---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 00:00:44 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
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To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 21 May 1999 to 22 May 1999 (#1999-33)
There are 17 messages totalling 734 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. music lessons
2. Actress novels
3. A Living Gothic: Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_
4. Missing messages (2)
5. _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_
6. Darwin thanks
7. Dramas about money/political economy
8. A Living Gothic: Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_: Bibliography
9. scholarship on ruined fathers/husbands (2)
10. vicorian gardening (2)
11. adultery/divorce thx
12. translations of _Corinne_
13. Charterhouse in Thackeray's day
14. curriculum changes in the UK
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 23:15:32 -0700
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: music lessons
There may be something on this in the Victoria Archives. I remember
writing in response to a similar query back in 1994 or so, and mentioning
Thackeray's story "The Ravenswing." In Chapter 4 of that story, there is a
passing reference to the "hours, and weeks, nay, preparatory years of
study" put in by young women to learn "a set of double-barrelled variations
upon this or that tune by Herz or Kalkbrenner"--"what evidences of slavery
.. are there," the narrator comments.
And besides that general reference to practising piano, the story focuses
on the study the heroine puts in to become a professional singer: "She
first had for teacher little Podmore, the fat chorus-master at the Wells,
and who had taught her mother ... He grounded her well, and bade her
eschew the singing of all those Eagle Tavern ballads in which her heart
formerly delighted, and when he had brought her to a certain point of
skill, the honest little chorus-master said she should have a still better
instructor, ... the celebrated Baroski."
She then progresses under Baroski until he makes improper advances and is
replaced by Sir George Thrum (apparently modelled on the real-life music
impresario Sir George Smart).
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 08:17:43 +0100
From: Paul Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Actress novels
In _No Name_ by Wilkie Collins, Magdalen Vanstone, who loves amateur
dramatics, is disinherited and courts the loss of her reputation by becoming
an actress.
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Thorpe <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 21 May 1999 21:21
Subject: Actress novels
>The actress Sibyl Vane figures prominently, though she is not the
>protagonist, in Oscar Wilde's _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ (1890).
>
>Doug Thorpe
>University of Saskatchewan
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 09:18:04 -0500
From: Ellen Moody <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: A Living Gothic: Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_
I hope Patrick will forgive me for the length of this e-mail.=7F
It is my way of reciprocating back to Victoria for all the
wonderful information and hints I was given some weeks
ago now when I said I was about to teach Mary Shelley's
_Frankenstein_. I am afraid most of my references
are pre-Victorian, but I see the book as pre-Victorian,
a Regency-radical-gothic romance (to be a little like
Polonius).
This week I am reading and about to prepare an outline or
perspective out of which I mean to expatiate in front of
a class this term and one in the fall in which I will
pair William Godwin's _Caleb Williams_ and some
of Byron's poetry with Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_
(as well as placing it somewhat later in the term with
Stevenson's _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ and Valerie
Martin's _Mary Reilly_). Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_
is to my mind in some ways a typical gothic romance
of the period from 1790 through to 1820; it has all the
characteristics of the mode, from the furniture, to the
mood, to the deep questioning of reality. It was published
in the same year Austen died. I will throw out some
thoughts about this fiction and then on a couple of the
movie adaptations made from it.
_Frankenstein_ has, first, all the surface absurdities of the mode. Most
of the characters are not at all probable. They are
figments of an imagination which for this book has taken
human psychology to a series of extremes: Elizabeth,
the heroine, is a saint as is her and Victor Frankenstein's
father; Henry Clerval is a version of Shelley mediated
by Mary's intense sympathy for her withdrawn, despairing,
melancholy poet of a husband; the minor characters are
all two-dimensional and play roles in an allegory. The
dialogue is wholly unreal. When it was first published (1818),
a typical reviewer, John Crocker, pronounced it 'a tissue of horrible
and disgusting absurdity', though he had to admit 'it cannot be
denied that this is . . . nonsense decked out with circumstances
and clothed in language highly terrific . . . _Frankenstein_
has passages that appall the mind and make the flesh creep.'
