhattan Transfer The U.S.A. Trilogy – Amazon UK
Manhattan Transfer The U.S.A. Trilogy – Amazon US

Manhattan Transfer

John Dos Passos

Manhattan Transfer – chapter summaries

FIRST SECTION

1. Ferryslip – Young farm worker Bud Korpenning arrives in New York City, a virtual hobo, hoping to find employment. Ed Tatcher is an accountant who dotes on his young daughter Ellie. His wife Susie however is a self-pitying invalid.

2. Metropolis – Emile is a French waiter who serves a group of rich, drunk, and vulgar business people late into the night. In the early morning he discusses social injustices with Mario, an Italian anarchist sympathiser. Bud gets a job washing dishes. Susie leaves Ellie on her own all night. Irish milkman Gus McNeil wants to travel out West for a better life, but is run over in a street accident.

3. Dollars – Lawyer George Baldwin pursues Nellie McNeil regarding her husband’s accident and is struck by her good looks. They begin an affair whilst Gus is still in hospital. Emile is courting widowed shopkeeper Mme Rigaud. Jimmy Herf and his mother arrive by boat on the fourth of July. Baldwin wins Gus McNeil’s compensation claim, but tires of Nellie.

4. Tracks – Jimmy Herf and his invalid mother have dinner in their hotel rooms. She complains of her ailments: he lives in a teenage dreamworld of fantasies. Emile continues his unsuccessful courtship of Mme Rigaud. Nellie ends the affair with George Baldwin. Bud is in the Sailor’s Mission. Jimmy’s mother has a stroke. He visits his well-to-do aunt’s house where casual racism is the norm. Ed Thatcher resists the temptation of an allegedly surefire investment.

5. Steamroller – Jimmy’s mother dies, whereupon his uncle suggests that he start work in the family business, but Jimmy is not keen on the idea. Bud reveals to a fellow hobo that he has killed his stepfather, who was beating him. He feels he is being pursued and has nowhere to go – so he commits suicide by jumping off Brooklyn Bridge.

SECOND SECTION

1. Great Lady on a White Horse – Jimmy collects his girlfriend Ruth Prynne for Sunday lunch. He is now a cub reporter, she is an aspiring theatrical. Ellen meets George Baldwin for afternoon tea and flirts with Stan Emery and even her own husband Jojo.

2. Longlegged Jack of the Isthmus – Joe Harland is out of work, but he spends his last money on drinks whilst bragging about his previous success and his ‘bad luck’. Nicky Schatz is caught in a burglary by Stan and Ellie, but he has only stolen stage money. Ellen is in love with Stan but married to Jojo. Meanwhile Joe Harland is pursued by his landlady for unpaid rent. He cadges money from an old colleague. Casie is courted by Maurice McAvoy who is broke. Ellen leaves Jojo early one morning and takes a taxi to a hotel.

3. Nine Day’s Wonder – Paul Sandbourne looks at a girl on Fifth Avenue and gets run over by a passing truck. Jimmy Herf drinks away the afternoon with his rich college friends. They meet Ellen and her husband Jojo. Meanwhile Joe Harland spends his time in low bars. Ellen is a momentary theatrical success. It is 1914 and George Baldwin’s marriage is on the rocks because of his adultery with Ellen and others. Ellen is decorating her new flat when Casie arrives to announce that she is pregnant. Joe Harland is working as a night watchman on a building site. The workforce is threatened with a lockout. Stan brings Ellen to Jimmy’s flat on a secret date, but they are confronted by her husband in a farcical scene. Ellen Thatcher announces to her father that she and Joe Oglethorpe are divorcing.

4. Fire Engine – Impressario Harry Goldweiser is trying to seduce Elaine. Baldwin and Gus McNeil discuss some shady political doings, and Joe O’Keefe encounters Joe Harland again. Elaine puts a drunk Stanwood in her bath at the theatre. She then smuggles him out and takes him back to her flat in a taxi.

5. Went to the Animals’ Fair – George Baldwin takes Ellen out to a night club and tries to persuade her to take him on as her ‘protector’. Jimmy Herf and friends at a nearby table talk about a recent murder and the war. Jimmy and Ellen then discuss politics and the war with the anarchist barman Congo Jack. A drunken Baldwin threatens her with a gun. Jimmy walks home with Tony Hunter, who reveals that he is a homosexual who wants to kill himself.

