Passage To India: A South Asia Special

Arising as a consequence of recent peregrinations...

Non-Fiction

Gita Mehta – Karma Cola (1979)

No doubt in 1979 an important antidote to Western Orientalism about the 'inherent spirituality' of India, these days it reads like a string of snarky and clichéd anecdotes about the dubious aspects of spirituality in the context of East-meets-West globalisation.


William Dalrymple – The Age of Kali (1998)
– White Mughals (2002)
– The Last Mughal (2006)

Dalrymple is, of course, at heart a colonialist sympathiser – though not of the same unrepentant and black-and-white ilk of, say, a Niall Ferguson, he clearly sees the Raj (at least in the early days) as replete with heroic eccentric humanists (despite a few bad apples), and misses the 'order' and rule of law that he thinks India had under the later period of British rule. Yet he is a wonderful, oldfashioned storyteller and an engaging travel writer. The Age of Kali is a series of essays on various aspects of his reporting from India, some of which now seem a bit dated in their discussion of the unexpected juxtapositions of globalisation (reminiscent of Pico Iyer's Video Night In Kathmandu), but featuring some interesting political moments. Far more engrossing, however, are White Mughals and The Last Mughal – the former dealing with a marriage between the British representative in Hyderabad in the late 1700s to a Mughal princess, and the latter with Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, the Sepoy Rebellion and the siege of Delhi in the mid-1800s. Both are rich and tragic narratives, but for my money the latter is the pick – with its Emperor-esque (Kapuscinski) glimpses of the last days of the Mughal court and of important figures such as Ghalib, and its harrowing tales of the atrocities of the siege, tales which bring to mind J. G. Farrell's Siege of Krishnapur, but with the addition of the attempt to give various sides of the story (though sadly the perspective of the sepoys themselves, as opposed to the British and the Mughal court, is lacking).


Yasmin Khan – The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (2007)

I've long been interested in Partition from my perspective as a genocide studies scholar – and my personal interest in India, on the one hand due to childhood Orientalism and on the other as a Buddhist. Deciding on a specific book about Partition was difficult, but I settled on Khan's. Khan's work is not limited to high politics or the personalities of the leaders involved; she deals both with everyday experience, and with the specific context and events which happened in different areas. Particularly interesting is her analysis of the fluidity of meaning in terms and concepts like swaraj ('self-rule') or 'Pakistan,' and the outcome of this indeterminateness in terms of human suffering. There is a strong sense of the contingency of the fact that partition happened at all. Khan consciously tries to extend analysis beyond the Punjab, usually seen as the 'ground zero' of Partition or the 'place where Partition happened.' In tone and style, it's somewhere between an academic work and a work of popular history. Without having read other books specifically on Partition it's hard to judge what criticisms might be levelled – the kind which always exist around controversial events such as Partition – but for me this seemed like a thorough introduction which had no obvious agenda in relation to nationalism or religion, and which examined the complexities of the situation within a work of manageable length accessible to the non-specialist.


Katherine Boo – Behind The Beautiful Forevers (2012)

Boo tells a New Journalism-style story of Annawadi, a small slum near an airport, following a number of inhabitants. Boo's previous work had been related to quality journalism about poverty in the United States – here, she transfers this interest to Mumbai. Based on years of participant-observation and thorough examination of sources to corroborate her personal interviews and observations, the book is written in novelistic style, except for an afterword in which Boo speaks in her own voice. It's an interesting story, though at times the pace flags, and also an interesting exercise, but one which raises questions about the choice of presentation which are not addressed, reminiscent of those around works like Capote's In Cold Blood – doesn't the presence of the author change events, and shouldn't it be at least acknowledged in the text, rather than given from a 'God's eye view' with an inevitable whiff of colonialism? How are we to know that the claims made on the basis of interviews and documentary corroboration actually stand up if they are not even discussed? Nonetheless, it's a fascinating and admirable work.


Fiction

Bhisham Sahni – Tamas ('Darkness,' 1974)

Sahni's is an emblematic work on Partition, and has been filmed for television (on 1986). The novel is a lightly fictionalised version of his personal experiences as a young man during the events depicted, in Rawalpinid in the Punjab (today, part of Pakistan). It's not an easy novel – not only because of the violence and trauma of the subject matter, but also because it reads as do accounts of real life events, episodic, and dealing with a plethora of characters. The voice is impersonal, the eye jaundiced, and the tale without redemption, as befits the events in question.


Aravind Adiga – The White Tiger (2008)
– Last Man In Tower (2011)

Despite the Booker, I wasn't particularly impressed by White Tiger, a story of the entrepreneurial and murderous rise of village boy Balram Halwai – it was entertaining enough, but lacking urgency in its narrative, somewhat unsophisticated in terms of language (even taking into account the first-person narration), and a little too knowingly clever in tone. Last Man In Tower, however, is another thing altogether – an impressive and deeply moving story (set in Mumbai) of a lone hold-out who refuses to leave a crumbling apartment building to make way for a gleaming new tower block, and the fate that befalls him. Up there with the best of Rohinton Mistry. Speaking of whom…


Rohinton Mistry – Such A Long Journey (1991)
– Family Matters (2002)

Unless and until he publishes further, A Fine Balance will remain Mistry's masterpiece. But his other works are not far behind. As with Mistry's other works, each deals with Parsi families – Such A Long Journey in Mumbai in the 70s, with the backdrop of Indira Gandhi's machinations and the war with Pakistan, while Family Matters is set in the same city 90s. Each display Mistry's talent for baroque Victorian narrative and observation of everyday detail intertwined with the bigger picture of Indian socio-politics. The former was withdrawn from the University of Mumbai's syllabus in 2010 after complaints from the family of Hindu nationalist politician Bal Thackeray – in typical fashion, reading the views experessed by characters as if they were expressed directly by the author.

...mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita...

a.k.a, recent reading, as follows:

Victorian

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Aurora Floyd (1862-3)
Classic Victorian sensation fiction – I actually enjoyed it more than the one for which Braddon is now best-remembered, Lady Audley's Secret. The plot centres around bigamy (it's also a canonical work in the 'Victorian bigamy novel') and so, as you can imagine, is of interest on all kinds of levels, but gender and sexuality especially.

Margaret Oliphant – Miss Marjoribanks (1866)
A delightful tale (part of the Chronicles of Carlingford) which bears resemblance to Trollope's slightly preceding Barsetshire Chronicles, of which I'm also a fan. Lucilla, our heroine, is determined to behave sensibly, and also to resolve the lives of everyone around her. Here there are echoes of Austen's Emma (1815), but unlike Emma Woodhouse, Lucilla's management is not wholly unsuccessful. Subversive to an interesting degree yet still moralistic in the classic Victorian mold. I must read the rest of the Carlingford novels.

George & Weedon Grossmith – Diary of a Nobody (1892)
For someone who's got a Victoriana obsession and also a research interest in the rise of the modern bourgeoisie, Diary of a Nobody is perfect. Of course, it's funny, and also a nice counterpoint to more 'serious' Victorian novels (see above) which are yours truly's usual diet.


Assorted Novels

Elizabeth Bowen – The Death of the Heart (1938)
These days I'm not much into 'writerly' writers but I'll gladly make an exception for Bowen, who I hadn't previously read. Her modernist prose makes you want to use clichés like 'crystalline,' and I'm also always a fan of the English novel of manners. In some ways she reminds me of Janet Malcolm (or vice versa) in that both have an exquisite sense of human frailty, but they also like to slyly slip the knife in.

Cornell Woolrich – Rendezvous In Black (1948)
Compared to Chandler and Hammett, Woolrich these days tends to be forgotten as an important noir figure, but the films based on his works are still remembered – Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Night Has A Thousand Eyes (one of my favourite titles) among others. Actually, though, his work is much darker, less procedural-driven and even more psychological than the aforementioned, full of dread. Rendezvous In Black is a revenge narrative following a man whose fiancée has been killed (bizarrely) in an accident with a low-flying plane and an empty liquor bottle. I have two other novels of his waiting, but I'm worried that it'll be too traumatic a reading experience…

Shirley Jackson – The Sundial (1958)
I'm a huge fan of Jackson's fiction, especially the stories other than 'The Lottery' (which is over-proscribed) - and of the great novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived In The Castle (1962). I've been slowly making my way through her lesser known work, which I find uneven. In The Sundial, as in We Have Always…, we find ourselves in a crumbling mansion on the outskirts of a village, both filled with eccentric characters. Aunt Fanny has a vision, delivered by her dead father, of an impending apocalypse, and preparations begin. I didn't warm to this novel though it was interesting, and in some ways could be seen as a test run for some of the themes of We Have Always… I wonder, too, if there is an influence on Stephen King's The Shining (King wrote about The Haunting of Hill House at length in Danse Macabre), particularly in scenes set in mazes.

