Detection and the Domestic:

Discursive Practices in the Writing of

Ellen Wood.

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of

The University of Western Australia

2009

Alison Jaquet

Bachelor of Arts (Honours)

Discipline of English and Cultural Studies

School of Social and Cultural Studies

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Abstract

This thesis will explore the interrelations of detection and the domestic in Ellen (Mrs

Henry) Wood’s novels, short stories and journalism. I want to reconsider the position of

Wood’s works in the heterogeneous category of sensation fiction and to tease out the

implications of this imprecise location. When Wood’s association with the sensation

school was established by Victorian critics in the 1860s, it became commonplace to

read her works as sensational, a critical position consistent to the present day, despite

the variation evident within her writings. I argue that the complexities within Wood’s

oeuvre and the vast differences between her texts and those of other writers labelled as

‘sensational’ produces space for new approaches to her works. The prominence of

detection and the domestic in Wood’s oeuvre, the discursive instability of her narratives

and their resistance to classification produce a new reading strategy through which I

will consider her writings: domestic detection.

Ellen Wood’s writings are replete with depictions of homes, families and nations as she

negotiates Victorian domestic discourses. In addition, crime and the law are prominent

features of her works and the many investigative figures that people her narratives

reveal that detection operates as discourse. By recuperating some of her lesser-known

texts and revisiting the most famous one, I will develop new resonances between the

works, and between Wood and other writers of the Victorian period. The discursive

complexities of domestic detection in Wood’s writings and in Victorian literature and

culture more broadly, suggest new ways of examining her novels, short fiction and

journalism and the context in which they were produced.

Wood’s works, previously pigeon-holed as conservative, formulaic and sentimental,

reveal subtle, evasive gestures, and domestic detection forms a key part of these

strategies. Hence, I want to suggest that Wood’s writings reflect and participate in

crucial debates of the Victorian period. Wood used her public power as an author to

create complex visions of the home and to investigate domestic discourse. At times,

Wood’s works demonstrate strategic interventions in discourses of gender and power, at

other times she adopts more conventional positions on issues such as sexual and

national identity. It is through the discourse of domestic detection that I wish to

illuminate and investigate these complex strategies.

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Contents

Abstract iii

Table of Contents v

Publications generated from this thesis vii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction. Domestic Detection 1

Chapter One. Storytellers’ Struggles: Detection and Gender

in East Lynne. 59

Chapter Two. Domestic Threats: Policing the boundaries of Englishness

in The Channings, Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles and Roland Yorke. 89

Chapter Three. The Domestic Detective: Mapping Masculinities in Ellen

Wood’s “Johnny Ludlow” series. 129

Chapter Four. Supernatural strategies in The Shadow of Ashlydyat,

Dene Hollow and Pomeroy Abbey. 161

Conclusion 205

Bibliography 209

Cover Image: “With a False Key.” Illustrated by Mary Ellen Edwards. Engraved by

Edmund Evans. Argosy 16 (June 1873). This illustration accompanied Chapter Sixteen

of The Master of Greylands, “Opening the Bureau”.

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Publications generated from this thesis

This thesis contains chapters that derive from my published work. In both instances, the

published work has been extended and revised to form thesis chapters. The

bibliographical details of the works and where they appear in the thesis have been

outlined below.

Chapter Three

Jaquet, Alison. “Domesticating the Art of Detection: Ellen Wood’s Johnny Ludlow

series.” Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian

Detective Fiction. Ed. Paul Fox and Koray Melikoglu. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2007.

179-95.

Chapter Four

Jaquet, Alison. “The Disturbed Domestic: Supernatural Spaces in Ellen Wood’s

fiction.” Women’s Writing. 15.2 (August 2008): 244-258. [Special issue: Ellen (Mrs

Henry) Wood. Ed. Emma Liggins and Andrew Maunder].

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Acknowledgements

I dedicate this work to my supervisor, Professor Judith Johnston. Her wise guidance,

from the inception of the idea to the final drafts, has ensured that this process has been

an illuminating and rewarding one. Judy, your warmth, enthusiasm, timely interventions

and sage advice have immeasurably enriched my work and my life. Thank you for being

such a perceptive and generous teacher.

Thanks must also go to the staff of the discipline of English and Cultural Studies at The

University of Western Australia (UWA). In particular I am grateful to Associate

Professor Kieran Dolin, Associate Professor Tanya Dalziell and Associate Professor

Steve Chinna who are wonderful teachers and have provided crucial guidance at key

points during my university career. I also want to acknowledge the patient and skilful

assistance of Ines Bortolini, Linda Cresswell and Hui Chuin Poa. To my lovely fellow

postgraduate students, Duc Dau, Stacey Fox, Karen Hall, Lee-Von Kim, Caitlin

McGuinness, David Nel and Michael Ondaatje thank you all for your friendship and

kindness throughout the years.

I must acknowledge the wonderful staff of the Bodleian Library at the University of

Oxford, and at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of

Texas, in particular, Katharine Reutner, for helping me to obtain crucial materials for

this project. Thanks also to the Wellesley College Library and The John Rylands

University Library, The University of Manchester for granting permission to reproduce

important correspondence. I also want to acknowledge Rod Berry who sold a much-

loved collection of Ellen Wood novels to me in the early days of this thesis.

I am forever indebted to my closest friends for their support, willingness to deconstruct

a tricky problem or celebrate an academic achievement. Adam Nicol, Zoe Templar,

Emily and Tama Leaver: your wit, warmth and wisdom contribute enormously to my

life and work. And to Henry Leaver, your happy little face dispelled thesis stress at

several crucial points in a way that only someone not-yet inducted into the tricky web of

language really could. Special thanks must also go to Anthony Catchpole, Rebecca

Leask, Francene and Tim Leaversuch, Max Naglazas and my lovely brother-in-law

Andrew Whitehouse.

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This thesis would not have been completed without the generosity of the Jaquet and

Yates families: the sources of never-ending encouragement, many dinners and

intellectual (and not-so-intellectual) discussions. To my Dad, Derrick Jaquet, and his

father, my Grandad Don, I owe my love of detective fiction. Under such wise tutelage, I

graduated from Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew and discovered Hercule Poirot and Miss

Marple. Sincere thanks also to Susanne and Henry Sharp who have always encouraged

and strengthened my intellectual curiosity and resilience. I am truly thankful for the

support of my brilliant twin sister, Emma Jaquet. Em, thank you for your love, honesty

and clear-sightedness. We are the best twins. Finally, to James Yates, who has brought

music into my life. James, your kindness, strength and love have inspired and sustained

me over the years. And, amidst the intensive thesis writing process, thank you for

suggesting, on occasion, that a trip to the beach or a game of backgammon might not be

such a bad idea as well.

This project was completed with funding from a University of Western Australia

Postgraduate Award, a University of Western Australia Completion scholarship and

valuable research funds from the UWA Graduate Research School and School of Social

and Cultural Studies.

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Introduction

Domestic Detection

This work will explore the interrelations of detection and the domestic in Ellen (Mrs

Henry) Wood’s novels, short stories and journalism.1 I want to reconsider the position

of Wood’s works in the heterogeneous category of sensation fiction with which they are

frequently associated. By recuperating some of her lesser-known texts and revisiting the

most famous, I will develop new resonances between the works, and between Wood and

other writers of the Victorian period. Wood’s writings are replete with depictions of

homes, families and nations as she negotiates Victorian domestic discourses. In

addition, the many investigative figures of her narratives reveal that detection operates

as discourse in her works. In this way, an examination of the slippage between sensation

and detection will allow Wood to be more adequately located within her literary and

cultural context. It is not my intention to dismiss Wood’s association with sensation

altogether, as genre is a useful classificatory tool, but once her association with the

sensation school of the 1860s was established by Victorian critics, it became

commonplace to read her works as sensational, whereas great variation is evident within

her writings. The discursive instability of Wood’s works and their resistance to

classification requires a nuanced approach.

The prominence of detection and the domestic in Wood’s oeuvre produces a new focal

point through which to consider her writings: domestic detection. Wood’s 1872 novel,

Within the Maze provides a telling example of domestic detection in her works. The

‘Maze’ of the title surrounds a secluded cottage that houses a prison escapee, Sir Adam

Andinnian. The novel’s hero is Karl Andinnian, brother to the fugitive and troubled

keeper of the secret, who protects the Maze from various detective figures that lurk in

the outside world. Several aspects of the novel, including the intrusion of crime into the

upper-middle class home and the threat to the family presented by various professional

and amateur detective figures, are themes that are repeatedly exploited by Wood in her

narratives. The text portrays home and marriage in ways that complicate the Victorian

bourgeois ideal, with Wood’s domestic sites often more suggestive of imprisonment and

threat than comfort and security. In this, and many other writings, Wood’s plots

1 Throughout this work I will refer to the author as Ellen Wood, despite the fact that, as I will

discuss, she insisted upon the appellation “Mrs Henry Wood” for her novels, as well as other

pseudonyms during her writing career, such as “Johnny Ludlow” and “Ensign Thomas Pepper”.

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alternately invoke, install, interrogate and subvert domestic ideologies. Thus, domestic

detection does not merely suggest a desire to detect guilty homes, but in Wood’s works,

there is an insistence upon a detection of the multiple meanings of the domestic: the

complex operations and negotiations involved in constructing, perpetuating and

engaging with domestic discourse.

Indeed, the image of the maze is a suggestive one for my purposes. When employing

the image of the maze, nineteenth century writers still imagined the original labyrinth of

Greek mythology: the Minotaur’s labyrinth. 2

This maze is navigated by Theseus who

employs a ball of thread to track his way out of the labyrinth. Indeed, it is this

unravelled thread or ‘clew’, as it is defined, that signals the domestic underpinnings of

detection. The etymology of the word ‘clue’, which is so prominent in narratives of

detection, derives from this thread or ‘clew’, and it is significant that this central

component of detection arises from the domestic practice of weaving or sewing.3 In

Wood’s novel, ‘The Maze’ represents both the cottage home and its surrounding

labyrinth of hedges. The one is never delineated from the other and both are associated

with suppression, secrecy and mystification. Hence, I would argue that it is the maze of

Victorian domestic discourse that Wood’s works navigate and scrutinise for her readers.

