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Date: 06 December 2002 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 4 Dec 2002 to 5 Dec 2002 (#2002-334)
There are 28 messages totalling 745 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. The World in 1900 (2)
2. Query: Wildean quote? (2)
3. Adultery (21)
4. folklore and executed criminals in Victorian sources (2)
5. Folklore and executed criminals in Victorian sources
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 03:40:04 EST
From: Judith Flanders <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: The World in 1900
For all of those in London, the National Film Theatre will be screening
films/a film (it's not quite clear from their publicity info which) called
The World in 1900 on 25 January. The NFT hasn't got it's January schedule up
yet, but their website is www.bfi.org.uk.
Best
Judith Flanders
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 03:20:12 -0600
From: Tracey S Rosenberg <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The World in 1900
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Judith Flanders wrote:
> For all of those in London, the National Film Theatre will be screening
> films/a film (it's not quite clear from their publicity info which)
> called The World in 1900 on 25 January.
It's a series of short films, all of them made around the turn of the
century, linked into a cultural travelogue. I can't dig up the
information right now, but sometime in the past month I sent a notice to
Victoria-L, with a link to the personal webpage of the guy who co-presents
the show (this page has a list of all the films included). So it should
be in the list archives. If in fact it never made the list and I'm
hallucinating, e-mail me privately if you want the information and I'll
pry it out of my sent-mail folder.
Tracey S. Rosenberg
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 07:51:19 -0700
From: Jason Boyd <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Query: Wildean quote?
Perhaps the Wilde quote you are thinking of is from his fairy tale "The
Remarkable Rocket":
"I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that
sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying." As Ian
Small notes in his Penguin edition of Wilde's _Complete Shorter Fiction_
, this is a "joke that underwent many repetitions: cf. Lord Goring's
exchange with his father in _An Ideal Husband_:
LORD CAVERSHAM: Do you always really understand what you say, sir?
LORD GORING: Yes, father, if I listen attentively." (Act III)
Jason Boyd
[log in to unmask]
Myrtle Stanhope wrote:
> I've been having trouble tracking down a quotation that may or may not be
> Wilde's. The gist of it is a comment made about talking to oneself
> because that is how one is assured of an intelligent audience.
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 13:17:51 -0000
From: Michel Faber <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Query: Wildean quote?
Jason Boyd surmised that the quote Myrtle Stanhope is looking for
may be from Wilde, as follows:
> "I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that
> sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
This is a droll quote, but I'm sure it's not the one Myrtle is half-
remembering. Like her, I am convinced I've read a quote
somewhere that runs pretty much as she says, ie,
> talking to oneself because that is how one is assured of an
> intelligent audience.
I don't think it was Wilde and indeed I doubt it was even 19th
century. I think it's 20th century, from correspondence, a novel or
even a movie script. The chances of tracking it down via VICTORIA
seem slim.
Best wishes,
Michel Faber
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 08:06:31 -0700
From: Jeff Franklin <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Adultery
Dear all,
I would not be surprised if this question has been worked through before,
but I am looking for Victorian novels in which female characters commit (or
are suspected of committing) adultery. I am aware of many instances of
"fallen" women and of women who have sex out of wedlock, but I'm stumped on
the adultery.
Best,
Jeff
Jeffrey Franklin
808 S. Vine Street
Denver, CO 80209
720-570-2923
Dr. J. Jeffrey Franklin
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of English
Campus Box 175
P. O. Box 173364
University of Colorado at Denver
Denver, CO 80217-3364
303-556-4026
(this address is not suitable for UPS or FedEx)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 10:07:13 -0500
From: Elisabeth Rose Gruner <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Isabel Vane from East Lynne comes immediately to mind as an adulterous
woman. Cathy I in Wuthering Heights? I'm blanking on names, but there's
an adulterous woman in Anne Brontë's Tenant of Wildfell Hall, too. Is Lady
Dedlock in Bleak House adulterous, or simply fallen?
Others will suggest more soon, I'm sure.