6. Five Statutory Questions – Joe Harland and Joe O’Keef discuss the war and politics over drinks. Ellen is getting divorced and is pursued by Harry Goldweiser. She meets Stan, who reveals that he has married a young girl. Jimmy Herf meets his family relation Joe Harland, who wants to go to fight in the war.

7. Rollercoaster – Stan attends a political event. He is completely drunk, and when he gets home the apartment is on fire. He is overcome by smoke and killed in the fire.

8. One More River to Jordan – George Baldwin and Phil Sandbourne compare political notes. Ellen is still waiting for her divorce, and is besieged by oppressive well-wishers. She is pregnant with Stan’s baby. When Jimmy Herf walks her home she claims she is going to give up the stage and raise the child, but in fact she goes for an abortion.

THIRD SECTION

1. Rejoicing City That Dwelt Carelessly – James Merrivale arrives back in New York City after the war. Jimmy Herf is married to Ellen who he has met serving in the Red Cross overseas. They arrive back with a baby into the prohibition era. Joe O’Keefe helps to organise workers for a union wage claim, then visits the doctor for treatment for syphilis. George Baldwin is being groomed for a political position..

2. Nickleodeon – Ruth Prynne has possible throat cancer. She is down on her luck and meets an old suitor. Dutch Robertson is out of work and money, and so is his girlfriend Francie. Jimmy and Ellie are also out of work, but drown their sorrows in cocktails with Congo Jack, who is now a bootlegger.

3. Revolving Doors – Jake Silverman and his girl Rosie are posing as rich business people in a fraudulent deal. The Merrivales have breakfast before leaving for the bank. Nevada Jones is dancing with Tony Hunter, who has been to a psychiatrist. She is visited by Baldwin and McNeil. Anna Cohen gets fired from the sandwich bar. Gus McNeil curries political favours ahead of local elections. Jimmy visits Congo Jack doing bootleg business, but there is an attempted hijacking of the consignment of Champagne. James Merrivale discovers that his daughter Masie is about to marry John Cunningham, who is already married. Businessmen are approached for donations towards the local elections. Jimmy is living in cramped conditions with Ellie and their baby Martin. George Baldwin calls on Nevada Jones but catches her with Tony Hunter and ditches her. Ellen is at a bohemian party that is raided by detectives, but a phone call to the district attorney calls off the raid. Jimmy is living separately from Ellen. Jake Silverman is arrested for fraud.

4. Skyscraper – Jimmy gives up his job as a reporter and wanders around in a delirium of jumbled thoughts. Anna Cohen is involved in a strike at the sewing factory, and her mother reproaches her. Jimmy gets drunk with his out of work friends. Dutch Robertson holds up a cigar store. Mr Densch’s business is hit by the slump. A reporter takes the cigar store holdup story, and a few days later Jimmy reads an account of Dutch’s arrest.

5. The Burthen of Nineveh – Baldwin’s divorce is due to come through. He proposes to Ellen, but she delays making a decision. Buck squeezes money out of Alice, who cashes a cheque in her husband’s name. Jimmy meets Congo Jack who is now Armand Duval and rich (but might go to jail) and has married Nevada Jones. Mr Densch escapes from the USA, ten million dollars in debt. Jack Cunningham gets an Illegal divorce and marries Masie Merrivale. Dutch Robertson and Francie get twenty years for their crimes. Ellen collects a new dress from Mme Soubrine, where Anna is scabbing as a seamstress. There is a fire in the workshop and a girl is badly burned. Jimmy leaves friends at a party and sets off with no money and no objective.

© Roy Johnson 2016

Manhattan Transfer – principal characters
Bud Korpenning a 23 year old farmhand
Ed Thatcher an ambitious accountant
Susie Thatcher his wife, an invalid
Ellie Thatcher their daughter
Emile Loustec radical hotel worker
Marco an Italian anarchist
Congo Jack bartender, later a bootlegger
Gus McNeil an Irish milkman
Nellie McNeil his pretty wife
George Baldwin an attorney, later a politician
Phil Sandbourne his friend, an anarchist
Mme Ernestine Rigaud a widowed shopkeeper
Jimmy Herf a romantic dreamer, later a journalist
Mrs Lily Herf his mother, an invalid who dies
Mrs Emily Merrivale Lily’s sister, Jimmy’s aunt
Jeff Merrivale Jimmy’s uncle, who becomes his guardian
Ruth Prynne unemployed dancer, Jimmy’s girlfriend
#Jojo Oglethorpe a gay theatrical mountebank
Elaine Thatcher Oglethorpe his wife
Casandra Wilkins would-be theatrical
Stanwood Emery rich friend of George Baldwin
Joe Harland former bond trader, down on his luck
Harry Goldweiser lecherous theatrical impressario
Tony Hunter a young gay actor friend of Ruth
Nevada Jones Tony’s admirer, later married to Congo Jack
Dutch Robertson an out-of-work who turns to crime