J. G. Ballard – The Drowned World (1962)
It's impossible not to recognise in Ballard one of the twentieth century's great prophets – which is why I'll reiterate. The Drowned World, an early novella, tells the story of a dystopian Earth on which the ice caps have melted, the seas risen, and the entire planet become tropical. The slow impact of this on the psyche of the survivors – the opaque excursions into psycho-evolutionary biology – along with the tropical/aquatic gothic setting make this a fascinating and prescient piece, if not always compelling.

J. G. Ballard – Crash (1973)
Again, although Crash's reputation preceded it, it didn't do anything to dint the pleasure of reading the work. Like a lot of Cultural Studies and pop culture research people, I find that 'body horror' area/era particularly interesting in which the body-machine complex starts to be overtly represented in forms both erotic and monstrous (note to self: Men, Women and Chainsaws is still waiting to be read). Ballard, Burroughs, Cronenberg, Lynch, and so on. I'm ashamed to admit that Crash (and Dead Ringers) are the two Cronenberg films I've yet to see, but I'm glad to have read the book first – and, like a few other of the works I describe here, it is every bit as stunning as one has heard. And amazing to imagine that it was written in 1973. The blank erotics and stark futurity, the sharp vision of the city and technology, the mutual violation and traumatic inseparability of body and machine and body-as-machine… it's all there. See also Mark Seltzer (thanks again for the recommendation Dr Swan) and also, of course, Donna Haraway.

Lew McCreary – The Minus Man (1991)
I have a long-neglected sideline interest in serial killers, and Mark Seltzer's eponymous work brought a number of references to my attention, including this novel. Generally, I tend to find serial killers a tiresome subject for fiction (particularly as they are now so implicated in crime fiction and television, and don't require a motive, hence obviating the plot work that writers would otherwise have to put in), but The Minus Man (Lydia Lunch has also named a song on her most recent studio album after the phrase) is much more of a psychological work (and, unlike my favourite serial killer novel, Joyce Carol Oates' Zombie, or Dexter, that other tale of a killer hero, uninterested in satisfying gruesome voyeuristic fantasies). While the controversy around the novel (which was also filmed) centred around the sympathy that the reader feels for Vann Siegert, the serial killer from whose perspective the story is told, in fact this seems like a ridiculous over-simplification; in straightforward prose, McCreary sets out a cold but very human psychological study of the killer as a human inhabiting a lifeworld which happens to include the compulsion to destroy others. A work which, as Seltzer pointed out, is thought-provoking both in terms of its original approach to its content, and when considered as a symptom of the violence and trauma at – and reflexively considered to be at – the heart of the modern social-technological complex.


Assorted Non-Fiction

Jessica Mitford – The American Way of Death Revisited (1998)
As is evident elsewhere, although death has been an ongoing theme – as it is for all of us – my recent Death Studies sojourn has been the locus around which various reading has centred in recent times. Mitford's revised version of her classic work takes us through the usual hideous juxtaposition of the biological and the consumer banal (as well as the institutionalisation of capitalist profit-making on the backs of the bereaved). Little of the older material will be news to anyone who's read Waugh's classic, The Loved One – but what rankles and intrigues is the extent to which, despite her original revelation, the deeply cynical corporatisation of the funeral industry has continued unabated. As with any good piece of muckraking – and Mitford's up there with the best – the indignation and disgust flow unabated (to take just one of myriad examples, the fashion for expensive 'double coffins' in which the outer layer is intended to be impenetrable by the elements - causing a build-up of gas inside the coffin due to anaerobic bacterial decay and leading to explosions - the solution being 'burping coffins,' which vent the gas so as to avoid the former, and presumably greater, indignity).

Simon Reynolds – Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past (2011)
There's so much that could be said about this book, but that will have to await a more thorough review. I loved Reynolds' work on post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again, but this one is a bit more personal, also more theoretical and coming from a position of critique, which is interesting but at times fails to gel or seems a little like a mid-life crisis. What I will note here, which others have before me, is that the irony is that Reynolds' thesis - that we now create music which does not attempt to be new, and that this is a bad thing - actually looks back to the time when music saw itself as new (Reynolds thinks '65 was the turning point) as an original golden age. Definitely worth reading - both enraging and engaging.

Scott Carney – The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers (2011)
This book is as gruesome as the title sounds, but it's necessary reading for anyone interested in necro- or thanatocapitalism and the reification of the human body on the unequal playing field of the global 'free market' – while not being as heavy a read as any of that sounds (it's written in an easy journalistic style). Carney's interest in the area began when one of his students, on a group tour to India, committed suicide and he was in the position to supervise the treatment and return of the body. From that point, he explores the various areas mentioned in the subtitle, including the fascinating nexus between holy or ritual head-shaving and the hair industry. For those who enjoyed Mary Roach's Stiff, there are many more interesting explorations to be had into the 'afterlife' of the human – or human biological material. Particularly recommended for the Death Studies cohort (Tim and Pia – also Meredith, you may find this one interesting if you haven't seen it already).

Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011)
I'd really enjoyed Jon Ronson's Them, and so I had high hopes for The Psychopath Test, particularly since, as you're now aware, it deals with a subject I have a deep interest in. But although, as always, Ronson uncovers various near-unbelievable histories and anecodotes, and employs his typical and typically entertaining strategic deployment of his own awkwardness and his unique style of reported dialogue, I found the book a little all over the place. Ronson isn't quite sure what he's interested in (Psychopathology itself, as a concept and as manifest? The 'madness industry' and its pernicious allies in other state and corporate institutions? Institutions and their impact on mental health?) and there is a particularly problematic chapter in which he interviews a former Tonton Macoute, trying to apply his new knowledge of psychopathy checklists – whereas those of us who know much about the area of organised mass violence know that it's precisely necessary not to employ sadists or psychopaths as violence workers because they're too unreliable and anti-systemic - you would think a book on psychopathy, even if not an academic work as such, might pay attention to this kind of thing. Still, all in all a lot of fun.


India

Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance (1996)
Just as good as I'd always heard it was – a Dickensian (I'm not always a huge fan of Dickens, but that's another conversation), addictive narrative set during the massive upheaval of Indira Gandhi's Emergency. In terms of other great recent English-language novels of India, I didn't love it as much as A Suitable Boy, but although Mistry's writing is less exquisitely fine-tuned than Vikram Seth's, the story itself grows powerful very early on.

Gita Mehta – Karma Cola (1979)
A good corrective to the neo-orientalist New Age view of India as a source of wisdom, particularly prevalent in the '60s and '70s – there are some great anecdotes of gurus and devotees, and the intermesh with capitalism, but I found Mehta's 'flip' style to be a bit casual and offputting.

William Dalrymple – The Age of Kali (1998)
Edward Luce – In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007)
I'd already read, and mostly enjoyed, Dalrymple's book on practitioners of different spiritual traditions in India, Nine Lives. But reading Western travel literature on India is difficult in that the writers often haven't caught up with post-colonialism, and that's unfortunately the case both for Dalrymple, who at times appears something of an imperialist nostalgic (I'm also finding that in the work of his I'm presently reading on Delhi, City of Djinns); and for Luce, bureau chief for the Financial Times in South Asia (and now Washington), who is too sympathetic to anti-statist freemarketism for my tastes (not saying that there aren't any problems with the Indian state as such). Nonetheless, Dalrymple's descriptions are gorgeous (and his encounters with Benazir Bhutto particularly stick in the memory), while Luce had access to some very interesting people and the anecdotes, situations and interviews he lays out are both hilarious and chilling, the latter particularly in relation to Partition and inter-communal violence (again, a theme of City of Djinns). I now intend to read some specific Partition histories, which I think may also be helpful for my mass violence research…

Charles Dickens - Our Mutual Friend (1865); Hard Times (1854)

As I may have mentioned previously, though a rabid fan of Victoriana I’m not a huge admirer of Dickens (I suspect I’ve been made bitter by his ascendance over his worthier and far more interesting colleague, Wilkie Collins). Having said that, however, his work always makes for worthwhile reading, even when it infuriates. Of course, the Victorian style of the episodic novel doesn’t necessarily lend itself to consistency in writing, and this, to me, is one of Dickens’ biggest flaws. However, my biggest gripes with Dickens are his characterisations, and the didacticism of his politics and sanctimonious moralising. Neither of the two volumes in question here are free of these flaws, but this is by no means to condemn them (as I would, for example, Oliver Twist).