Wood’s characters constantly seek the necessary clue in order to negotiate the complex

web of this maze, as ordinary people are readily transformed into guilty figures or

amateur detectives by the author. This is also suggested by the various domestic spaces

that are subject to investigation in the novel. In addition to the focus on The Maze, Karl

Andinnian’s household at Foxwood Court is also scrutinised for the reader. Wood

interrogates Karl’s mismanagement of his new marriage to the sensitive and refined

Lucy Cleeve who begins to suspect her husband of infidelity. Moreover, while the

narrator criticises Karl’s lack of openness with his wife, Lucy’s willingness to believe

2 Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House

(London: Bloomsbury, 2008), p.68, points to the importance of the myth of the labyrinth to

nineteenth century writers including Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins and Andrew Forrester

who wrote The Female Detective (1864). 3 Indeed, the derivation of ‘clue’ from the domestic practice of sewing is suggestive when we

consider that Wilkie Collins’ female detective in The Diary of Anne Rodway (1856) is a

seamstress and the heroine of Andrew Forrester’s The Female Detective (1864) hides her role as

an investigator and states: “my friends suppose I am a dressmaker” (Cited in Joseph A. Kestner,

Sherlock’s Sisters: The British Female Detective, 1864-1913 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p.11).

“clue n.” The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Twelfth edition. Ed. Catherine Soanes and

Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University

Press. University of Western Australia. 25 March 2009.

<http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t23.e10704>.

3

gossip about her husband is also condemned. Indeed, in the novel, the author avidly

investigates the domestic conduct of husbands, wives, servants, neighbours and friends

as much as the criminal activities in the novel. Within the Maze forms just one of many

examples of Wood’s investigations into the home in her fiction that was published

widely during the second-half of the nineteenth century. 4

In developing the category of domestic detection, I have been influenced by Catherine

Ross Nickerson’s discussion of ‘domestic detective fiction’ in The Web of Iniquity:

Early Detective Fiction by American Women.5 In her study, Nickerson locates this new

subgenre amongst novels written by women during America’s postbellum era and

beyond.6 Her approach involves recuperating and incorporating certain ‘forgotten’ texts

by women into the history of ‘detective fiction’ and to suggest how these works critique

issues of gender and class of the period. In my own work, I will develop this model in

order to analyse Ellen Wood’s writings that were first published in London from the

1850s to the 1890s. While Nickerson largely confines her discussion to detective fiction

as a genre, I will argue that detection as a discourse can be mapped regardless of generic

categories that might mark out a particular work as a domestic or sentimental novel,

sensation, gothic, detective fiction or all of the above. By extending Nickerson’s

framework, I am interested in detection more broadly, as a pervasive system that, for

Wood, reaches beyond the politics of the household and interrogates the politics of

Victorian England. In designating this impulse as domestic detection, I emphasise that

the domestic sites of the texts are not unproblematic or neutral, and that the work of

investigating these spaces necessarily involves complex negotiations of the domestic

discourses of the period.

4 Within the Maze was first serialised in the Argosy from January to December, 1872. According

to sales figures published in 1901, Wood’s sales were “approaching Three Million Copies”.

Within the Maze had sold 140,000 copies and its popularity is only exceeded by Wood’s novels,

East Lynne (540,000), The Channings (200,000), Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles (160,000) and

Roland Yorke (150,000). Figures published in Mrs Henry Wood, Verner’s Pride (1862; London:

Macmillan and Co, 1901). Only a decade later, in 1911, Macmillan’s publicity declares that

“over Five Million Copies” of Wood’s novels have been sold. East Lynne has reached almost 1

million sales (970,000), The Channings (330,000), Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles (255,000),

Roland Yorke (206,000) and Within the Maze (184,000). Figures published in Mrs Henry Wood,

George Canterbury’s Will (1870; London: Macmillan, 1911). 5 Catherine Ross Nickerson, The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women

(Durham: Duke University Press, 1998). 6 Nickerson addresses works by female authors such as Metta Victor, Pauline Hopkins, Anna

Katherine Green and Mary Roberts Rinehart

4

An earlier work that is echoed in Nickerson’s approach and to which my formulation of

domestic detection is indebted, is Anthea Trodd’s Domestic Crime in the Victorian

Novel. Trodd argues that representations of domestic crime provide a vehicle for

Victorian novelists to explore household tensions.7 In her compelling analysis, Trodd

discusses the separate spheres ideology that led to anxieties surrounding the figures of

the policeman, the servant and the Lady. She concentrates her discussion around these

suspect, guilty or even criminal figures and briefly includes Wood’s novels East Lynne

(1861) and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles (1862) in her analysis. My work draws upon

Trodd’s ideas, but modifies the focus to concentrate on the processes of detection.

Wood’s novels do not only offer up guilty homes and genteel criminals, but they also

produce networks of domesticated detectives with complex interpretive powers and

broad spheres of operation. As I have already emphasised, in Wood’s works,

investigations of individual households often speak to broader concerns about the

domestic space of England. The discursive complexities of detection and the domestic

in Wood’s writings and in Victorian literature and culture more broadly, suggest new

ways of examining her novels, short fiction and journalism and the context in which

they were produced.

Domestic Detection: The Road Murder

Mrs Kent was sitting downstairs at the breakfast table when her

husband came in to tell her that their son was dead.

‘Someone in the house has done it,’ she said.

Cox, the maid, overheard her. ‘I have not done it,’ Cox said. ‘I have

not done it.’

At nine, as usual, Kerslake put out the fire beneath the kitchen

hotplate.8

Domestic detection is not only evident within Wood’s fiction, but is also a concept

derived from the broader context. To examine the significance of domestic detection

during the infancy of Ellen Wood’s career as a novelist, I would like to consider the

example of the Road Murder. This infamous Victorian murder of 4-year-old Francis

Kent, at his home in the village of Road, draws together many of the threads that I will

7 Anthea Trodd, Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (London: Macmillan, 1989), p.156.

8 Kate Summerscale, p.20. In this text, Summerscale recounts the Road murder in the style of a

country-house murder mystery. To reconstruct the events, she uses archival material including

police reports, newspaper coverage and court testimony among other sources. Her narrative

emphasises the oppressive, transgressive and criminal possibilities that lie beneath the surface of

the Victorian home.

5

be tracking in this thesis. The quotation cited above from Kate Summerscale’s book,

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House, draws together

violent crime with the rituals and routines of the middle-class home. During the 1860s,

Victorian Britain was gripped by this startling domestic crime. On the 3rd

of July, 1860,

the seemingly respectable Kent family found their youngest son in the grounds of their

home, with his throat cut. This caused an outcry in the popular press and for five years

the investigations of detectives, including Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher,

exposed the Kent household to years of scrutiny. While the mystery remained unsolved,

commentators speculated on possible suspects and used the case as evidence of the

destructive forces lurking beneath the middle-class domestic ideal. This was reinforced

when in 1865, Francis’ stepsister, Constance Kent, confessed to his murder. Anthea

Trodd cites the Road murder as an example of a domestic crime that “affronted the

popular conception of the domestic sanctuary in the most violent manner possible”.9

Andrew Mangham, in his recent book, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction: Crime

Medicine and Victorian Popular Culture, suggests that this murder “fostered a notion of

the home as a deceptive place of conflict between latent dangers and misleading

appearances”.10

Both Trodd and Mangham reflect the ways in which the Road Murder

foregrounded domestic conflict, violence and danger. However, Kate Summerscale

takes this further in the introduction to her work, arguing that, “the murder at Road Hill

became a kind of myth – a dark fable about the Victorian family and the dangers of

detection”.11

In her compelling analysis, Summerscale also signals the threat to privacy

that a detective’s investigations might pose to the Victorian home.

During the five years of mystery following the Kent murder, speculation abounded

about the crime. Summerscale notes that “the emotions aroused by the Road Hill

murder went underground, leaving the pages of the press to reappear disguised and

intensified, in the pages of fiction”.12

Writers such as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins,

Ellen Wood and Mary Braddon paid close attention to crimes reported in the

9 Trodd, p.19.

10 Andrew Mangham, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction: Crime Medicine and Victorian

Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p.51. 11

Summerscale, p.xi. 12

Summerscale, p.217.

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newspapers, crimes that would often be adapted for the pages of their fiction.13

According to Ellen Wood’s son, Charles Wood, she was fascinated by criminal trials:

She took the keenest interest in all great trials. She followed out the

threads and points of an intricate case with the greatest clearness and

insight. In all important trials where mystery or complications were

involved, or doubt and indecision as to right and wrong, guilty or not

guilty, she quickly made up her mind at an early stage, saw the strong and

the weak points, and was scarcely ever wrong in the opinion she formed.

She often said that had she been a man, she would have made a first-rate

lawyer, with a passionate love for her work.14

While Wood’s innate ability to detect criminals from the pages of the newspapers in the

comfort of her home might be an exaggeration, she certainly explored incidents of crime

and its detection in her writings for her middle-class readership. Mangham’s useful

analysis explores the ways in which authors, including Wood, engaged with the

Constance Kent case to construct the dangerous women of their novels. He pinpoints

Wood’s novel St Martin’s Eve (1866) as a response to the medical and psychological

discourses of female insanity that circulated around the case.15

However, Wood’s

writing is also linked more explicitly to the Road Murder. In a letter from 1863, Harriet

Martineau praises Wood’s novel Verner’s Pride (1863), asserting that its interest is

“like that of the Road Murder for occupying people’s minds and causing speculation”.16

13

Thomas Boyle, Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian

Sensationalism (New York: Viking, 1989), p.146. Boyle argues that Collins used the Road

murder as the inspiration for The Moonstone (1868), but acknowledges that this practice was

widespread, and that “almost all the writers used the newspapers as sources of information in

one way or another”. Summerscale argues that in Mary Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862)

the figure of Constance Kent was “refracted into every woman in the book” (p.217). She also

argues that Dickens wrote to Collins on Oct 24, 1860 to speculate upon the Road murder,

believing Mr Kent, the father of the child to be the murderer (p.190). 14

Charles W. Wood, “Mrs Henry Wood: In Memoriam”, Argosy 43 (1887): 436. Opinion was

divided over the accuracy of Wood’s depictions of legal matters. In 1862, one reviewer asserts

of East Lynne, “Mrs Wood has an accuracy and method of legal knowledge about her which

would do credit to many famous male novelists.” (Saturday Review 13 (15 Feb, 1862): 187.)