Marcel Proust Illustrated Life

by

biographical notes, charming illustrations, and photos

This short biographical study offers an introduction to Proust’s strange life, and his unrelenting devotion to creativity. It’s written by an expert, and presented in a very attractive manner with archive photographs on almost every page. Mary Ann Caws admits from the outset that with so many other excellent biographies of Proust available [by George Painter, Ronald Hayman, and William Sansom] there’s no point in writing another.

Marcel Proust Illustrated LifeInstead, she produces an account of Proust which takes themes and motifs from his life as a starting point for meditations upon them – some of them not much longer than a single page, and others stretching out in more leisurely fashion to make well-informed reflections on the social context which gave rise to his work.

For those who don’t know Proust well, she includes a sufficient number of tantalizing biographical details to whet any appetite for more. He slept between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon, then worked late into the night, fueled (like Balzac) by strong coffee and a variety of drugs. He turned up to the best restaurants in the middle of the night and paid for special dinners to be laid on. He left some of his best furniture to a male brothel which he frequented.

Caws is steeped in knowledge about Proust and his background, and her account moves easily from his personal life to cultural issues. Her most extensive chapter is a lengthy analysis of Proust’s relationship to music, and the influence of the Ballets Russes on Paris and London in the early years of the last century. She also discusses the influence of the English art critic Ruskin on Proust’s literary style, and notes in addition his enthusiasm for the work of Thomas Hardy.

The beginner expecting a chronological introduction to the main events in Proust’s life might be disappointed, but by way of compensation it is the photographs and illustrations which make this book such a charming experience. The images of late nineteenth century Paris which inspired so much of his work are surrounded by sketches from his notebooks, paintings of the people who inspired his characters, and photographs that you rarely see elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Mary Ann Caws, Marcel Proust: an illustrated life, New York: Overlook Press. 2005, pp.112, ISBN: 1585676489

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Marcel Proust on Reading

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the philosophy of books, authors, and their readers

Marcel Proust on Reading is a collection of essays and reflections on the relations between writers, text, and readers. When he was only twenty-six Marcel Proust had already written Jean Santeuil, a thousand page would-be novel. It’s a trial run for his much more successful In Search of Lost Time. He realised that it lacked structure and coherence, and in 1897 he abandoned it unfinished. He turned away from fiction and devoted a number of years to studying and translating the works of John Ruskin, who was then at the height of his popularity and influence as an English cultural critic. Proust learned a great deal from him; he imitated his prose style; and he empathised deeply with Ruskin’s belief in the moral value of high art.

Marcel Proust on ReadingProust’s English was not very good. As he himself admitted ‘I do not claim to know English; I claim to know Ruskin’. And what he also claimed was an ability to read in such a sympathetic manner that he could grasp the underlying personal ‘tune’ of a writer beneath the words on the surface of the page. This skill was something which led him to write a number of Pastiches of famous writers. But it also led him to write the long essay on the philosophy of reading that is at the heart of this collection.

The essaay is his preface to his translation of Ruskin’s famous collection of lectures Sesame and Lilies. The other items in the book are the original Ruskin lecture On Kings’ Treasuries complete with Proust’s extensive footnotes and commentary, and four short prefaces by Proust to his other translations. The book also has both a foreword and an introduction written by two different translators, commenting on the origin of the texts themselves – quite a curious compilation.

Proust starts out in very typical fashion by talking about the pleasures of reading as a child, but he points out that those stories we love and which we wish could go on forever are not a virtue in themselves so much as a trigger for the memories and associations they allow us to carry into our adult lives.

He explores a whole philosophy of books, authors, and reading, throwing off interesting observations and aphorisms on almost every page:

Indeed, this is one of the great and wondrous characteristics of beautiful books (and one which enables us to understand the simultaneously essential and limited role that reading can play in our spiritual life): that for the author they may be called Conclusions, but for the reader, Provocations.