Some of Dickens' works which have some of the most amazing characters and moments – of those I’ve read, I think of Great Expectations, in particular – also have some of the most infuriating (Joe, Magwitch & Wemmick). While Dickens was a progressive for his time, and did excellent work as an advocate for social justice reform in Victorian England, his class and gender politics (particularly disappointing given his own unusual household arrangements) remain highly problematic for the modern reader. In pursuing these prejudices even while critiquing social practices, his novels have a tendency to reify these values into flat characters who are made up of nothing more than idealised and stereotypical values. But at the same time Dickens’ gift for caricature, his sharp social observation, and his occasional prose passages of great beauty and originality, mitigate these tendencies.

How does all of this play out in OMF and HT? The first was my favourite of the pair – probably, indeed, my favourite Dickens (thus far) after Bleak House. HT, in contrast, is more interesting than gripping – but interesting, and unique in Dickens’ oeuvre, it certainly is. Both of these are later works, and it shows – they demonstrate both complexities and stylistics which are absent in earlier novels.

OMF, like Bleak House, takes as its central pole a legal process – in this case, the will of the miser Old Harmon, who made his fortune in the dust trade. Various characters become involved in the horse-trading and identity shifts and concealments which ensue. These include the young John Harmon (and his mysterious doubles), presumed drowned in the Thames (the Thames itself is really the central character of the work, along with, more generally, the dark and noisome city in which it is embedded – of all of Dickens’ works this is perhaps the most a novel of London); Mr Boffin, a working-class dustman to whom the fortune reverts, with unfortunate consequences for his open-handedness (and his contrasting employee, the scheming & unscrupulous Silas Wegg); Bella Wilfer, determined to marry into riches for their own sake, but with a heart of gold which may yet prevail; the Veneerings and the Lammles, odious and opportunistic socio-economic climbers; and Gaffer Hexam and his daughter Lizzie, who make their living finding corpses of the drowned in the aforementioned river.

As will be evident from this description, the two central themes here are the instability of riches (and of identity, both in relation to wealth and otherwise), their corrupting effect, and the unfortunate consequences of attempts to cross the class barrier; and decease and decay, both in the deaths, natural and unnatural, which take place over the course of the novel, and in the rubbish which silts the Thames (while at the same time the contrasting symbolism of water as baptism and rebirth is employed), and the dust-heaps on which the contested Harmon fortune was made. These latter, along with other examples such as the trade of Gaffer & Lizzie Hexam and that of Mr Venus the taxidermist, provide the symbolic and actual connection between these two concepts – which we might describe as ‘filthy lucre.’

This is a very dark novel, and I deeply enjoyed the gothic aspects of the plot, which are reinforced by Dickens’ very frequent Biblical allusions (which, of course, tend back to the much-neglected Biblical teachings fulminating against wealth and reflecting on its transitoriness, as part of the transitoriness of the human condition, as well as emphasising another characteristic Dickensian theme present here in spades, the visiting of the sins of the patriarch upon the head of the child). On the religious note, Dickens presents here a character, Mr Riah, who is a kindly and sympathetic Jew who owes a debt of obligation to the rapacious and antisemitic Christian Mr Fledgeby which he pays by serving as a stereotypical front for his moneylending business. This character, it seems, was purposefully created in order to allay the hurt that was felt in regard to the antisemitism perceived in the character of Fagin (and in writing thus, Dickens was charged with creating a one dimensional character of the opposite type, an accusation which contains some justice without being wholly accurate). In Riah’s sometime protégé, the disabled child-woman and dolls’ seamstress Jenny Wren, Dickens has created perhaps his finest character (although I am torn here thinking of Miss Havisham). In the latter part of the novel, as betrayal, passion and murder begin to play an ever greater part in the twisted complexities of the unfolding plot, we move almost into the realm of the sensation novel, a development which I found anything but displeasing.

The novel displays some of the typical faults of Dickens’ work mentioned above. Some characters here, in particular his women, are far too saintly to be believable and the unsatisfactoriness of their saintliness is thrown into sharp contrast by the fascinating minor characters. Dickens’ mixed feelings about class, and its instability in the Victorian milieu, are evident inasmuch as, on the one hand, parvenus are condemned and we are shown how the lower classes will never feel at home in the upper social echelons – indeed, they are gently ridiculed, as in the (nonetheless very sympathetic) character of Mrs Boffin – and that we should admire them for the virtue of rejecting charity, as in the case of Betty Higgs – while on the other, mixed class marriages are admitted as acceptable. There are numerous scenes which appeal to the extremely overblown Victorian sense of sentiment (as Wilde put it, ‘One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing”) and the plot itself is impossibly intricate (and, typically for the time, makes liberal use of coincidence) – although inasmuch as it is so, it washes over the reader like the lapping tidal shifts of the Thames – and in being so, it is highly taxing on the suspension of disbelief, as for example in Mr Boffin’s shift from generous spirit to miser and back again.

Stylistically, in the earlier parts of the work, we encounter some of Dickens’ most gorgeous and original passages, descriptive and metaphorical, but as the work progresses descriptions become more stock and the writing more functional – although this may be due, on the one hand, to the pressure of the episodic form, and on the other, to Dickens’ involvement in the Staplehurst Rail Crash during the writing of the novel (he had the manuscript with him in the rail-car), which seems to have caused him a great deal of psychological trauma (criticism of the systems which allow rail crashes to occur makes a brief appearance in the novel).

One of the most relevant concerns for the present moment which OMF gives us is, as part of its examination of the various aspects of the ephemeral nature of wealth, the criticism of market speculation, both literal and as it is found in human relationships (for example, in the newly-prosperous Mr and Mrs Boffin’s search for an appropriate orphan to adopt). HT also deals with concerns which remain highly relevant both in their resemblance and their dissimilarity to the contemporary moment, in its examination of industrialisation and its discontents.

A far less satisfactory novel, but one which remains fascinating for the social moment that it depicts and the ambiguities in the authorial stance, HT, unusually for Dickens, is not set in London. Instead, the action takes place in the fictional Coketown, an industrial mill-town which Dickens partially based upon Preston. Again unusually, the novel is short (originally published episodically, but in shorter sections than his other works) – only 235 pages in my Wordsworth edition (as opposed to the 800-odd of OMF). Dickens apparently wrote the novel in the hope of boosting the sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, and this was successful, though in the event it was not well received critically. The novel is in essence a didactic critique of the industrial system which had been in the process of transforming Victorian England (Dickens had been horrified by visits to Manchester factories), and at the same time – and here equated with it – of the doctrine of utilitarianism (intertwined with the new science, if such it may be termed, of Political Economy), understood by the authorial voice not as a particular approach to happiness but rather as an inherently exploitative reduction of the human (and hence human dignity) to the level of the unit of labour and the bureaucratic account. In making this critique, Dickens also attacks the laissez-faire capitalism (hypocritically enabled by government at the behest of the rich and powerful, as he notes) which was also a feature of the time and which, though it was a theory and practice which already had a solid history by Victorian times, was transforming with the rise of industrial technology and practices. Another central and related concern is education – Dickens targets education by rote learning, the cramming of facts and figures deprived of meaning or context into the heads of pupils (by teachers who have only recently graduated from such methods themselves, and know no others – such a figure is Bradley Headstone in OMF, and he also comes to grief as does Louisa Gradgrind in HT).

