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More Die of Heartbreak

May 30, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

More Die of Heartbreak (1987) comes in the middle of Saul Bellow’s mature period as a novelist. He had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the previous decade, and obviously felt confident as the chronicler of modern American society. However, he continued to keep alive the folk memories of his heritage as the son of Jewish immigrants and his connections with European society from which his grandparents had emigrated.

The novel features many of his characteristic tropes and character types – corrupt lawyers, businessmen, and politicians; the violence of modern urban centres; rapacious females; and the dominance of the metropolitan city in contemporary American life.

More Die of Heartbreak – commentary

Saul Bellow’s novels very often feature a central character who is trying to make sense of the world in which he lives. These protagonists can be slightly tragic figures such as Tommy Wilhelm in the novella Seize the Day (1956) or the comic Moses Herzog who writes letters to dead philosophers in Herzog (1964).

Frequently the central character or narrator will be presenting a second larger-than-life character who is being held up as a role model of some kind. Humboldt’s Gift (1975) is narrated by Charlie Citrine, but it is the figure of his friend Humbolt Fleischer who provides a great deal of the novel’s amusement and interest. Bellow does the same thing: in Ravelstein (2000) where the narrator Chick is searching for meaning, but the novel is dominated by the portrait of his colleague Abe Ravelstein.

More Die of Heartbreak follows the same pattern – but in surprisingly muted tones. Neither the narrator Kenneth Trachtenberg nor his uncle Benn Crader are large scale comic figures, and they are beset by no more serious problems than entanglements with the opposite sex.

Benn Crader is supposed to be a world-class botanist – but this characterisation is never fully persuasive, just as Kenneth Trachtenberg’s role as a professor of Russian literature is not convincingly realised. We simply do not see these characters at work sufficiently to give them full fictional credibility. Moreover, there is never sufficiently persuasive evidence provided for Ken’s obsessive interest in his older uncle’s welfare.

The main theme

Kenneth is surrounded by conflicting influences and role models. His father is a successful playboy, and his mother has turned herself into a Saint Theresa missionary figure in response. Ken admires his uncle Benn, and he has other relatives who include a corrupt politician who has swindled his own family.

Ken sustains himself in this social maelstrom by his belief in the humanising influence of his academic discipline – Russian literature. He also employs what is now called cultural history as a lodestone as he finds himself dragged into more and more complex entanglements generated by modern American life.

There is also a surprisingly understated element of his being trapped between the position of an insider and outsider. He is from a Jewish immigrant family, but was born and raised in France. He keeps modern European history firmly in mind – the Russian revolution, the Nazi death camps – as he tries to steer his uncle Benn through American waters infested by legal sharks and property speculators. All of this will be familiar territory to those acquainted with Bellow’s other major novels.

The secondary theme

However, a secondary or sub-theme emerges from just about every part of the novel’s events – and that is a surprisingly explicit interest in sexuality. It should also be said that although it is articulated via Ken as the narrator, this almost obsessive interest must be attributed to Saul Bellow. He depicts a world shot through with an almost obsessional interest in sexuality at every level.

This begins with the slightly unpleasant and barely credible interest Ken takes in his uncle Benn’s sex life following the breakdown of his marriage. The idea of two adult males from different generations sharing erotic technique tips is as aesthetically toe-curling as it is improbable.

Ken also gives full accounts of his father’s adulterous sexual activities – which are not only successful, but are endorsed by Ken and tolerated by his wife. Ken himself is involved with Trekkie, a young woman whom he suspects of being engaged in sado-masochistic practices with other men which leave her with bruises on her legs.

Benn is being vigorously pursued by the rapacious cougar Caroline Bunge, who spices up her sexual attractions with pornographic videos and drugs. And when Benn courteously changes a light bulb for a lonely neighbour, she pursues him saying “What am I supposed to do with my sexuality?”

When Ken and Benn make a sudden trip to Japan, the outstanding element of the visit is not Benn’s lectures on plant biology but a visit to a strip club which culminates in two girls displaying their vaginas to the crowd. Later, when Benn meets his prospective father-in-law Doctor Layamon, the gynaecologist’s principal topic of interest is the sexual relationship Benn has with his daughter Matilda.

Every one of these incidents can be justified on grounds of narrative relevance and the context of post sexual revolution writing in the 1980s. But responsibility for their volume and insistence lies clearly at Saul Bellow’s own door. It leaves behind a slightly unpleasant impression.

It is not easy to take seriously a concern for the victims of Stalin’s show trials and Hitler’s death camps, with a prurient interest in the bedroom positions and practices of a middle-aged couple during copulation. But it seems that these contrasting or even contradictory issues are precisely what Saul Bellow wishes to present as the challenge of modern consciousness.

The Flight from Woman

The other side of this coin of sexual obsession is the theme of escaping from the clutches of rapacious women. At the start of the novel Ken is in flight from Trekkie – a woman to whom he is sexually attracted but regards as perverse, since she seems to be engaged in sado-masochistic behaviour with other lower-class men.

Uncle Benn on the other hand is being pursued by Caroline Bunge, from whom he escapes on the very day they are due to be married. He then falls into the clutches of the ambitious Matilda Layamon, who is part of a rich and successful family. However, they wish to use Benn as a status-gainer on their social circuit. Benn marries Matilda – but shortly afterwards escapes from her and flies off to the ‘North pole’ to join a research project.

The logic of the narrative is that women are attractive and desirable as sexual partners, but that socially they are demanding, expensive, and uncontrollable. It is significant that Ken finds his only relaxing connection with Dita Schwartz, who has been virtually de-sexualised as a result of a horrendous dermatological operation on her face.

The setting

It is quite clear from the incidental details that the novel is set imaginatively in Chicago. Yet Bellow for some reason avoids a specific location for the events of the narrative. The main focus of attention is on the fictional ‘Radio Tower’ – which is fairly obviously the mammoth Willis Tower in Chicago

Straight ahead of us stood the Electronic Tower, with its twin masts like the horns of a Viking helmet – it was very nearly as tall as the Sears building in Chicago.

This is something of a literary joke, because the giant Willis Tower in Chicago is commonly referred to as the Sears Tower. But why should Bellow adopt this sleight of hand? Maybe because in other parts of the novel he is exposing all sorts of corrupt practices in the legal and political life of what is obviously Chicago. He gives himself a certain protection by the creation of a fictional city – which is never named.

The conclusion

Saul Bellow’s novels are unusual in that their narratives rarely culminate in a dramatic finale or even a resolution to the conflicts they have been exploring. More Die of Heartbreak concludes with Benn Crader running away from his unsuitable wife to pursue his scientific interests in a remote place. The narrator Kenneth Trachtenberg remains where he was at the beginning of the novel – a teacher of Russian literature who might have occasional custody of his daughter.

They both seem to have undergone a certain amount of erotic-based heartache, and they have theorised about their attitudes to women ad nauseam. There is a sense in which Bellow’s novels do not offer dramatic narratives: they explore states of mind and a portfolio of contemporary beliefs. Nor do they offer any comforting certainties or resolutions: there is very little sense of closure here.

More Die of Heartbreak – study resources

More Die of Heartbreak – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

More Die of Heartbreak – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

More Die of Heartbreak – Library of America – Amazon UK

More Die of Heartbreak – Library of America – Amazon US

Saul Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Saul; Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz UK

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz US

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

More Die of Heartbreak – synopsis

Young professor of Russian literature Kenneth Trachtenberg gives an account of his uncle Benn Crader, a Jewish botanist who has recently become divorced. Ken also describes his ambivalent relationship with his womanising father Rudi, who is disappointed with his son’s lack of ambition and panache.

Ken’s relative Harold Vilitzer is a crooked politician who has defrauded his own family, yet Benn still feels an affection for him. Ken wonders why his uncle has chosen botany as a vocation, and he tries to generate a coherent understanding of life from his disparate collection of relatives.

Ken has problems with his partner Trekkie, who refuses to marry him, lives like a student even though she has money, and has a taste for sexual masochism. Benn is being pursued by Caroline Burge, a rich and fast-living vamp with a taste for drugs and celebrities. Ken and Benn take a holiday in Japan to escape from these problems on the day Benn is due to get married.

Ken has visited his mother who is working in a Somalian refugee camp. She too is disappointed in her son. He talks to her about the Gulag archipelago and Russia’s talent for suffering. In Kyoto Benn finds a visit to a strip club rather upsetting.

Without telling Ken during his absence, Benn marries Matilda Layamon, a rich young woman with a celebrity doctor father. Ken disapproves of his choice and is severely critical of the Layamons’ vulgar ostentation. Benn moves into the Layamons’ appartments, and Matilda is revealed as a spoiled and ambitious dilettante socialite. Doctor Layamon’s wealth is founded on dubious favours from his rich clients.

Benn and Matilda look over the enormous apartment she has inherited. Layamon takes Benn to an expensive lunch where he reveals that he has had Benn investigated by a private detective. He also wants Benn to recover the money Vilitzer owes him to pay for the refurbishment of the old apartment.

Ken pumps the seedy entrepreneur Fishl Vilitzer for information about his father. and judge Amador Chetnick. Fishl wants to act on Benn’s behalf in an effort to retrieve the money he lost in the rigged court case. Fishl explains the financial and political corruption in local government – but obviously has mixed motives.

Ken looks after his ex-student Dita Schwartz who has drastic dermatological surgery on her face. He meets Trekkie’s mother – who suddenly proposes marriage to him.

Dr Layamon takes Benn on hospital rounds, then persuades him to challenge Vilitzer for the money he owes. Benn and Matilda see Psycho which upsets him because he identifies with Norman Bates. He regards this as a warning, but marries her anyway.

Ken has dinner with Dita Schwartz and lectures her about his Parisian childhood. Ken and Benn attend the rape case parole board hearing They confront Vilitzer, but he refuses to give them the money he has made from the family property.

Ken flies to Seattle, bent on ‘revenge’ He smashes up Trekkie’s bathroom, then they discuss sharing custody of their daughter Nancy. Benn flies to Miami, where Vilitzer has just died. He then tricks Matilda into flying on to Rio, whilst he jets off instead to northern Finland on an arctic research expedition.