Even in that year Walter Scott (who could speak with similar
broad sympathy of spirit and generous understanding of
Austen's _Emma_ -- than which one would be far to find
something more different from _Frankenstein_), Walter
Scott, I say, wrote of Mrs Shelley's little book: 'An
extraordinary tale, in which the author seems to disclose to
us uncommon powers of poetic imagination . . . [it is a
work which genuinely] excites new reflections and untried
sources of emotion'.
To read Mary Shelley's preface, you would not guess you
were necessarily in another realm from that of Mrs Radcliffe
or Catherine Morland's adventures in the Abbey. Mary writes that her
purpose was to 'think of a story . . which would speak to the
mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror --
one to make the areader dread to look around, to curdle
the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.' I've
heard this one before. But look at the epigraph to Mary's book:
it is a line from Milton's _Paradise Lost_: 'Did I request thee,
Maker, from my clay/To mould me Man, did I solicit thee/From
darkness to promote me' (_PL, X, 743-45). Mary Shelley's
book has again and again been identified as not only
questioning the complacencies of Christianity, but as
an attack on whatever Deity it is that is in charge with
Victor playing the part of the Deity and his Creature
the part of man. Look at the subtitle: _Frankenstein,
Or, The Modern Prometheus_, and note all the many
references to the Greek and modern usages of the
Promethean myth of rebellion; read Blake, and you see
that, as other critics have written, Mary Shelley uses
the gothic to make a statement about the nature of
life which is at once exultant in its rejection of the
norms of a mercenary foolish society which are trivial,
soul-destroying and absurd and despairing in its search
for some new source of fulfillment which will not twist
human nature into depravities it has not known before
(such as we find in deSade -- another writer from this
era).
The gothic is an instrument by which you can explore our
existence and its meaning fundamentally, ask fundamental
questions the premises of a realistic novel doesn't allow.
Then turn to Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface and you see
he saw the novel as a voice in a conversation about science
and knowledge, and about its limits. This is the way
the book has generally been seen by the ordinary reader
since. I would say Kenneth Branagh's recent film of the
novel takes its intepretation of the novel from Percy's
view; it is a good one; it is relevant. I watched this
film last night and was struck by the scenes of the
creation. An operation in a hospital severely underfunded?
It is a nightmare drawn from modern experiences of
major surgery -- all dolled or gussied up with the usual
gothic fairy tale apparatus. I am not particularly taken
by this perspective, but it is interesting to note that the
film emphasises how Victor Frankenstein was not reading
the 'new' books in science in the period, but returned to
Paracelsus and the whole set of persons who turn up
in Francis Yates's book. The honor given these 'ancient
books' and 'ancient learning' in the film as opposed to was
modern science is regarded and turns out to be a
fright, a horror, a terror is thought-provoking. (The modern science
for Mary Shelley takes off from the sorts of things being written
and thought and also in Edinburgh done -- including a trial for grave-
snatching and killing of people to make corpses).
A final perspective which was taken at the time and is
still with us derives from understanding that the hero of
the story is the Creature. He is one half of a doppelganger
figure of which the other half is his Creator. The Creature
is someone abused, mocked, beaten, someone utterly
rejected, someone who thus brings forward a mirror by
which we see our society as made up of small-minded
narrow, mindless creatures who have no hearts. When Justine
is blamed for the murder of little William and given no
chance to defend herself; when her priest tortures=7F
her into confessing a murder she didn't commit; when
she is hung -- we have a clear Godwinian attack on
how the legal system is a creature of prejudices
and on the injustice of capital punishment. In the scene
in the book and in the two hangings which occur in the
Branagh film, Rictor Norton's summing up the mob as
irrational, 'bloodthirsty' and cruel is what informs the scenes.
To this I would add the modern feminist perspective first enunciated
by Ellen Moers: this is the story of a birth and a rejection
of a baby. It is the story of a death coming from childbed
(chapter 5 uncannily recalls Mary Shelley's mother's
death in childbed); it is a woman's nightmare about birth
and death and mothering. The Branagh film also emphasises
this by giving us a particularly bloody gruesome depiction of
the death of Victor Frankenstein's mother in childbirth.