If you think that all of these issues sound extremely contemporary (consider for example the debates of recent decades over the ethics of globalised industrial production and labour conditions, the smashing of labour power by conservative governments, the growth of Kafkaesque bureaucratic-administrative procedures of power and surveillance by governments who claim free markets as an unchallengeable secularised religion, or the ‘culture wars’ over education in areas such as history, literature and language acquisition), you wouldn’t be wrong. In this sense we can see one of the things about the Victorian era which gives it a part of its endless fascination, for me at least – for us (post)moderns, to examine the period is akin to recognising ourselves through a distorted mirror.

Again, however, in taking on his role as social reformer Dickens remains a conservative at heart. The narrative concerns Josiah Bounderby, a ‘self-made man’ (or so we are led to believe) and manufacturer with endless contempt for those who have not managed to raise themselves up by their bootstraps (again, a familiar figure in the modern context, particularly in terms of the strength of the Horatio Alger myth, with its convenient concealment of systemic factors and its equation of wealth with industry & hence morality, in the USA and the Anglophone world more generally). Bounderby is the boss of Gradgrind, a schoolteacher who has brought his own children up to reject all fancy and all emotion and to worship fact and reason. Meanwhile, Mr. Sleary’s travelling circus is set up as the positive antithesis of these exploitative, self-satisfied, cruel and unempathetic figures. In creating a further foil for these, we are given Stephen Blackpool, a downtrodden and deeply moral factory worker, and Rachael, a woman whom he loves but can never marry on account of his previous marriage to a woman now become a violent alcoholic. Dickens takes this opportunity to expound upon the hypocrisy of marriage laws in the era, whereby divorce could only be attained either through annulment or a private bill in parliament, and thus was available solely to the very rich and well-connected – this would change three years after the publication of OMF with the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act.

Like many of Dickens’ other characters, Stephen and Rachael are little more than ciphers of morality, rather than well-rounded characters; Stephen’s despair has more than a whiff of Hardy (and, as in OMF and in Hardy, we find an overt Biblical allusion in the titles of the three volumes – Sowing, Reaping and Garnering). And like those other characters, they are not to be allowed a happy ending but must redeem themselves either through death, or through patient acceptance of suffering as one’s lot. The really interesting aspect of this pair, though, is the way in which they reveal Dickens’ ambivalence about the conditions of labour in England, and their relationship to the class system. On the one hand, the upper classes as well as the up-and-coming bourgeoisie and capitalists – such a feature of the period – are depicted as hypocritical and morally corrupt. As well as Bounderby and Gradgrind, the upper-class James Harthouse, corrupter of marriages, and the influence he exerts upon Tom Gradgrind, exemplifies this – Tom is in many ways a similar character to Charley Hexam in OMF, an upwardly mobile young man who is quite prepared to sacrifice his sister upon the altar of his own socio-economic advancement.

But before we conclude that Dickens’ sympathies lie entirely with the miserable and inequitable conditions of the working classes, we must examine his condemnatory depiction of unions and labour solidarity. Slackbridge, the trade union leader, is painted in extremely unattractive lights as an outsider, a trouble maker, dishonest and on the make; and because of a promise Stephen has made Rachael not to get involved in any politicking related to labour, he is condemned by Slackbridge and cast out by his fellow workers (interestingly, the reason for this promise – the rage Stephen feels over Rachael’s sister past loss of her hand in an industrial accident, and Rachael’s injunction to ‘let such things be, they only lead to hurt’ – was cut from the published text). It has been suggested that in having class harmony as his ultimate social goal, Dickens was unable to provide either a meaningful solution to the workers’ problems, or an optimistic conclusion, and this is seen in his failure to propose any better measures for addressing the concerns he raises than employers choosing to treat their labourers better by seeing that, morally, they should do so.

As well as the character problematics mentioned above, we have here – again as is typical in Dickens – more than one unrealistic change of heart as the events of the novel conclude. Perhaps the most interesting character here, though, and an unusual woman in Dicken’s novels (even if not granted a happy ending) is Louisa Gradgrind, who agrees to a loveless marriage to Bounderby for purely rational reasons, according to her inculcated utilitarianist lights, before almost falling into the arms of a seducer when emotion, or fancy, begin finally to rebel; passing this test of morality, Dickens allows her at least to physically escape her marriage. But her strange façade, and her later, somewhat quixotic alterations, make her one of Dickens’ more interesting characters (a later echo is found in OMF, in the person of Sophronia Lammle).

As in so many cases, Dickens knows what he doesn’t like, but, apart from moral purity and submission to the natural order of society which can be discerned beneath the distortions of inequality – mixed, to be sure, with the more comical aspects of the working class and its pursuits – he is not sure exactly what he does. Where OMF is a novel which displays some of his flaws while giving the reader a final taste of a writer with literary powers in full flight, HT remains, if not socialist, certainly sullen and didactic, but nonetheless one which combines Dickens’ own social commentary with a demonstration of the classic ambivalence of the Victorian reformer; and threads this together with a narrative in a way more successful than, for example, the earlier Oliver Twist. Both of these are late works, drawing on archetypes, suffused with social and personal melancholy, even tragedy (despite lashings of Dickens’ characteristic humour and personal optimism), and opening up panoramic socio-cultural buffets which they are not always able to resolve into digestible morsels. Exactly herein, however, lies not only the frustration of the reader of these works, but also the pleasure.

Susan Hill - The Woman In Black (1983)

I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss Susan Hill, given the strong feelings I have for the classical English supernatural tale as manifest from the Victorian era through to the first few decades of the Twentieth century. Perhaps it’s because I have a general dislike for pastiche in literature (if not in other genres) and, in the postmodern age in particular, I tend to find it an excuse for failing to make up an original plot and/or use an original style (while the often anachronistic attempt at adoption often merely puts the skill of the writer being pastiched into an even more flattering light). None of these faults, however, are to be found in Hill’s ghostly novella.

The Woman In Black – set in the early part of the twentieth century, where cars still vie with pony traps – is told with the classic framing device of the elderly reflection on a terrifying and traumatic event of youth; the occurrence in question is the visit of Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, to lonely Eel Marsh House. The house, with attendant crumbling cemetery, lies on a piece of land far out in the windswept salt marshes, accessible only by a causeway which is periodically covered by the rising tide. Kipps is in the process of going through the papers of Mrs Drablow, the late unlamented inhabitant of Eel Marsh House; but when he sees an emaciated woman in unfashionable black clothes at the funeral (getting only surly hostility from the locals on questioning), and starts to hear strange noises from across the marshes and from the locked room at the end of the passageway, things take a turn for the sanity-destroying.

As that précis indicates, all of the ingredients of the supernatural tale of terror are present here, as are James’ five key features of the English ghost story. Hill herself has indicated that her earlier novels are ‘serious,’ while her latter works, including TWIB and her Serailler detective series, do not fall into this category. Certainly it could not be said that TWIB is an original piece (though we might also say that of many of the ‘classical’ works of supernatural fiction), but it stands as a consummate example of an art which might have been considered lost in the age of torture porn and gritty realism. Indeed, we might ask whether originality is an important demand in genre work. Hill’s writing is fine (in the best sense of that word, and in contrast to the lonely setting), despite the frequent comma splices (but please ignore my soapboxing a pet peeve), rising to more poetic heights in some beautiful descriptions of landscape and atmosphere:

Away to the west, on my right hand, the sun was already beginning to slip down in a great, wintry, golden-red ball which shot arrows of fire and blood-red streaks across the water. To the east, sea and sky had darkened slightly to a uniform, leaden grey. The wind that came suddenly snaking off the estuary was cold.

Am I wrong in thinking that, mood-wise, the echoing spaces and sudden emotional stabs of The Cure circa Seventeen Seconds/Faith/Pornography (that is, in the same period as TWIB was written) would be an appropriate soundtrack? Rosemary Jackson, bringing a feminist analysis to Hill’s work (more on this anon), has suggested ‘coldness’ as its imaginative centre, and the tension between detachment from and desire for life as fundamental. The themes here are the ‘sensational’ passions – possessive love, revenge, fear, memory – refracted in sharp shards through the mirror of the past, a liminal demarcation (reminiscent of James’ own story 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad') which takes form literally in the flat sea surrounding the house, stressing the inaccessibility of the recollected, and the dangers both of the alluring yet treacherous waters of forgetfulness, and those of painful recollection – a double Charybdis which in either case leaves the overcurious subject isolated and, ultimately, suffocated.