More Die of Heartbreak – principal characters

Kenneth Trachtenberg	the narrator, a Jewish professor of Russian literature who was born in France
Benn Crader	a midwestern botanist of Jewish origins with an international reputation
Rudi Trachtenberg	Ken”s father, a successful womaniser
Matilda Layamon	Benn’s rich and attractive second wife
Harold Vilitzer	a crooked politician who has cheated his own family
Fishl Vilitzer	his son, a seedy and incompetent ‘entrepreneur’
Treckie	Ken’s partner, who refused to marry him
Tanya Sterling	Trekkie’s mother – a cougar

More on Saul Bellow
More on the novella
More on short stories
Twentieth century literature

Mr Sammler’s Planet

October 1, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, further reading, web links

Mr Sammler’s Planet (1969) was first published in back-to-back issues of Atlantic Monthly. It was subsequently issued in one-volume novel form by Viking Press in 1970, and it won the National Book Award for Fiction the following year.

Mr Sammler’s Planet – commentary

The main theme

Bellow’s previous novels The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Henderson the Rain King (1959), and Herzog (1964) had all been commercially successful and widely critically acclaimed – but it was with Mr Sammlers Planet that he located his main theme – one which he was to continue exploring for the rest of his life as a creative writer. That theme was the role of the immigrant Jew in twentieth century America

In Bellow’s work (fiction and non-fiction essays) the immigrant Jew has a cultural identity- but an identity that has been formed ‘elsewhere’. This elsewhere is likely to be middle, northern, or Eastern Europe. The person has been driven by poverty, war, or anti-Semitism (or all three) to find refuge in a land which proclaims on its welcoming statue (of Liberty)

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The problem, as Bellow sees it, is that once on American shores, the immigrant is pulled between preserving his (or her) own culture, and becoming assimilated as an American. This is normally characterised as a choice between two ways of life. The first is a traditional respect for liberal humanism, human decency, a love of arts, intellectualism, and a deep sense of cultural and political history. It is also likely to involve close bonds with family members.

The second is a no-holds-barred pursuit of individualism and personal liberty, embracing free-market capitalism, dog-eat-dog competition, get-rich-quick schemes, and devil-take-the-hindmost greed and corruption at all levels.

It is quite obvious which of these two options Bellow supports. Sammler is a Holocaust survivor. He cherishes his relatives and friends. He is a man of culture and sophistication, even though he is living on handouts from his nephew (and war reparations). He is a living representative of twentieth century history – a man who has dug his own grave and miraculously survived a Nazi execution squad. He will not let that experience fade as a measure of how he will interpret the behaviour of others.

The following extract captures this multiple, overlapping approach to a form of stream-of-consciousness in dealing with one of his favourite themes – the immigrant faced with the multiple possibilities of American life:

And the charm, the ebullient glamour, the almost unbearable agitation that came from being able to describe oneself as a twentieth-century American was available to all. To everyone who had eyes to read the papers or watch television, to everyone who shared the collective ecstasies of news, crisis, power. To each according to his excitability. But perhaps it was an even deeper thing. Humankind watched and described itself in the very turns of its own destiny. Itself the subject, living or drowning at night, itself the object, seen surviving or succumbing, and feeling in itself the fits of strength and the lapses of paralysis – mankind’s own passion simultaneously being mankind’s great spectacle, a think of deep and strange participation, on all levels, from melodrama and mere noisedown into the deepest layers of the soul and into the subtlest silences, where undiscovered knowledge is.

Bellow does not offer this as a simplistic example of victimhood. At one point Sammler reflects on the case of Chaim Rumkowski, a Jewish ‘leader’ in occupied Poland who assisted the Nazis, arranged the deportation of children to the death camps, and even abused young girls – before he was beaten to death by fellow inmates on arrival at Auschwitz in 1944. Bellow’s message is quite clear: the full horror must be confronted, and not forgotten.

But Sammler is surrounded by every excess that modern America can throw at him: the black pickpocket who intimidates him with an aggressive sexual gesture; his ex-student Feffer whose instinct is to exploit everything that comes his way; Wallace Gruner, the son of his nephew, described by his own father as a ‘high-IQ idiot’ who is full of mad entrepreneurial schemes to make money

The 1960s and sexual revolution

This novel is basically Bellow’s response to the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s in America and Europe, coupled with his long-standing concern for the fate of immigrant Jews in post-Holocaust America

He takes a view that sides with what he sees as tradition and decency – Sammler is oppressed and appalled by the excesses of “a sexual madness [which] was overwhelming the Western world”. His young niece Angela is the living embodiment of the sexual revolution writ large. She dresses in provocatively in revealing clothes and flaunts her erotic life like a banner of defiance in a way Sammler clearly finds shocking.

The students on campus are in rebellion; beards proliferate; nobody gives a damn; and America is in full technological expansionist mood – preparing to put men on the moon. It captures the vibrancy and the excesses of the 1960s very accurately.

The planets

The novel was published in the same year as the first moon landings in 1969, and most readers will have little difficulty in appreciating the multiple symbols and references to planetary matters which run through the novel.

Artur Sammler inhabits the only planet he knows – the earth – and he tries to make sense of the gigantic contradictions that twentieth century history has thrown at him and his fellow survivors. He finds modern life – particularly in New York City – overwhelming.

But he reads Govinda Lal’s treatise on lunar colonisation with interest – largely as a symbolic suggestion that there might be alternatives to the horrors and unresolvable contradictions of life on earth.

His meeting with Dr Lal provides him with the one intellectually satisfying experience that occurs in the novel. Then throughout its events he catches glimpses of the moon which act as a reminder of this search for ‘alternatives’

Structure

Bellow is not normally strong on the structure of his novels. He seems to prefer a free-wheeling, improvisatory approach in which he introduces incidents and characters for their own sake, and does not (necessarily) tie them closely to his main theme. But it must be said that Mr Sammler’s Planet is a masterpiece of bravura plotting and organisation.

The content of the narrative is an amalgam of Sammler’s movements in New York, his reflections on political history, his slightly woolly and abstract ruminations on life, and the second-hand reports of activity from minor characters. But the amazing thing is that the entire events of the narrative take place over only two days.

This chronological compression is somewhat concealed, since so much of the narrative is taken up with flashbacks into Sammler’s earlier life. His ‘European’ experiences during and after the Holocaust are woven seamlessly into the account of events in 1960s New York. And since the narrative is delivered almost entirely from his point of view, the transitions between reminiscence and dramatic interaction between characters is almost imperceptible. It also has to be said that the resulting narrative is also padded out with generous passages of abstract reflection on Sammler’s part – a feature which one cannot help regarding as something of an indulgence on Bellow’s part, since it appears so frequently in all his other novels.

Things met with in this world are tied to the forms of our perception in space and time and to the forms of our thinking. We see what is before us, the present, the objective. Eternal being makes its temporal appearance in this way The only way out of captivity in the forms, out of confinement in the prison of projections, the only contact with the eternal, is through freedom.

Such passages become strangely heterogeneous, set as they are amongst events which sometimes border on the farcical – Sammler’s nephew flooding the house and crashing an aeroplane whilst taking photographs for instance. But fortunately, the novel as a whole is held together by the seriousness of Sammler’s search for meaning in a life composed of such disparate elements.

Mr Sammler’s Planet – study resources

Mr Sammler’s Planet – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Mr Sammler’s Planet – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

A Saul Bellow bibliography

Saul Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Saul; Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz UK

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz US

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

Mr Sammler’s Planet – summary

I. Artur Sammler is a seventy year old Polish Jew living in New York with his widowed niece Margotte. He has a semi-retarded and divorced daughter Shula who collects junk. They are all immigrant survivors of the Holocaust. He formerly lived in Bloomsbury London, and is something of an Anglophile. Shula has been urging him to write a memoir of H.G. Wells. She presents him with a scholarly paper on the colonisation of the moon written by a Dr Govinda Lal.

Sammler delivers a lecture on British politics in the inter-war years that is rudely challenged by students. Afterwards he is accosted by a black pickpocket he has seen on a bus journey each morning. The man follows Sammler home and exposes himself in a threatening manner in the lobby of the building.

II. Sammler struggles to make sense of urban life, which he finds overwhelming. He is visited by his sixty year old nephew Walter, who has a fetish for women’s plump arms. Sammler finds his confessions oppressive, as he does those of his niece Angela, who recounts the sexual details of her affair with an advertising executive.

Sammler visits his nephew Dr Elya Gruner who is in hospital after suffering an aneurysm. Gruner has been giving financial support to Sammler and his daughter Shula, and he is closely concerned with family ties. Sammler assumes that Elya’s wealth comes from Mafia-controlled real-estate investments.

Sammler has survived the end of the war hiding in a Polish mausoleum after surviving execution by a firing squad. He discusses Elya’s slim chances of survival with Elya’s son Wallace, who is an improvident wastrel eager to get hold of his father’s money.

III. He meets the fantasist Lionel Feffer who claims to be in a money-making scheme with Wallace. Feffer reports the theft of Dr Lal’s. manuscript by Shula and then exhorts from Sammler the story of the thief on the bus. He wants to sell the story to television, and at the same time he also brags about a bogus insurance claim he has made.

Sammler writes to Dr Lal, explaining that the manuscript is safe. He speculates about the interplanetary future of the earth and mankind, then recalls his survival from the Nazi execution squad and killing a German soldier during his escape. At the end of the war he was forced to escape from anti-Semitic attacks by the Poles. More recently, he has been to Israel to cover events in the Six-Day War

IV. At the hospital Sammler meets Angela who unburdens herself of the problems she has with her father. Sammler reflects on his experience during the Six-Day War, and then is joined by his son-in-law Eisen who wants to be an artist but has only produced worthless junk. Margotte phones to say Dr Lal ‘s manuscript is missing. Sammler promises he will retrieve the manuscript from Shula

V. En route to the Gruner house Wallace badgers Sammler about the black thief and other sex-related matters. Sammler finds Shula has Xeroxed the manuscript and put copies in safe deposit boxes at Grand Central Station. Margotte arrives with Dr Lal, who engages Sammler in a friendly discussion about H.G. Wells and space exploration. Their discussion then goes on to metaphysical considerations of human personality – which is interrupted by a flood of water caused by Wallace hunting for his father’s money, supposedly hidden somewhere in the house. When the fire brigade arrive Sammler goes outside and recalls his earlier visit to the Six-Day War and its heavy death toll.

VI. Next day Sammler reflects
on the other characters – Shula, Wallace, and Elya. He is frustrated by a series of delays preventing his return to New York. He wishes to rejoin the terminally sick Elya, who has some unfinished business to discuss with him. Lal’s manuscript is located, but there is no copy of it.

