COMPLETE The Story of a Modern Woman (version 2) by Ella Hepworth Dixon - dc

[Sunrise2020]

Chapter 4 is ready for PL.
Bruce

PL of Chapter 4 is okay.

[Sunrise2020]

Chapter 4 is ready for PL.
Bruce

PL of Chapter 4 is okay.

[Sunrise2020]

Chapter 5 is ready for PL.

Here's a little research I've been digging up. Around the 17:15 mark in the recording, Alison says she wouldn't want anyone to think that she was "slumming" and she has contempt for "district visiting". I looked it up. "District visiting" was a highly organized activity, a kind of charitable work — and a pre-cursor to today's "social work" — organized through churches. They were like service clubs, and lots of people — women, mainly — headed off to poorer neighborhoods to talk with and support the poor. (And the term "slumming" first refers to this phenomenon, suddenly appearing in the language and blooming in the 1880s and 90s.)

The total number of visitors from all faiths working across the country was considerable. Precise statistics are not available for all denominations, but in its first official count in 1889, the Church of England announced that there were 47,112 district visitors, mostly female, working in 12,000 of the 15,000 parishes in England and Wales, a figure that rose to 74,009 in all the church’s parishes in 1910.
...
The range of services provided by the visiting societies depended on each one’s aims and resources. They commonly offered food, recipes, coals, boots, clothing, blankets, tracts, Bibles, a sympathetic ear, and advice on matters of domestic importance, such as sanitation and child-care.
...
The evidence suggests that by the mid-nineteenth century there were about three women volunteers for every man, a figure that was on the rise. One commentator, writing in 1887, remarked that 90 per cent of the visitors to the East End were women.

That's all taken from
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539796.001.0001/acprof-9780199539796-chapter-3
Naturally, for some of the "visitors," some smug condescension and touristy voyeurism would set in, which is what Alison is trying to avoid, when she says she'd rather bring the East Enders out of their neighbourhood to live in a better setting, rather than just visiting them in the East End. Of course, her own attitude is not so simple and pure, either. We probably bristle when she says, "I believe I shall make a sensible person of Evelina."

In any case, how middle and upper class people treat lower class people will be an issue in this book.

PL of Chapter 5 is okay.

Thanks for the research. It was interesting to read it beforehand and to better understand what otherwise would have been an unknown reference. I thought that Alison was quite condescending in her description of Evelina and her circumstances while taking her own privilege for granted.

[beeber]

I thought that Alison was quite condescending in her description of Evelina and her circumstances while taking her own privilege for granted.

Right, and here's a point that we modern readers are in danger of overlooking, but would have been perfectly clear to the original readers: Mary and Alison are definitely not of the same social class.

Mary's father was middle class — admittedly, upper middle class — and had to work for a living: he was a professor and author. The inheritance he left for Mary is going to run out in a couple of years. As Alison acknowledges in Chapter 5, she's not thrilled by Mary's plan to go to Art School, but, "Never mind, my dear girl. You must work at something." Indeed.

Alison, on the other hand, is definitely upper class: her mother is a titled aristocrat: "Lady Jane Ives." When Alison says that she's content to let God (or "Providence") take care of her future, Mary mildly replies, "You can afford to." Seeking employment will never be an issue for Alison: she can afford to invest her time (and money) in philanthropic projects.

So, making their own way in the world is a very different project for these two women.

[Sunrise2020]

Chapter 6 is ready for PL.

Two tiny details worth noting:

1. Mary exclaims at one point, "Do you really think that because I am a woman that I must sit by and fold my hands and wait?" The idea of a woman waiting will become an important recurring idea in this book. Waiting (for a husband) was, of course, a feature of life for so many women at that time. Watch for images of "waiting women"!

2. Vincent is planning to write a book on "the Woman Question." It was indeed a big issue at that time, and he (pompously?) assumes that he will have something worth saying on the subject. Just keep that in mind.

Bruce

PL of Chapter 6 is okay. How curious that Vincent declares himself and then announces that he'll be off for a year. With the full expectation that Mary will indeed wait for him.

[beeber]

Chapter 7 is ready for PL.

Bruce

[Sunrise2020]

Chapter 7 is ready for PL.

Bruce

PL of Chapter 7 is okay.

[beeber]

Chapter 8 is ready for PL.

A few notes about this chapter:

1. You may be puzzled by the chapter's title. A "kettledrum" was an informal party, typically hosted by women, to which people could come and go on their own schedules. (As opposed to a formal dinner party.) Today, here in Canada at least, we would call it a "drop-in."

2. Dr. Dunlop Strange will be an important character. Note that he is a specialist in "nervous disease." That means women's ailments; for the Victorians, it was only women who had "nervous" problems.

3. The author seems to be having fun with her portraits of the guests at the party: several of them may be based on real people who would be recognized by the artsy/literary circle. For us today, the most recognizable are the editor with flowers in his lapel — "Bosanquet-Barry" — and his follower, the "pale boy" with "tired eyelids" — "Beaufort Flower," nicknamed "Beaufy." These two are unmistakably based on Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed "Bosie." Here's a photo of Wilde and Bosie, taken in 1893, one year before the publication of this novel. Notice Bosie's "tired eyelids." It was in the following year, 1895, that their homosexual relationship would blow up in a sensational scandal, leading to Wilde's imprisonment.

[Sunrise2020]

PL of Chapter 8 is okay.

Thank you for taking the time to write notes with the readings. It really makes them all the more interesting. I wouldn't have made the connection with Oscar Wilde and is lover!

The other day I about "slumming" and was very pleased to know what it meant.

[beeber]

Chapter 9 is ready for PL.

Bruce

[beeber]

Chapter 10 is ready for PL.
Bruce

[beeber]

Chapter 11 is ready for PL.

Here's a tiny bit of trivia. I mentioned that Bosanquet-Barry, at the party, is clearly based on Oscar Wilde. Most scholars believe that the editor of "The Fan" magazine — the unnamed second editor she visits in this chapter — is also based on Wilde. Slyly, the author tells us that Mary "vaguely" feels she must have seen him somewhere before. She decides it must be because he looks just like the model who has appeared in a bunch of ads for men's fur-lined overcoats. That's the tell-tale give-away for the reader, because there had been widely publicized photographs of Wilde (from his trip in America) in an extravagant fur-lined coat.

It's hard to know what to make of this, other than to see it as a kind of winking in-joke for people in the know. The real-life Wilde, as an editor, did in fact publish a number of Dixon's short pieces of writing.

[Sunrise2020]

Chapter 10 is ready for PL.
Bruce

PL of Sections 9 and 10 is fine.

[beeber]

Chapter 12 is ready for PL.
Bruce

[Sunrise2020]

Chapter 11 is ready for PL.

Here's a tiny bit of trivia. I mentioned that Bosanquet-Barry, at the party, is clearly based on Oscar Wilde. Most scholars believe that the editor of "The Fan" magazine — the unnamed second editor she visits in this chapter — is also based on Wilde. Slyly, the author tells us that Mary "vaguely" feels she must have seen him somewhere before. She decides it must be because he looks just like the model who has appeared in a bunch of ads for men's fur-lined overcoats. That's the tell-tale give-away for the reader, because there had been widely publicized photographs of Wilde (from his trip in America) in an extravagant fur-lined coat.

It's hard to know what to make of this, other than to see it as a kind of winking in-joke for people in the know. The real-life Wilde, as an editor, did in fact publish a number of Dixon's short pieces of writing.

PL of Chapter 11 is fine.

I'm proud of Mary: a first paycheck!