Sign of Four Posts

Hello Victorianists,

On Thursday, we will be wrapping up our discussion of Victorian literature.  It feels like someone should be getting married, no?

As a way to revise what we have studied and synthesize the discussions of a very productive semester, I would like you to choose one text from the second half of the semester (those of Dickens, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arnold, Hopkins, Eliot, Meredith, Hardy, or Levy) to compare to The Sign of Four.  What connections can you discover between Doyle’s text—its narrative, characters, themes, style, tone—and that of one of the other authors?

For example, you might note that The Sign of Four has a double setting: the characters during the actual unfolding of the adventure remain in London but the mystery and Small’s lengthy retelling position us in India.  That Doyle sets his text on a symbolically potent borderline might remind you of Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” located as it is on the cliffs between England and France.  You might consider how each author uses the cultural/national border—how he asserts the difference between self and other, and how he blurs that distinction.

Or, perhaps Doyle’s treatment of female characters as commodities (Watson compares his engagement to Mary Morstan to gaining a treasure like that of the Indian jewels) reminds you of Christina Rossetti’s great poem of fruit and prostitution.  Comparing the power that women in each text have and how they operate in the Victorian exchange economy might be illuminating. 

Don’t be afraid, of course, to compare seemingly unlike things; we didn’t read Eliot for nothing.  We have plenty of light at our command; disperse it as you will over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe. 

Please enjoy the famous images of Holmes by Sydney Paget (his original illustrations did much to create the image of Doyle's detective we still have).  Then, please enjoy this scene from the iconic 1987 film adaptation of The Sign of Four by the British television behemoth, ITV Granada.  The clip features the revelation of Tongo (beginning at 0:52).

Happy (re)reading,
Prof. M.

from "The Silver Blaze"

from "The Man with the Twisted Lip"

Amy Levy responses

Hello Victorianists,

For Thursday we are returning to the works of Amy Levy, whose “Magdalen” we briefly looked at when discussing dramatic monologues written from the perspective of the powerless.

We are now delving into some of her journal articles, one of her short stories, and some selections from her last poetry collection, A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse.  One of the dominant theme of Levy’s works across all these genres is the nature outsider identity or rather, what it is like to be both within and outside of a dominant culture.  On the one hand, Levy grew up in a well-off, middle-class family of acculturated Jews.  She was well educated; in fact she was the first Jewish student at both her preparatory school and at her college at Cambridge, and the first female Jewish student to attend Cambridge as a whole.  As a young adult she lived in London and enjoyed the independence that the urban world provided to “New Women.” 

On the other hand, these privileges were precarious and partial.  The law that made it possible for Jews and Catholics to attend universities, for example, was passed in 1871, and though women were permitted to take classes it would be several more years before they were allowed to take degrees.   As is visible throughout her writing, the academic, religious, social, and political worlds she inhabited were still deeply biased toward Christian men.  As a Jewish woman who was attracted to other women, Levy found herself an outsider to hegemonic British culture in profound and complex ways. 

Choose a passage from one of the texts and examine how Levy depicts minority identity.  You might consider, for example, how Levy depicts the eponymous Cohen, considering her frustrations with traditional representations of Jewish characters outlined in “The Jew in Fiction.”  Or you might consider the less clearly defined identity of the speaker in her poems, considering how life in London enables or constrains this figure.

Enjoy a photo of Levy as well as one of the many cartoons mocking the New Woman, a figure of female independence at the turn of the century.

Happy reading,

Prof. M.

George Du Maurier cartoon for Punch, 1894.

Middlemarch, Books 7-8 posts

Hello Victorianists,

On Thursday we will draw to a close our discussion of Middlemarch.  Speaking in the broadest possible terms, western literary tradition allows for two main types of narrative ending.  Comedies resolve the romantic and erotic tensions of their narratives in the closure of marriage; tragedies end in epic failure and irretrievable loss. Middlemarch seems to want to end both comically and tragically.

Both marriages and tragic failures abound in the final books.  Mary and Fred finally overcome the obstacles to marriage, while Dorothea and Rosamond remarry, getting a chance to revise their initial choices.  You might examine one passage describing one of the marital relationships.  To what extent does the marriage create closure?  How is it like and unlike other marriages in the text?  Does marriage indicate, as it is often expected to, a successful end of struggles?

Alongside the marriages, remarriages, and renewed marriages (think Harriet and Nicholas Bulstrode) at the end of the novel, we find also a series of failures.  As Casaubon never completed his Key, Lydgate never finds his primal tissue.  Moments when characters recognize this failure are agonizing.  Bulstrode nearly collapses under the “quick vision that his life was after all a failure” (726) when his dark past and his role in Raffles’ death are revealed.  Rosamond, though a very different figure, experiences a similar “collapse” of her hopes and visions.  After Will’s speech, “her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering in the midst as a lonely bewildered consciousness” (780). 