En route to the hospital the car is held up by a street confrontation in which Feffer photographs the black thief on the bus. The thief demands the camera, but is fought off by Feffer’s accomplice Eiser, who clubs him with a bag of cheap iron medallions. Sammler is upset by the incident.

At the hospital Angela reports that Wallace has crashed a plane whilst taking photographs of houses. Sammler and Angela argue about her refusal to apologise to her father. Shula telephones to say she has found Elya’s Mafia money hidden at the house – and meanwhile Elya has died.

Mr Sammler’s Planet – characters

Artur Sammler	a 70 year old Polish Jewish survivor of the Holocaust
Shula-Slawa	his slightly deranged divorced daughter who collects junk
Margotte Arkin	Sammler’s politically argumentative niece
Ussher Arkin	Margotte’s husband, killed in a plane crash
Dr Elya Gruner	Sammler’s nephew a retired gynaecologist and real estate owner
Angela Gruner	Gruner’s daughter, a sex pot
Wallace Gruner	Gruner’s son, ‘a high-IQ idiot’
Dr V. Govinda Lal	a professor of biophysics
Lionel Feffer	Sammler’s ex-student, a boastful spiv
Walter Bruch	Sammler’s nephew, a musicologist
Eisen	Shula’s estranged husband

More on Saul Bellow
More on the novella
More on short stories
Twentieth century literature

Mrs Dalloway

January 28, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, video, criticism, study resources

Mrs Dalloway (1925) is probably the most accessible of Virginia Woolf’s great modernist novels. A day in the life of a London society hostess is used as the structure for her experiments in multiple points of view. The themes she explores are the nature of personal identity; memory and consciousness; the passage of time; and the tensions between the forces of Life and Death. The novel abandons conventional notions of plot in favour of a mosaic of events.

Virginia Woolf

She gives a very lyrical response to the fundamental question, ‘What is it like to be alive?’ And her answer is a sensuous expression of metropolitan existence. The novel also features her rich expression of ‘interior monologue’ as a narrative technique, and it offers a subtle critique of society recovering in the aftermath of the first world war. This novel is now seen as a central text of English literary modernism.

Mrs Dalloway – plot summary

The novel covers one day from morning to night in a woman’s life – Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class society wife. As the novel opens she walks through the streets of London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The pleasant day reminds her of her youth at Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband. She married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, and she had not the option to be with Sally Seton towards whom she felt a strong attraction. Peter reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning, having returned from India that day. After his visit, he wanders off into Regent’s Park.

The point of view then shifts to Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I who is suffering from post traumatic stress (or ‘shell shock’ as it was first known). He is spending his day in the Park with his Italian-born wife, Lucrezia, waiting for an appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist. Septimus is visited by frequent and indecipherable hallucinations, mostly concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war. He cannot see anything of worth in the England he fought for, and he believes his lack of feeling is a crime. However, Sir William does not listen to him and diagnoses ‘a lack of proportion’. He proposes to send Septimus to a mental institution.

The scene switches again to conservative MP Richard Dalloway taking lunch with Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton, members of high society. After lunch, Richard returns home to Clarissa with a large bunch of roses. He intends to tell her that he loves her but finds that he cannot. Clarissa considers the void that exists between people, even between husband and wife.

Clarissa sees off her daughter Elizabeth and her history teacher, Miss Kilman, who are going shopping. The two older women dislike one another quite passionately, each believing the other to be an oppressive force over Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Septimus and Lucrezia are in their apartment, enjoying a moment of happiness together before the men come to take Septimus to the asylum. One of Septimus’s doctors, Dr. Holmes, arrives, and Septimus fears the doctor will destroy his soul. In order to avoid this fate, he jumps from a window to his death on the railings below.

In the evening, most of the novel’s characters (including people from her past) assemble for Clarissa’s party. It turns out to be a big success, but Clarissa cannot help feeling wistful about her friends and the fact that most of them have not achieved the dreams of their youth. She feels that even her daughter Elizabeth will be the same.

When Sir William Bradshaw arrives late his wife explains that one of his patients has committed suicide. Hearing this, Clarissa gradually identifies with Septimus, and feels that she understands his motives. She retires to reflect on the matter, seeing people such as Sir William Bradshaw antithetical to life, and admiring Septimus for his courage in resisting medical bullying.

The party nears its close, and the guests begin to leave, hereupon Clarissa re-enters the room and fills it with her ‘presence’. This fills Peter Walsh with awe, for despite his criticisms of Clarissa for leadingthe shallow life of a society hostess, he is forced to admit to himself that he admires her.

Video lecture

Part I of biographical documentary

Mrs Dalloway – study resources

Mrs Dalloway – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Mrs Dalloway – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Mrs Dalloway – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Mrs Dalloway – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Mrs Dalloway – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon UK

Mrs Dalloway – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon US

Mrs Dalloway – York Notes – Amazon UK

Mrs Dalloway – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Approaches to Teaching Mrs Dalloway – Amazon UK

The Cornell Guide to Mrs Dalloway – Amazon UK

Mrs Dalloway – free eBook edition

Mrs Dalloway – 1998 dramatisation on DVD – Amazon UK

Mrs Dalloway – a facsimile page from Woolf’s manuscript

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf as a Modernist Writer – essay

Virginia Woolf – biographical notes

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

The Mrs Dalloway Reader – critical essays – Amazon UK

Approaches to Teaching Mrs Dalloway – Amazon UK

Selected Essays – by Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

Photomontage

Mrs Dalloway’s walk – through modern day London

Principal characters

Richard Dalloway	a conservative Member of Parliament
Clarissa Dalloway	his wife – a society hostess
Elizabeth Dalloway	their 17 year old daughter
Septimus Warren Smith	a shell-shocked WWI veteran
Lucrezia Smith	his wife – an Italian millener
Peter Walsh	a romantic admirer of Clarissa’s
Sally Seaton	childhood close friend of Clarissa’s
Hugh Whitbread	a vacuous English gentleman
Doris Kilman	born-again Christian, Elizabeth’s teacher
Sir William Bradshaw	renowned London psychiatrist
Dr Holmes	Septimus’ unimaginative doctor
Lady Bruton	society lady and do-gooder
Evans	Septimus’s close friend in the war

Virginia Woolf podcast

A eulogy to words

Mrs Dalloway – first edition

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell.

This appeared only a few weeks after the publication of The Common Reader and although the reviews were mixed, the book had sold 2,000 copies by the end of the year.

This is the first of Virginia Woolf’s three great masterpieces (along with To the Lighthouse and The Waves. In it, she developed the experimental literary techniques which had been tried out in Jacob’s Room and brought them to an achievement of a high order.

“The reviews when they came were mixed, and so was Bloomsbury’s reaction. E.M. Forseter praised Mrs Dalloway and Virginia, gallantly kissing her hand and telling her the novel was better than Jacob’s Room and he was very pleased; but Vita Sackville-West was doubtful; and Lytton Strachey, admiring The Common Reader more, thought the novel was a flawed stone. Readers bought the book, however, and the sales were brisk. By June 18, one month after publication, Virginia noted that 1,250 copies had been sold … Leonard issued a second impression of 1,000 copies in November 1925.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

Vanessa Bell’s design for the jacket of the novel features a bouquet of flowers. Diane Gillespie notes that the “design in which first the white, then the black dominates, the cover anticipates, if only in a general way, the alternating exhilaration and fear, sanity and insanity, as well as life and death which pervade the book”.

Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Woolf’s-head Publishing: The Highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press

Mont Blanc pen – the Virginia Woolf special edition

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a tryptich of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
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Orlando (1928) is one of her lesser-known novels, although it’s critical reputation has risen in recent years. It’s a delightful fantasy which features a character who changes sex part-way through the book – and lives from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Using this device (which turns out to be strangely credible) Woolf explores issues of gender and identity as her hero-heroine moves through a variety of lives and personal adventures. Orlando starts out as an emissary to the Court of St James, lives through friendships with Swift and Alexander Pope, and ends up motoring through the west end of London on a shopping expedition in the 1920s. The character is loosely based on Vita Sackville-West, who at one time was Woolf’s lover. The novel itself was described by Nigel Nicolson (Sackville-West’s son) as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’.
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The Bloomsbury Group is a short but charming book, published by the National Portrait Gallery. It explores the impact of Bloomsbury personalities on each other, plus how they shaped the development of British modernism in the early part of the twentieth century. But most of all it’s a delightful collection of portrait paintings and photographs, with biographical notes. It has an introductory essay which outlines the development of Bloomsbury, followed by a series of portraits and the biographical sketches of the major figures.

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Virginia Woolf – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never Let Me Go

December 17, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and plot summary,

Never Let Me Go (2005) is the sixth novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Anglo-Japanese writer, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize which he had won previously in 1989 for The Remains of the Day. The novel was adapted for the cinema in 2010 by Mark Romanek for a film with the same title starring Keira Knightly.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go – critical comment

Biography

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in Japan in 1954. His father was an oceanographer who moved to live in Britain in 1960. Kazuo attended grammar school in Surrey, then studied English and Philosophy at the University of Kent in Canterbury. After a gap year touring America and Canada, he entered the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia, where his tutors included Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. He graduated with an MA in 1980 and became a British citizen in 1982. He has written novels, screenplays, stories, and the lyrics to songs for the Anglo-American jazz singer Stacey Kent. He has won several literary awards, including the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for his first novel A Pale View of Hills (1982), the Whitbread Prize for An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and the Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017.

Dystopia

A dystopia is the opposite of a utopian view of the world. Utopian narratives imagine successful, harmonious, and happy worlds, whereas a dystopian world emphasises all its worst elements and even exaggerates them as a form of warning about what we might become if these elements are not held in check.

Because these dysfunctional worlds do not exist but are creations of the imagination, there is a great deal of overlap with the imaginary worlds of science-fiction.

Utopias in literature include Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), and H.G.Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905). Examples of dystopias include Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1927), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1947 – which was based on Zamyatin’s novel), and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932).

Some novels may even combine elements of both Utopia and Dystopia to create satires of society – such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872).

Narrative voice

One of the main problems in a novel of this length is the quality of the narrative voice. Ishiguro takes the naturalistic rendering of his protagonist’s first person account to almost unbearable lengths of tedium. Her narrative is packed with repetition, cliché, dated teenage slang, and manufactured uncertainties.

She talks in what one reviewer called “a sort of social worker’s drone, all professional cant and washed-out idiom (‘When it came down to it … Anyway, I’m not making any big claims for myself.’)

