---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 2 Dec 2004 to 3 Dec 2004 (#2004-177)
From: "Automatic digest processor" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, December 4, 2004 5:00 am
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are 29 messages totalling 963 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. The Diorama (3)
2. paintings/photographs of women writing (5)
3. Painting/Photographs of Women Writing
4. Women writing
5. Women writing: book illustrations
6. theoretical sources on class (6)
7. Elephant imagery in Dickens' "Hard Times"
8. images of women writing
9. CFP: 'Jews, Empire and Race'
10. "Wooden Legs" (6)
11. Photographs of women writing
12. A Woman of Mind
13. book on 19th century novels: marital versus family love
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:32:46 -0000
From: Judith Flanders <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: The Diorama
I am just re-reading Richard Altick's The Shows of London, and I note =
that
he says that until the mid-1970s the Pugin building for the Diorama =
survived
in Park Square East in London, until the 1920s as a Baptist Chapel, then =
as
part of the University of London. As he was writing, permission was =
granted
to convert the building into a mosque. Was this done? I am trying to =
work
out where it would have been. Park Square East is now (I think) only one
side of a square, where the Prince's Trust is, and I certainly don't
remember a mosque. Is a remnant of the Diorama left?
Best
Judith
[log in to unmask]
=20
=20
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:47:38 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: paintings/photographs of women writing
There's a photograph of Mary (Mrs. Humphry) Ward with a pen in hand on my
still-not-ready-for-prime-time-even-though-it's-been-up-for-three-years
Ward web site. The site is at
http://www.lima.ohio-state.edu/academics/english/marcella/Ward/index.html
It's in the image gallery, and although the student who set up the site
for me labelled the photo "Ward at Work," it looks more like "Ward
addressing invitations" to me. It's not my favorite picture of her by any
means, partly for that very problem that even _The Bookman_ can only show
a literary woman writing when the context is non-literary. Hrumph. Still,
it's a photo of a woman holding a pen. I hope it's helpful.
Beth Sutton-Ramspeck
Associate Professor of English
The Ohio State University at Lima
Galvin 470C, 4240 Campus Drive
Lima, OH 45804
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:57:55 -0000
From: Lee Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Diorama
It looks like the walls/outline of the original are still there and it is
the Prince's Trust buildings. See ...
http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/DIORAMA_WOOD_1_1.html
for a good essay on the building and dioramas in general. In particular, the
aerial photo showing the surviving building's outline,
http://www.midleykent.fsnet.co.uk/diorama/Diorama_Wood_3.htm which can still
be seen if you look at the aerial photo of the area from multimap.co.uk.
regards,
Lee
www.victorianlondon.org
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:13:19 -0000
From: Lee Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: paintings/photographs of women writing
A Cruickshank cartoon from 1847 reveals the truth about the domestic lives
of women writers (ahem)
http://www.victorianlondon.org/women/education.htm
Actually, though I'm of the wrong gender, it does rather resemble my flat.
regards,
Lee
www.victorianlondon.org
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:48:16 +0000
From: Gillian Kemp <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Painting/Photographs of Women Writing
3 December 2004
In 'Julia Margaret Cameron's Women' by Sylvia Wolf [Yale University Press,
1998[ there is a photograph by Mrs Cameron entitled 'Our May, 1870' which
depicts May at her desk writing. In my copy it is on page 40
Best regards
Gillian
Gillian Kemp,MA
MPhil/PhD Candidate
Birkbeck College
University of London
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:18:09 +0100
From: Amelia Yeates <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Women writing
Re: Lee's query about women writing, there might be some useful images in
Bergman-Carton's book The Woman of Ideas which is a very useful book on
19thc French art.
Best,
Amelia Yeates,
University of Birmingham.
--
Whatever you Wanadoo:
http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/time/
This email has been checked for most known viruses - find out more at:
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:08:29 -0500
From: Perry Willett <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: paintings/photographs of women writing
When designing the website for the Victorian Women Writers Project
<http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp>, I spent a long time looking through
periodicals for images of women writing, and found very few. Most of the
women in the images I found didn't seem to be enjoying it much
either--sobbing while writing a letter to a departed lover, that kind of
thing. The one that adorns the VWWP homepage is about the only one I found
who seems somewhat happy about the experience. It's not a common image for
this period.