Elisabeth Rose Gruner
Associate Professor of English & Women's Studies
University of Richmond
Richmond VA 23173
Voice: 804/289-8298 Fax: 804-289-8313
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.richmond.edu/~egruner
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 09:23:22 -0600
From: Peter Garrett <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
For a fascinating extended account of false suspicion of adultery,
culminating in a false confession, see Trollope's _He Knew He Was Right_.
___________________________________________________________________________
____ Peter Garrett
Department of English (217) 333-2391
Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory (217) 333-2581
University of Illinois (217) 333-4321 FAX
608 S. Wright St. [log in to unmask]
Urbana, IL 61801
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 15:24:41 GMT
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Mrs Tranter's (? correct name? - text not to hand)
adultery in George Eliot's _Felix Holt the Radical_,
though it took place before the opening of the novel,
is central to the plot. Lydia Glasher has left her
husband for Grandcourt (and had several children by
him) in _Daniel Deronda_. Rosamund in _Middlemarch_
seems at one point to be contemplating emotional, if
not actually consummated, adultery with Ladislaw.
Aren't there a number of Kipling's _Plain Tales from
the Hills_ which involve adulterous relationships? (or
does it have to be novels?). It's many years since I
read Flora Annie Steel's _On the Face of the Waters_
but have a very faint recollection that there was some
kind of forbidden relationship happening against the
backdrop of the Indian Mutiny.
Lesley Hall
[log in to unmask]
Homepage:
www.lesleyahall.net
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 11:34:48 -0400
From: Rohan Maitzen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Monica Widdowson (nee Madden) in Gissing's "The Odd Women" nearly commits
adultery and is certainly suspected of it. And there's Mrs. Transome in
"Felix Holt". The adulterous woman in "Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is
Annabella, Lady Lowborough (nee Wilmot).
Rohan
Rohan Maitzen
Associate Professor
Department of English
Dalhousie University
[log in to unmask]
http://is.dal.ca/~rmaitzen/home.html
"Incoherence is not less a defect because an imperfect foreign writer once
made use of it." (Walter Bagehot, 1864)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 10:34:27 -0500
From: Dara Rossman Regaignon <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
And then there's also Annie Strong, suspected and accused of adulterous
desire, if not adultery itself, in _David Copperfield_.
Dara
--
Dara Rossman Regaignon
Princeton University Writing Program
609/258-7349
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 15:55:18 +0000
From: Nicola Bown <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Not, I know, a novel, but *the* image of the adulterous woman is Augustus
Egg's _Past and Present_ trilogy, especially the central picture, which has
the woman lying prone in agony while her husband, stunned, reads the letter
revealing her adultery, and the two children innocently build a house of
cards. The review in the _Athenaeum_ from 1860 is really interesting too.
It's quoted by Lynda Nead in her extensive discussion of the pictures in
_Myths of Sexuality_.
Nicola Bown
--
Nicola Bown
Birkbeck College
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 09:52:28 -0600
From: Mark D King <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
You might also want to take a peek at Trollope's *Phineas Finn* and
*Phineas Redux* (Lady Laura Kennedy) and Trollope's *The Bertrams* (I think
the character's name is Caroline --sorry, I don't have my books with me.)
Best,
Mark King
PhD Candidate
Louisiana State University
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 16:07:28 -0000
From: Paul Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Miss Gwilt in Wilkie Collins's Armadale (1866) is suspected of having been
an adulteress before the book began. She was acquitted of murdering her
husband to hide the fact.
Paul
Paul Lewis
web www.paullewis.co.uk
tel 07836 217311
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 09:12:39 -0800
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
The climactic portion of Thackeray's Vanity Fair focuses on whether Becky
Sharp committed adultery with Lord Steyne. Was she guilty or was she not,
the narrator asks (and never really says). Her husband thinks she's "as
good as guilty," though, so it comes to the same thing: Becky's marriage
effectively ends and she is expelled from good society.
In Dickens's _Hard Times_ there is adulterous desire between Louisa
Gradgrind and James Harthouse which results not in any actual adultery, but
in authorial punishment for Louisa.
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 12:10:21 -0400
From: "Terry L. Meyers" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Kind of a complicated case, but Tess, married to Angel Clare,
commits adultery in churchly terms when she returns to be with Alec.