“While we’re on the subject … Looking back now … And then there was the time that … But that’s not really what I want to talk about just now … When it came down to it … I don’t know how it was where you were … Anyway … Now to be fair … As it happened … What with one thing and another … “

There are too many events and incidents that have little structural significance, and that are inflated beyond any sense of their intrinsic interest. In the later part of the book for instance there is a protracted excursion to Cromer in Norfolk which promises to reveal something significant about the ‘possibles’ – people from whom the characters might have been cloned – but this comes to nothing when they decide they have made a mistake.

Much is made of a cassette tape containing Kathy’s favourite song which gives the novel its title – Never Let Me Go – then its unexplained disappearance, followed by a search for its replacement. But none of this, including the title, is linked in any significant way to the central issues of the novel.

Similarly, there is an outing to visit an abandoned boat on the marshes, the type of incident which in most stories would be at least metaphoric, if not symbolic of something important within the meaning of the novel as a whole. But the tediously extended episode adds nothing to what we already know.

Conversely, there is an attempt to give significance to what are no more than teenage arguments, changes in allegiance, and feelings of isolation. But these fail to be convincing, because they remain no more than adolescent trivia which contribute nothing to any narrative interest. But this issue does raise another point.

It’s possible that Never Let Me Go was produced quite deliberately as a genre novel for the teenage market, but Ishiguro has done himself no favours by presenting his story in such a banal and repetitive narrative voice, and packing the story with largely inconsequential behaviour – without exploring any of the ramifications of the scientific conceit on which the novel is based.

Science-fiction?

We now know that advances in microbiology and DNA manipulation now permit animal matter to be cloned. In this sense the novel is not very ‘futuristic’. But the idea of cloning human beings specifically (and at risk of their own death) to provide body parts to keep other people alive – is a sinister form of modern human sacrifice.

The problem is that Ishiguro simply does not examine the social or scientific rationale for this practice. Nor does he explain how individual humans can be clone-created to have normally functioning body parts (apart from reproductive organs) yet be so singularly lacking in will, imagination, and resistance.

The main problem is that whilst it is possible to suspend disbelief and accept the authoritarianism behind cloning and genetic engineering. there is no plausible reason offered why the characters should be so totally passive and accepting of their planned destinies.

These are characters who watch television, drive cars, have lots of sex, and read Daniel Deronda, yet who show no enterprise when they are free to walk away at any time from their planned organ donations. The organisation that has created them has even gone out of business by the end of the novel, but at no point do any of them think to regard themselves as autonomous beings.

Never Let Me Go – study resources

Never Let Me Go – Faber paperback – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go – Faber paperback – Amazon US

The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro – paperback – Amazon UK

Kazuo Ishiguro: A Routledge Guide – paperback – Amazon UK

Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro – paperback – Amazon UK

GCSE Revision Notes – page by page analysis – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go – plot summary

Chapter 1. Kathy H introduces herself as a ‘carer’, and recounts her early years at what seems to be an authoritarian boarding school called Hailsham and her concern for an outsider youth Tommy.

Chapter 2. She describes daily life at the school and further instances of teasing and bullying on Tommy, who retreats into a childlike state.

Chapter 3. Tommy tells Kathy about a conversation with sporty and butch ‘guardian’ Miss Lucy who sympathises with his lack of creative ability. Kathy recounts how the controller of the school, called Madame, is frightened of contact with the students, even though she appropriates their artworks for her private ‘gallery’.

Chapter 4. The students are given tokens in exchange for their work which they can exchange at occasional ‘Sales’. They all appear to have problems with missing memories. Kathy’s friend Ruth makes her into a ‘secret guard’ of Miss Geraldine, a favourite guardian.

Chapter 5. Surrounded by menacing woods at the school, the secret guards plot to kidnap Miss Geraldine. There is rivalry between Kathy and Ruth about favouritism.

Chapter 6. Rivalries and ‘secret knowledge’ continue to cause tensions. Norfolk is regarded as a ‘lost corner’ of Britain. Smoking is forbidden at the school because the students must preserve their ‘special’ natures. Kathy plays her tape of Never Let Me Go. She knows that she and all the other students are infertile. The tape goes missing, but Ruth presents her with an alternative.

Chapter 7. Miss Lucy reveals to them that they have been bred as DNA clones and organ donors. It appears that their body parts are detachable.

Chapter 8. Kathy reports on sexual activity amongst the students, including her friends Tommy and Ruth, and her own preparations to have sex with Harry.

Chapter 9. Miss Lucy retracts what she has previously told Tommy about creativity not being important – and then suddenly disappears when she is expelled from the school.

Part Two

Chapter 10. After leaving Hailsham, Kathy transfers to the Cottages with Tommy, Ruth and others. They imitate each other’s gestures, then Kathy and Ruth quarrel.

Chapter 11. Kathy looks back on and revises her memories of conversations with Ruth. She then starts having casual sex; Ruth gets rid of her collection of memorabilia; and Tommy catches Kathy looking at porn magazines.

Chapter 12. Veterans at the Cottages, Chrissie and Rodney report back from a trip to Cromer where they have seen a possible original for Ruth, who then begins to fantasise about her ‘dream future’ working in a modern office.

Chapter 13. A month later five of them go on an excursion to Cromer where the two veterans Chrissie and Rodney ask the rest about the rules for requesting a ‘deferral’ of two or three years before they become organ donors. Nobody knows the rules.

Chapter 14. They locate Ruth’s ‘possible’ in an office on the High Street, then see her again later. When they follow her to an art gallery they all realise she is not a possible, then argue about going to visit Martin, another ex-veteran.

Chapter 15. Tommy and Kathy go in search of her lost tape and find a copy. He tells her his theory that the Madame’s gallery is a repository of the students’ souls which will enable the guardians to make choices for deferrals. He also thinks Kathy might have been looking at the porn magazines in search of her ‘possible’ – which she thinks could explain her uncontrollable sexual urges.

Chapter 16. Tommy shows Kathy his miniature drawings of imaginary animals, then discusses his gallery theory with Ruth and Kathy. Ruth claims that they find his drawings laughable, which creates unpleasant tensions in relations between the three friends.

Chapter 17. Kathy tries to resolve these tensions by talking to Ruth. During the conversation Ruth suggests that Tommy disapproves of Kathy’s sexual promiscuity. Shortly afterwards Kathy decides to leave the Cottages and start her training.

Part Three

Chapter 18. Some time later Kathy is working independently as a carer. She bumps into Laura, an old friend from the Cottages. They discuss Ruth, and Laura suggests that Kathy become Ruth’s carer. It transpires that Hailsham has closed, which makes Kathy feel cut off from her former fellow students. She does become Ruth’s carer, but there are still tensions between them. Ruth persuades Kathy to take her to see a boat – which is an opportunity or an excuse to see Tommy.

Chapter 19. Ruth and Kathy visit Tommy at the Kingsfield centre and take him to see the boat. They discuss their donors, some of whom have ‘completed’ (died) during the operation. They see an advertising poster which recalls the trip to Norfolk, then Ruth reveals that she has had sex with others besides Tommy. She wants Kathy and Tommy to be a couple and apply for a deferral, and also suggests that Kathy become Tommy’s carer. She dies shortly afterwards during her second donation.

Chapter 20. Kathy becomes Tommy’s carer and starts having sex with him. He starts drawing his animal pictures again, but not so successfully. Kathy has located the Madame, whom they plan to visit to request a deferral.

Chapter 21. They visit the Madame where Tommy explains his theory of the gallery. The Madame understands but does not admit to its validity. However, she produces Miss Emily, the head guardian, in a wheelchair.

Chapter 22. Miss Emily reveals to them that the idea of deferrals is merely a false rumour she has been unable to extinguish. She claims that the art works were taken to prove to doubters that the students did have souls, and were being well educated. She explains the post-war history of the ‘movement’ which has now been brought to a halt because of a scandal which has resulted in a lack of sponsors. The Madame explains her sympathies for their plight as donors. On their way back, Tommy gets out of the car and goes into a rage in a field.

Chapter 23. Tommy is preparing for his fourth donation when he suggests to Kathy that she should no longer be his carer – and he dies shortly afterwards, leaving her to face an uncertain future.

Kazuo Ishiguro – other novels

A Pale View of Hills – Amazon UK

When We Were Orphans – Amazon UK

An Artist of the Floating World – Amazon UK

The Unconsoled – Amazon UK

The Buried Giant – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby

August 26, 2014 by Roy Johnson

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

Nicholas Nickleby first appeared as a serial novel in nineteen monthly instalments between 1838 and 1839, published by Chapman and Hall. It was Charles Dickens’ third novel, but he wrote it at the same time as he was completing his second novel, Oliver Twist. He had struck a best-selling formula with his first novel – The Pickwick Papers – an episodic narrative issued in monthly parts, and he stuck to this publishing format, selling 50,000 copies a month of each instalment, which cost one shilling per issue and two shillings for the final double issue.

a monthly instalment

It is worth noting, in terms of the history of the novel and literature as a cultural medium, that Charles Dickens’ name does not appear on the cover – only his nom de plume, ‘Boz’. And he is not the author but the editor of these recorded adventures – almost as if their existence were due to some other person or source.

In addition, each instalment of the serial was illustrated – in this case by his favourite artist, Hablot Knight Browne, who was also given a pseudonym of ‘Phiz’. The convention of illustrating novels persisted until the end of the nineteenth century and then disappeared in the early twentieth.

Nicholas Nickleby – critical commentary

The picaresque novel

Dickens greatly admired the novelists of the eighteenth century – Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Tobias Smollett – all of whom had inherited the earlier tradition of the novel as a picaresque narrative. That is, the focus of attention in a novel was on an individual who engaged with society and embarked on a series of adventures. In its original form the picaro was usually a low-life character, and this is perhaps reflected in Fielding’s hero (in Tom Jones) being a foundling, or in Smollett’s heroes Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle being ‘groundlings’ or ordinary characters.

The traditional picaresque novel featured a one central character (Lazarillo de Tormes and Tom Jones for example), but Dickens gives this convention a creative twist by having essentially two central characters battling with the vicissitudes of society. Nicholas and his sister Kate are both young and vulnerable following their father’s death. They are saddled with a mother who is worse than useless as a moral and spiritual guide, and they are surrounded by villainous characters who wish to do them harm.