Perry Willett
University of Michigan
[log in to unmask]
>>> [log in to unmask] 12/02/04 6:57 PM >>>
Dear List,
I am looking for 19C images of women writing.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:04:43 -0600
From: Michael Hargreave Mawson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: paintings/photographs of women writing
Dear Lee,
As far as photographs are concerned, I do have a signed photographic
postcard showing early-Edwardian stage actress Phyllis Dare signing
autographs - but this is perhaps not quite what you are after! Let me
know if you'd like a scan, and I'll rummage through the box-room.
ATB
--
Mike
Michael Hargreave Mawson
<OC[at]46thFoot[dot]com>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 10:33:29 -0600
From: Ellen Moody <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Women writing: book illustrations
There may be very few paintings and photographs of
women writing in the 19th century, but there are a plethora
of (or at least numerous) images of women writing in the
idyllic style book illustrations from the 1860s on. I can't
say that the women look happy; they certainly look
deeply absorbed and industrious.
Here are a few I've put on my site, just about all in
illustration of original or early editions Trollope's novels:
Marcus Stone for _He Knew He Was Right_:
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/HKHWRPriscill.jpg
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/hkhwrnwrite.jpg
Francis Arthur Fraser for _The Golden Lion of Granpere_:
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/marie.jpg
Henry Woods for _The Vicar of Bullhampton:
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/marie.jpg
Millas for _Kept in the Dark_:
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/kept.jpg
These are only a selection of those to be found in
the original book illustrations for Trollope's novels.
There are others to be found in illustrations for
other contemporary novelists. Just about all I've
seen are in the idyllic style (discussed and reprinted
by Reid, White and Goldman in their various
invaluable reprints of these illustrations). All
those I've noted for Trollope are of women writing
letters -- not books.
Would anyone care to speculate why it was socially
acceptable/permissible/conventionally appropriate
to depict women writing in book illustrations but
not in paintings or photographs. Obviously it's
true that in the particular scenes of the novels where
such illustrations occur the woman character is
in fact imagined writing a letter. But why chose
this scene and not another? Why was it socially
taboo to paint or photograph a woman writing?
I'll add that very popular today are luxuriously
produced calendars of women reading. Typically
the pictures or photos are in color and show
the woman dressed expensively and in luxurious
surroundings or as someone who is obviously
at leisure. Very popular too are little girls
reading. There is usually (but not always) a
kind of sexuality or sensuality depicted in
such pictures -- the implication (one mad
explicit in 18th century depictions of women
reading) that such imaginings will be erotic.
So the image becomes a "Come hither ..." as
well as flattery and compensation/consolation/
identification (empathy anyone?) for the woman
buying such a calendar.
Ellen
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 10:29:46 -0500
From: Cathrine Frank <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: paintings/photographs of women writing
Dear Lee,
This will be a circuitous route to answering your question, but here
goes. The link below is to the cover of the 1998 edition of Showalter's
A Literature of their Own .
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0691004765/ref=sib_dp_pop_fc/102-2814665-9155314?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S001#reader-link
This image doesn't show the woman writing, or even reading that pile of
papers for that matter; however, I know there's another one featuring
the same woman/style that does (I have a postcard of it at home). Its
caption is The New Theater, I think, but more to the point, it features
the woman with pen in hand in a clearly contemplative mood- - as if
she's stopped writing mid-sentence. I especially like the other iconic
figures in it, a burning cigarette for one.
Does anyone know the source for the cover? Or the name of the series,
assuming that where there are two such pictures there are probably
more?