You might examine a single passage that discusses one character’s failure(s).  What has caused the failure?  Is there any recompense?  Does the failure leave us with the classical sense of catharsis?  Or does the failure deny us relief and closure?

For your visual enjoyment, some images of marriage and failure from a 1910 edition of the novel:

Dorothea and Will

Rosamond and Lydgate

Happy reading,

Prof. M.

Middlemarch, Books 4-5 posts

Spoiler alert, my fellow Victorianists.  The following gives away some key plot points of Books 4-5.

Books 4 and 5 develop around strangers and estrangement.  Two strangers—the frog-faced Joshua Rigg and the enigmatic Raffles—turn up suddenly in “the prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch” (323).  They are strange in that little is known about them and they come from distant places, but yet it quickly becomes clear that they are not unconnected with the people and the affairs of the community.  Rigg, we learn, is the illegitimate son of Featherstone, meaning he is a blood relation to many of the would-be heirs.  Raffles it seems has connections both to Bulstrode and to Will, and also brings to light a connection between the other two.  You might consider, then, the extent to which one can be a stranger in Eliot’s world.  Those who appear to be wildly different or foreign are often revealed to be intimately connected to the town.  Do we see anyone who is completely separate from the community? 

Of course, proximity is no guarantee of intimacy.  Books 4 and 5 also feature a number of estrangements between related characters.  Mr. Brooke’s career as a reform politician is endangered by the fact that he is largely estranged from his tenants—people who live on the same land that he does.  Marital estrangement also continues to escalate.  Rosamond and Lydgate, shockingly, grow further and further from each other, as do Casaubon and Dorothea.  In the case of the latter, Casaubon’s death would seem to sever them completely.  Moreover, Dorothea feels a new level of estrangement—“a violent shock of repulsion from her departed husband” (490)—when she learns about the codicil Casaubon added to his will.  At the same time, his “dead hand” seems to retain a hold on her: Casaubon remains intertwined with Dorothea’s life so long as his injunction not to marry Will affects her feelings and behavior.  You might examine a scene of estrangement and consider how the people involved are separated from each other and how they remain bound together.

Finally, you might consider the appeal of the strange.  Throughout the novel we have seen Middlemarchers cleave to strangers.  When watching Featherstone’s funeral procession, Mrs. Cadwallader is drawn to the face of the unknown man that is “queerer” than any other (328).  Earlier, too, we learned that both Rosamond and Bulstrode liked Lydgate the more for being a stranger to Middlemarch.  “One can begin so manyt things with a new person,” the narrator noted in relation to Bulstrode, even begin to be a better man” (125).  What is so useful about strangers?  Considering how Rosamond and Bulstrode are doing now, were they right in their sense that a stranger would provide them with opportunities?

Enjoy below some images of isolation and estrangement (and perhaps strangeness).

All best,
Prof. M.

John William Waterhouse, Ophelia (1889)

Frederick Leighton, Solitude (c. 1890)

Middlemarch, "Old and Young" posts

Hello Victorians,

On Thursday we will be discussing Book II, “Old and Young.”  In your responses, you might consider the various things and people to which this title refers.  Perhaps most directly it suggests the relatively old Casaubon and the relatively young Dorothea whose marital union will come back into focus mid-way through Book II.  After all, the narrator and other characters often describe Dorothea in terms of her blooming youth while Casaubon is continually depicted as if extremely old or even dead (he looks like a “death’s head skinned over” in Mrs. Cadwallader’s colorful expression).  And yet, in point of fact, Casaubon is merely middle-aged, and Dorothea, even from the opening sentence, appears to have affinities with a distant past.  Moreover, Casaubon is no less naïve than his wife in the illusions he cherishes about marriage and marital partnership.  To what extent, then, is their relationship defined by their difference in age?  Or does the title in fact apply equally to other characters?  In general, what do the young people of the novel have in common; what separates them from the old?

Alternatively, we might take “Young and Old” in a broader sense, applying to generations or historical progression.  Notice how frequently Eliot shifts between the individual histories of her particular characters and a larger, cultural history.  Lydgate, for example, understands his identity in direct reference to medical innovators who have come before him.  Further, this book is filled with oscillations between the present moment of the narrative (1829-32) and distant moments in history.  Dorothea and Casaubon voyage to Rome on their honeymoon, for example, where Dorothea struggles to comprehend the fragmented vision of ancient worlds she encounters, and to feel any kinship with that lost culture.  What is the function of such large historical narratives in relation to the stories Eliot is telling?      

Happy reading,

Prof. M.

Roman statue, called Sleeping Ariadne, Vatican Museums; the statue to which Dorothea is compared in the opening of Chapter 19.

Melancolia I, Albrecht Durer.  This is the most iconic representation of the pose that indicated melancholy in Renaissance culture, the pose referred to in the Dante epigraph to Chapter 19 and in Eliot's description of Dorothea.