Nicholas first has to battle with the psychopathic schoolmaster Wackford Squeers and his equally brutal family. Then he is also thwarted by his uncle, Ralph Nickleby

Ralph Nickleby is also the spider at the centre of the corrupt web of upper-class rakes trying to ensnare Kate Nickleby. Even though it is Sir Willoughby Hawk who is her main assailant, he is a client of Ralph’s and operates under his roof. Kate quite rightly complains that the very person who should be protecting her honour (her uncle) is putting her at risk by exposing her to moral danger and actually using her as live bait to ensnare the rich but simple Lord Frederick Verisopht.

The elements of the picaresque novel are normally movement – the journey – encounters with unknown individuals who may be rogues desperadoes, or comic characters. This was the novel as sheer entertainment, and Dickens happily embraced the genre. As well as featuring the hero’s mixed fortunes in society, encounters with rogues and villains, there were also a lot of knockabout comic and farcical scenes, plus no shortage of real physical violence – much in evidence here in the scenes at Dotheboys Hall.

There is very little notion of a tightly plotted story. The essence of the picaresque is a loose, episodic tale where one event follows another. Nevertheless, Dickens inserts elements which typify his later command of the tightly plotted serial novel, with a structure unified by overarching metaphors and symbols.

He introduces mysterious and dramatically interesting details which act as a thread through the episodes of the story. For instance, the curious figure of Newman Noggs who works for but despises Ralph Nickleby. He passes a message to Nicholas as he embarks at the start of the novel on his journey to Yorkshire and Dotheboys Hall. This creates a link between them which enables Nicholas to survive the vicissitudes of his exile and even his return under an assumed name (Johnson).

The negative parent figure

We know that Dickens was very concerned about the ill-treatment of children – despite the fact that he neglected his own. His novels are full of neglected and poor youngsters, children forced into work and crime, and pathetic under-aged beings who suffer and die young.

The other side of this coin is the parent figure who neglects those under its supervision and care. Nicholas Nickleby has a wide range of characters who are what might be called the negative parent figure – people who are responsible for people younger than themselves who neglect their welfare and in some cases actively seek to undermine it.

First in order of appearance of these figures is Wackford Squeers, the sadistic headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, who acts in loco parentis to his pupils. Squeers is motivated entirely by greed and self-gratification. He actually robs the pupils under his care; he beats them; more or less starves them; and actively stands in the way of their securing any possible outside help. He is what we would now classify as a sociopath or even a psychopath

Mr Bray is one of the many miserly characters in the novel, but his outstanding characteristic is that of an emotionally tyrannical father figure. He has a daughter (Madeleine) who is slavishly devoted to him, but rather than appreciate her efforts, he abuses her unmercifully and turns her life into a living misery. Rather like Squeers, he is entirely self-regarding and even sneers at the very sources of income which keep him alive (the ‘purchases’ made by the Cheerybles).

Mrs Nickleby is a great comic figure in the novel – a social snob even when her family has become penniless, and a garrulous featherbrain who fails to understand anything that is going on. She doesn’t actually make her children suffer, but she is certainly derelict in his role as a parent, and it is interesting to note that she shares self-regard and a solipsistic view of the world with the other negative parent figures in the novel.

Ralph Nickleby turns out to be the worst parent figure of all. He is dominated by an almost pathological worship of money. He marries for financial advantage, and when his wife leaves him, he gives away his son – who becomes the abandoned Smike at Dotheboys Hall. The conditions there – in addition to his consumption – contribute to his early death.

Money, inheritance, and class

The origins of the entire narrative lie in a version of the Biblical parable of the talents. At his death old Nicholas Nickleby divides his money between two sons, Ralph and John. One (Ralph) becomes a money lender (a usurer) and makes more money: The other (John) invests his portion of the inheritance in the stock market and loses everything.

This accounts for the tensions within young Nicholas Nickleby’s family and his personal life. He has been raised and educated to be a ‘gentleman’, but he suddenly finds himself with no money and a mother and sister for whom he is responsible.

Nicholas is forced to work as an almost unpaid assistant schoolteacher, whilst his mother clings to comically misplaced snobbish standards as if she were still upper class. Kate too is forced into low-paid work, and can only hope for a suitable marriage to save her from her plight.

But any marriage should be on reasonably equal terms. This explains the dramatically stretched issue of conscience and scruples when Nicholas insists that Kate should not encourage Frank Cheeryble as a suitor – because Frank will inherit from his twin uncles, whereas Kate has nothing to inherit.

Nicholas puts an equally severe limit on himself when he asks for Madeleine to be taken away from his mother’s house. He is in love with her, but he realises that the Cheerybles will look after her financially, whereas he has no inheritance to offer her. He belongs (albeit temporarily) to a lower social class. However, these problems are resolved by the fairy-tale generosity of the Cheerybles.

Nicholas Nickleby – study resources

Nicholas Nickleby – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon US

Nicholas Nickleby – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Charles Dickens – biographical notes

Nicholas Nickleby – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Nicholas Nickleby – audioBook at LibriVox

Nicholas Nickleby – Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) illustrations

The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby – Audio book (unabridged) – Amazon UK

Charles Dickens’ London – interactive map

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby – plot summary

Chapter I. Old Mr Nickleby leaves money to his two sons, Ralph and Nicholas. Ralph invests his inheritance and becomes a successful money-lender. Nicholas speculates with his money on the stock exchange and loses everything.

Chapter II. Ralph and fellow entrepreneurs hold a public meeting to promote interest in a parliamentary bill to establish a muffin-making business, which will in fact be a monopoly.

Chapter III. Ralph receives news of the death of his brother. He visits his sister in law and her two young children and, completely lacking in generosity and compassion, arranges to ‘find a job’ for young Nicholas.

Chapter IV. Wackford Squeers enrolls pupils for his school at Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire, and Ralph persuades him to take on Nicholas as an assistant schoolmaster.

Chapter V. Nicholas sets off for Yorkshire. Before departure Newman Noggs slips him a mysterious letter. Squeers feeds himself liberally, but completely neglects his pupils. The coach overturns in bad weather.

Chapter VI. The travellers recover at a nearby inn, where they regale each other with tales of ‘The Five Sisters of York’ and ‘The Baron of Grogzwig’.

Chapter VII. Nicholas arrives at Dotheboys Hall, meets the abandoned boy Smike, and is given a frugal supper by Mrs Squeers. He reads the mysterious letter from Noggs, offering him sympathy and accommodation in London if ever he should need it.

Chapter VIII. Squeers runs the school in a brutal and exploitative manner. All the pupils are broken and miserable. Nicholas is ashamed of being there. Smike has no friends and no hope.

Chapter IX. The plain Fanny Squeers decides to fall in love with Nicholas, then announces to her friend Matilda that she is ‘almost’ engaged to him. The two young women entertain their beaux to tea, then fall out in rivalry with each other.

Chapter X. Miss Le Crevey paints a miniature portrait of Kate Nickleby. Ralph Nickleby finds Kate a questionable job as a dressmaker with Madam Mantalini and moves her mother into an empty house he owns.

Chapter XI. Kate and her mother leave Miss Le Crevey and are taken by Noggs to live in an old run down house in a poor party of the City.

Chapter XII. Fanny and Matilda repair their disagreement of the day before. Matilda is to be married in three weeks. They meet Nicholas and claim he is in love with Fanny. When he refutes this claim, Fanny vows vengeance on Nicholas, who comforts the persecuted Smike.

Nicholas starts for Yorkshire

Chapter XIII. Smike suddenly runs off from the school, but is hunted down and recaptured. When Squeers starts to administer a public flogging before the assembled boys, Nicholas intervenes and beats Squeers. Nicholas leaves the school to go back to London, and is followed by Smike.

Chapter XIV. A wedding anniversary party is under way in the rented rooms of the Keriwigs. nTheir neighbour Noggs is in attendance, despatching punch, when Nicholas and Smike arrive.

Chapter XV. The Squeers have sent a defamatory letter to Ralph Nickleby, denouncing Nicholas. Noggs urges patience. Meanwhile Lillyvick lords it over the party and its members. When the babysitter’s hair catches fire, Nicholas rescues the baby and is admired by everybody as a gentleman and an aristocrat

Chapter XVI. Next day Nicholas goes in search of a job, but turns down the position of secretary to an unscrupulous member of parliament. Instead, Noggs arranges for him to become private tutor to the Kenwig girls, under the name of Johnson.

Chapter XVII. Kate starts work at Mantalini’s where she feels demeaned by the nature of her position. The Mantalinis are semi-comic buffoons, somehow connected with Ralph Nickleby.

Chapter XVIII. Miss Knag has an almost Sapphic crush on Kate, who makes a good impression on visiting customers. But when Kate is chosen to display bonnets instead of Miss Knag, she turns hysterically against her.

Chapter XIX. Kate in invited to dinner at her uncle’s house. But the guests are all-male boors, and she has been used as bait to lure a rich young lord. One drunken guest tries to attack her. Ralph Nickleby feels the first twinges of conscience regarding his niece.

Chapter XX. Ralph confronts Kate and her mother with Nicholas’s ‘misdeeds’ (reported by Squeers). Nicholas stands up to Ralph and maintains his innocence – but he is powerless to do anything more. Everything is against him – but he sticks by Smike.

Chapter XXI. The Mantalinis are bankrupted (by Ralph) and Kate loses her job. She becomes a companion to Mrs Witterly, who suffers from ‘an excess of soul’.

Chapter XXII. Nicholas decides to leave London. He and Smike walk to Portsmouth, but before they get there Nicholas meets the theatrical manager Vincent Crummles, and in desperation is persuaded to join his troupe.

Chapter XXIII. When they reach Portsmouth Crummles introduces Nicholas to his band of itinerant ‘actors’, including the ‘infant phenomenon’. Crummles gives Nicholas a French text to translate and plagiarize for performance in a few day’s time.

Chapter XXIV. Nicholas writes the play for Miss Snevellicci’s benefit performance (one of many) – then has to go out touting for subscriptions.The play is put on, and despite its ridiculous and corny plot is a big success.

Mr and Mrs Mantalini in Ralph Nickleby’s Office

Chapter XXV. Mr Lillyvick the water tax collector arrives to tell Nicholas of his impending marriage to Henrietta Petowker, who is joining the troupe. A comic wedding scene ensues. Nicholas teaches Smike his simple part in Romeo and Juliet.

Chapter XXVI. Hawk and Verisopht conspire to pursue the pretty Kate. Hawk wishes to trap Verisopht financially. They visit Ralph Nickleby, who wants to entrap them both. Mrs Nickel by arrives and naively hopes that Kate will marry one of these corrupt rakes. Ralph’s conscience pricks him for a second time.