Cathrine
Cathrine O. Frank
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of New England
11 Hills Beach Road
Biddeford, ME 04005
(207) 283-0170 x.2709
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:34:55 -0600
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: theoretical sources on class
I'm teaching a graduate seminar next semester on Victorian social class and
social classes. I have a lot of wonderful literature, Victorian social
history, and modern historical scholarship to choose from, but I'm not sure
what, if anything, to include in the category of modern theoretical
sources. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance for your help,
Ellen Rosenman
[log in to unmask]
Ellen Bayuk Rosenman, Chair
English Department
1203 Patterson Office Tower
University of Kentucky
Lexington KY 40506
859-257-1292
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 07:51:19 -0800
From: Peter O'Neill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Elephant imagery in Dickens' "Hard Times"
In her introduction to the Penguin _Hard Times_, Kate Flint discusses how
the rhetorical "double movements" of the novel often render it
"particularly resistant to interpretive certitude." At one point, Flint
suggests that Dickens's use of metaphor in the novel becomes diversionary:
"[H]is transformative treatment of the realities of the industrial
landscape--his melancholy-mad elephants, his smoke-serpents, his forests
of looms--distracts the reader from considerig the appalling aspects of
'machinery and reality' and redirects their attention to verbal virtuosity
instead: indeed, the industrial conditions furnish the occasion for it.
'Let them be!' reads two ways: both as a call to action, and,
paradoxically and more troublingly, as a plea for passivity, the realities
of industrial life providing the basis on which both didactic and
imaginative writing are built." (xxxi)
Further, Valentine Cunningham discusses rhetorical tension in _Hard Times_
in his study, _In the Reading Gaol_.
Best,
Peter O'Neill
[log in to unmask]
---------------------------------
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:37:24 -0700
From: "Colleen J. Denney" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: images of women writing
Hello VICTORIA,
=20
Regarding images of women writing, there is great cartoon by the French
artist, Honore Daumier, entitled "Mother in Throes of Composition, Child
is in the Bathwater," from his "Bluestocking" series of the 1840s.=20
=20
You might also check with the Women's Library in London via their
website. They have a marvelous collection of photographs, including some
of Josephine Butler writing her memoirs.
=20
Also, there is a color image of Alexandra, Princess of Wales, from
Vanity Fair (1882) by Chantran. This image will soon appear in color in
my forthcoming book, Representing Diana, Princess of Wales: Cultural
Memory and Fairy Tales Revisited (sorry for the shameless plug!), or you
can contact the Colindale Newspaper Library, where I purchased the
photo. She is working on correspondence at a desk in the image.
=20
I would also check with the Heinz Archive at the National Portrait
Gallery as well as doing some searches on the NPG website. They have an
amazing collection. The Archive accepts inquiries via e-mail and I have
had great success with them. Cheers,
=20
Colleen Denney, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Art History
Adjunct in Women's Studies, American Studies, and African American
Studies
Art Department, 1000 E. University Ave.
University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY 82071-3138
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: (307) 766-4351
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:00:22 -0000
From: Sarah Brown <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: theoretical sources on class
How about Gary Day's short book on class?
Sarah
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 16:58:13 +0000
From: Sharon Hodsgon <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: theoretical sources on class
Earlier today as I was trawling for a particular book, I ran into this
one - perhaps it would be useful?
Language Of Gender And Class Transformation In The Victorian Novel
<http://library.hull.ac.uk/search/dclass/dclass/1%2C91%2C1093%2CB/frameset&FF=dclass+english+literature+fiction&2%2C%2C2>
, Ingham Patricia , London Routledge 1996
Sharon Hodgson
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:24:52 -0000
From: Sabine Clemm <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: CFP: 'Jews, Empire and Race'
The following conference may be of interest to list members - apologies =
for cross-posting:
Call for Papers: "Jews, Empire and Race"
International Conference, 27-29 July 2005, Southampton=20
A three-day conference organized by the AHRB Parkes Centre for the Study =
of
Jewish/ non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton, UK=20
Conference organisers: Professor Tony Kushner, Dr Nadia Valman =
(University
of Southampton) and Dr Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University of the =
Negev,
Israel)
This international conference has two parts:=20
I. Jews and Empire
The first two days of the conference will aim to develop literary,
historical and theoretical approaches to the study of the various roles
played by both Jews and 'the Jew' in the rise and fall of European =
empires,
from the early modern period to decolonization. While recent years have =
seen
a burgeoning critical literature on European imperial cultures, as well =
as
some important work on the history, culture and representation of the =
Jewish
minorities in Europe, there has been little attempt to connect these two
fields of enquiry. The conference will bring together scholars working =
in
both fields to study the representation and self-representation of Jews =
and
Judaism as actors in the imperial apparatus as well as objects in the
imperial imaginary.=20
Possible themes could include:
Jews and the Black Atlantic ;=20
Evangelicalism, Millennialism and Missions to the Jews;=20
Imperialism and the imagery of "Chosen People" ;
Jewish emigrants and immigrants ;
Global networks of communication ;
Jewish and imperial historiographies ;
Semitism and Orientalism ;
'The Jew' in Imperial Gothic narratives ;
Zionism and imperial culture ;
Anti-Semitism and imperialism ;
Representations of the Wandering Jew ;
Jews as colonists, colonial administrators or colonized people ;
Diaspora, globalization and the Jews.