However, Samuel Lucas, in his Times review (25 Jan 1862): 6, was highly critical of Wood’s

depiction of the criminal trial at the end of East Lynne, asserting that she should have consulted

“the young men at chambers” to improve it. Again, in 1863, Lena Eden writes, “Mrs Wood is

not much of a lawyer, and the reader who knows anything about wills and property can only

smile at her very romantic machinery (Lena Eden [unsigned], Review of Verner’s Pride,

Athenaeum 1845 (Mar 7, 1863): 322). 15

Mangham, pp.71-79. In St Martin’s Eve (1866), published only a year after Constance Kent’s

confession, the beautiful, but insane Charlotte St John murders her stepson in a jealous rage. 16

Extract of a letter from Harriet Martineau to Ellen Wood, 18 Mar 1863, Ellen Wood Papers,

Wolff Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at

7

The connection between Wood’s writing and the Kent case indicates that both occupied

a close position in the popular imagination. I would argue that the fascination for

domestic detection among Victorian readers is the common thread, and the prominence

of crime, law and detection in Wood’s works suggests a way in which we might

reconsider her writings and their position in Victorian culture.

Indeed, the relationship between literature and criminal investigations in the popular

press is closely connected. Crime and its representations were in dialogue during the

Victorian period. The popularity of the Sherlock Holmes series is linked to a late-

Victorian anxiety about an elusive urban psychopath, as the unsolved Jack the Ripper

murders in Whitechapel, produced a desire for a masterful detective figure.17

In

considering the Road murder, I want to position Wood’s writings as domesticated

precursors to Conan Doyle’s more famous urban detective. Both authors’ works of

detection were produced or popularised almost simultaneously with sensational real

crimes, and can be read as imaginative responses to the anxieties and concerns of the

cultural moment.18

I want to emphasise that Victorian literary negotiations with

detection and crime did not merely culminate in the arrival of Sherlock Holmes, but

were fertile territory for writers such as Ellen Wood, at mid-century.

Detection and discourse

Heather Worthington’s The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Popular

Fiction complicates the traditionally masculinised narrative of nineteenth-century crime

literature, commonly traced from Vidocq to Dupin to Holmes.19

She resists what she

terms the ‘retrospective reconstruction’ of the detective’s emergence in literature by

Austin, uncatalogued. While a letter extract seems a little dubious, quotations from this

correspondence were used as publicity for Wood’s novels during Martineau’s lifetime, thus

suggesting its authenticity. 17

Franco Moretti, Signs Taken For Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms, trans.

Susan Fisher, David Forgacs and David Miller (London: Verso, 1983), p.145, describes Holmes

as “the great doctor of the late Victorians, who convinces them that society is still a great

organism: a unitary and knowable body. His ‘science’ is none other than the ideology of this

organism.” 18

Summerscale argues persuasively that “The unsolved murder at Road played out the sensation

novelist’s vision of Britain” (p.221). 19

Heather Worthington, The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Popular Fiction

(New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p.1. Maureen T. Reddy also describes this masculinist

trajectory as “a movement from man to man” in “Women detectives,” The Cambridge

Companion to Crime Fiction, ed. Martin Priestman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2003), p.191.

8

focusing on once-popular, but now lesser-known, texts from the period. Worthington’s

approach is an important influence on my own work, notably her use of Foucauldian

notions of disciplinary power to link the role of the modern police force to the

emergence of the fictional detective. I will extend Worthington’s ideas that focus on

early nineteenth-century fiction, to show how detection as a discourse is embedded in

Wood’s popular narratives later in the century. Moreover, I would argue that this

approach is indebted to the strategies of a key theorist of detection, Martin Kayman. In

From Bow Street to Baker Street: Mystery, Detection, Narrative, Kayman reminds the

reader that ‘detective fiction’ is a term that did not come into popular usage until the

1880s.20

Kayman’s premise is:

What we call ‘detection’ is most usefully construed as a historically

specific strategy for mastering what are designated as the mysteries

which, at various moments, a range of discourses, structures and

institutions claim the privilege and power of being able to read/write.21

Like Worthington and Kayman, I argue that detection is bound up in modern modes of

power, and in this vein, I wish to define detection in a more specific way: as a

discourse.

In considering domestic detection in Ellen Wood’s fiction, it is apparent that the

depiction of ‘detection’ as a process brings into question the act of storytelling itself.

That is to say, detectives have often been theorised as figurative writers and storytellers

as they (re)construct the narrative of a crime.22

As such, the construction of narrative is

a process that is staged within the texts, and the figure of the detective interrogates

assumptions about truth and knowledge. Peter Thoms elucidates this authorial power of

the detective to interpret signs, construct knowledge and produce truths where he

contends that:

20

Martin Kayman, From Bow St to Baker St: Mystery, Detection, Narrative (London:

Macmillan, 1992), p.172. 21

Kayman, p.4. 22

This emphasis on storytelling and narrative (re)construction follows such works as Dennis

Porter’s, The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1981).

9

For the inventors and earliest practitioners of detective fiction, narrative is

not what is – an unproblematic mirroring of events – but what is made,

and that process of construction becomes the very subject of these works.

In this context, the detective functions as an authorial figure, attempting

to uncover the story of the crime, and the “case” becomes a story about

making a story. Thus the resulting solution confronts us as an artifice, as

an intelligible chain of narrative constructed from discovered information

and, significantly, from other documents.23

Thoms’ argument, in its relation to the detection plots of Wood’s novels, suggests that

they function as narratives about constructing narrative, representations of

(re)presentation and stories about storytelling. Summerscale reflects upon this practice

in her summary of the “slipperiness” of the task of detection when she argues that, for

the Victorian investigator, “objects as well as memories were endlessly open to

interpretation”. She goes on to argue that:

Darwin had to decipher his fossils. Whicher had to read his murder scenes.

A chain of evidence was constructed, not unearthed. Forrester’s lady

detective puts it simply: ‘The value of the detective lies not so much in

discovering facts, as in putting them together, and finding out what they

mean.”24

Accordingly, narratives of detection are fundamentally concerned with the problem of

knowledge and detectives become powerful figures as authors of this knowledge.

These circulating epistemological concerns of narrative, knowledge, truth and power

enable the theorising of detection as a discourse. Sara Mills defines discourse as a site

of struggle to produce ‘truths’ in society, which involves the exclusion of some forms of

23

Peter Thoms, Detection and its Designs: Narrative and Power in Nineteenth-Century

Detective Fiction (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998), p.1. Thoms clearly draws from earlier

studies such as Albert D. Hutter’s assertion in “Dreams, Transformations and Literature: the

Implications of Detective Fiction” Victorian Studies (December 1975): 194, that detectives are

“inevitably concerned with the problem of knowledge”. See also, Peter Hühn, “The Detective as

Reader: Narrativity and Reading Concepts in Detective Fiction.” Modern Fiction Studies 33.3

(Autumn 1987): 451. Huhn explores reading-writing contest of the detective and criminal and

argues that the detective genre “thematizes narrativity itself as a problem, a procedure and an

achievement”. 24

Summerscale, p.216. The quotation here from Forrester is drawn from his novel, The Female

Detective (1864).

10

knowledge.25

Mills’ analysis is developed from the writings of Michel Foucault who

elucidates the relation between truth and discourse:

Truth isn’t outside of power, or deprived of power ... Truth is of the world;

it is produced there by virtue of multiple constraints. And it induces there

the regulated effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its

“general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse it harbours and

causes to function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one

to distinguish true from false statements, the way in which each is

sanctioned; the techniques and procedures which are valorised for

obtaining truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what

counts as true.26

Foucault’s reference to this “status” of the truth-tellers in society is explained further by

Mills as a function of how discourse is “bounded by rituals which limit the number of

people who can utter certain types of utterance”.27

In this way, like a priest who

performs marriage rites or a monarch who opens parliament, the detective has a

legitimate position from which to speak, where others are limited.28

In similar terms,

Summerscale suggests that the “Victorian detective was a secular substitute for a

prophet or a priest. In a newly uncertain world, he offered science, conviction, stories

that could organise chaos.”29

In addition, Ronald R. Thomas, in Detective Fiction and

the Rise of Forensic Science argues that detection is a “science” in which the body

(criminal or victim’s) reveals a “truth” only legible to the detective. These ideas about

reading and interpretation, truth and authority circulate in my own theorising of

detection as discourse.30

Consequently, I argue that the detective is a powerful figure as

s/he constructs meaning out of disorder via the discourse of detection.

In 1863 Margaret Oliphant argues that “the science of the detective is by no means

based on truth-telling” as she perceives that detection is not necessarily equated with

25

Sara Mills, Discourse (London; New York: Routledge, 1997), pp.18-19. 26

Michel Foucault, Power, Truth, Strategy, eds. Meaghan Morris and Paul Patton (Sydney:

Feral Publications, 1979), p.46. 27

Mills, p.71. 28

These particular examples are drawn from Mills (p.71) but I have extended her analysis to

incorporate the example of the detective. 29

Summerscale, p.xii. 30

Ronald R. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1999) pp.1-18.