Chapter XXVII. Mrs Nickleby is fascinated with the idea of upper-class connections. She is visited by Pyke and Pluck who flatter her and invite her to the theatre on behalf of Hawk, who oppresses Kate again. They are also introduced to Mrs Witterly, who is also flattered by the attention of these rakes.

Chapter XXVIII. Hawk and his entourage become regular visitors chez Mrs Witterly – and continue to oppress Kate. She appeals to her uncle Ralph for help – but he refuses to do anything, and even though he has encouraged their behaviour, he disapproves of it. So does Noggs, who disapproves of his employer Ralph.

Chapter XXIX. Lenville is jealous of Nicolas’s success in the acting troupe. He offers a challenge, but Nicholas knocks him down. Nicholas communicates with Noggs via post, who replies that Kate might need his protection in the future.

Chapter XXX. Nicholas prepare to leave the acting company. He goes to dinner, where Mr Snevellicci gets drunks and kisses all the women. An urgent note from Noggs arrives, so Nicholas and Smike leave for London by the morning coach.

Chapter XXXI. Noggs negotiates with Miss La Crevey to delay telling Nicholas about Kate’s problems on his imminent arrival in ~London – to forestall rash actions.

Chapter XXXII. Nicholas reaches London and immediately goes in search of Noggs, who has deliberately gone out as part of his plan. Nicholas wanders into a hotel and overhears Hawk maligning Kate. He challenges him, but Hawk refuses to reveal his identity. They fight in the street, and Hawk sustains injuries when his cab overturns.

Chapter XXXIII. Nicholas removes Kate from Mrs Witterly’s , his mother from her lodgings, and writes to Ralph denouncing him as a villain.

Chapter XXXIV. Ralph is visited by Mr Mantalini who needs money. Mrs Mantalini argues with her husband., during which time Ralph learns about the coach accident. Mr Squeers arrives, and Ralph quizzes him about Smike’s identity and origins.

Chapter XXXV. Mrs Nickleby and Kate meet Smike, then Nicholas goes in search of a job, where he meets the improbably philanthropic Mr Cheeryble, who provides him with a well-paid job, a home, and gifts of furniture.

Chapter XXXVI. Mrs Kenwigs has a baby. The family all congratulate themselves on their future prospects, but when Nicholas arrives with the news that their ‘benefactor’ Lillyvick has married Henrietta Petowker in Portsmouth, they go to pieces ,thinking that their ‘expectations’ have been ruined.

Miss Nickleby Introduced to her Uncle’s Friends

Chapter XXXVII. Nicholas makes a success of his introduction to working at Cheeryble’s, and old Tim Linkinwater’s birthday is celebrated in the office with lots of toasting and good cheer. Mrs Nickleby confides in Nicholas that she is being courted by their next-door neighbour by throwing cucumbers over the wall.

Chapter XXXVIII. Miss La Crevey thinks that Smike is changing significantly. Ralph Nickleby visits Hawk who is still recovering from his injuries in the coach crash. Lord Verisopht is amongst the rakes but he thinks that Nicholas has acted honourably in defending his sister’s reputation. On his way back home, Smike is captured by Squeers and held prisoner.

Chapter XXXIX. John Browdie arrives in London with his new bride Matilda Price and her friend Fanny Squeers.. They meet Mr Squeers at the Saracen’s Head That night Browdie helps Smike to escape from Squeers’ clutches.

Chapter XXXX. Nicholas falls in love with a girl he saw very briefly in the Registry Office. He commissions Noggs to find out who she is and where she lives. He does this and actually arranges a meeting with her late at night.But when they get there it is the wrong girl.

Chapter XXXXI. The eccentric (mad) man next door continues to pay court to Mrs Nickleby – who is flattered by his attentions, even though she feigns to reject them.

Chapter XXXXII. Nicholas visits John Browdie at the Saracen’s Head. Whilst they are discussing Fanny Squeers’ lack of marriage prospects, she suddenly appears. There is a comic argument between Fanny and Matilda, then between Squeers and Browdie

Chapter XXXXIII. Following the altercation at the Saracen’s Head, Nicholas meets Frank Cheeryble, with whom he feels a close bond. Yet he immediately wonders if he is a rival for the mysterious and beautiful girl – to whom he has never spoken. Frank and one of his uncles visit the Nickleby home the following Sunday, and everybody has a good time.

Chapter XXXXIV. Ralph Nickleby is out collecting debts when he is tracked down by Mr Booker, a former business associate who has been in jail. Booker threatens to reveal compromising information, but Ralph calls his bluff and refuses to help him.There is a fake suicide by Mr Mantalini, then Ralph goes off withSqueers and a stranger, with Noggs in pursuit.

Chapter XXXXV. Whilst John and Matilda Browdie are at the Nickleby cottage they are interrupted by Ralph Nickleby, Squeers, and Mr Snawley, who claims to be Smike’s estranged father. THey wish to capture Smike and take him back to Yorkshire, but Smike does not want to go.. After they throw out Squeers, Ralph leaves, threatening legal action against Nicholas.

Chapter XXXXVI. Nicholas relates these incidents to the Cheerybles, who tell him a similar story about the beautiful girl who has devoted herself to an unloving father who is a wastrel. They want to use Nicholas as a means of supplying money to her. This enables him to meet Madeleine Bray and her thankless father.

Chapter XXXXVII. Ralph Nickleby arrives at his office with Arthur Gride, who relates his plan to marry Madeleine Bray so as to acquire a property she will inherit. Ralph forces him to sign an agreement between them – all overheard by Noggs. They visit Bray and Madeleine and put their plan into motion, hoping that the greedy and heartless Bray will persuade Madeleine to accept.

Chapter XXXXVIII. Nicholas is upset regarding his role in the supply of money to Madeleine Bray. He then meets up with the Crummles theatrical troupe giving their farewell performances before going to America. There is another lengthy dinner with speeches.

Mr Linkinwater Intimates his Approval of Nicholas

Chapter XLIX. In the Nickleby household Smike is suffering from consumption, but hides it from everyone. The mad old man from next door comes down the chimney in pursuit of Mrs Nickleby, but then changes to Miss La Crevey when he sees her.

Chapter L. Sir Mulberry Hawk appears at Hampton Races after recuperating abroad. He quarrels with Lord Verisopht, who has a guilty conscience regarding his part in the plot against Kate. That night, after gambling and drinking, they fight a duel, in which Lord Frederick is killed.

Chapter LI. Arthur Gride selects his clothes for the marriage to Madeleine Bray. Noggs has been approached by the mysteriousMr Brooker, and he tells Nicholas about Gride’s plan to marry Madeleine Bray.

Chapter LII. Noggs takes Moreleen Kenwig to the barber, where they meet Lillyvick. His wife Henrietta has eloped with a solider, so he is received at the Kenwigs where he reverses the terms of his will in their favour, following much sycophancy on both sides.

Chapter LIII. Nicholas appeals directly to Madeleine to call off or at least delay the marriage. He explains the plot between her father and Gride. But she refuses: she is sacrificing herself to gain the money promised to support her father. Nicholas then goes to Gride and offers to buy him off, but Gride refuses.

Chapter LIV. Ralph and Arthur Gride arrive at the Bray house on the morning of the wedding, but suddenly Nicholas and Kate arrive to confront them and take Madeleine away. There is a stand off, and then Bray drops dead upstairs. Nicholas takes Madeleine away telling Ralph that his business has collapsed.

Chapter LV. Mrs Nickleby is convinced that Frank Cheeryble is in love with Kate, who is looking after Madeleine as she recovers. Mrs Nickleby asks Nicholas to encourage the relationship, but he warns against it on the grounds that they are poor, whereas Frank has ‘expectations’ from his uncles. Nicholas is then commissioned to take the ailing Smike to Devon for convalescence.

Chapter LVI. Ralph has lost £10,000 in a bank crash. Returning to Gribe’s house, they discover that old Peg has stolen incriminating papers and absconded. Ralph devises an elaborate plan of revenge (on Nicholas and just about everybody else) which includes the Snawley and Smike relationship, Madeleine’s inheritance, and recovery of Gride’s stolen documents. He enlists the services of Squeers to do the dirty work and carefully excludes all mention of himself from the arrangements.

Chapter LVII. Ralph has located old Peg and Squeers visits her in a drunken state. He persuades her to show him the documents – but whilst they are inspecting them Frank Cheeryble and Noggs sneak into the room and knock Squeers out.

Chapter LVIII. Nicholas takes Smike to Devon where they share a bucolic and tranquil existence. Smike has a fleeting vision of the man who first took him to Dotheboys Hall, reveals that he has been in love with Kate , and dies.

Chapter LIX. An anxious Ralph is visited by Charles Cheeryble who wishes to warn him of something – but he dismisses him. Ralph goes off in search Noggs, Squeers, and Snawley, but none of them are to be found. So he goes to Cheerybles where he is confronted by Noggs who has unravelled the whole pilot. They offer him an honourable escape, but he scorns it.

Chapter LX. Ralph tracks down Squeers at the police station where he is being held on remand. There are signs that even Squeers is turning against him. Then he returns to Cheerybles, where they produce Ralph’s former employee Mr Brooker, who reveals that Smike was Ralph’s son. Ralph suddenly disappears.

Chapter LXI. Nicholas returns from Devon and learns that Kate has refused an offer of marriage from Frank Cheeryble on grounds of differences in their social positions. Nicholas vows to do the same regarding Madeleine, and asks the Cheerybles to remove her from his mother’s house.

Chapter LXII. Ralph retreats to his house, followed by a black cloud, and is oppressed by feelings of defeat and the fact that his enemy Nicholas was the person who looked after his own son, Smike. He goes into the attic and hangs himself.

Chapter LXIII. The Cheerybles summon everyone to a dinner at which the details of Madeleine’s inheritance are made known and the two couples – Frank and Kate, and Nicolas and Madeleine – are united.Then Tim Linkinwater proposes to Miss La Crevey, who accepts, much to Mrs Nickleby’s disgust.

Chapter LXIV. Nicholas travels to Yorkshire to see his friend John Browdie and brings him up to date with all the news. It is revealed that Squeers has been found guilty and transported for seven years. John Browdie rides over to Dotheboys Hall where the boys revolt against Mrs Squeers and her two offspring. They then all run away.