II. Jews, Racialisation and the Anglo-American World
The third day of the conference will develop further, through =
theoretical
work and case studies, considerations of how Jews have been subjected =
and
responded to processes of racialisation from the late eighteenth century
onwards. In particular, it will focus on the role of 'race science' and =
how
it confronted/constructed Jewish 'difference'. The geographical scope =
will
be Britain (including the British Empire and Commonwealth) and America.
Papers are particularly welcome from those working in a comparative
framework, situating the construction of 'the Jew' in relation to other
minority groups. We seek to encourage multi- and inter-disciplinary
approaches.
Strands will include:
theories of racialisation ;
Jews and Afro-Caribbeans/Afro-Americans ;
Jews and other minorities ;
contemporary asylum seekers and processes of racialisation' ;
the continuation of 'race science' through genetic mapping?=20
self-construction of minorities and processes of racialisation ;
the impact of Empire and its aftermath.
Sponsored by the 'Jews and Literary Representation' and the 'Race, =
Ethnicity
and Memory' projects of the Parkes-AHRB Research Centre for the Study of
Jewish/non-Jewish relations, University of Southampton and the journal
'Patterns of Prejudice'.
Please send 200 word proposals for papers for either part of the =
conference,
with a brief CV, by 10 January 2005 to:
Dr Steve Taverner
AHRB Parkes Centre
Department of History
University of Southampton
Southampton, SO17 1BJ
United Kingdom
Or through email [log in to unmask]
Any updates will be posted to: http://www.parkes.soton.ac.uk/race.htm=20
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:33:50 +0000
From: Malcolm Shifrin <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Diorama
Hi, Judith,
The diorama was in what is a now the Prince's Trust building and we were
shown it during one of the tours they offered a few years ago during one
of the 'open buildings' weekends. I'm sure they would let you see it if
you wrote. Alas, my memory is so like a sieve these days, I can't trust
myself to describe it.
Best wishes,
Malcolm
--
Malcolm Shifrin
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------------------
Visit our website, a not-for-profit
educational project based in the UK
http://www.victorianturkishbath.org/
Judith Flanders wrote:
>I am just re-reading Richard Altick's The Shows of London, and I note that
>he says that until the mid-1970s the Pugin building for the Diorama survived
>in Park Square East in London, until the 1920s as a Baptist Chapel, then as
>part of the University of London. As he was writing, permission was granted
>to convert the building into a mosque. Was this done? I am trying to work
>out where it would have been. Park Square East is now (I think) only one
>side of a square, where the Prince's Trust is, and I certainly don't
>remember a mosque. Is a remnant of the Diorama left?
>
>Best
>
>Judith
>
>[log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:33:48 -0800
From: Peter O'Neill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: theoretical sources on class
I nominate Gareth Stedman Jones's essay _The Language of Chartism_ and his
book _Outcast London_.
Best,
Peter O'Neill
__________________________________________________
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:16:29 -0500
From: daley <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: theoretical sources on class
Perhaps a selection from Anne McClintock's Imperial Leather - especially
the Munby-Culwick material - both historical and theoretical.