11

morality.31

Indeed, Summerscale indicates the conflict between detection and domestic

discourses where she argues that after the detectives failed to solve the Road murder,

public faith shifted and “the image of the detective darkened”.32

Hence, in Wood’s

novels, detection is a contested and highly political discourse. The heart of my argument

concerns Foucault’s assertion that “discourse is not simply that which translates

struggles or systems of domination, but is the thing for which and by which there is

struggle”.33

In this way, individuals actively engage with discourses in order to

empower themselves, and in my analysis, this opens up detection to acts of

reinterpretation and re-scripting.34

D. A. Miller has been an influential figure in using

Foucauldian analysis to examine detective fiction. However his assumption, in The

Novel and the Police (1987), that the policing paraphernalia of the state acts as a

monolithic force, is one that has been questioned in more recent scholarship.35

While I

follow Miller’s use of Foucault to analyse the power relations inherent in domestic

detection, I will explore the complex and contradictory discursive forces negotiated by

Wood’s everyday detectives.

In Wood’s narratives, the power and authority that resides in the hands of figures such

as detectives, doctors, lawyers, judges and narrators to produce meaning, knowledges

and narratives is foregrounded, questioned and destabilised. Detectives are often

amateurs who use gossip, intuition, superstition or even specialised domestic knowledge

to detect crime and deviance. Police are usually suspect figures, operating too closely

among the lower or criminal classes. In Wood’s texts The Channings (1862), Mrs

31

Margaret Oliphant, “Novels”, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 94 (August 1863): 170.

Among the works of other popular writers, Oliphant mentions Wood’s novels East Lynne and A

Foggy Night at Offord (1863), using the latter novel to lament the “police-court aspect of

modern fiction” (169). This is also the review in which Oliphant speaks of the tendency towards

“detectivism” and “criminalism” in modern fiction in which there is an “imperfect and confused

morality” (170). 32

Summerscale goes on to argue that “Many felt that Whicher’s inquiries culminated in a

violation of the middle-class home, an assault on privacy, a crime to match the murder he had

been sent to solve. He exposed the corruptions within the household: sexual transgression,

emotional cruelty, scheming servants, wayward children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and

loathing. The scene he uncovered aroused fear (and excitement) at the thought of what might be

hiding behind the closed doors of other respectable houses. His conclusions helped to create an

era of voyeurism and suspicion, in which the detective was a shadowy figure, a demon as well

as a demi-god” (xii). 33

Michel Foucault, “The order of discourse,” Untying the Text: A Post-structuralist Reader, ed.

R. Young (Boston: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1981), pp.52-53. 34

Mills, p.91, asserts this in relation to feminist theory and discourse theory and I find that it

applies equally to my theorising of detection as a discourse. 35

See Thomas, pp.13-14.

12

Halliburton’s Troubles (1862), Roland Yorke (1869) and Within the Maze (1872) this

tendency is evident as the works explore anxieties regarding police power and authority

in relation to the middle-class home and family. However, even the professional classes

in Wood’s novels evoke suspicion. In both Lord Oakburn’s Daughters and Oswald

Cray (1864) doctors abuse their professional privileges by committing murder and

fraud. The “Johnny Ludlow” story “Coming Home to Him” (1868) portrays a

magistrate who misuses the processes of law and Wood’s narratives are replete with

sinister lawyers who change wills and defraud clients for personal gain. In response to

these myriad threats to the respectable home, Wood fills her novels with detective

figures. As Stephen Knight argues “[d]etection was a recurrent element in these first

major sensational novels, and in some others it can dominate so that it is as easy to call

it a detective novel”.36

As I will show, domestic detection operates as a pervasive

discourse in Wood’s novels, obscuring the distinction between the sensation and

detective novel. In Wood’s writings, there is rarely only one detective operating within

each narrative. Often there are several characters involved in detection: competing,

coalescing, and/or obstructing each other’s investigative processes.

The many detectives that populate Wood’s works raise interesting questions about

issues of gender and power – questions that will be considered throughout this thesis.

The significance of this convergence – gender, power and detection – is suggested by

the preceding discussion of the struggle for control of the discourse of detection. In

Wood’s novels detectives are men, women, boys and girls of all classes. It is this

struggle to tell truths, to form knowledge and to claim the role of detective that Wood’s

narratives reveal. Those who are most powerful or successful as detectives are those

who conform to expectations of acceptable gender roles and class position. These ideas

are illuminated in Anne Hereford (1868), the first of Wood’s novels to be serialised in

the Argosy under her editorship. In this narrative, the narrator, Anne, is a benign

detective, operating for the reader much in the manner of a Jane Eyre figure, as a

governess trying to discover the dark secrets of the Chandos family. Geraldine

Jewsbury, on reviewing the novel, remarks:

36

Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction, 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity (Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p.43.

13

Anne Hereford evinces throughout a remarkable faculty for hearing, seeing

and falling in, quite unexpectedly, with other people’s secrets. We seldom

have met with a heroine who looked out of a window, or opened a door, or

went into the wrong room, or trespassed on forbidden precincts, so

frequently as this Miss Anne Hereford.37

Anne is gifted with, as she describes it, “the faculty of reading human countenances and

human tones” which, in addition to her trusted position as a governess in the household,

and her role as our narrator, gives her a distinct advantage in the discourse of

detection.38

However, in contrast to Anne, the vengeful Mrs Penn is in the house as a

spy, trying to solve the same murder mystery. Anne’s developing affection for the

Chandos family renders her as less of a threat than Mrs Penn. On discovery, Mrs Penn,

who has been found with a set of skeleton keys in her possession, asserts: “I was at

work in your house as a detective: my acts bore but one aim – the discovery of your

brother, the murderer.”39

As this example demonstrates, the label of ‘detective’ is not

always a definitive or positive one. In this novel, there is also an ambivalent attitude

towards the police. Throughout much of the novel they are threatening figures, but by

the conclusion they operate as a tool for the family in order to eject the illegitimate

detective, Mrs Penn, from Chandos House. Significantly, in this novel that is shrouded

in crime, mystery and the supernatural, our narrator, Anne, describes herself as “only a

rational girl of sober, every-day life”.40

This category of the everyday is one of

particular importance in Wood’s writing, especially as it intersects with the detection in

the texts.

The everyday in Wood’s writings

Despite the sensational aspects of Wood’s works, both Victorian and present-day critics

refer to Wood’s writing in terms of its verisimilitude and ‘everydayness’. In 1897,

37

Geraldine Jewsbury [unsigned], “New Novels,” Review of Anne Hereford: A Novel, By Mrs

Henry Wood, The Athenaeum (Oct 31, 1868): 564. Jewsbury is often a more generous reviewer

of Wood’s works, and she had, earlier, recommended that Bentley publish East Lynne following

its rejection by George Meredith for Chapman and Hall. 38

Ellen Wood, Anne Hereford (1868; London: Macmillan, 1902), p.19. This is a gift that Wood

would bestow one month later on her hero, Johnny Ludlow, in the first short-story of the series.

I will discuss the Johnny Ludlow series at length in Chapter Three. 39

Ellen Wood, Anne Hereford, p.415. This question over the detective as spy can be usefully

compared to Forrester’s The Female Detective when the narrator argues “I am quite aware that

there is something peculiarly objectionable in the spy, but nevertheless it will be admitted that

the spy is as peculiarly necessary as he or she is peculiarly objectionable. We detectives are

necessary”. Quoted in Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, p.11. 40

Ellen Wood, Anne Hereford, p.368.

14

Adeline Sergeant praises Wood’s willingness to depict “the ordinary complications of

everyday life” 41

in her works and in his recent article Matthew Pires refers to Wood’s

preoccupation with “banal English social habits”.42

Indeed, in her novels Ellen Wood

rarely misses an opportunity to describe, in minute detail, the clothing of her characters,

or the quality and types of food at the family dinner table. However, Wood prefers to

darken and dazzle with her versions of the everyday. Deborah Wynne argues that

Wood’s novels bring together the “trivial and the ordinary with the splendid and showy”

and that her strategy aims at “infusing the commonplace of domestic realism with an

incongruous gorgeousness”.43

Indeed, Wood’s everyday resonates with Yuriko Saito’s

argument that “part of the goal of everyday aesthetics is to illuminate the ordinarily

neglected, but gem-like, aesthetic potentials hidden behind the trivial, mundane and

commonplace façade”.44

While Wood often describes charming furnishings and

gardens filled with exquisite blooms to achieve her aesthetic vision of the

commonplace, she also employs more gothic machinery.

This technique is suggested in The Master of Greylands (1872), when a servant recounts

the thrilling tale of a local murder to a visiting Frenchwoman while the two women are

cooking.45

These two activities are interwoven and the mysterious story is intertwined

with the details of the preparation of herbs. As this example demonstrates, Wood offers

a particular version of the commonplace: it is, more often than not, focussed upon the

experiences, habits and preoccupations of middle-class women. The everyday depicted

in Wood’s novels emphasises the rituals and routines of the domestic. Domestic labour

is an everyday reality for Wood’s female characters. From sewing to support the family,

working as governesses or supplementing the work of servants, women are shown to

work both in and out of the home. Monica Cohen, in Professional Domesticity in the

Victorian Novel: Women, Work and Home, argues that representations of domesticity in

the period “invite placing the idea of the home on a continuum of professionalism”,

41

Adeline Sergeant, “Mrs Henry Wood,” Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: A Book

of Appreciations, by Mrs Oliphant et al (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1897), p.174. Sergeant goes

on to argue that “ It is her fidelity to truth, to the smallest domestic detail, which has charmed

and will continue to charm, a large circle of readers” (p.187). 42

Matthew Pires, “‘Boulogne-sur-Mer, of all places in the world!’: France in the Works of Ellen

Wood”, Women’s Writing 15.2 (2008): 169. 43

Deborah Wynne, “See What A Big Wide Bed it is!” Mrs Henry Wood and the Philistine

Imagination”, in Emma Liggins and Daniel Duffy (eds) Feminist Readings of Victorian Popular

Texts: Divergent Femininities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p.90. 44

Yuriko Saito Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p.50. 45

Ellen Wood, The Master of Greylands, (1873; London: Macmillan, 1900), pp.142-143.