In other words, the author’s work is complete, but for the reader, this is just the start of an imaginative journey. And of course ‘Reading’ is interpreted in its very broadest sense. One moment he is discussing literature, but then the next it’s paintings, architecture, and philosophy – anywhere the creative spirit can leave its mark.

Ruskin’s lecture purports to be on ‘the treasures hidden in books’, and it does take in the form of empathetic reading that Proust describes. But it is largely a rambling series of lofty over-generalisations offered de haut en bas concerning the evils of contemporary society, which include road tunnels in the Alps, iron foundries in the UK, and ‘new hotels and perfumers’ shops’. Proust’s footnotes offer both a critique of Ruskin’s ideas and an appreciative close reading that demonstrates a practical example of sensing the author’s ‘tune’ beneath the surface of his words.

Proust would have loved Hypertext. He is forever inserting examples, asides, correctives, and qualifications into the flow of his text. He is an avid user of footnotes, and of course we know that he composed his works in an accretive manner, with one strip of paper after another glued into the pages of the exercises books he used as he thought of extra things to say.

Marcel Proust - typescript and revisions

Proust’s revisions to a typescript

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© Roy Johnson 2011

Marcel Proust, On Reading, London: Hesperus Press, 2011, pp.113, ISBN: 1843916169

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Marcel Proust translations

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a comparison of the three generally available versions

Marcel Proust - portraitMost English-speaking readers will choose to read Marcel Proust in translation. And his literary style is quite demanding. His sentences are long, the paragraphs are huge, and his great novel is one of the longest ever – at a million and a half words. But the effort is worthwhile – and the benefits are enormous. Proust offers gems of psychological perception on every page, and his characters come alive in a way which makes you feel they become your personal friends. There is very little in the way of plot, suspense, or even story in a conventional sense. This modern classic is one which depicts an entire world of upper-class fin de siècle French characters circling round each other before and shortly after the First World War.

The greatest depths of insight he offers are in the form of profound reflections on some of the most important issues any novelist can approach – love, desire, memory, time, and death. These are presented in the form of extended aphorisms, embedded as part of his narrative in such a way that you will hardly be aware where one ends and the other begins.

Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact.

Marcel Proust translations - Scott-MoncrieffEventually, it comes down to which translation should you read – and in English there are three options currently in print. My favourite is the oldest by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. It was first to appear as the original volumes were published, and it even had Proust’s own blessing. Although it is based on a version of the French original which was not complete, it has a charm all of its own. There may be technical errors here and there, but it will take a long time for any of the subsequent translations to supersede its elegance and the powerful influence it has had. It is still held in high regard as a work of literary interpretation.

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Marcel Proust - six-pack The second option is an edition which is based on the Scott Moncrieff original translation, but which was revised and re-translated by Terrence Kilmartin in the 1990s. This version is also informed by updated versions of the original text in French, including new material which has come to light since the author’s death. Kilmartin’s work was then itself edited by D.J.Enright. So this version comes to us with a guarantee of completeness and accuracy, but with the traces of three different translators’ hands since the original work. Each volume contains its own notes, addenda, and a synopsis, so readers new to Proust can feel supported by this additional material.

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This same tanslation by Kilmartin and Enright is now also available in Everyman’s Library Classics edition. It’s available in both hardback and paperback versions, and they have the advantage of being presented in just four volumes, which keeps down the cost of the complete work.

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Marcel Proust translations - box setThe most recent version was produced by seven different translators. This has the advantage of being the most up to date. It is based on the latest version of a text with a very tangled provenance, and each translator writes a preface on the problems of translation. This version got a mixed reception when it first appeared. Some people argue that it removes a certain prissiness which had clung to the English version of Proust since Scott Moncrieff’s translation. Others have claimed that it introduces new problems and lacks a unifying voice. Perhaps the best reason for choosing it is that it’s now generally available at a cut-down price in a handy boxed set.

Marcel Proust translations Buy the book at Amazon UK
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The Cambridge Companion to Proust The Cambridge Companion to Proust provides essays on the major features of Marcel Proust’s great work. These investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters, its humour, its analytical profundity and its wide appeal and influence. This is suitable for those who want to study Proust in depth. The discussion is illustrated by textual quotation (in both French and English) and close analysis. This is the only volume of its kind on Proust currently available. It contains a detailed chronology and bibliography.