Ken Daley
Ohio University
--On Friday, December 03, 2004 9:34 AM -0600 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 11:06:36 -0700
From: Goldie Morgentaler <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: "Wooden Legs"
I wonder if anyone on Victoria can give me more information about a
poem called "Wooden Legs" that was published in Harper's New Monthly
Magazine (vol. 33, no. 197) in October 1866? The poem is a dialogue
between a brother and sister in which the boy patriotically
anticipates going to war on behalf of the Queen and having his legs
amputated, while his sister urges him to forego such plans "for fear
of wooden legs." Despite its publication in Harper's, the poem is
clearly British in its setting and references. The full text of this
poem can be found at:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:4xeQR_GHAOEJ:www.harpers.org
I am quoting this poem in an essay on Dickens and wooden legs, but I
can't seem to find any more information about it. I'm especially keen
to know the author's name. If anyone can help, I would greatly
appreciate it.
--
Goldie Morgentaler
Dept. of English
University of Lethbridge
4401 University Drive
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:09:12 -0500
From: Victoria Olsen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Photographs of women writing
Julia Margaret Cameron took a series of photographs of May Prinsep (later
Hallam Tennyson's wife) in 1870 that includes a few variant prints of her
writing at a desk. See #436 and 437 in Cox and Ford's Julia Margaret
Cameron: The Complete Photographs (2003). I believe there are photographs
of Julia Stephen (Cameron's niece) writing at a desk too, but not by
Cameron. They are more in the nature of family snapshots and might be
included in Maggie Humm's book on Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell's photo
albums.
Good luck,
Victoria Olsen
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:47:46 +0100
From: Timothy Mason <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: theoretical sources on class
Three or four pages by Anthony Giddens on Marx and Weber in "Sociology ;
Introductory Readings, Anthony Giddens (ed), Polity, 2001 provide a
pocket-sized introduction to theories of class. You might want to look
at his 'The Class Structure of Advanced Societies' (Hutchinson, 1973)
almthough it would be considered rather out of date now.
A site which has a number of readings by the classical theorists - Marx
and Weber, followed up by C. Wright Mills and others :
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Four/index.html
For substantial theoretical treatement of sociality and the difficulties
of forming class-for-itself in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries :
Richard Sennett, 'The Fall of Public Man', Norton 1992 (first published
in 1976, but still an exhilerating read).
Pierre Bourdieu's 'Distinction' needs to be mentioned if not actually read.
Best wishes
--
Timothy Mason
Université de Paris 8
http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/index.htm
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:46:47 -0600
From: Patrick Leary <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: A Woman of Mind
I had sent this on to Lee privately, but perhaps others might find it
interesting, as well. These are the verses that originally accompanied
that Cruikshank engraving in the Comic Almanack for 1847 on "A Woman of
Mind." According to Blanchard Jerrold (who would have known) the author is
Henry Mayhew ... who, incidentally, was married to Blanchard's sister,
Jane. Discussions of the unease about literary women that's played out in
various 19th-c. novels, essays, and biographies could do worse, I think,
than to take these verses as a starting-point. Besides, they're pretty
funny in places. -- PL
My wife is a woman of mind
And Deville who examined her bumps
Vow'd that never were found in a woman
Such large intellectual lumps.
"Ideality" big as an egg
With "Causality" -- great -- was combined;
He charged me ten shillings and said,
"Sir, your wife is a woman of mind."
She's too clever to care how she looks,
And will horrid blue spectacles wear,
Not because she supposes they give her
A fine intellectual air:
No! she pays no regard to appearances,
And combs all her front hair behind,
Not because she is proud of her forehead
But because she's a woman of mind.
She makes me a bushel of verses,
But never a pudding or tart,
If I hint I should like one, she vows
I'm an animal merely at heart;
Though I've noticed she spares not the pastry,
When e'er at a friends we have din'd
And has always had two plates of pudding,
Such plates! for a woman of mind
Not a stitch does she do but a distich,
Mends her pen too instead of my clothes;
I haven't a shirt with a button,
Nor a stocking that's sound at the toes;
If I ask her to darn me a pair,
She replies she has work more refined;
Besides to be seen darning stockings!
*Is* it fit for a woman of mind?
The children are squalling all day,
For they're left to the care of a maid;
My wife can't attend to "the units"
"The millions" are wanting her aid.
And it's vulgar to care for one's offspring--
The mere brute has love of that kind--
But *she* loves the whole human fam'ly
For *she* is a woman of mind.