15

which is a useful way to consider Wood’s texts.46

Cohen argues that in novels of

professional domesticity, “scenes of baking, mixing, chopping, dusting and waxing

occur amid reading, writing, translating and corresponding”47

This is evident in The

Master of Greylands where the act of storytelling is synchronised with the preparation

of herbs. Indeed, the domestic work here, requiring a middle-class woman, Madame

Guise, to interact freely with a servant, Molly, allows the lady to begin her work of

detection. Molly is willing to gossip about a mysterious, local disappearance, where her

employer is not.48

Certainly, domestic detection points to another type of important and

systematic form of labour operating within the home – one that defamiliarises and

denaturalises the domestic space. This politicised space of the home renders the

everyday as a productive framework through which to theorise domestic detection in

Wood’s works.

Key theorists agree that the everyday is an ambiguous and indeterminate category.

Pioneering theorist Henri Lefebvre’s fondness for the phrase “the familiar is not

necessarily the known” registers the mystery inherent within the everyday.49

Rita Felski

echoes Lefebvre when she argues that “[e]veryday life is the most self-evident, yet the

most puzzling of ideas”.50

The depiction of the everyday in Wood’s nineteenth-century

fiction reflects Lefebvre and Felski’s emphasis upon mystery and the unknown. The

domestic spaces of Wood’s novels are often remarked upon for their ordinariness or

banality and overlooked for their complexities. Wood’s Victorian everyday is

punctuated by mystery, the supernatural and the sensational in a manner that is echoed

in Lefebvre’s discussion of everydayness:

46

Monica F. Cohen, Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel: Women, Work and Home

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 186. Cohen emphasises that “professional

domesticity is an invention of middle-class Victorian women and men who worked at home

writing novels and essays that were supposed to be as edifying as they were entertaining, which

is to say, as socially useful as personally profitable” (10). While Wood’s motivations for writing

can only be speculated upon, the overt moralising in her novels suggests that the author

envisioned a broader scope for her works than mere entertainment. 47

Cohen, p.9. 48

My reading of Madame Guise as a detective is substantiated by Dorothy Glover, Victorian

Detective Fiction: A Catalogue of the Collection made by Dorothy Glover and Graham Greene

(London: Bodley Head, 1966), p.119. The cover illustration of this thesis depicts Madame Guise

secretly investigating her husband’s murder by using a false key to unlock the bureau of his

suspected murderer. 49

As cited in Michael Sheringham, Everyday Life. Theories and Practices from Surrealism to

the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p.135. 50

Rita Felski, Doing Time. Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture (New York: New York

University Press, 2000), p.77.

16

Why should the study of the banal itself be banal? Are not the surreal, the

extraordinary, the surprising, even the magical, also part of the real? Why

wouldn’t the concept of everydayness reveal the extraordinary in the

ordinary? 51

According to this reading, the everyday is not necessarily oppositional to the spectacle,

or the ‘event’, and, as feminist theorists have argued, it need not be a residual or

negatively-defined category.52

Alice Kaplan and Kristin Ross, echoing Lefebvre, assert “everyday life has always

weighed heavily on the shoulders of women”.53

Refiguring this idea in more positive

terms, Felski argues that “everyday life has also been hailed as a distinctively female

sphere and hence a source of value”.54

This is particularly significant when considered

in relation to Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life where he theorises the

everyday as a site of tactical resistance and argues that space is “a practiced place”.55

De

Certeau suggests that the everyday and the space of home are constructed by specific

cultural practices and thus, can work as potential sites of resistance. Therefore, as a

concept rather closely aligned with the lives of women, the everyday takes on a political

aspect that has been productive for feminist theorists. The home is, according to Agnes

Heller, integral to the everyday as the site of the familiar or “a fixed point in space, a

firm position from which we ‘proceed’ […] and to which we return”.56

And home is

strongly linked to the everyday in Wood’s writings that focus upon domestic spaces and

practices.57

Marie Riley notes of East Lynne, “a wealth of pertinent detail about the

theory and practice of mid-century household management can be found within its

pages.”58

Riley follows Emma Liggins’ feminist re-reading of Wood’s works as a

51

Henri Lefebvre, “The Everyday and Everydayness,” Trans. Christine Levich in Yale French

Studies 73 (1987): 9. 52

Felski stresses this point, pp, 79-80. 53

Alice Kaplan and Kristin Ross, “Introduction” to “Everyday Life” Yale French Studies 73

(1987): 3. 54

Felski, p.94. I do not wish to endorse the idea that women represent everyday life (while men

live extraordinary lives filled with adventure) only that, as it was figured in Wood’s texts, the

everyday is strongly associated with women and domestic spaces. 55

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Trans. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1984), pp.xix, 117. 56

Agnes Heller, Everyday Life (London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p.239. 57

I will explore the multiple meanings of ‘home’ and the domestic, later in this introduction. 58

Marie Riley, “The enterprising fiction of Ellen Wood” in Popular Victorian women writers,

eds. Kay Boardman and Shirley Jones (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p.168.

17

response to influential writings on domestic management of the period. Liggins argues

perceptively that, despite Wood’s obvious enthusiasm for domesticity, her narratives

urge her readers “to reject the role of ideal housewife” advocated by Victorian domestic

advice literature made famous by Isabella Beeton and Sarah Stickney Ellis.59

Indeed, a

survey of the troubled, broken and turbulent homes of Wood’s novels reveals a refusal

to represent the household as an idealised space. However, Wood also emphasises the

consolations and pleasures for women that can be attained in a ‘good’ home with a

loving family. For Wood, the everyday site of the home as it is experienced in the

domestic household is a space teeming with dangers for women, but also potential

freedoms. Gaston Bachelard argues that: “A house constitutes a body of images that

give mankind proofs or illusions of stability. We are constantly reimagining its

reality”.60

In the process of domestic detection, these proofs and illusions are uncovered

and scrutinised and the everyday becomes an unstable and political site in Wood’s

novels.

Laurie Langbauer’s poststructuralist approach to the everyday in The Series in English

Fiction 1850-1930. Novels of Everyday Life, extends de Certeau’s ideas and suggests

that the everyday functions as a concept resistant to definition. Langbauer focuses on

gender and the series as a way to work through this elusive category of the everyday.

Langbauer’s approach considers the everyday, not merely as a space for the

artist/intellectual/hero to transcend, but as a site with its own consolations, interest and

potential for heroism. She critiques the masculinist assumptions of the everyday

inherent in the theories of such thinkers as Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau and instead

positions the everyday as a productive space, particularly for female experience.61

Wood’s writings often display an enthusiasm for the quotidian, its cycles and

repetitions. And domestic detection, in particular, registers not only an anxiety, but also

the extraordinary potential of everyday sites and the people that inhabit them. As I will

show, in Wood’s writings the home is positioned as an essential and productive site for

59

Emma Liggins, “Good Housekeeping? Domestic Economy and Suffering Wives in Mrs

Henry Wood’s Early Fiction” in Emma Liggins and Daniel Duffy (eds) Feminist Readings of

Victorian Popular Texts: Divergent Femininities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, p.68. 60

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (1958; Boston: Beacon Press,

1994), p.17. 61

Langbauer, Laurie. Novels of Everyday Life: The Series in English Fiction, 1850 – 1930

(Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1999), p.143-4. This continues her earlier work

where she critiques the gender politics of Raymond Williams, among others, in Laurie

Langbauer “Cultural Studies and the Politics of the Everyday”, Diacritics, 22 (Spring 1992): 47-

65.

18

both women and men. In her novels and short stories, Wood is particularly concerned to

interrogate Victorian masculinities, proposing ideal male heroes who are able to thrive

in domesticity. Her works stage conflicting versions of masculinity – fathers, brothers,

guardians, friends, professionals – who are judged by their ability to adequately

champion and defend the middle-class home. Wood’s male heroes flourish in

domesticity, whereas her villains are often unable to conform to, or marginalised from,

the repetitions and cycles of domestic life. Moreover, the juncture of the “everyday” and

the series is instructive when considering Wood’s works, as the series structure is a

recurrent feature of her writing. Clearly the long-running “Johnny Ludlow” series

(1868-91) attests to this, but also the number of sequels evident in her novels is

noteworthy. St Martin’s Eve (1866) is a sequel to Mildred Arkell (1865), and Roland

Yorke (1869) continues the story of The Channings (1862). Wood’s journalism is also

often continuous – “A Word to England” (1853), was followed a month later by its

sequel and a number of early stories that carried on for months at a time in Bentley’s

Miscellany and the New Monthly Magazine, were fleshed out into novels later in

Wood’s career. In Wood’s writings, the rhythms and repetitions of the everyday and the

series are both central to detection: exposing the practices of domestic ideology while

affirming the centrality of domestic life.

Although Summerscale argues that famous fictional detectives have noted that truth

resides in what seems irrelevant and unremarkable,62

I do not wish to reinscribe the

everyday as a site in which ‘truth’ is inherent. This would be as fruitless as suggesting

that it operates simply as a site to be transcended. Instead, Wood’s narratives, which

insist upon the “repetition and ongoingness” of the everyday, position it as a powerful

and productive site in human experience.63

Her works, previously pigeon-holed as

conservative and mediocre, reveal subtle, evasive gestures, and domestic detection

forms a key part of these strategies. Warren Chernaik has emphasised that detective

fiction is not an ideologically conservative form, where he states: “ there is always a

residue of unease at the end of most novels of crime and detection ... [g]uilt can never

be dissipated entirely, the criminal Other never cordoned off, the potential for the

sudden eruption of that which is most feared brought wholly under control”.64

This is

62

Summerscale, p.138. 63

Langbauer, p.235. 64

Warren Chernaik, “Mean Streets and English Gardens”, The Art of Detective Fiction, Eds.

Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales, and Robert Vilain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p.107.

19

applicable to Wood’s fiction, where detection does not restore anything like an ordered,

innocent or secure world. While moral outcomes and happy endings often conclude

Wood’s narratives, these endings are neither secure nor easily achieved. Domestic

detection, as it is rooted in the Victorian everyday, is an ongoing process.

Mapping detection in Wood’s oeuvre

The authors and Authoresses of the day are going in for crimes of every

description from murder downwards, in a manner that is most startling,

and Mr Mudie’s lending library will soon become a sort of Newgate

Calendar. What with lovely murderesses, and accomplished bigamists,

and spies, and forgers, and here and there an occasional attorney who is

on their trail, works of romance seem in a fair way to be very lively

reading before long. The effect produced on sensible and unimaginative

people ought to be to render them suspicious of their nearest

acquaintances.65

The ability of this “lively reading” of the 1860s, to transform a reader’s “nearest

acquaintances” into suspicious figures, is echoed by Patrick Brantlinger. He suggests

that in the sensation novel, where disguise, secrecy, instability and doubleness abound,

“the work of detection begins for the reader as well as for the detective”.66

Brantlinger’s

assertion, that in this literature “everything becomes a clue”, is also located in the

writings of Walter Benjamin who suggests that urban modernity creates “times of terror,

65

“Homicidal Heroines”, Saturday Review (7 April 1866): 403-5, reprinted in Andrew Maunder

(ed) Sensationalism and the Sensation Debate. Volume 1 of Varieties of Women’s Sensation

Fiction, 1855-1890, General ed. Andrew Maunder, Consulting ed. Sally Mitchell (London:

Pickering & Chatto, 2004), p.145. Kate Flint argues forcefully against this assumption of the

passive reader of sensation. In The Woman Reader 1837 – 1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1993), p.293, she states: “The reader is habitually acknowledged as possessing a wider, more

subtle interpretive system than that granted to the heroine. The ability to read literature carefully

is equated (as in so many advice manuals) with the ability to read life. This attention which is

demanded on the part of the reader, not to mention the command which she is implicitly

expected to uphold over a wide range of literary references, goes some way towards giving the

lie to the dangerously uncritical mindlessness which so many critics chose to present as being

induced by the opiate of sensation fiction.” See also: Knight, Crime Fiction 1800-2000, pp. 1-9,

for a useful discussion of the Newgate Calendar as a forerunner of detection. 66

Patrick Brantlinger, The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literature in Nineteenth-

Century British Fiction (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998), p.161, also reflects that: “The

development of the sensation novel marks a crisis in the history of literary realism, in part

because of its challenge to the naïve empiricism or observation that serves such realism as its

epistemology […] The material surfaces of things, even in that most familiar of settings, the

bourgeois home, themselves become double, treacherously unstable, disguises for the most

buried, traumatic secret, the once-seen and not-yet-seen.”

20

when everyone is something of a conspirator, everybody will be in a situation where he

has to play detective”.67

Taken together, these critics reflect the ways in which detection

is a pervasive discourse. Detection becomes a corollary of modernity and modern

novels reflect this detection, necessarily making detectives of their readers.

As Ian Ousby notes in his early work in the field, “Since crime produces almost endless

opportunities for the introduction of startling ingredients and displays of passion, it was

inevitably a staple ingredient of the sensation novelists’ work”.68

This implies that the

connection between crime and sensation is incidental, however the interconnectedness

of these categories in Wood’s works requires further investigation. In 1866, Geraldine

Jewsbury refers to Ellen Wood’s “delight” in producing “detective mysteries” in her

novels.69

Similarly, over a century later, Joanne Shattock observes that Wood employs

“characteristic plotting devices of crime and detection” in her works.70

Certainly,

therefore, the connection between sensation and detection has long been apparent.

However, critics have largely ignored the significance of Wood’s detectives and their

operation within her plots.71

This is not to say that editors of detective fiction collections

have overlooked Wood, as the reality is quite the opposite. During the twentieth

century, some of Wood’s short stories, have been collected in various detective and

mystery collections. In 1929, Dorothy L. Sayers’ Omnibus of Crime included Wood’s

“The Ebony Box” alongside the fiction of Poe and Conan Doyle.72

In 1935, in a

collection, A Century of Detective Stories, introduced by G. K. Chesterton, Wood’s

“Johnny Ludlow” story, “Abel Crew” was included.73

Much later, in 1980, Everett F.

Bleiler included the “Johnny Ludlow” story “Going Through the Tunnel” in A Treasury

of Victorian Detective Stories.74

In 1992, Michael Cox would collect the “Johnny

67

Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of Hight Capitalism, trans.

Harry Zohn (London: N.L.B., 1973), p.40. 68

Ian Ousby, Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle

(Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press, 1976), p.80. 69

Geraldine Jewsbury, “New Novels,” Rev. of Elster’s Folly: a Novel. By Mrs Henry Wood,

Athenaeum (July 21, 1866): 76. 70

Joanne Shattock, The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1994), p.473. 71

In a recent exception to the trend, Stephen Knight mentions the detection plot of Wood’s East

Lynne in his survey, Crime Fiction, 1800-2000, pp.42-43. However, by virtue of the nature of

his work, his discussion is rather brief. I will take up the task of exploring the significance of

East Lynne’s detection plot in Chapter One of this present work. 72

Dorothy L. Sayers, ed, The Omnibus of Crime (New York: Payson and Clarke, 1929). 73

A Century of Detective Stories, introduced by G. K. Chesterton (London: Hutchison and Co,

1935). 74

E. F. Bleiler, A Treasury of Victorian Detective Stories (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980).

21

Ludlow” stories, “The Mystery at Number Seven” and “Owen, the Milkman” in his

Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection: An Oxford Anthology.75

As I have previously indicated, Wood’s writing was associated with the ‘sensation’

craze that received critical attention during the 1860s. Sensation is a complex category

that I will address in more detail later. Nevertheless, Wood’s works certainly contained

staple tropes of sensation fiction such as crime, mystery, bigamy plots, secret marriages

and returns from the dead. However, Wood’s particular brand of fiction is an

emphatically domesticated one, as her stories are characterised by moralising narrators,

lessons on moderation, domestic and political economy, protracted death-bed scenes,

minute attention to female dress and domestic conduct. These tensions, between

sensation and the domestic resonate beyond Wood’s writing and into the life of this

Victorian author.

Detecting Ellen Wood

She remains inherently contradictory. Like a holograph shifting under our

gaze, she is at once heroic wife and mother, scandalous sensationalist, and

harbinger of the commercial degradation of art. 76

Ellen Wood, the elusive woman who penned the works of Mrs Henry Wood, is a figure

who has evaded detection by even the most determined of literary scholars. As Andrew

Maunder’s words so aptly reflect, the ‘shifting’ figure of Ellen Wood is a slippery and

confounding image of idealised mother, devoted wife, opportunistic scribbler, hard-

nosed professional and celebrated Victorian author. In approaching the task of

researching Wood’s life, scholars are often hampered by a paucity of sources. Indeed,

while Wood forms the subject of a 2008 special issue of Women’s Writing, Lucy

Sussex’s article “Mrs Henry Wood and her Memorials” is dedicated to the problems of

75

Michael Cox, ed, Victorian Detective Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. This

story was also included in Harriet Devine Jump, Nineteenth-century Short Stories by Women: A

Routledge Anthology (London: Routledge, 1998). Again, in Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert,

Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),

Wood’s 1868 Johnny Ludlow story “Reality or Delusion?” is included in the collection

alongside works by Dickens, Conan Doyle and Stevenson. While these anthologies are not

directly related to detective fiction or crime, both stories involve domestic detection. 76

Andrew Maunder “Ellen Wood was a Writer: Rediscovering Collins’s Rival”, Wilkie Collins

Society Journal 3 (2000): 30.

22

recovering the details of Wood’s life given the absence of a “rigorous modern

biography”.77

What is known is that Wood was born Ellen Price in Worcester on 17 January, 1814.

Her father was factory owner, Thomas Price, and her mother was Elizabeth Price (nee

Evans). In her early years, the young Ellen lived with her grandparents until her

grandfather’s death when she was seven. She then returned to live with her parents and

five brothers. An intelligent girl, her education seems to have been overssen by her

father who was, himself, a dedicated scholar. As a teenager, she began to show the signs

of curvature of the spine, a debilitating condition that caused her to be bedridden for

several years of her young life.78

In 1836 she married Henry Wood, a banker, and they

lived for the next 20 years in France, raising a family. Following an unspecified

financial failing of Henry Wood’s, they returned to London with their four surviving

children. During these trying financial times, Ellen Wood continued in earnest her

writing of short stories and journalism for periodicals such as Bentley’s Miscellany and

the New Monthly Magazine – a pursuit that she had begun as early as 1851.79

77

Lucy Sussex, “Mrs Henry Wood and her Memorials”, Women’s Writing 15:2 (2008): 160. 78

A lack of information about Wood has led scholars to look for self-representation in her

works. In her recent article, Lucy Sussex, “Mrs Henry Wood and her Memorials”, 163, points to

Charles Wood’s assertion that a fictional “counterpart” for Wood can be found in the character

of Lucy Cheveley in Mildred Arkell (1865). Lucy is a beautiful, honourable woman who is

physically disabled by a spinal deformity. In this vein, I would argue that the depiction of Mabel

Smith, a recurring character in the Johnny Ludlow stories, bears more than a passing

resemblance to Wood herself. When we first meet her in the story “At Miss Deveen’s” (1869),

Mabel is a young invalid with a spinal deformity who has a shrewd intellect and dotes on her

father. The only Johnny Ludlow story never republished is “Fred Temple’s Warning” (1873)

one in which the teenaged Mabel is conducting a secret, but doomed, love affair. Others have

noted that the benevolent owner of a glove-manufactory, Thomas Ashley, in Mrs Halliburton’s

Troubles (1862) resembles Wood’s own father. Certainly Wood uses her familiarity with the

workings of the industry and trade unionism to flesh out her depictions in the novel, as she does

in Mildred Arkell (1865), A Life’s Secret (1867) and Bessy Rane (1870). Of course, the

significance of these possible sites of self-representation is speculative at best. 79

The earliest known work by Wood is “Seven Years in the Wedded Life of a Roman Catholic”

which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine 91 (1851) 245-55. A sample of her early writing

demonstrates the diversity of subject matter: “An Event in the Life of Lord Byron” recounts an

episode, apparently well-known in Europe, in which Lord Byron was stranded on an

uninhabited island in the Adriatic, in New Monthly Magazine 99 (October 1853): 138-150; “A

Record of the Gold-Fever” which illustrates the dangers of temptation that the gold rush in

Australia presents to young Englishmen, in New Monthly Magazine 100 (1854): 58-72 and

“French and English Female Dress” in Bentley’s Miscellany 46 (1859): 504-507, in which

Wood corrects the current belief that the clothing of Frenchwomen is showy or flashy, to argue

that they are often more neatly attired than Englishwomen.