There is much blood and rotting ugly mottled flesh to
be seen everywhere in this film
Of course John Croker had a point. It's all nonsense. The story opens
on the icy edges of the earth, near the North Pole. We
have impossible fantastic voyages through mountains, into
a crazed laboratory-scene deep in the Orkneys, in
furthest Scotland; it takes us back to the ice for
the rousing conclusion. It is all letters or first-person narratives --
only the epistolary mode could carry such a reverie off
and keep you believing. The absolutely primal way Frankenstein
and his creature converse are wholly unreal -- to find an
equivalent allegorical resonance you have to return to
poetry, Blake, Milton, the Greek drama, probably also
the dramas of Byron and Shelley too.
Nonetheless, the emotional truth of the novel
has made it live. To take but one strong motif: that
of pursuit. The Creature pursues Frankenstein;
he pursues the Creature -- until the death. We are
led to experience a scene which takes place in our
dreams (and which by-the-way actually happened
to the Shelleys -- after Shelley's half-suicide, Byron
built a pyre and burnt the body by the sea): upon
the death of his creator, the Creature plans to
'ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult
in the agony of the torturing flames.' The sureness
of Mary Shelley's touch this one time is shown in
her not killing off the creature, in our last seeing=7F
him 'on an ice raft which lay close to the vessel
[Walton's, an explorer]. He was soon borne away
by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance'.
Frankenstein's creature stands for something
today. Over the centuries so many people have tried to put it into
adequate words: he feels oversized, loathsome; he is
driven by malign hatred, agonised by loneliness,
desirous of a sexual mate. Is it personhood? (This
is a word used by Leonard Wolf of the book and recent
film; he is responsible for the recent fully annotated
'Essential _Dracula_). For my part I think the reason the old
1931 film with Boris Karloff as the Creature is still in print
and the reason no one has been able to embody the Creature
in a way that makes us forget Karloff is that Karoff in his costume
somehow captured what this something is.
Glance at some of the stills. He's a monster, unreal,
scary. Then have a more careful meditative look. The
face is delicately nuanced; the two absurd metallic pins coming out
of his neck signify real pain; he shambles; he looks awkward.
His pants are too short; his shoes are too thick. I never
discount the importance of costumes in theatre. Watch
Karloff's hands as they reach our trembingly, the gestures of need,
his hestitations, how he simply holds on tight to walls to steady
himself. And then his eyes. They are, to use a word I like
to use of Catherine Morland in some of her adventures
(_vis-a-vis_ the malicious Isabella Thorpe), feelingful, eyes
which look out at you with a sideways indirect yet intense
emotions and are yet glazed over.
Mary Shelley never wrote so greatly again after she finished her
_Frankenstein_. Betty Bennet (her editor) and others have talked
of a lifetime of depression as the reason. Mary lost an horrific number
of babies within a brief time, has miscarriages, was at one
point near death but for Shelley's placing her in a basin of ice
water to stop a hemmorage; little William is her first dead little boy.
But Mary is deeply depressed in _Frankenstein_. It is profoundly
melancholy. Its lyricism is that of Shelley's 'Mont Blanc'.
So that explanation won't do.
Ellen Moody
Please note new address: <[log in to unmask]>
----
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 15:31:32 +0100
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Missing messages
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Is anyone else getting very hiccupy delivery of Victoria messages? I =
keep getting postings which are obviously part of ongoing discussions =
I've missed the beginning of, and while a post I sent the other day was =
acknowledged, it still hasn't shown up in my inbox.
Lesley Hall
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Victoria messages? I keep getting postings which are obviously part of =
ongoing=20
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other day=20
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 08:08:20 -0700
From: Martin Ainsley <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Missing messages
Perhaps this explains why recommendations for novels re: adultery and
actresses are being repeated well after subscribers first mentioned them?
Jill Ainsley
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 10:09:07 -0500
From: Ellen Moody <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_
I wonder if there are any good _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ movie adaptations.
Would anyone care to recommend one he or she is an intelligent adaptation
of Stevenson's novella?