Every thing is an inch thick in dust,
And the servants do just as they please,
The ceilings are cover'd with cobwebs,
The beds are all swarming with fleas;
The windows have never been clean'd
And as black as your hat is each blind;
But my wife's nobler things to attend to,
For she is a woman of mind.
The Nurse steals the tea and the sugar,
The Cook sells the candles as grease,
And gives all the cold meat away
To her lover who's in the Police;
When I hint that the housekeeping's heavy
And hard is the money to find,
"Money's vile filthy dross!" she declares,
And unworthy a woman of mind.
Whene'er she goes out to a dance
She refuses to join in the measure,
For dancing she can't but regard
As an unintellectual pleasure,
So she gives herself up to enjoyments
Of a more philosophical kind,
And picks all the people to pieces,
Like a regular woman of mind.
She speaks of her favourite authors
In terms far from pleasant to hear:
"Charles Dickens," she vows "is a darling,"
"And Bulwer," she says "is a dear,"
"Douglas Jerrold," with her "is an angel,"
And I'm an "illiterate hind"
Upon whom her intellect's wasted,
I'm not fit for a woman of mind.
She goes not to Church on a Sunday,
Church is all very well in its way,
But she is too highly inform'd
Not to know all the parson can say;
It does well enough for the servants,
And was for poor people design'd,
But bless you! it's not good to her
For *she* is a woman of mind.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 16:16:58 EST
From: Robert Lapides <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Wooden Legs"
I assume Harper's found this poem in its archives and
then posted it earlier this year because of its current
relevance. It's impossible to read it today as anything
but a class-conscious anti-war piece. And yet in 1866,
because there were so many veterans of the American
Civil War walking around with wooden legs, it would've been
more complicated. In any case, the poem's erotic and
castration imagery made me think the author was more
likely a woman than a man.
I look forward to Goldie Morgantaler's essay, as wooden
legs in Dickens is an issue I've always wondered about.
Bob Lapides
BMCC, CUNY
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:04:17 -0800
From: Peter Wood <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Wooden Legs"
Bob Lapides wrote:
> I look forward to Goldie Morgantaler's essay, as wooden
> legs in Dickens is an issue I've always wondered about.
Not only in Dickens; Conan Doyle appears to have had a preoccupation
with one-legged and wooden-legged men, both in the Sherlock Holmes stories
where they appear some half-dozen or more times, and in his other fictional
writing. Of course there is always Long John Silver, a character who
apparently derived his injury from the poet W. E. Henley.
Has the subject of "one-leggedness" in Victorian fiction ever been
studied in detail?
Peter Wood
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:25:19 -0500
From: Tara McGann <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Wooden Legs"
There's Fictions of Affliction by Victoria's own Martha Stoddard Holmes.
Tara McGann
> Has the subject of "one-leggedness" in Victorian fiction ever been
> studied in detail?
> Peter Wood
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Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:38:35 -0500
From: Hugh MacDougall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Wooden Legs"
I can't resist the line of doggeral from my childhood beginning (and I know
not how it ends) "The sun was shining brightly through the knot-hole, in
grandpa's wooden leg." Whether it had a Victorian origin I don't know.
Hugh MacDougall
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Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:58:02 -0500
From: Pat and Govind Menon <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: book on 19th century novels: marital versus family love
Having worked on this book in an editorial capacity, I hope I may refer
those readers interested in the 19th century novel to <Love Confounded:
Revaluing the Great Tradition> (with chapters on Austen, Emily Brontë,
Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Henry James, Conrad and Lawrence) by Brian
Crick. Central to the work is a critical exploration of the novelists'
valuations of marital and family love.
For more information, see the Edgeways website:
http://www.edgewaysbooks.com/acatalog/Love.html
Pat Menon
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Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:47:45 -0500
From: Michael Wolff <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Wooden Legs"
There's also, I believe, music-hall patter in which a patent medicine being
touted by the cockney comic is "guaranteed to make the blood flow freely
through a wooden leg".
Michael Wolff
[log in to unmask]
Professor Emeritus
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 2 Dec 2004 to 3 Dec 2004 (#2004-177)
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