23

In London, with strained finances, Wood’s writing took on a new importance and her

first novel, written in less than a month, was Danesbury House (1860). Wood wrote this

work in response to the Scottish Temperance League’s offer of a £100 prize for the best

novel illustrating the blessings of moderation and the evils of intemperance. She won

this prize and in the same year, her new tale, East Lynne – a sensational story of a

wayward wife – began its serialisation in the New Monthly Magazine.80

This work

followed closely on the publication of Wilkie Collins’ mystery story, The Woman in

White in All the Year Round from 1859-60 and preceded Mary Braddon’s sensational

narrative, Lady Audley’s Secret in Robin Goodfellow and Sixpenny Magazine from

1861-2. As a result of this convergence of the three authors’ successful novels,

contemporary critics identified Collins, Wood and Braddon as key authors associated

with the new literary fashion for ‘sensation’.81

Following its monthly serialisation,

Wood’s East Lynne was published as a three-volume novel in 1861, and with some

good reviews and popularity with the circulating libraries, it soon became a best-selling

work.

Many novels by Wood followed in the wake of her success. The works were often first

serialised in various periodicals including the Leisure Hour, Good Words, the Quiver

and Once a Week before being published as novels. Following East Lynne, Wood

published The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles in 1862. In 1863 The Shadow

of Ashlydyat, Verner’s Pride and The Foggy Night at Offord appeared. 1864 saw Lord

Oakburn’s Daughters, William Allair, Oswald Cray and Trevlyn Hold in print and

Mildred Arkell, St Martin’s Eve and Elster’s Folly would appear in the following two

years. During this time, in 1866, Henry Wood died and in 1867, after averaging almost

two novels a year since her literary debut, Wood purchased the Argosy. On its initial

publication in 1865, the Argosy had been envisioned as a serious monthly magazine like

the Cornhill. However, following the moral outcry over the serialisation of Griffith

Gaunt by Charles Reade – a tale of bigamy –Wood was able to purchase the magazine

80

Lyn Pykett, in “Women and the sensation business,” Writing: a woman’s business: Women,

writing and the marketplace, ed. Judy Simons and Kate Fullbrook (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 1998), p.25, refers to Henry Wood as “hapless” and explains that “[t]he

sensation phenomenon was the means of launching several women as career writers, enabling

them to support families and dependent male relatives with their earnings from writing, and/or

to acquire fame (or notoriety) as prominent authors of best sellers (p.19). 81

Certainly, twentieth-century critics often grouped the three works to demonstrate the origins

of 1860s sensation, although, as I will show, sensation has always been a broadly-defined and

amorphous category.

24

cheaply and continue the trend of publishing sensational fiction.82

Over the next twenty

years of her life, her novels were serialised in the Argosy along with many short stories,

including the long-running “Johnny Ludlow” series (1868-91). In her early years at the

helm of the Argosy, Wood contributed the bulk of the stories and articles. To this end,

she constantly recycled her earlier work, whereby the short-stories written for Bentley’s

Miscellany and the New Monthly Magazine during the 1850s were often fleshed out into

novels or simply reprinted.83

After 1867, Wood’s prolific publishing slowed to around a

novel per year, as she produced A Life’s Secret (1867), Lady Adelaide’s Oath (1867),

Anne Hereford (1868), Roland Yorke (1869), George Canterbury’s Will (1870), Dene

Hollow (1871) and Within the Maze (1872). An illness in 1873 led to more infrequent

publishing, with The Master of Greylands (1873), Bessy Wells (1875), Adam Grainger

(1876), Pomeroy Abbey (1878) and Court Netherleigh (1881) forming the later

narratives. During this later period, Wood returned to her original format: short stories,

and many were collected and published in volume form. In particular, the “Johnny

Ludlow” series was published in six collected volumes from 1874 – 1899 and

Featherston’s Story was published as a novella in 1889. When Ellen Wood died of heart

failure on February 10, 1887, she had produced over 40 novels and short story

collections. Wood’s final novels, which appeared in the years after her death, were The

Story of Charles Strange (1888) and The House of Halliwell (1889). The last collection

attributed to Wood, Ashley and Other Stories (1897), appeared a decade after her death,

but her works continued to sell into the early twentieth century.

The Domestication of Ellen Wood: Charles Wood’s Memorials.

Despite her immense productivity as a writer, Wood did not write a memoir of her own

life. That task was left to her doting son, Charles, whose financial success was

underpinned by the longevity of his mother’s reputation.84

Following a series of

82

Maunder, “Ellen Wood was a Writer”, 29. Maunder estimates that under Wood’s control, the

magazine outsold Mary Braddon’s Belgravia with a monthly circulation of 20,000. 83

Rolf Burgauer’s early research illuminated this tendency in Mrs Henry Wood: Personlichkeit

und Werk (Zurich: Juris-Verlag, 1950) pp.97-104. This practice of recycling was continued by

Wood’s son, Charles, after her death. Recycling was common practice among writer/editors.

For example, the poet Eliza Cook reprinted her poems at the end of each number of Eliza

Cook’s Journal (1848-54). 84

Wood’s fortune at her death is fixed at £36,393 13s. 5d, a sum that her son managed to

increase to £88,407 at his own death in 1919. See: Sally Mitchell, “Wood , Ellen [Mrs Henry

Wood]”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – Volume 60, eds. H. C. G. Matthew and

Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p.91. See also, Michael Flowers,

“Ellen Wood – A Chronology” The Ellen Wood (Mrs Henry Wood) Website

25

memorials written for the Argosy in the months after her death, Charles Wood’s The

Memorials of Mrs Henry Wood was published in volume form in 1894. The problems of

relying upon such a source for biographical information have been widely noted, but

until a more impartial biography is produced, Charles Wood’s memorial, more befitting

the genre of hagiography, remains the most comprehensive discussion of Ellen Wood’s

life.85

This practice, in which a relative would turn biographer, was popular amongst the

Victorians and has been aptly named domestic biography.86

Indeed, Charles Wood’s

work not only domesticates the genre of biography, but also his subject. As a result, his

attempts to refigure the image of the best-selling sensationalist ‘Mrs Henry Wood’ into

a domestic angel generate many tensions in his depiction.

Charles Wood’s Memorials is a strange and tortuous journey through the life of Ellen

Wood. In his preface, the author points to the fragmented and subjective sources on

which his work relies as he acknowledges that it is “compiled from notes, from

fragments of diaries, from memory”.87

It is fitting that, at times, his style mirrors that of

his mother’s intrusive, moralising narrators. Indeed, the excessively sentimentalised

depiction of his mother’s final illness is equal to the heavy-handed deathbed scenes of

any number of Wood’s novels. In Memorials Charles depicts Ellen Wood as a virtuous,

wise and humble woman and, in this way, evokes the domestic ideal:

It has been said of many literary people that they are not domesticated. It was

not so with Mrs Henry Wood. No one ever looked more earnestly to “the ways

of her household.” The happiness of those about her was ever her first thought

and consideration. Her house was carefully ruled, and order and system reigned.

Nothing ever jarred; the domestic atmosphere was never disturbed.88

[http://www.mrshenrywood.co.uk/chron.html]. Elisabeth Jay (ed) “Introduction” East Lynne

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p.xviii, also notes that, in comparison Wilkie Collins

left £10,831, less than one-third the amount of Wood’s fortune, following his death in 1889.

One new source of income for Charles seems to derive from the pages of advertising, which he

included in the Argosy as “The Argosy Advertiser” from 1888, the year after his mother’s death. 85

In particular, Andrew Maunder in “Ellen Wood was a Writer”, 19, notes that “Eulogistic and

devoid of dates, Charles Wood’s memoir is a partial one (in both senses of the word)”. 86

Christopher Tolley, Domestic Biography: The Legacy of Evangelicalism in Four Nineteenth-

Century Families (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.1. 87

Charles Wood, Memorials of Mrs Henry Wood (London: Bentley, 1894), p.vii. 88

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.227. It is instructive to compare this depiction to that of

Margaret Oliphant’s self-representation in her 1899 autobiography. Cohen, p.3, argues that

Oliphant characterises her work as intimately linked with the space of home and she would

share a spot at the table as friends visited and the household labour went on around her. It is

important to register that Wood’s home was also her place of work as a writer and hence the

26

Unsurprisingly, Charles stresses that his mother’s form of domestic rule was achieved

via acceptably feminine traits of “kindness and quiet influence”.89

Although he gives

ample room to a discussion of his mother’s works and their reception, Charles Wood is

anxious to depict her as, primarily, a caring and devoted mother. To this end he enlists

the help of other ‘friends’ to memorialise Wood in this way. Alexander Japp asserts that

within half an hour of his first meeting with Wood, “the great novelist was forgotten,

and only the sympathetic and gracious woman was before me”.90

Japp insists that she

was “intellectual without affectation, and refined while still in the best sense

domesticated and approachable”.91

The tension inherent in the representation of Wood

as the very model of middle-class womanhood while at the same time acknowledging a

successful professional career is very apparent. In light of this, it is interesting to note

that Charles sent a copy of the completed Memorials to the era’s exemplar of these

tensions, Queen Victoria.92

Despite his intention to illuminate his mother’s life, even Charles Wood reflects the

necessity of perceiving ‘Mrs Henry Wood’ primarily through her works where he

reflects: “her works are her best memorial, and in one sense can be her only

memorial”.93

And here we find evidence that modifies certain claims in the Memorials.