In this sense, there is an aspect of the ‘psychological ghost story’ to TWIB, manifest in a not-so-pathetic fallacy, which is heir to works like de Maupassant’s The Horla or even Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (though without that work’s prescient questioning of perception itself) – and we might associate this existential alienation, resolved but never quite forgotten or overcome, with the dislocated temporal position of the narrator, trapped between old certainties and modernist innovations, with the house both as a space of security from the external world (the classic Victorian model), and as manifestation of anxiety - in being, on the one hand, the place par excellence for the determination of (cultural) capital, and, in this case, empty, that is, both void of any audience for such a display, and signifying the growing bourgeois realisation of the ultimate emptiness of the endeavour of wealth accumulation and conspicuous consumption.

On this note, class issues – fluidity and the lack thereof – are central to the landscape here. Class transformation is evident in the narrator’s own trajectory (given in the framing story), and a symbolic moment occurs when he transforms, in the eyes of a friendly but unsophisticated, new-moneyed landowner local, from suave young solicitor to dishevelled and fearful victim of the irrational. Beyond this, the fact that class mores were a determining factor in the events which led to the haunting is made explicit in the text – figuring, in other words, the (equally oceanic) arriviste on a lonesome road (one whose lonesomeness is only exaggerated by the many who tread it yet dare not recognise each other), desiring yet dreading to turn his head to see the ‘frightful fiend’ of class ignominy (a common theme in the sensation novel).

This anxiety – the prevailing mood of both the psychological ghost story, and of modernism itself and those who literarily anticipated its concerns – is also manifest in gender relationships. The narrator here moves in a masculine world of solidity (and reassuring, if undesirable, stolidity) while the appearance of the feminine in the text foreshadows catastrophe and unknowability – whether the unseen Mrs Drablow, the ‘woman in black' herself, or Kipps’ fiancé, Stella, who remains offstage and undescribed virtually throughout. One of M. R. James’ rules for the ghost story is the absence of gratuitous bloodshed and sex, and while this is certainly the case here (and while not wanting to emphasise overmuch the repressive hypothesis), nonetheless the events in question are put in motion by the sexual act (not to mention the absent father) - and the attraction-repulsion between the narrator and the ‘woman in black,’ who is a fallen woman both in the sexual and soteriological sense, who is both punished and who punishes, who is caught textually somewhere between the figure of the ‘natural’ and the ‘unnatural mother’ – certainly holds a strong sexual charge, the most obvious manifestation of which occurs in his discernment of the traces of beauty in her wasted features. One might ask, is there a scent here of the unnamed ‘wasting disease’ – the highly sexualised consumption, perhaps – as a punishment for sexual and maternal misconduct? It might be drawing too long a bow to recognise here the advent of HIV/AIDS, but it certainly resonates with the historical moment in which the novel was published.

Meanwhile, the counter-balancing feminine forces, equally without character – the remembrance of the maternal care of Kipps’ mother and his nurse, the warm asexual figure of his latter-day wife – certainly play into a narrative of the saviour Madonna in contrast to the unnatural whore or the barren hag. But I wouldn’t by any means say that this is a novel in which there lies concealed a misogynist narrative – rather, that these tropes of the supernatural genre, in the hands of a female writer (not that that necessarily counts for mitigation), are played upon and indeed complexified in their emotional import. Indeed, we might read the presence of these ‘silent women,’ and the reasons for their silence, as a statement in itself.

In order to appreciate TWIB, however, it’s not necessary (though it’s certainly enjoyable) to analyse the ways in which this work is a reflection on the sensibilities which shaped the classic ghost story, as filtered through the lens of the early 1980s (a period in which the gothic was once again beginning to take hold of popular culture). In short, what we have here is a worthy heir to James, Le Fanu, Mrs. Gaskell and the other luminaries of the luna-nary canon.

Six-Six-Sixties: the number of the angel?

God Help The Girl - God Help the Girl (2009)
The Magic Theatre - London Town (2010)
The School - Loveless Unbeliever (2010)

While 1960s pop of the kind pioneered by Phil Spector with African American girl groups brought to England’s shores the brash and brassy Lulus, Cilla Blacks and Sandie Shaws, to my mind it was at its finest in the more melancholy fragility of a (vastly underrated) Twinkle or a Marianne Faithfull. But this isn’t to say that these two tendencies can’t be profitably combined.

I’ve recently become enamoured of a number of groups doing just that – the revival of the English brand of sweet orchestral 60s girl-group pop. Revivalism, as I may have written before, is a double-edged sword – on the one hand, I might prefer to listen to something more original (whatever that might be), but, on the other, given that historical material is ultimately limited (even if the quest to unearth entire genres is more than a lifetime’s work), why not enjoy yesterday’s sound today? And if it’s done well, a self-consciousness and quality control can be brought to styles which may have been somewhat lacking in that regard during their heyday – a latterday perfection of the essence of the sound, so to speak.

The first of these is God Help the Girl’s self-titled album, essentially a side-project for Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch. But while I’m a big fan of The Boy With The Arab Strap (which itself is deeply indebted to Nick Drake’s 60s masterpiece Bryter Layter), I haven’t been particularly taken with the rest of Belle & Sebastian’s work, or with their performance as a live band. This album, however, while certainly not without its flaws, crystallizes some of my favourite aspects of their work – the gorgeous melodies, sense of vulnerability and a barely perceptible edge of darker melancholy. When I first listened to the album I thought that it was all a little too much the same, with no standouts except the title track (a perfect pop tune which remains by far the finest moment) but the other tracks reveal themselves more gradually as the plot unfurls – the story, which is outlined in the accompanying booklet, is a ‘musical film’ which Murdoch plans to shoot in 2011, though there is no clear narrative arc that I can ascertain. Catherine Ireton’s vocals are gorgeous, smooth but by no means devoid of personality (compare her version of Funny Little Frog to Murdoch’s own from 2006’s The Life Pursuit), and bring a freshness to the music itself – so, while the album suffers from flaws including Murdoch’s tendency to insert himself vocally a little too much into a project which is ostensibly not Belle & Sebastian, as well as a lyrical habit of straying into an irritating faux-naivete which is not always held as well in check as it could be, this is nonetheless a work which is undemanding and pleasurable in the best possible sense.

The concept album theme continues with The Magic Theatre’s London Town, a fascinating album of chamber pop which owes its existence to a strange story of market capitalism, the music industry and the struggling artist. When Ooberman, the previous band of Magic Theatre duo Dan Popplewell & Sophie Churney, failed to sell enough copies to pay their wages, despite support from John Peel and other indie luminaries, the band split up and Popplewell found another way (of the very few remaining) to make a living from music creation: library music. Ultimately, this became a career, and one in which he could explore new musical directions (hence the involvement of the Slovak Radio Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir on this album); but at the same time, the pop sensibility began feeding back into his work, until he was writing library pieces which were also backing tracks for the London Town album songs.

From these extraordinary beginnings comes a narrative, according to their website, is “a time-travel love story set in 1968 and 1888, where the young 60s hero falls through a hole in time in The Magic Theatre in the Old Victorian Steam fair, to find his one true love in 1880’s London.” Even if the music is entirely different, I can’t help being reminded of Momus’ awe-inspiring track London 1888 – one which strikes the same lugubrious note as the conclusion of this story (which, however, is by no means so throughout, but rather follows a quartet of seasonal moods). While the band suggest that the sounds are chosen from the 19th century as well as the 60s, it is undoubtedly the second which predominate. Standouts include the hooky opener, Steamroller, and the subdued rush of the title track.

The pick of this endearing litter, however, is without a doubt The School’s addictive and flawlessly realized Loveless Unbeliever. Packed with bittersweet, upbeat 60s-influenced indie pop gems, and without the nagging twee ingenuousness which haunts God Help the Girl, there’s little to say about this album but to praise it. A point of reference might be Saint Etienne’s Good Humor (my personal favourite of SE’s work – and indeed the album is produced by Ian Catt of both SE and the Field Mice), but here we are in more straightforward territory genre-wise, and in a milieu which is much less enamoured of the atmospheric panoramas of American leisure. The lyrics, dealing with themes of love’s vicissitudes, are completely appropriate while never clichéd or unintelligent. Highlights include Let It Slip, Valentine and the 50s-bop Hoping and Praying. As The Essex might say, ‘they’ve got everything.’