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Marcel Proust: BiographyMarcel Proust is the definitive biography, by George Painter. This study has become famous in its own right, because it combines deep insights with scholarly rigour – and it is also written in a very stylish manner. Painter sketches in the background to Parisian society, which provides a historical context for what follows. He then traces Proust’s singular life (the neurasthenia, the ‘job’ he kept for one day, the cork-lined bedroom) up to his death in 1922 – where he was still revising his masterpiece in bed, which is where he had written most of it. This is regarded as a classic of modern biography, and in 1965 it was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.

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Marcel Proust – web links

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guide to ‘In Search of Lost Time’. comparison of the English translations, book reviews, web links, study resources.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Project Gutenberg
A collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats, mainly in French.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, early works, bibliography, further reading, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus production notes, box office, trivia and quiz.

Marcel Proust web links Temps Perdu.com
Translations, collector’s editions, Proust chronology, characters in the novel, film audio and music, online version of the novel, and discussion groups.

Marcel Proust web links The Kolb-Proust Archive
An online searchable database of Proust’s correspondence in French and English, plus further study resources and related web sites. – located at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Marcel Proust web links Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Picture gallery, bibliography, who’s who, video and audio files, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust – Ephemera Site
Juvenilia, articles, pastiches, poetry, letters – materials unavailable elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Marcel Proust web links

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a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Marcel Proust web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions.

Marcel Proust - portrait

Marcel Proust – web links

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guide to ‘In Search of Lost Time’. comparison of the English translations, book reviews, web links, study resources.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Project Gutenberg
A collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats, mainly in French.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, early works, bibliography, further reading, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus production notes, box office, trivia and quiz.

Marcel Proust web links Temps Perdu.com
Translations, collector’s editions, Proust chronology, characters in the novel, film audio and music, online version of the novel, and discussion groups.

Marcel Proust web links The Kolb-Proust Archive
An online searchable database of Proust’s correspondence in French and English, plus further study resources and related web sites. – located at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Marcel Proust web links Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Picture gallery, bibliography, who’s who, video and audio files, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust – Ephemera Site
Juvenilia, articles, pastiches, poetry, letters – materials unavailable elsewhere.

WRITING – I

Mont Blanc pen - Proust edition

Mont Blanc – Marcel Proust special edition

Don’t let this glamorous fountain pen deceive you. Marcel Proust’s writing instruments and his notebooks were quite humble. He used Sergent-Major nibs and pen holder which were the cheapest of their kind. For paper, he used the common French school children’s exercise notebooks which he purchased in bulk.

The Cambridge Companion to ProustThe Cambridge Companion to Proust
This compilation provides essays on the major features of Marcel Proust’s great work. These investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters, its humour, its analytical profundity and its wide appeal and influence. This is suitable for those who want to study Proust in depth. The discussion is illustrated by textual quotation (in both French and English) and close analysis. This is the only volume of its kind on Proust currently available. It contains a detailed chronology and bibliography.

© Roy Johnson 2010

More on Marcel Proust
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Marriage a la Mode

by

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

Marriage a la Mode was one of a group of six stories commissioned from Katherine Mansfield by Clement Shorter, the editor of the Sphere, a fashionable illustrated newspaper targeted at British citizens living in the colonies. The story was written in August 1921 and published in December the same year. It was later reprinted in The Garden Party and Other Stories published in 1922.

Marriage a la Mode

Marriage a la Mode – William Hogarth

Marriage a la Mode – critical commentary

Anthony Alpers, Katherine Mansfield’s biographer, describes Marriage a la Mode as a ‘shallow … bill-paying’ story whose lack of depth and subtlety is a result of her badly needing money to pay doctors’ fees during her illness whilst living in Montana-sur-Sierre in Switzerland.

It is certainly true that the story requires very little close reading or interpretive skill to yield its single meaning. William is a crushed husband figure whose tender feelings for his family are completely trampled upon by his wife’s selfishness, her social climbing, and her self-indulgent bohemianism. He is more or less excluded socially from his own home by her empty-headed friends. When he is driven by necessity to communicate his love for her by letter, she responds by reading it out for the amusement and mockery of her house guests. When she realises what a heartless and vulgar thing she has done, there is a momentary impulse to reach out to her husband in response – but instead she chooses to rejoin her friends.

It is a sceptical, if not jaundiced view of marriage, but it is to Mansfield’s credit that as a writer who so often reveals masculine foibles and insensitivities in her work, she creates here a sympathetic account of a working man and a scathing portrayal of his selfish and empty-headed wife.