Conclusion. Nicholas marries Madeleine on the same day that Frank marries Kate. Nicholas becomes a partner in the firm. Ralph’s money is left un-touched and reverts to the State. Gride escapes punishment, but is then murdered. Hawk lives abroad, but on return is jailed for debt, where he dies.

Mont Blanc – Charles Dickens special edition

Nicholas Nickleby – principal characters

Old Mr Nickleby	Nicholas’s grandfather
Ralph Nickleby	his elder son, who becomes a speculator
Nicholas Nickleby	his younger son, who loses his money and dies
Mrs Nickleby	his widow, a naive and gullible woman
Nicholas Nickleby	his son, good-natured and personable (19)
Kate Nickleby	Nicholas’s pretty sister
Newman Noggs	one-eyed clerk to Ralph Nickleby, ‘a decayed gentleman’
Wackford Squeers	an unscrupulous, greedy, and brutal ‘schoolmaster’
Mrs Squeers	his equally vulgar and stupid wife
Fanny Squeers	their plain daughter (23) who falls for Nicholas
Smike	a desperate abandoned boy, unpaid skivvy to Squeers (19)
Miss Le Crevey	an artist in portrait miniatures
Matilda Price	a pretty friend (and rival) of Fanny Squeers
John Browdie	her fiancée, a tall Yorkshire corn-merchant with a Geordie accent
Mr Mantalini (actually Murtle)	a ridiculous fop
Mrs Mantalini	his (new) wife, a dressmaker
Mr Kenwig	a turner in ivory
Mr Lillyvick	a pompous collector of water taxes
Mr Crowl	a dubious associate of Noggs who wears a red wig
Miss Knag	garrulous and hysterical shop manager at Mantalinis
Mortimer Knag	her brother, a gloomy bookseller and novelist, former admirer of Mrs Mantalini
Mrs Julia Witterly	a social climbing hypochondriac who employs Kate as a companion
Henrietta Petowker	marries Lillyvick, then leaves him for another man
Sir Mulberry Hawk	a lecherous nobleman who pursues Kate
Lord Frederick Verisopht	a simple dupe of Hawk, who kills him in a duel
The Cheerybles	twin brothers and philanthropists
Frank Cheeryble	their nephew, who falls in love with Kate
Timothy Linkinwater	their chief clerk, who marries Miss La Crevey
Mr Walter Bray	a selfish and dying miser
Madeleine Bray	his beautiful and devoted daughter
Arthur Gride	an old, greedy, and corrupt miser who tries to marry Madeleine
Peg Sliderskew	his old and ugly housekeeper
Mr Brooker	an ex-convict and formerly Ralph’s clerk

Other works by Charles Dickens

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

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

Charles Dickens – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night and Day

June 1, 2015 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot. web links

Night and Day was Virginia Woolf’s second full-length novel. It was first published by Duckworth and Company in October 1919. (This was the publishing company owned by Woolf’s step-brother Gerald Duckworth.) An American edition appeared under the imprint of George H. Doran in 1920

first edition – Duckworth 1919

Night and Day – critical commentary

The main theme

Virginia Woolf had been writing about the plight of the young unmarried middle-class woman since her earliest works such as the short story Phyllis and Rosamund (1906). She continued to develop her observations and criticisms about women’s education and their role in society in her non-fiction polemic A Room of One’s Own (1929) and these ideas were further developed into her wholesale attack on the patriarchal nature of British society in Three Guineas (1938).

Katharine Hilbery has not been educated or trained to do anything useful except live at home with her parents. She feels oppressed by the family and its illustrious history, and her only possibility of change is the option of marriage, which is why she initially feels doomed to accept William Rodney’s offer when it comes along.

Katherine is very conscious of being cut off from the world of work – and she actively wishes she had a job. She sees this as an antidote to the somewhat pointless life she leads as an unmarried young woman living at home where she ‘helps’ her mother in the vanity project of writing her grandfather’s biography.

Work

The novel makes a strong critique of the emptiness of a young unmarried woman’s life, and contrasts this with the apparent satisfaction of being engaged in purposeful work.

The suffragist Mary Datchet is very conscious of her own independence, and proud of the fact that she has a ‘room of her own’ and works in an office for a cause in which she believes. However, she does not get paid for the work she does, and it is no surprise to eventually find that she is the daughter of a clergyman, and is thus being kept economically by her family. She is engaged in voluntary charity work, not paid employment; and she is not truly self-sufficient.

Woolf appears to have slightly romantic ideas about the nature and conditions of paid employment. Mary doesn’t start work until 10.00 am; she has expensive lunches; and she lives in central London in rooms which are spacious enough to host meetings – none of which she would be able to afford without the financial backing of her family.

Ralph Denham also doesn’t start work until 10.00 am, and seems to have endless amounts of free time for extended walks through London, for afternoon teas, and for visiting people in what would normally be working hours. He arranges to meet Katharine Hilbery for a serious discussion about his future in Kew Gardens – at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Ralph is bored by his own work as a solicitor’s clerk, and has romantic aspirations to be a journalist – having published a review in Mr Hilbery’s Critical Review. Woolf appears to be uncertain about his exact status: sometimes he claims to be a ‘solicitor’ but on other occasions he is described as a ‘solicitor’s clerk’. There is a big difference between the two.

William Rodney is supposed to be a government clerk – yet he has enough money to live in style; he owns a piano and collects expensive rare editions; and the Hilbery family think he is an acceptable match for Katharine. He too is free to attend a tea party in Cheyne Walk at half-past four in the afternoon

It’s as if Woolf didn’t want to populate her novel entirely with upper middle class people who lived off private incomes and investments, but could hardly conceptualise the lives of real working people. The result is that the three characters of Ralph Denham, William Rodney, and Mary Datchet are cyphers for working people, and are less convincing fictional characters as a result.

The text is modernist in that it reflects the technology of twentieth century life. People make telephone calls from their own homes (requesting a number from an operator) they take rides in cabs, the underground, and the omnibus (not yet abbreviated to ‘bus’) – yet it has to be said that the historical setting remains slightly vague. The only certainty is that the events pre-date 1914.

Weaknesses

The romantic oscillations and changes of mind between the four principal characters are dragged out to inordinate length. The indecisions and reversals of feelings might accurately reflect uncertainty in people’s feelings and their choices of romantic attachment, but something like twenty chapters of will-she, won’t-she (and will-he won’t-he) plus rather amateurishly orchestrated coincidental meetings put a great strain on the reader’s patience.

This element of the novel reaches almost farcical proportions in the passages dealing with William, Katherine, and Cassandra. For instance when William begs Katherine to return to their former engagement she tells him that Cassandra loves him more, at which he immediately reverses his choice and is united with Cassandra, who has been listening to the conversation in concealment – all within the space of a few short paragraphs. This is the material of a Brian Rix Whitehall farce. The novel becomes more like a radio or television soap opera than a carefully constructed novel.

If weakness can have a climax, the novel reaches one in its final chapters when the two male suitors are (quite reasonably) banned from the house by Mr Hilbery. But they are then forgiven and reinstated the following day, with no explanation given. Everyone is happy, as in a children’s story, and the serious social issues raised by the Ralph Denham—Katharine Hilbery match simply dissolve in a vaporous and false ‘resolution’.

It has been emphasised throughout the novel that Ralph Denham has no money, and is responsible for supporting the remainder of his family. It stretches credulity and the conventions of the realist novel that a family such as the Hilberys would permit their daughter to marry with so few prospects of being decently kept.

Moreover, Denham’s own prospects are also not resolved in any detail. He has been dissatisfied with his (ill-defined) work throughout the novel, occasionally nursing a fantasy of living in a cottage and writing a book, but this comes to nothing – so he is no further forward at the end of events than he was at their beginning.

Woolf also seems to forget that she endows him with the dubious habit of gambling with his scant savings on the Stock Exchange at the start of the novel – but this is never mentioned again after the first chapters. He neither loses money, nor pulls off a profitable investment. The issue is simply forgotten.

There are too many named but inconsequential characters cluttering the text. For instance, Mary Datchet’s brothers and sisters are introduced – Elizabeth, her older sister, her brother Edward who is an estate agent, and Christopher who is a law student. This might establish the social status of the children of a provincial rector, but they serve no purpose in the novel whatever, since they never reappear.

Denham’s college friend Harry Sandys is introduced in the middle of the novel, and is never mentioned again. The family relative Cyril Alardyce is living with a woman to whom he is not married, and much is made of the issue, but it is not related to the main events of the novel in any meaningful way, and once a visit of concern has been made, the topic disappears, never to be mentioned again.

Katharine’s interest in mathematics is established as her individualist reaction to the weight of social convention that she finds so oppressive. She is expected to pour tea and make polite conversation with visitors but (we are expected to believe) she has a private passion which provides a separate life outside this public realm, located in the abstract realm of numerical calculations. The problem is that this private passion is never dramatised or expressed in any way. Indeed, it is simply not mentioned again after its first appearance in the text.

These weaknesses are what would normally be described as ‘loose ends’ – that is, issues which are not successfully integrated or resolved in the overall scheme of the novel. But there are simply too many of them, and these weaknesses, coupled with the poorly executed finale to the main drama, suggest a novel which has simply not been carefully conceived or written.

Night and Day – study resources

Night and Day – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Night and Day – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Night and Day – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Night and Day – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Night and Day – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

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

Night and Day – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

Night and Day – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

Virginia Woolf – biographical notes

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Selected Essays – by Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

Night and Day – plot summary

Chapter I. During a Sunday afternoon tea party in Cheyne Walk, Katharine Hilbery shows Ralph Denham some of the relics and souvenirs of her illustrious family. They spar with each other about issues of class and family traditions.

Chapter II. Ralph returns to his lower middle-class family home in Highgate, his mind full of Katharine and the comforts of her fashionable home. He wishes to study alone, but his elder sister Joan brings him news of a family problem which they haven’t the money to solve.

Chapter III. This chapter recounts the history of Katharine’s famous family – of which she is the only child. She and her mother are making no progress with a biography of her grandfather, the famous poet Richard Alardyce. Katharine tries to create a disciplined approach to the task, but her mother lacks all sense of proportion, selection, structure, or purpose. Katharine looks after her mother, and has a secret interest in mathematics.

Chapter IV. Ralph meets Katharine again when he attends a meeting hosted by his suffragist friend Mary Datchet. The speaker William Rodney performs badly. Katharine and Mary discuss work, and Ralph again spars with Katharine regarding class. Katharine leaves the meeting with William Rodney.