All of these albums work with a joy/melancholy musical dynamic which I must confess is one of my favourite registers, and all recapture – or create – a nostalgic 1960s England of kitchen-sink dramas and funfairs, bright skies and sudden showers, one which thus far has existed mainly in the imagination of Morrissey, but which is certainly worth a (re)visit.

Wilkie Collins - Poor Miss Finch (1872)

While it's one of Collins’ lesser-known works, Poor Miss Finch does not fall into the category of his ‘thesis’ novels, and it remains a work with much to offer the reader. It does not measure up to the heights scaled by some of his other novels, but unlike those pieces, this is a novel which has, not characterisation and intricate plotting, but philosophical, and, specifically, phenomenological exploration as its central strut. Nonetheless, we are not without the sensational, gothic and grotesque aspects which characterise Collins’ work – the double (a recurrent theme), hideous disfigurement, the exurban gothic setting of an isolated house in a remote corner of the country (though accompanied by that staple of Victorian fiction, the picaresque village), and a plot driven by crime, multiplying and improbable coincidence, and a sense of fated doom.

The narrative concerns Lucilla Finch, a young blind woman, and her suitor, the good-natured but weak and quick-tempered Oscar Dubourg, as well as his more worldly twin, Nugent. The story is related by Madame Pratolungo, a companion to Lucilla and a former South American revolutionary – who represents here, along with the eye surgeon Herr Grosse, an example of Collins’ problematic depictions of ‘foreigners’ (we might think of Professor Pesca in The Woman In White), as well as the occasional vehicle of somewhat misogynistic views, but is nonetheless a sympathetic character. Perhaps the most famous aspect of this tale is the treatment Oscar takes for epilepsy – silver nitrate, which turns his skin a metallic blue-grey. The work is subtitled 'A Domestic Story,' and Collins (who, like Dickens, had a highly unorthodox domestic situation, but who, unlike Dickens, was open to the presentation of radical sociosexual moral critique) treats us to a hideous parody of the lower-upper Victorian bourgeois family in the Finch rectory, a former nunnery.

The plot is at times artificially melodramatic, and hence the characters somewhat frustrating, although from a feminist perspective Lucilla is a very atypical Victorian heroine – strong willed and with a definite personality (even if at times more stereotypically irrational and emotionally labile) – but the gothic and melodramatic aspects can also be relished, in the setting (an isolated downland house) and the dénouemont (a wild chase to avert a marriage schemed up under the auspices of deceptive identity, the latter being another characteristic Collins theme).

But unlike many of Collins’ other works, the concern here is not only with identity in terms of appearances which are deceptive because misrecognised (treating here another typical Collins project, the converse characteristics and complex emotional bonds of the double), but also with the way in which identity is created by perception – in particular, in Lucilla’s travail between blindness and sight, and the implications for her character and state of mind. Collins did a great deal of research into blindness for the work, and it was written in a period in which explorations of perception and ontology, with particular reference to blindness, had been budding in the work of philosophers such as Locke, Molyneux, Diderot and Bishop Berkeley (Collins did a great deal of research into the medical aspects of the work, both accounts of blindness and recovered sight, and the treatment of epilepsy with silver nitrate).

In a deeper sense, then, the novel is one which questions deeply-held assumptions about ‘affliction,’ happiness and the human condition, and further, mutual intelligibility – Catherine Peters’ introduction quotes Shaw: ‘do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.’ Peters also notes that Collins’ project, well achieved, was not to show blindness in the typical Victorian sentimental mold, but in the light of human reality – and the sometimes frustrating aspects of Lucilla’s character may be an inevitable outcome of this approach.

Even more so than his better-known novels, this is not a piece without flaws – and those which are characteristic of Collins are the most magnified. But it is also a thought-provoking text and one which is fascinatingly unusual both within Collin’s already outré oeuvre – due to its philosophical concerns – and within the Victorian canon itself.

Ellen Wood - East Lynne (1861)

Working through the darker recesses of Victorian fiction and the sensation novel, I’ve wended my way from Collins through early Hardy, Le Fanu and Braddon to Ellen Wood (Charles Reade, I’ve got my eye on you…) East Lynne, somewhat neglected but, unlike many of its sistren and brethren, still in print, is a work which justly takes its place in this canon. The story involves the vicissitudes of the tragic and immoral Lady Isabel, her doomed marriage to Archibald Carlyle, and the slowly-emerging circumstances of a long-ago murder. While it is not as deeply gothic as works such as Collins' The Woman In White or Le Fanu's Uncle Silas – we are not treated to the scenes of imprisonment and mounting dread which partly gave a name to the ‘sensation’ phenomenon – it is nonetheless sensational in the themes which it treats, including sexual infidelity, divorce (a common theme at the time, given the recently passed Matrimonial Causes Act), bigamy, and murder.

As Elisabeth Jay recounts in the excellent introduction to this edition, one of the shocking things about the sensation genre was that it took the dark concerns and grand guignol of the classical gothic novel, and set them in surroundings familiar to the reader, hence introducing aspects of social commentary and setting the trend for the now well-established 'suburban gothic.' At the same time, however, this left the works open to contemporary criticism of introducing concerns which had previously been those of the lower classes - the murders and scandals which had hereunto found their place in broadsheets and penny dreadfuls - to a non-working class audience - and hence the decadence, lack of taste and even immorality which was so often represented by the novel and the lending library even in fiction itself (putting aside for a moment the Byzantine politics of Victorian publishing trends).

The meeting of high and popular culture is particularly apparent in East Lynne, a somewhat ‘lower’ work than that of other 'classic' Victorian novels (and one often scorned by Wood's contemporaries), the slangy prose is a treat (my Oxford Classics edition apparently restores the prose from later formalization of the language), while Wood, like Trollope is given on occasion to break the fourth wall in interesting authorial asides. Regrettable, though, is an occasional anti-Semitism. Generalising from this point, the reader's sympathy will not always lie with those (presumed) of the author – for example, the individualistic but emotionally available present-day reader may not warm to the sympathetic Barbara Hare’s moral disregard for taking care of and spending time with her children, or with Archibald Carlyle’s failure to notice the impingement of his sister on his relationship with his wife. However, the characters here are interesting – for the most part (unlike, for example, many of those of Dickens), though not universally, they are not moral ciphers, but rather human creatures with good and bad qualities – and, as in Collins’ Armadale, even the wicked female lead is a tragic figure rather than one who is condemned out of hand. The Victorian approach to love and romance, so similar and yet so different to our own, is explored here - particularly apparent, and yet also problematised, is the way in which the Victorians expected that a proper lady would not fall in love until she was sure that the gentleman in question had already done so.

In terms of character and the ‘low’ nature of the novel (which nonetheless is written in a perfectly literary, if not poetic, style), given the morally shocking subject matter, it’s interesting to see characters who don’t often appear in other Victorian fiction, such as the man who has had two (legitimate) sexual relationships – adding an interesting depth to the proceedings (though, as with other mainstream Victorian novels turning on the nature of intimate relationships, one can’t help wondering, even if with a regrettably typical late modern sensibility, what light exploration of the characters’ sexual relationships and personae might cast on the plot). We are also treated to the typical coincidences, mistaken identity, and bizarreries of the sensation oeuvre – grotesque disguises and physical disfigurements, in particular – as well as the typical preoccupation with the dangers of class mingling.

Class-based insecurities bear an obvious relationship to the rise of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, and the new moneyed classes, but one wonders whether the question about individual identity is also related to incipient modernity, the growing and impersonal urban environments and the way in which they allowed switches in identity, in contrast to the small rural communities beloved of so many Victorian fiction writers (here we might think of Cranford as the paradigmatic case of the clash represented). This insecurity can be related to the aforementioned rise of 'new money' inasmuch as in such a circumstance identity was ascertained by appearance, and hence subject to manipulation.