Plagiarism?

A number of commentators have pointed to the similarities between Marriage a la Mode and a story by Anton Checkhov called Not Wanted (1886). In fact the most severe of these critics have accused her of direct plagiarism.

In Checkhov’s story a Court official Pavel Zaikin is travelling out to his summer cottage by train in the summer heat. He complains to a fellow traveller in ‘ginger trousers’ about the cost and inconvenience, which he attributes to ‘women’s frivolity’.

He finds his son alone in the cottage: his wife is attending the rehearsal of a play and has not prepared any dinner. Zaikin feels anger gnawing at him and in bad temper he scolds his son without reason – then regrets having done so.

His wife Nadyezhda returns from the rehearsal with her friend Olga and two men. She sends the servant out for ‘sardines, vodka, and cheese’. The thespians then begin noisy rehearsals until late, after which she invites the two men to stay the night. She also moves Zaikin out of his own bed to accommodate Olga. In the early morning Zaikin gets dressed and goes out into the street, where he meets the man in ginger trousers again. He too has a houseful of unexpected visitors.

The similarities in the two stories are the working husband who is abused by a self-indulgent wife; the train journey; the houseful of disruptive bohemians; and the fact that the man is treated like an outsider in his own home.

But this was not the first time Katherine Mansfield had re-told a story by Checkhov. Her early piece The-Child-Who-Was-Tired is taken from Checkhov’s Sleepyhead (1888) and her plagiarism was the subject of a debate on her conscious or unconscious borrowings in the pages of theTimes Literary Supplement in the 1950s.

However, she composed so many original and outstanding stories of entirely her own invention, that it is unlikely these accusations will cause the damage to her reputation some people hope for and others fear. But there is one telling detail in Marriage a la Mode that nails the story inescapably to its Russian origins – and that is the choice of sardines for the improvised evening meal. Isabel’s arty friends consume sardines and whisky, whilst Checkhov’s amateur theatricals have their sardines and vodka. There is simply no escaping the fact that this detail is copied. Fish and vodka are entirely native to Russian culture, but would be exceptional in English social life.

Marriage a la Mode – study resources

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode – plot summary

A London solicitor William is returning home on Saturday afternoon to his fashionable and demanding wife Isabel. He feels anxious about not having bought presents for his two sons, but buys them a melon and pineapple instead. He reads through legal papers, but is distracted by thoughts of his wife, who has cooled in her feelings towards him. They have moved from a modest to a much bigger house, and Isabel has made new friends, but William thinks back to their earlier days when he was happier.

Isabel is waiting for him at the station, but she is accompanied by some party-loving friends. She appropriates the fruit, and they buy sweets for the boys instead, meanwhile making asinine comments. When they arrive at the house, the party go off swimming, leaving William to reflect critically on the way the house is being run. Returning from the swim, they eat sardines and drink whisky, disattending to William.

The following day William is preparing to return to London. He has not seen his sons and has had no opportunity to talk to Isabel. When he gets to his train he decides to write to her instead.

The next day Isabel and her friends are lazing about in the sun when William’s letter arrives. It is a long love letter in which he reveals his feelings for her, and says he doesn’t want to stand between her and her happiness. She reads it out aloud to her friends, who scoff and make fun of the letter. Isabel suddenly feels ashamed of what she has done, and has the impulse to write a reply, but when the friends invite her to go swimming, she leaves with them instead.

Marriage a la Mode

Katherine Mansfield – web links

Katherine Mansfield at Mantex
Life and works, biography, a close reading, and critical essays

Katherine Mansfield at Wikipedia
Biography, legacy, works, biographies, films and adaptations

Katherine Mansfield at Online Books
Collections of her short stories available at a variety of online sources

Not Under Forty
A charming collection of literary essays by Willa Cather, which includes a discussion of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield at Gutenberg
Free downloadable versions of her stories in a variety of digital formats

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, including Mansfield’s ‘Prelude’

Katherine Mansfield’s Modernist Aesthetic
An academic essay by Annie Pfeifer at Yale University’s Modernism Lab

The Katherine Mansfield Society
Newsletter, events, essay prize, resources, yearbook

Katherine Mansfield Birthplace
Biography, birthplace, links to essays, exhibitions

Katherine Mansfield Website
New biography, relationships, photographs, uncollected stories

© Roy Johnson 2014

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