Ellen Moody
Please note new address <[log in to unmask]>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 10:21:24 -0500
From: Mollie Sandock <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Darwin thanks
Thanks to all who replied on the list or privately to my question
about Darwin biographies; particular thanks to Ellen Moody.
Mollie Sandock
--------------------------------
Mollie Sandock
English Department
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, IN 46383
(219) 464-5756
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 10:59:14 -0500
From: Herbert Tucker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Dramas about money/political economy
At 02:22 PM 5/21/99 -0600, you wrote:
>To the collective wisdom of the VICTORIA list:
>
>I am looking for 19th c. plays that are concerned, either implicitly or
>explictly, with problems of money, credit, speculation and/or political
>economy. My interest is primarily in Victorian drama, but any Romantic
>precursors would also be fine. I got interested in this connection by
looking
>at plays such _Money_, _The Game of Speculation_, _The Ticket-of-Leave Man_,
>and a few others; I'd like to find as many more like these as possible.
>Anything come to mind?
I'd wager that it's a rare Victorian melodrama that is *not* about money
and property. Isn't the mock-melodramatic scene of choice always the
landlord showing up for the unforthcoming mortgage payment?
Anyhow, what you draw together on this topic will have a marked
background-foreground relation, I predict, to Tennyson's generic ambitions
for *Maud: A Monodrama*, where there's no end of causes for a cascade of
effects about which nothing is to be done, but prominent among those causes
is the hero's father's suicide because "a vast speculation had failed."
Herbert Tucker
[log in to unmask]
804-924-6677
FAX: 804-924-1478
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:03:48 -0500
From: Ellen Moody <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: A Living Gothic: Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_: Bibliography
As I was working this morning on the book I have been using while watching the
various movies I had a sudden paranoic moment -- probably brought
on by all the talk we have had of plagiarism in the past couple of
weeks. So I would like to say both quotations I cited (from John
Croker and Sir Walter Scott) as well as the words taken from
Leonard Wolf are cited from Kenneth Branagh's _Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein: The Classic Tale of Terror Reborn on Film_ (New
York: A Newmarket Press Book, 1994). The stills I was describing
are reprinted in this book though of course my description of
the 1931 movie itself comes from memories of the movie.
I'll also take the opportunity to say I find this new practice of
publishing the script for the screenplay of a movie very helpful
whether I choose to use a movie adaptation of a novel or not.
In the particular case the script shows why Branagh's movie
doesn't work. It is mostly very poor; there has been little
time or effort to create a nuanced language adequate to the
situations. The pace of the movie is too fast: we move
from one hysterial moment to the next. One can sometimes
tell why one movie is good and another is bad by studying
these scripts together with the stills while watching the
movie or afterwards.
One problem with e-mails is one doesn't take them seriously
enough. While I know my occasional practice of citing page
and edition is not common, I don't do it often enough.
Ellen Moody
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:50:04 -0500
From: Patrick Leary <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: scholarship on ruined fathers/husbands
On Sat, 22 May 1999, Herbert Tucker wrote:
> Anyhow, what you draw together on this topic will have a marked
> background-foreground relation, I predict, to Tennyson's generic ambitions
> for *Maud: A Monodrama*, where there's no end of causes for a cascade of
> effects about which nothing is to be done, but prominent among those causes
> is the hero's father's suicide because "a vast speculation had failed."
This reminds me that I'd be interested to learn more about scholarship
on this theme of "the ruin of the father" in Victorian culture, because it
is such a constantly recurring feature of the lives of Victorian authors.
One can't survey literary biography of the period without noticing that is
almost the exceptional Victorian novelist who was not propelled into
literature by death, bankruptcy, or abandonment of the family by either
father or husband or both. Thackeray's loss of his patrimony is a
variation on this theme, but more straightforward examples could be
multiplied almost endlessly, and it would be interesting to know what sort
of work has been done on how these experiences were transmuted into
fiction, drama, and poetry. I don't doubt, as Chip suggests about money
and melodrama, that examples of such treatments, too, would be legion (we
can all think of a number of them) but I can't think what's been written
about it. Apart from Claudia Nelson's book about fathers, can anyone
point me to scholarship on this?
