Literary Likes

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  • A Princess in the Attic

    Here is another piece originally written for Wordsworth Editions Blog.

    I first came across A Little Princess through the 1973 BBC adaptation and was immediately captivated by it. I am not sure exactly what drew me in but having recently returned to the original novel I realise I was a similar age to the gently heroic Sara Crewe when the narrative begins. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s tale of the experiences of young Sara, born in India and who at the tender age of seven arrives at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies in London, has remained in print since its first publication in 1905.

    Just to clarify, Sara is not actually a princess, although at the start of the narrative she is extremely privileged, wealthy and much loved by her father Captain Crewe.  She arrives at school with an elaborate wardrobe with ‘sable and ermine on her coats, and real Valenciennes lace on her underclothing’ (Chapter 1).  Her favourite doll Emily also has an extensive wardrobe and Sara’s status is such that she has her own private sitting-room and a French maid. The very strict Miss Minchin finds her clothing ‘perfectly ridiculous’ for a child of her age, but is more than happy to exploit the benefits of having such a wealthy pupil at her school.

    The narrative is a relatively simple one and on the surface this may seem like an ordinary school novel, in that Sara has to overcome her initial homesickness at leaving her beloved father, and cope with a headmistress who does not like her. There are the challenges of making friends as she is unable to win the approval of the clique of popular girls led by the nasty Lavinia. Despite these challenges, Sara settles in and all is well until her eleventh birthday at which point tragedy strikes when Miss Minchin receives news of Captain Crewe’s death.  This is where matters take a decided turn for the worst as Captain Crewe has lost his fortune through a disastrous investment in a diamond mine. Sara is left a penniless and homeless orphan at the mercy of Miss Minchin. Rather than turn her out onto the street, Miss Minchin is persuaded to consider her reputation and instead puts Sara to work and banishes her to a cold attic, minus her extensive wardrobe.  The rest of the narrative follows Sara’s efforts to survive her harsh living conditions and her attempts to make the best of her situation by relying on her very active imagination. However, if you peel away the top layer of an apparently simple children’s story, it becomes apparent Frances Hodgson Burnett has something to say about child poverty in Edwardian Britain.

    The novel went through a number of incarnations, beginning as a serialized short story in 1887, before becoming a successful stage play during the 1890s. In 1905 it was expanded into the novel we now have.  It’s original title was A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Being Told for the First Time. This included an introduction written by Burnett in which she said ‘… between the lines of every story there is another story…’ Burnett’s reasons for expanding and developing the story were, in part, financially motivated. Following her divorce from Swan Burnett and then a second divorce after a disastrous short marriage to Stephen Townsend, a man somewhat her junior, Burnett found herself in need of some additional income. This was solved by transforming the stage version of A Little Princess into a novel.

    … To read the full article, please head over to Wordsworth Editions. Click here…

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  • Mary Elizabeth Braddon, ‘Eveline’s Visitant’

    Here is another of my earlier blog posts for Wordsworth Editions. You can expect to see more on Mary Elizabeth Braddon as she is one of my research interests.

    Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a contemporary of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and yet is nowhere nearly as well known. If her name does spark any recognition, it is usually in connection with her novel Lady Audley’s Secret, published by Wordsworth Classics with an Introduction by Esther Saxey. Yet Braddon’s output during her life was prolific, often producing two novels a year, most of which were serialized in the popular magazines of the time. She also wrote plays, poetry and short stories. Curiously though, it is Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd, both published in 1862, which have received most of the academic attention over the years, despite the fact that her publishing career began in 1860 with Three Times Dead and ended with Mary, published posthumously in 1916.

    Her biography reads a little like a plot from one of her own sensational novels and Stephen Carver’s article on Lady Audley’s Secret provides comprehensive details.  However, to summarise, her parents’ marriage was not a happy one and eventually they became estranged. In 1852, at the age of seventeen, Mary became an actress in order to support herself and her mother, using the stage name Mary Seyton. This was not a respectable way for women to earn money and thus began her rather dubious reputation. She gave up acting to pursue her writing career fulltime after meeting publisher John Maxwell in 1859. Their relationship soon combined the professional with the personal and she moved into his home as his wife. The only problem was, Maxwell was still married to Mary Anne, who was either living with her family or was constrained within an asylum in Ireland, depending on which version of the story you believe. Nevertheless, Braddon and Maxwell pretended to be married and had children together. Eventually the truth behind their façade came out which caused a fair amount of scandal, although they were eventually legally married following the death of Maxwell’s wife in 1874.

    In addition to Braddon’s novels, she wrote a number of short stories, many with a supernatural feel. These were published in the popular journals of the time, although were not anthologized during her lifetime. One of these stories, ‘Eveline’s Visitant’ can be found in Classic Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories edited by Rex Collins, in Wordsworth’s Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural. 

    ‘Eveline’s Visitant’ was originally published in Belgravia magazine in 1867, some six years after Lady Audley’s Secret. Belgravia was Braddon’s own magazine, which she started in 1866 and edited for ten years. This story differs in some ways from the sensation novel genre which made Braddon famous.  These frequently take typical upper class or middle class settings such as the country house as their premise. Instead, Braddon creates a sense of distance as the opening line tells the reader ‘It was at the masked ball at the Palais Royal that my fatal quarrel with my first cousin André de Brissac began.’