Chapter V. Ralph and his friend Harry Sandys follow Katharine and Rodney through the streets to the Embankment. Rodney wants to marry Katharine, but he has essentially chauvinistic views about women. He insists on sending her home in a cab. On then meeting Ralph, Rodney invites him back home for a drink. Ralph is impressed by the cultivated ambiance, and warms to him. He borrows a play Rodney is writing, and a few days later receives an expensive rare edition Rodney has sent him from his collection.

Chapter VI. Mary is happy to begin each day in her own room, and she is very conscious of being a ‘worker’ – although she does not get paid. She works in the morning, then over a substantial lunch she fantasises about Ralph, with whom she is in love. In the afternoon Katharine visits the office, where she becomes the recipient of proselytising on behalf of the suffragist movement. When Ralph arrives there is tension between Katherine and Mary. Ralph leaves with Katharine and then on a bus ride home they return to the subject of culture and his poverty.

Chapter VII. Katherine spends the evening at home having dinner with her parents. Her mother nostalgically recalls the family’s complex history. Katharine remains conscious of the suffragist office.

Chapter VIII. Katharine receives a proposal of marriage from William Rodney and a letter from her aunt regarding her cousin Cyril Alardyce, who is living with a woman to whom he is not married. She discusses the family problems with her father, but he disclaims any responsibility and leaves her to report the news to her mother.

Chapter IX. Katharine feels oppresses by her home, her family, and its history. Mrs Hilbery loses herself in reminiscence instead of working on the biography. Mrs Milvain suddenly appears to discuss the case of Cyril Alardyce. They are then joined by another spinster relative.

Chapter X. Joan thinks anxiously but romantically about her brother Ralph’s future. He is divided between dreams and unrealised ambitions. He has odd hobbies, and he gambles on the Stock Exchange. He goes to see his friend Mary Datchet, even though his thoughts are full of Katharine. He patronises Mary, and is unaware of her strong feelings for him.

Chapter XI. Katharine has written to William Rodney refusing his offer of marriage.She visits his rooms for tea and they talk unsuccessfully about poetry. Yet she feels doomed to marry him, and reverses her decision.

Chapter XII. Ralph visits the Hilbery house and unexpectedly finds Katharine at home. They engage in the usual sparring, but they are interrupted by the arrival of Katharine’s aunts who turn the conversation to literature and family reminiscences. Ralph is angry when they reveal that Katharine is engaged to marry William Rodney. He leaves abruptly in a state of acute disillusionment, and feels he has been betrayed.

Chapter XIII. Ralph meets Mary Datchet in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He is in very low spirits, but will not say what is bothering him. She tries to encourage him, and invites him to her family home for Christmas.

Chapter XIV. Mary goes on to a committee meeting where she finds it difficult to concentrate because of her thoughts about Ralph. She goes home and is visited by Katharine and William Rodney who announce their engagement. She finds something attractive about Katharine, whom she compares to Ralph.

Chapter XV. Ralph visits Mary at her family home in Lincolnshire over Christmas. The scene is one of deep rural life in an old house. He settles comfortably in the welcoming hospitality of the family and feels rejuvenated by the country ambiance.

Chapter XVI. Katharine is also in Lincolnshire at nearby Stogdon House for the Christmas holidays. She sits in the garden at night, worrying about her relationship to William Rodney. She shares her feelings with her favourite cousin Henry Otway. They are interrupted by William Rodney, who is jealous and possessive regarding Katharine.

Chapter XVII. Katharine tries to discuss marriage with her mother and her aunt Charlotte. She cannot understand why her feelings have changed since leaving London, but she realises that she does not love the man she is due to marry. A party from the house sets off for a ritual outing to Lincoln.

Chapter XVIII. Ralph and Mary are walking through the fields towards Lincoln. She is in love with him: he is in love with Katharine, but does not mention it. He suddenly invents a romantic plan to give up work, live in the countryside, and write a book – but the plan noticeably excludes Mary. Ralph is momentarily tempted to ask Mary to marry him, but when he finally realises that she loves him, he changes his mind. When he sees Katharine in the street, Mary finally realises that he is in love with her. The two groups meet by accident and Ralph tells Katharine about his ‘plans’. William Rodney and Katharine then argue, and she tells him that she doesn’t love him, whereupon he is distraught, and cries, after which she changes her mind and agrees to marry him.

Chapter XIX. As Ralph and Mary walk back from Lincoln he suddenly asks her to marry him – but she realises his heart isn’t in it, and she refuses. They eventually, and reluctantly agree to remain friends, but neither of them feels very happy about the arrangement.

Chapter XX. Mary returns to her work in the wake of her disappointment. She feels disillusioned and unable to fully believe in the cause for which she is working. But she eventually adopts a stoical attitude and accepts that she might not be happy, but that she wishes to face up to the Truth.

Chapter XXI. Mary goes home and tries to write, still thinking about Ralph. She is visited by Katharine, towards whom she feels hostile. Both women want to unburden themselves about their feelings. Finally Mary reveals the full truth – that she is in love with Ralph, who is in love with Katharine. Mary feels a complex mixture of humiliation and happiness at having made the revelation.

Chapter XXII. Katharine is inspired by what she has learned, and is late for an appointment with William Rodney. But when she arrives full of intention, he waves his newfound interest in Cassandra Otway in her face as a provocation. They discuss their lack of romantic interest in each other in an emotionally sadistic manner. Katharine almost persuades him that he is in love with Cassandra – but their discussion is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Ralph.

Chapter XXIII. They all feel very awkward with each other, and are unable to speak their minds. Ralph leaves with Katharine, and makes a full revelation of his feelings about her. He also confesses his mistreatment of Mary. Katharine is privately elated by what she hears, but does not respond. Ralph goes home feeling angry about William Rodney.

Chapter XXIV. Mrs Hilbery develops an enthusiasm for Shakespeare, and Katharine is restless. Katharine invites her cousin Cassandra to visit them. She is puzzled by the connections between Ralph, William, Mary, herself, and now Cassandra. She feels that the ‘love’ in these connections should somehow be cherished. She arrives home to find William Rodney at tea. They spar with each other regarding Cassandra, and put their engagement on hold whilst he tests out the possibilities of a relationship with Cassandra- but without making it known publicly.

Chapter XXV. Katharine meets Ralph in Kew Gardens and is impressed by his botanical knowledge. He offers her a compact of honesty and friendship – and she accepts it.

Chapter XXVI. Cassandra Otway arrives in London, young and enthusiastic. There is a dinner party at the Hilyers where Katharine senses that William is getting closer to Cassandra. She leaves them together and visits Mary. There she meets Mr Basnett, a social reformer. When she arrives back home, William and Cassandra are both very happy.

Chapter XXVII. William, Katharine, Ralph, and Cassandra visit the zoo. William is angry and argues with Katharine. Ralph decides to humiliate Katharine by taking her to his home for tea. She is shocked aesthetically but warms to the conviviality of close family life. Ralph feels that his plan has failed, and they draw closer in their friendship pact again. He gives up his plan to live in a cottage.

Chapter XXVIII. Ralph tries to exorcise his obsession with Katharine, but fails completely. He wants to communicate his feelings to someone, and goes to see Mary, where he inflicts them on her. Then he goes to the Hilbery house, where he meets William leaving. They admit to each other that they are in love with and suffering because of Katharine.

Chapter XXIX. That night Cassandra reveals to Katharine that she has been affronted by a declaration from William – which causes Katharine to reveal that they are no longer engaged. Next day Mrs Milvain arrives to say that people are talking about the irregular ‘engagement’. William arrives to tell Katharine that they should drop the connection with Cassandra and revert to their former fully-engaged status. Katharine reveals that Cassandra is in love with him, whereupon he changes his mind. Cassandra has overheard their conversation, and is united with William.

Chapter XXX. Ralph has been loitering outside the house, hoping to see Katharine. When he is admitted, Rodney’s new engagement is revealed, and Ralph is left to talk with Katharine alone. They both feel ambiguous about their love for each other. Mrs Hilbery interrupts them to discuss poetry.

Chapter XXXI. Cassandra wants to be married on the same day as Katharine, who is still uncertain about the true nature of her relationship to Ralph. She feels under pressure from Cassandra and Rodney. She visits Mary (who is no longer in love with Ralph, though she regrets the fact) and they search for him fruitlessly throughout London. But when Katharine goes back home he is waiting for her and she collapses with love for him.

Chapter XXXII. The two couples celebrate by going out to a music hall, then for the next two days go to Greenwich and Hampton Court. Mrs Milvain then reports her suspicions to Mr Hilbery. When he questions Katharine she tells him that her engagement to Rodney has been mutually called off. Mr Hilbery demands explanations from Katharine, who will only say that she is no longer engaged. She and Ralph are suffering some sort of metaphysical problem about their relationship.

Chapter XXXIII. Mr Hilbery bans Ralph and William from the house, and sends Cassandra back home to Lincolnshire. Mrs Hilbery returns from Stratford and is entirely sympathetic to Katharine’s problem. She goes out to collect Ralph and William and brings them back to Cheyne Walk. They are joined by Cassandra who has missed her train. All is forgiven, and the two couples become engaged.

Chapter XXXIV. After dinner Ralph and Katharine take a bus ride and walk to Mary Datchet’s rooms – but Ralph cannot bring himself to go in and tell her their news.

Oxford World Classics edition

Night and Day – characters

Richard Alardyce	a great 19 century poet – Katharine’s grandfather
Mr Trevor Hilbery	editor of the Critical Review – Katharine’s father
Mrs Hilbery	Alardyce’s only child – Katharine’s mother
Katharine Hilbery	their only child (27)
Ralph Denham	a solicitor’s clerk (29)
Joan Denham	his elder sister (33)
Mary Datchet	a suffragist volunteer (25)
William Rodney	a government clerk and aesthete
Harry Sandys	a college friend of Denham
Mrs Celia Milvain	Katharine’s interfering aunt – Hilbery’s sister
Cyril Alardyce	lecturer at workmen’s college – Katharine’s cousin
Reverend Wyndham Datchet	Mary’s father – a rector
Elizabeth Datchet	Mary’s elder sister
Edward Datchet	an estate agent – Mary’s brother
Christopher Datchet	a law student
Henry Otway	Katharine’s favourite cousin in Lincolnshire
Lady Charlotte Otway	Katharine’s aunt
Cassandra Otway	Katharine’s attractive cousin (22)
Horace Basnett	a young radical social reformer

Other works by Virginia Woolf

Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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