Patrick Leary
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 17:59:37 +0100
From: Angela Richardson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: vicorian gardening
>>From: Jadene Felina Stevens
>
>I was wondering if anyone could suggest where i
>>might find information on authentic Victorian gardening practices of
>>America (northeast) circa 1840-1885
>
>
>I've been looking for sources on domestic Victorian gardening in London,
>and it is proving quite difficult. However, I have come across a book
>which is largely American. In its format its not very scholarly,
>(the Victorian Kitchen Gaden, A Seasonal Companion compiled and edited
>by Jan Hughes from Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, California) but it does
>have some useful references in the back.
>
>You could try
>
>Garden Making by L H Bailey, New York, The Macmillan Co 1904
>Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers and Farming, by Henry Ward Beecher, New
>York , JB Ford & Co 1874
>A Woman's Hardy Garden by Helena Rutherfurd Ely, New York, The Macmillan Co
>1903
>
>There is also a journal Coutnry Life in America.
>
>The Seasonal Companion also contains addresses for heritage seed suppliers,
>most
>of whom are in America.
>
>Angela
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 10:19:21 -0700
From: Ryan Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: adultery/divorce thx
My thanks to all those who responded to my query re: adultery and divorce.
Inconjugally yours,
Ryan
Ryan Johnson
General Editor
Stanford Humanities Review
Mariposa House
Stanford, CA 94305
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Department of English [log in to unmask]
Stanford University (415)626-5885 home
Stanford, CA 94305
Theory is good, but it does not prevent things from existing.--Charcot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 17:40:54 +0000
From: Suzanne Daly <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: translations of _Corinne_
I apologize for the pre-Victorian question, but I know of no better source
of wisdom on novels than this group. So --
my local bookstore has 2 copies of Madame de Stael's _Corinne_: an Oxford
World Classics edition translated by Sylvia Raphael, and a scholarly
edition from Rutgers UP translated by Avriel H. Goldberger.
I'm not planning to teach the novel; I just want to read it (having just
finished Jewsbury's _The Half-Sisters_, which it is supposed to have
influenced).
Does anyone have a preference?
Suzanne Daly
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 14:03:59 -0400
From: Hugh Mac Dougall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: vicorian gardening
For: Jadine Felina Stevens, et al.
I'm far from being an expert, but I find the following fascimile editions
on my shelves:
Fearing Burr, Jr., "Field and Garden Vegetables of America" (Boston: J.E.
Tilton and Co., 1865) (fascimile reprint, Chillicothe, IL: The American
Botanist, 1988; American Horticultural Series, No. 1). Fascinating account
of vegetables, their varieties, origins, culture, and uses -- including a
repertoire of plants with parts that looked like worms or insects, grown to
stick in the salads of your friends!!! (an old Victorian custom I had
entirely overlooked until I stumbled on this book!).
Joseph Breck, "The Young Florist; or conversations on The Culture of
Flowers, and on Natural History...." (Boston: Russell, Odiorne & Co., 1833)
(fascimile reprint, Guildford, CT: OPUS Publications, 1988 -- reprinted for
Old Sturbridge Village).
Joseph Breck, "The Flower-Garden; or, Breck's Book of Flowers....with
directions for their cultivation" (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1851)
(fascimile reprint, Guildford, CT: OPUS Publications, 1988 -- reprinted for
Old Sturbridge Village).
A[ndrew] .J[ackson]. Downing, "A Treatise on the Theory and Practise of
Landscape Gardening" (New York: A.O. Moore & Co., 6th revised ed., 1859)
(fascimile edition, with an introduction by John O. Simonds, New York: Funk
& Wagnalls, 1967). Downing was the leading landscape gardener and designer
of rural homes in mid-19th century America.