Despite its conservative take on this subject, however, East Lynne is not a work which can be read either as a clear challenge to Victorian mores, or as a straightforward reproduction of hegemonic ideals - it is opaque in this sense, which, while it does not seem to be a conscious choice on the part of Wood, nonetheless contributes to the interest the work holds for the moder reader. One of the joys of Victorian fiction for me is that to read it is to see we English-speaking moderns ourselves, as it were, through a glass darkly - and East Lynne, with its classic sensation concerns of identity, crime, class, social mores, religion, and the way in which these intertwine with the human emotions, does not disappoint.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Wylder’s Hand (1864)

Like many, I’m a fan of Le Fanu’s best-known works, his short stories (including the canonical Green Tea). I’ve also read and enjoyed his sensation novel, Uncle Silas – but it’s outdone by Wylder’s Hand. Again in the mould of the sensation novel (one of my favourite genres), WH tells the story of upstart Mark Wylder’s unlikely impending marriage to Dorcas Brandon, scioness of the ancient Brandon family (who share a history of intermarriage and murderous feud with the Wylders). But when Mark Wylder conveniently absconds to the continent, his rival, Captain Stanley Lake, steps into the breach… but what does he have to hide? Why is his relationship with his fiery but despairing sister, Rachel, so tense? And what role will be played by the pious hypocrite, lawyer Joss Larkin?

Wylder’s Hand is not without flaws – a first-person narrator who rarely appears, when the narrative is otherwise told from an omniscient perspective, is odd, and the novel contains the typical flaws of the sensation genre such as a reliance on coincidence and a too-convenient tying-up of loose ends – but overall I thoroughly enjoyed this macabre and mysterious tale, more so than the aforementioned Uncle Silas. The characters have a depth and complexity which is fascinating, and, unlike many Victorian novels, the women – Rachel Lake and Dorcas Brandon – are not stereotypical personality-less heroines who are little more than objects of fate, but agents with subjectivity and complexity of their own (though, like the other characters, ultimately at the mercy of fate). Likewise, the villains are not embodiments of evil (and indeed, in another original twist, the role of villain changes over the course of the work), but humans whom we may recognise, and even at times feel sympathy for. As in Le Fanu’s other work, the writing is fine and the milieu is beautifully depicted – an atmosphere which is gothic without being overblown, one interspersed with critical observation of the day-to-day social and economic exigencies of Victorian life, is created in impressive fashion. Like the best works of its kind, the feeling of uneasy tension rises over the course of the book, to come to a climax in a grisly crescendo.

This novel was one of Le Fanu’s most popular in its day, but is now, unfortunately, for the most part forgotten. My edition is published as part of the Atlantic Classic Crime series, and if we think of the Victorian era and the sensation authors as forerunners to the crime genre (the classic example is, of course, Collins’ The Moonstone) then we can read this work as a crime novel, by no means a procedural as is the case for the aforementioned, but certainly a narrative of manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre in which a hidden and mysterious deed, which is made to seem impossible, is brought to light and its mechanics explained. Insanity (as well as the ‘blood curse’), that staple of the sensation genre (and something with which Le Fanu was personally familiar in the tragic life of his first wife, Susanna Bennett), makes an appearance in the prophetic figure of Uncle Lorne. The notes to my edition quote Terry Eagleton’s suggestion that the novel is heavily influenced by Le Fanu’s Irish background (Le Fanu set his later works in England on the basis of his publisher’s injunction that Irish settings were not commercial) – that the family blood feud and its relationship to land and property (and indeed, inherited land as sacred is one of the characteristically Victorian themes here) were characteristic of the Irish rather than English landowning gentry. That other doyen of the gothic tale, M. R. James, is also quoted commenting on melancholy as a defining tonal characteristic of the author’s writing.

Wylder’s Hand is a work which skilfully conceals and reveals the dark and mysterious underlying the everyday, which is deeply atmospheric, and which evocatively calls forth a mounting unease, drawing the reader subtly but relentlessly into a vortex of inhumanity and bloodshed. As do the characters, I intend to delve further into the depths of Le Fanu’s oeuvre.

Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth (1905)

I must confess that I haven't previously read any Wharton. However, as a fan of Victoriana (okay, we're talking America, not Britain, and publication a few years after Victoria's death, but let's not quibble) and particularly the Victorian novel of social mores (good ol' Wikipedia describes THOM as one of the first American novels of manners), this work fell right into my demographic, so to speak.

There is, of course, a resemblance to the works of Henry James, though Wharton does not have James' love-hate relationship with all things English; nor does Wharton possess James' subtlety as a stylist. But in comparison to James' works set in the American milieu (well, Washington Square, which is the one I've read) I preferred THOM. The story, realist with touches of melodrama, follows Lily Bart, a poor but lovely socialite, as she attempts to find a wealthy husband, but slowly sinks into a disrespectable and ultimately destitute state through th self-sabotage of her own quest. I was driven by the narrative, which is moving and tragic.

Ultimately, the novel is a sharply biting satire of the hypocritical social world of the American upper classes in this period. The work was first published in serial form, and was not expected to be hugely successful given that it was not a traditional romance as such, but it became a massive hit, perhaps because of the depiction and criticism of this upper-class world, fascinating both for those who belonged to it and those who did not. Lily Bart's quest for extensive wealth and a place in society at the cost of her own happiness is at times frustrating in its seemingly reasonless monomania, but this, I think, is the view of a modern-day reader who does not exist in such a social world.

The major characters are well and intimately drawn, although some of the minor characters are not so original or deeply sketched. But a major point of interest here is the intersection of privileged and underprivileged groups and their intersection with the (separated) spheres of social class and wealth. Lily's position as an upper-class woman makes 'good' marriage a financial necessity, and the difference between her possibilities and that of a man's in a similar class and financial situation is a theme which fascinates and angers in its inequity. The intersection between class and money, though well-explored in Victorian literature, also holds a great deal of interest in a period in which, particularly in America (even as opposed to Britain), a great deal of money was being made very quickly (in comparison to previous eras), by individuals who would not necessarily have previously had the opportunities they did, and effecting the old class system in ways which were still in the process of working themselves out. Finally, and in this light, ethnicity is also a problematic factor - one of Lily's marriage possibilities is to Simon Rosedale, a financially up-and-coming Jewish man, and there is a fair amount of nasty (authorial) antisemitism here, while at the same time a realistic depiction of the same sentiment in the New York social milieu, and an unexpected sympathetic glimpse into Rosedale's character.

I was somewhat disappointed by the ending, inasmuch as Lily's fate seems inevitable (though realistic), even fatalistic, in the same way as the typical homosexual narrative in fiction. However, ultimately THOM provides not only a fascinating and emotionally involving narrative, and a glimpse into a social milieu which is relatively under-represented in fiction, but also a fascinating dissection of the intersection of money, class, gender, and ethnicity in a fast-changing world.

Timothy J. Gilfoyle - A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of 19th-Century New York (2006)

A Pickpocket's Tale is a non-fiction account of the life of George Appo (1858-1930), a small-time pickpocket, opium addict, and confidence man. The tale of Appo's life gives a fascinating picture of the changes which took place between a Victorian and proto-contemporary criminal underworlds, and the changing understanding of and approach taken by the authorities to the 'problem' of 'crime' over this period.

Appo was in many ways an unlikely and atypical character, which may be part of the reason why records of his life (including his autobiography) survive in enough detail for Gilfoyle to produce a book such as this. His father was a Chinese immigrant, who was at first very successful, but would later be imprisoned for murder (Appo and his father would meet for the last time in prison). Appo himself, despite periods of contact with the licit and illicit areas of Chinese culture, would find a home as a 'good fellow,' a crook who practiced by skill rather than through violence and pre-emptive brutality (both of which Appo was often a victim of), and who took prison time rather than betraying even an enemy to the official forces of policing. Finally, however, Appo would be rejected, unjustly (according to the author) by this world after testifying before the Lexow Committee on police corruption, and would attempt, with little success, to 'go straight' in conjunction with various organisation and individuals working for the purpose of reforming criminals.

Gilfoyle weaves a fascinating story. Appo's experience evokes a New York which in part is more familiar through English Victorian imagery, but from which at the same time can be seen the emergence of a more particular American, noir-ish world of corruption.

