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.