    The first-person male narration immediately draws the reader in as we realise he is about to tell us an important story:

    ‘I can feel the chill breath of that August morning blowing in my face, as I sit in my dismal chamber at my chateau of Puy Verdun tonight, alone in the stillness, writing the strange story of my life. I can see the white mist rising from the river, the grim outline of the Chatelet, and the square towers of Notre Dame black against the pale-grey sky.’

    Braddon successfully creates a strong sense of place, alerting the reader to the narrator’s location in Paris through mention of his view of ‘Notre Dame’ with such specific details creating a feeling of authenticity about the tale.  That his view may be partially obscured by ‘the white mist rising from the river’ as he sits in his ‘dismal chamber’ suggests this will not be a happy tale. The ominous feeling is strengthened through further evocation of the senses as he feels a ‘chill breath’ of an ‘August morning’, all of which compounds the increasingly gothic tone.  Braddon achieves all of this by the third paragraph of the story. 

    … To read the rest of my article (for free) please follow the link

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  • ‘Lois the Witch’ and Elizabeth Gaskell

    This is an extract of my first blog written for Wordsworth Editions. I have added a link to their site if you would like to read the full article. The above image is the statue of Roger Conant, first citizen of Salem, which stands outside the Salem Witch Museum in Massachusetts, which I was fortunate enough to visit back in 2018.

    The name Elizabeth Gaskell probably conjures up associations with her more well known social realist novels such as Mary Barton (1848), North and South (1855) and Cranford (1853).  Yet, during much of her writing career she remained fascinated with the supernatural and produced numerous ghost stories.  In her biographical work The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) Gaskell relays an anecdote of her telling a ghost story to Charlotte Bronte shortly before bedtime.  Bronte apparently ‘shrank from hearing it, and confessed that she was superstitious’. Many of Gaskell’s ghost stories were originally published in the popular journal Household Words, edited by none other than Charles Dickens. Often, her stories would appear in special editions produced for Christmas, because, as we all know, the festive season is the season for ghosts. A comprehensive selection of these tales have been gathered together in Tales of Mystery and the Macabre as part of the Wordsworth Mystery and Supernatural series, featuring an introduction by David Stuart Davies.

    I should point out that Gaskell’s gothic stories are not merely chilling ghostly tales lacking in the kind of political and social issues addressed in her novels. If anything, the gothic form gave Gaskell greater freedom to engage with concerns which were dear to her heart, such as social and political injustice particularly as it related to women’s lives.  Many of her gothic tales take as their point of inspiration actual or legendary events, two such examples being her short story ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ and her novella ‘Lois the Witch’. Yet these supposed similarities are a little misleading as when you delve deeper into her gothic tales it becomes apparent her ghost stories employed a variety of narrative styles and subject matter. For example, the inspiration for ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ originates from a Haworth legend of a woman who was seduced by her brother-in-law and became pregnant.  She was locked up by her father and shunned by her sisters and the ghosts of the woman and her daughter were said to have haunted the local area.

    Other stories in the collection are similarly varied in nature. For example, ‘Disappearances’ is more of a series of anecdotes rather than a story with a single narrative focus, and as the title suggests, relays accounts of various people who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In contrast, ‘The Poor Clare’ whilst also fictionalizing local legends and actual events, adopts a stronger supernatural stance, whereas ‘The Squire’s Story’ is much more satirical in style.

    ‘Lois the Witch’ casts back to New England, America in the 1690s and takes as its inspiration the events of the Salem Witch Trials. The American setting may seem unusual, but Gaskell wrote the story with an American audience in mind.  However, it was initially serialized in All the Year Round in October 1859, an appropriate offering for Halloween.  The Nineteenth Century British reader would probably have had some familiarity with the Salem Witch Trials, as a number of paintings were produced during the Century detailing various scenes from the trials. Gaskell’s research on the historical context surrounding the Salem Witch Trials was largely based on the work of Unitarian Boston minister Charles Upham’s Lectures on Witchcraft, Comprising a History of the Delusions of Salem, in 1692 published in 1830.

    Salem Memorial and house

    The basic events of the Salem Witch Trials are that in 1692, 19 people were convicted of witchcraft and taken to Gallows Hill, which was a barren slope near Salem Village, where they were hanged.  Another man who was over 80 years old was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft. Many languished in jail for months on end without trials.  Then, almost as soon as it had begun, the hysteria that swept through Puritan Massachusetts ended. There was nothing particularly new or unusual about accusations of witchcraft. What was significant was the rapidity with which the charges spread and the fact that all claims and accusations of witchcraft were believed.  More people were executed in the Salem Witch Trials than had previously been executed in the history of New England.

    … To read the full article (for free), please follow the link

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    One response to “‘Lois the Witch’ and Elizabeth Gaskell”

    1. Vernon Avatar
      Vernon

      Excellent first article

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  • Welcome to Literary Likes

    Welcome to Literary Likes. This is a space where I will indulge my love of reading. I am a semi-retired lecturer and used to teach English and American Literature at a University. I still do a little teaching and run a Literature class at a local community centre. I have also written a number of blog posts for Wordsworth Editions, which I will link to.

    My intention is to continue writing about books I am interested in. I also plan to write up some of my past lectures into blog posts.

    I am particularly interested in Victorian and Edwardian fiction, including gothic and seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I also enjoy reading Golden Age detective fiction.

    Please stop by as I would love to hear your comments and if you subscribe you will be notified of any new posts.

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