Appo's experiences chart the 'evolution' of penitentiaries, from Houses of Refuge for boys, to prison ships designed to instil a working ethic into young male criminals, on which same-sex sexual activity was more or less taken for granted; from the festering conditions, murderous brutality and casual torture of Sing Sing, where the lines between the external world and the prison were always highly nebulous, to Eastern Penitentiary where total isolation was practised, intended to reform the prisoner by allowing them to do nothing but reflect upon their wrongdoing.

Gilfoyle's book contains so many interesting facets that it's hard to list them; for example, the emergence of bohemian culture and the way it brought the middle and upper classes into the ambit of crime (though many bohemian opium dens strictly forbade clientele of Asian origin); common confidence tricks, particularly the highly profitable and highly bureaucratised 'green goods game' in which the con man offered to sell forged currency to the mark, before substituting the cash-filled bag; or the casual, monumental inequity of the 'justice' system throughout the period, and the often naive or counter-productive efforts of organised reformers. A particularly memorable episode is Appo's period on the stage, as sensational plays depicting the criminal underworld became huge popular successes.

In terms of flaws, Gilfoyle becomes perhaps a little too sympathetic to his subject, despite the hideous injustices of his life and the fact that, given his social circumstances and the nature of society at that time, he had little opportunity to become anything else. Due to the nature of the sources, gender relations in the period are little explored. Finally, Appo's testimony is more or less accepted as fact by the author (though he notes that it is substantially corroborated wherever other records exist; but this, of course, applies only to major events). Overall, though, this book is a depiction of a fascinating individual, as well as casting light on the nature of criminal subculture and its interactions with the 'licit' social world, the practices of criminal justice and policing, penitentiary systems, illegality and popular culture, as well as giving an engrossing cultural and social portrayal of life in New York for the underclasses, whether criminal or working, in a period of massive social change.

Susanna Clarke - The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories (2006)

Since leaving my teens, I've never been a fan of the updated fairy tale, perhaps because it tends either to simply (re)include heavy sexuality, or else put a heavily obvious ideological spin on the proceedings. And (in contrast to a former self) I rarely read short stories these days. But Susanna Clarke's fantastic (in all senses), monumental novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, an epic story of faeries and magicians set in a Victorian alterna-history in which magic took the place of the Industrial Revolution (this sells the work extremely short, and I can't recommend it highly enough), was a feast - and so I gave her new work, a collection of short stories based on magical and, in particular, faerie themes, a go.

As a complete Victoriana-phile, I'm always looking for modern fiction set in the Victorian period which actually manages to pull off the period detail, society, and language, rather than Mills & Boon cod-Victoriana, or an unfunny, over-the-top send-up of Victorian manners. It's a difficult quality to find, but Clarke has it in spades (some others I'd recommend in this vein, though without the fantasy aspect, are D. J. Taylor's Kept and Wesley Stace's Misfortune). The best of the stories here are set in the world of Strange and Norrell (and some familiar characters recur), that is, the late-Regency to Victorian period in Britain, in which a familiar opposition takes place between the magic of the 'head' (modern, rational, booklearning, technological prowess) and of the 'heart' (ancient, emotional, connected to gods and faeries, natural, uncontrollable). The theme of the cunning mortal outwitting the faerie is also a recurring plot.

The most successful stories are those which most inhabit the world of Strange and Norrell, while the least are those which simply retell old fairy tales. Overall, in opposition to JS&MN, plot is not the point here: even the more elaborate stories are fairy tale retellings, cast into a different world, or else based heavily on traditional fairytale narratives. But, unusually for me, I didn't find this a problem - all the stories held my interest, and I devoured the whole (modest) book in one sitting.

There are some other interesting points to the work; the one 'retelling' aspect which comes up fresh, original and shiny is a fascinating piece which compares the situation of Jews and Faeries in the society created by Clarke. There's also a story set in the village of Wall (where the human and fairy realms meet), created by Neil Gaiman in Stardust (having said which, I've never liked anything of Gaiman's except for his original Sandman series).

This work threw a lot of things at me which I don't usually have much time for (these days, at least): short stories, 'updated' fairytales and myths, and modern genre fantasy (Clarke thanks Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, among others) - but I devoured it. I wouldn't lay money, however, on whether it would universally find the same reception amongst those who haven't read JS&MN. The work, to me, was a tease, a little taster of what's been happening in that world since and contemporaneously with the original novel - I can only hope Clarke doesn't keep me waiting too long for something more significant to sink my teeth into.

Judith Flanders - Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (2006)

I'm an absolute sucker for well-written books of Victorian cultural and social history, and Flanders' CP fits that bill exactly. Flanders has written two other books on the Victorian period which I haven't had the pleasure to read. However, this one, on a subject which I haven't seen explored at any more than chapter-length in most popular books I've read on Victorian history, was really fascinating, giving both an excellent social history of the explosion of leisure among the working classes, and of mass consumption and the technologies which drove it; and, though treating little with personal narrative, an excellent sense of the concrete, day-to-day realities of Victorian life across the classes.

In terms of subject matter, CP deals with the Great Exhibition, the development of the shop (from retail to department) and advertising, the modern newspaper along with serialised and commercial fiction, travel (especially by road and train), holidays and tourism, theatre and spectacle, music, art (especially the development of the artist from a figure of patronisation to a commercial individual, as well as public museums and galleries), sport, and Christmas. Personally, I would've liked to see a chapter on the commercialism of sex and sexuality (surely the ultimate activity involving 'leisure and pleasure'), as well as on drinking and recreational drugs (and all of these, a two-faced attitude to sexuality, a change in the nature of the 'corner pub' and the substances consumed, or the rise and cultural role of 'opium dens', or example, would be fascinating); but and of these would perhaps be another work, and these topics are already covered, to greater or lesser degree, in other works on the era - besides which, at 500-odd pages, CP is already a fairly significant brick.

As well as tracing the grand outlines (the changes brought to peoples' lives in terms of psychologicality, temporality and geography by the new availability of consumer goods, travel and entertainment, and the struggle, mostly class-based, of what forms these new pleasures were to take and who would be included and excluded), Flanders' work is a wealth of fascinating incidental asides on the less-considered aspects of Victorian life (it was impossible, for example, for a woman to visit a bathroom outside her home until the development of the tea shop and the department store, thereby leading to a considerable increase in her outside-the-home purchasing hours; traditional Christmas plum pudding developed from an earlier standard Christmas-porridge, beef broth thickened with bread, dried fruit, wine and spices, beloved in England but 'a dish few foreigners find to their taste'; or the legal necessity for 'low' or popular theatres, forbidden to perform serious works, to produce Shakespeare in tableaux featuring signs in order to get around the rule against spoken performances of 'high'[er] art). But the book is also excellent at tracing the unexpected synchronicities of technology and discourse, and the non-directed developments, of the period which lead to its classic manifestations; for example, the combination of new technologies developed entirely separately in metalwork and in rubber, a good road system covering a relatively small area, a view of lower-middle class men in office jobs as effeminate indoors weaklings, led to a huge boom in the production and use of the bicycle (first mooted in the late 1860s) among the general population.

The Victorian period is usually understood, with justification, as the beginning of the contemporary period as we understand it. In reading Flanders' book, the embryonic outlines of many of today's practices are quite clear (sometimes even near-fully-formed) and the way in which our primary identities, as self-constructed consumers and possessors of individual and shaped personalities, as well as our mentality of constant growth and 'improvement', can be seen, without explicit links being drawn by Flanders herself. The way in which it traces the connection between leisure, consumption and identity, without specifically addressing itself to this subject as an academic topic in itself, is one of the work's great strengths. However, without specifically laying it out (and particularly in the areas where we venture into the eighteenth century in search of the roots of the nineteenth and the historical context in which these changes were occurring), it also gives some truth to the argument, laid out in other writers' work on the period, that the classic schematic separation between pre- or proto-modernity, and contemporary modernity as we know it, took place halfway through what we consider 'the Victorian period' - and we can understand the period better in this light.

Overall, I'd second A. N. Wilson's description of CP: 'as packed with goodies as a rich Victorian Dundee cake'. To be put on the shelf along with works like Wilson's own The Victorians or Liza Picard's Victorian London to return and be dipped into to at leisure (and, of course, at pleasure).