_________________________________________________________________________
Terry L. Meyers voice-mail: 757-221-3932
English Department fax: 757-221-1844
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
********
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available for public
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_________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 13:11:09 -0500
From: "Cynthia M. VanSickle" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this yet, but Thomas Hardy's Tess of the
d'Urbervilles addresses adultery. Once Tess is abandoned by Angel, she ends
up living with her initial seducer, Alec, as his wife. Of course, the novel
culminated with Tess's murder of Alec and subsequent punishment by hanging.
I hope this helps. Best of luck!
Cynthia VanSickle
Wayne State University
Department of English
51 W. Warren Ave. #2244
Detroit, MI 48202
Phone: (313) 577-5627
Fax: (313) 577-8618
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
"The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed."
-- Charlotte Brontë
_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
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------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 11:13:08 -0500
From: Jamie Ridenhour <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Louisa in Dickens' _Hard Times_ is another example. It may not have been
actually adultery, but it was close, and she was suspected of it if I
remember right.
Jamie Ridenhour
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 07:50:57 -0800
From: Heather Wenig <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Perhaps I am not remembering correctly, it's been over
a year since I read it, but doesn't Basil's wife
commit adultery in Wilkie Collins's _Basil_? Becky
Sharp is another example of a wife suspected of
committing adultery with one man and is invited to do
so with another in Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_.
Heather Wenig
[log in to unmask]
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 11:51:35 -0800
From: Priti Joshi <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Lady Audley in Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret.
Priti. At 08:06 AM 12/5/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I would not be surprised if this question has been worked through before,
> but I am looking for Victorian novels in which female characters commit
> (or are suspected of committing) adultery. I am aware of many instances
> of "fallen" women and of women who have sex out of wedlock, but I'm
> stumped on the adultery.
>
> Best,
> Jeff
>
>
>
>
> Jeffrey Franklin
> 808 S. Vine Street
> Denver, CO 80209
> 720-570-2923
>
> Dr. J. Jeffrey Franklin
> Director of Graduate Studies
> Department of English
> Campus Box 175
> P. O. Box 173364
> University of Colorado at Denver
> Denver, CO 80217-3364
> 303-556-4026
> (this address is not suitable for UPS or FedEx)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Priti Joshi
Assistant Professor
Dept of English & Comparative Literature
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-8140
Phn: (619) 594-5170
Fax: (619) 594-4998
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 15:28:27 -0500
From: Rajani Iyer <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Again, it's not a novel, but doesn't the husband in Meredith's _Modern
Love_ suspect his wife (also unnamed, if I'm remembering properly) of
adultery?
Rajani Iyer
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 14:39:18 -0500
From: Gerri Brightwell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
Wilkie Collins' Basil marries a young woman on the understanding that
the marriage is not to be made public or consummated for a year. Just
as it is about to be, Basil discovers his wife has been having an affair
with her father's clerk (and gentleman manqué) Mannion.
Gerri Brightwell
University of Minnesota
Heather Wenig wrote:
> Perhaps I am not remembering correctly, it's been over
> a year since I read it, but doesn't Basil's wife
> commit adultery in Wilkie Collins's _Basil_? Becky
> Sharp is another example of a wife suspected of
> committing adultery with one man and is invited to do
> so with another in Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_.
>
> Heather Wenig
> [log in to unmask]
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 22:05:18 +0100
From: neil davie <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: folklore and executed criminals in Victorian sources
I would be very interested in hearing from list members who have come =
across references in Victorian literary or other sources to popular =
beliefs linked to the bodies of executed criminals. I have already found =
some examples of beliefs linked to the supposedly magical powers of the =
rope used on the gallows (its sale could be a nice little earner for the =
hangman), or the healing powers of contact with the recently deceased =
prisoner's skin (as described by Thomas Hardy in "The withered arm", =
*Blackwood's Magazine*, Jan. 1888). Further examples would be most =
welcome.=20
Thanks in advance!
Best wishes,
Neil
Neil Davie, Universit=E9 Paris 7, Paris, France.