Hope you find this useful,
Hugh C. MacDougall
Secretary/Treasurer
James Fenimore Cooper Society
8 Lake Street, Cooperstown, NY 13326-1016
<[log in to unmask]>
<http://library.cmsu.edu/cooper/cooper.htm>
----------
>>
> >>From: Jadene Felina Stevens
> >
> >I was wondering if anyone could suggest where i
> >>might find information on authentic Victorian gardening practices of
> >>America (northeast) circa 1840-1885
> >
> >
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 13:01:19 -0700
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Charterhouse in Thackeray's day
Well, where to begin? Probably the best biography in general on Thackeray
is Ray's 2-volume opus. I don't have it to hand; but I would check there
first. There are also accounts of Charterhouse in Monsarrat's biography
and in Catherine Peters's book, _Thackeray's Universe_.
Thackeray often referred to Charterhouse in his fiction, in his earlier
works as Slaughter House, and in his mellower later works as Grey Friars
(the school's own nickname, I believe, because of its monastic origins).
You can see a description of school bullying and a long fist fight at
"Slaughter House" in the opening pages of his story "Mr. and Mrs. Frank
Berry" (in _Men's Wives_). (This fist fight is clearly the ancestor of the
fight involving Dobbin in Chapter 5 of Vanity Fair. And in Chapter 2 of
Vanity Fair there is a reference to the flogging Charterhouse headmaster,
Dr. Raine--see Sutherland's note on this in the World's Classics edition.)
See Chapter 2 of _Pendennis_ for a description of life at "Grey Friars." I
think there is also some of this in _The Newcomes_. There is also a
Roundabout paper of Thackeray's ("Thorns in the Cushion") that talks about
the horrors of school, and there are letters of his on the subject as well
(the biographies will guide you).
I, too, at one point was looking into a Charterhouse schoolmate of
Thackeray's (one J.E.M. Prower) and discovered that just because the two
were the same age didn't mean they were in the same form, so I could not
definitively establish that they knew each other at school.
There are some general works on Charterhouse, many of which were sent to me
by the very helpful Charterhouse librarian, Mrs. A.C. Wheeler. There is a
history of Charterhouse by Anthony Quick and some articles in the
Charterhouse magazine, The Greyfriar, from the 1890s: one called "Thackeray
as Carthusian" 2 (1890-95): 61-67 and one called "Some Charterhouse
Reminiscences" 2(1890-95): 75-79. There is also a Charterhouse Register of
students compiled by R.L. Arrowsmith and published in 1974. For all this
material, I would write to Mrs. Wheeler (assuming she is still the
librarian).
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 13:26:11 -0700
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: scholarship on ruined fathers/husbands
Janice Carlisle's 1981 book _The Sense of an Audience: Dickens, Thackeray,
and George Eliot_ talks of Thackeray's opposition to parental authority,
but I don't remember if she focuses specifically on fathers--and in any
case she is talking not of parental ruin, but parental authoritarianism.
Similarly there are articles on Oedipal struggles in Thackeray's fiction
like Sylvia Manning's "Incest and the Structure of Henry Esmond,"
Nineteenth-Century Fiction 34 (1979): 194-213. Manning talks about the
rebellion against father figures in Esmond--a recurrent motif in Thackeray.
But if we're looking for the biographical connection, it would be less any
ruin of Thackeray's father or the loss of his patrimony and more
Thackeray's resentment of his step-father.
On the other hand, in her _Women and the Demon_, Nina Auerbach sees
_Esmond_ as containing a futile search for a father.
For another work that deals with the portrayal of parents in Thackeray, see
A. Altinel's 1986 book, _Thackeray and the Problem of Realism_.
Sheldon Goldfarb
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Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 14:38:54 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: curriculum changes in the UK
Just a quick follow-up note: I was of course speaking of my experience in
an American high school; I realize the English pre-collegiate experience is
very different. I'm delighted to have the testimony of those for whom high
school education drew them to literature; I didn't mean to imply that my
experience, in a high school I generally admire, was any different. But I
can't think of a single literary insight, except in a senior honors class
taught by a college-level instructor, that I carried away from that
experience; not atypically, I suppose, I unlearned and relearned in
college, in graduate school also, and especially after I started teaching.
Hence my feeling, in general, that WHAT one learns in high school is far
less important than HOW one learns in high school.
Jack Kolb
Dept. of English, UCLA
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 21 May 1999 to 22 May 1999 (#1999-33)
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