([log in to unmask])
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 10:43:05 -0500
From: Anna Henchman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
In Hardy's Two on a Tower, Viviette Constantine is adulterous (though
not far into it she thinks her husband is dead), and then once her husband
really dies and her lover leaves, she finds herself pregnant,
marries another man and pretends the baby is his; Tess is adulterous
(lives with Alec after marrying Angel); and so is Sue Bridehead in Jude
the Obscure (marries Phillotson and then lives with Jude and had chidren
with him).
Best,
Anna Henchman
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Jeff Franklin wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I would not be surprised if this question has been worked through before,
> but I am looking for Victorian novels in which female characters commit
> (or are suspected of committing) adultery. I am aware of many instances
> of "fallen" women and of women who have sex out of wedlock, but I'm
> stumped on the adultery.
>
> Best,
> Jeff
>
>
>
>
> Jeffrey Franklin
> 808 S. Vine Street
> Denver, CO 80209
> 720-570-2923
>
> Dr. J. Jeffrey Franklin
> Director of Graduate Studies
> Department of English
> Campus Box 175
> P. O. Box 173364
> University of Colorado at Denver
> Denver, CO 80217-3364
> 303-556-4026
> (this address is not suitable for UPS or FedEx)
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 13:50:51 -0700
From: Robin Hoffman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
What about Maria and Henry Crawford in _Mansfield Park_?
And as long as suspected/contemplated (or narrowly prevented) adultery is
fair game, there's an interesting case with Louisa Gradgrind-Bounderby and
Jem Harthouse in _Hard Times_. (Based on the responses so far, we might
supposed that Dickens seems to enjoy casting suspicion on married women...)
Keep warm,
Robin Hoffman
[log in to unmask]
University of Richmond
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 13:35:55 -0600
From: Tracy Nectoux <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
If someone's already mentioned Hardy's "Jude the Obscure," forgive me.
Sue Bridehead was still married to her husband when she lived with Jude,
no?
Also Browning has two poems in which he alludes to the idea that wives
have committed adultery: "Porphyria's Lover" and "My Last Duchess."
Peace,
Tracy
Tracy Nectoux, Instructor
Parkland College
Dept. of English & Critical Studies
2400 W. Bradley Ave.
Champaign, IL 61821
217-353-2626
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 23:35:01 +0000
From: Mike Newman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adultery
On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 15:06, Jeff Franklin wrote:
> I would not be surprised if this question has been worked through before,
> but I am looking for Victorian novels in which female characters commit
> (or are suspected of committing) adultery. I am aware of many instances
> of "fallen" women and of women who have sex out of wedlock, but I'm
> stumped on the adultery.
For an interesting twist on adultery, which in fact never quite happens
but causes all manner of problems and her eventual downfall in pursuit
of a career as a professional musician, it might be worth investigating
Alma Frothingham in George Gissing's "The Whirlpool".
Remains in print, with an excellent introduction and notes by Bill
Greenslade.
Mike
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 21:42:21 +0000
From: Gillian Kemp <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Folklore and executed criminals in Victorian sources
5 December 2002
Neil:
You could try V.A.C. Gatrell's excellent book 'The Hanging Tree: execution
and the English people 1770-1868' (Oxford University Press, 1996).
Victor Hugo's 'The Last Day of a Condemned Man' may have something?
Gillian
..........................................
Gillian Kemp, MA
Independent Scholar
<[log in to unmask]>
..........................................
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 11:06:11 +1300
From: KATE LYON <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: folklore and executed criminals in Victorian sources
There's a reference to the Hand of Glory in one of the Ingoldsby Legends - I
think that people still believed in it up to about the middle of the
nineteenth century. Burglars used it - it was a hand taken from a person on
the gallows, dipped in wax, and then candles were inserted between the
fingers, so that eventually the fingers would burn too. Burglars used them
to commit burglaries, as the sight of it - understandably - could give the
poor homeowner a case of the screaming abdabs and the burglars could carry
on.
Kate Lyon
New Zealand
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 4 Dec 2002 to 5 Dec 2002 (#2002-334)
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