So when Charles notes, “[i]n politics she took no part, beyond being a strong

Conservative”94

it is hard to reconcile this statement with Wood’s role as a female

writer, who constantly negotiated various political domains in her writings. In Mildred

Arkell (1865) Wood depicts the effects of opening of British ports and the introduction

of foreign goods upon English manufacturing.95

In A Life’s Secret (1862), Mrs

Halliburton’s Troubles (1862) and the “Johnny Ludlow” story “Our Strike” (1871)

work of these women collapses the ideology of separate spheres even in its conditions of

production. 89

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.228. 90

Japp as cited in Charles Wood, Memorials, p.339. 91

Japp as cited in Charles Wood, Memorials, p.340. 92

Letter from Arthur Bigge to Charles Wood, 13 Feb. 1895, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff

Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin,

uncatalogued. Arthur Bigge was assistant to Queen Victoria’s private secretary, Sir Henry

Ponsonby. In the letter, Bigge writes, “The Queen has received the copy of your book:

“Memorials of Mrs Henry Wood” for which I am commanded to express to you Her Majesty’s

best thanks…” 93

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.297. 94

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.234. 95

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.45, asserts that for this depiction, Wood draws upon her

personal remembrance of her father’s financial woes.

27

Wood interrogates the plight of striking workers, focusing on the costs to their wives

and children.96

Despite her son’s attempts to depoliticise Wood, the politics of Ellen

Wood are rarely far from the surface. Indeed, twentieth-century scholars have,

understandably, been intrigued by the gender and class politics of Wood’s works, a

focus that forms an integral part of my own approach.

Contextualising Ellen Wood: Journalist, Writer, Editor.

Charles Wood asserts of his mother’s writings that, “nearly all her MSS. and letters

were destroyed”.97

This avowal reveals something rather important, because the letters

that remain have been found as interesting counterpoints to the depiction of Ellen Wood

as a modest, retiring figure of domesticity. The impression of a shrewd businesswoman

and a clever financial manager emerges from her correspondence with friends,

publishers and editors. Indeed, Wood’s keen business acumen prompts John Sutherland

to label her as “one of fiction’s toughest negotiators”.98

Despite Charles Wood’s

assertion that his mother’s primary focus was her domestic duties, the picture of a hard-

working professional is unfolded.

In an 1862 letter, Harrison Ainsworth praises Wood for her diligence: “As a fellow

labourer, I must also express my astonishment at your industry. I cannot understand

how you can do so much, and so well”.99

In this letter, Ainsworth works to negotiate

Wood’s continued relationship with the New Monthly Magazine so an element of

flattery can be suspected. However, Wood herself reflects on her professional workload

in a later letter to fellow female author, Fanny Aikin Kortright, stating that she has

“little time” for letter writing, asserting “I have so much work constantly before me that

must be done”.100

These two examples signal that the roles of writer, editor and

proprietor were fundamental for Wood and crucial to an understanding of her life.

96

This is something that Charles Wood acknowledges elsewhere in the Memorials when he

describes the 1862 picketing of the offices of the Religious Tract Society, the publisher of the

Leisure Hour (p.257). 97

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.298. 98

J. A. Sutherland, Victorian Novelists and Publishers (London: University of London Athlone

Press, 1976), p.85. 99

Letter from Harrison Ainsworth to Ellen Wood, 12 Dec. 1862, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff

Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin,

7292c. 100

Letter from Ellen Wood to Miss Kortright, 3 Dec. 1868, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff

Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin,

7290b.

28

Wood’s letters to her editors also reveal a woman with an interest in, and awareness of,

the workings of the literary market. She gives directions about the advertising of her

novels and is not too modest to insist upon timely payment for her writing.101

Moreover,

it is in an 1861 letter to George Bentley that she insists upon ‘Mrs Henry Wood’, as the

appropriate version of her name for East Lynne’s cover, “Be particular that the Christian

name (Henry) is inserted”.102

While the choice of “Mrs Henry Wood” reflects what

some have interpreted as a conservative tendency, it also reveals, as Maunder

emphasises, that Wood’s “identity as a writer was created as consciously as those of her

characters”.103

The chosen name evokes a middle-class respectability that Wood and her

son were at pains to promote as the essence of her writing and her public image.

As part of this conscious creation of her image, Wood refused to be photographed. In a

letter to fellow author Fanny Kortright in 1868, she politely denies a request for her own

photograph and makes a rather pointed observation of an enclosed image of Kortright

herself: “It is altogether very pleasing – but I think that like all photographs it does not

flatter you.”104

For an aging female author with a visible deformity, one can understand

Wood’s aversion to photographic portraiture. Indeed, the only known image of Wood is

Reginald Easton’s miniature, the image of a demure lady, in a black dress with copious

lacework around her cap and collar. This vision of feminine respectability is the only

one that she endorsed and it came to represent the very idea of Mrs Henry Wood.105

This attention to visual detail is echoed in Wood’s negotiations over artistic decisions

regarding her works. Her disappointment with various details of the illustrations for the

one-volume edition of East Lynne is evident when she asserts to George Bentley in

101

Letter from Ellen Wood to Richard Bentley, 25 Sept. 1861, reprinted in Andrew Maunder

(ed) East Lynne, by Ellen Wood, (Ontario: Broadview, 2000), p.694. Maunder enlarges upon

this in his analysis of the Bentley archive letters in “Ellen Wood was a Writer” 28-29. 102

Letter from Ellen Wood to George Bentley, 8 Aug. 1861, reprinted in Andrew Maunder (ed)

East Lynne, by Ellen Wood, (Ontario: Broadview, 2000), p.694. 103

Maunder, “Ellen Wood was a Writer: Rediscovering Collins’s Rival,” 21. 104

Letter from Ellen Wood to Miss Kortright, 3 Dec. 1868, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff

Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin,

7290b. 105

Maunder, in “Ellen Wood was a Writer: Rediscovering Collins’s Rival” 21, argues for the

significance of Wood’s endorsement of an engraving “a form of pictorial image which lacks the

immediacy of the photograph and involves instead a process of reinvention”. He rightly argues

that it “is suggestive of her methods of reworking and blurring her public image.”

29

1862: “I do not think the illustrations calculated to enhance the success of the book”.106

Only a few months later, she takes more control over the process when illustrations are

being devised for The Channings. In a letter to Messrs. Dalziel, she instructs the famous

nineteenth-century engravers on how to illustrate the major characters and their

costumes, marking out particular sections of the novel for their attention. She also refers

to illustrations for a new edition of East Lynne, arguing that the artist needs to make the

novel’s hero, Archibald Carlyle “more of a gentleman”. She goes on to state:

He aught to wear plain black clothes – a frock coat would be best. I think

it would be a very good plan to have his back to the reader. He must be

drawn as a very tall man. Were Mr Carlyle badly done, it would spoil the

whole. Better not put him in at all unless he can be artistically

executed.107

With this kind of attention to detail regarding the depiction of her fictional characters, it

is unsurprising that Wood’s own image was so carefully managed during and after her

lifetime.

This image of Ellen Wood was modified in the decades after her death. I would argue

that the memorial of Wood in Worcester Cathedral provides a suggestive image through

which to read her life. In 1916, C.B. Shuttleworth compiled A record of the unveiling in

Worcester Cathedral of the Memorial Tablet to Mrs Henry Wood: The Famous

Victorian Novelist. This work gives an indication of Wood’s reputation, close to her

own time, but as an alternative to Charles Wood’s sentimentalised remembrances. The

memorial at the cathedral includes a portrait of Wood, one based on the famous Easton

miniature. However, in the Worcester memorial, the artist, Miss Dorothy Wise, has

inserted a book into Wood’s hand.108

This small, but significant, gesture emphasises

106

Letter from Ellen Wood to George Bentley, 29 May 1862, reprinted in Maunder, ed, East

Lynne, p.697. She complains “Lady Isabel is as tall as the bed if you look at the perspective.

The plate is certainly bad. Richard Hare is not good, and at the first glance Justice Hare’s house

looks like a road-side public [house] with a water trough before the door.” These particular

illustrations have been reprinted in Maunder, ed, East Lynne, pp.39 and 692. 107

Letter from Ellen Wood to Messrs. Dalziel, 19 Sept. 1862, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff

Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin,

7266a. 108

In C. B. Shuttleworth, A record of the unveiling in Worcester Cathedral of the Memorial

Tablet to Mrs Henry Wood: The Famous Victorian Novelist (London: Macmillan: 1916), the

artist of the memorial is given as Miss D. S. Wise A. R. C. A. This sculptor, Dorothy Stanton

Wise who was profoundly deaf, writes of her process of creating the memorial and it seems that

it was her design of the image of Wood with a book in her hand that was preferred by the

30

Wood’s role as a writer and is also echoed in the Dean’s speech. These aspects of the

memorial render it as a significant site at which Wood’s role as a professional writer is

foregrounded, as Shuttleworth records:

She was the first woman who, of her own right, had won a title to be

placed upon the Cathedral walls. Other women’s names were on the

walls, because they were the wives of bishops or deans or canons […] But

Mrs Henry Wood’s was the first case of a woman who, by general

consent, was regarded as a person who ought to be commemorated on the

walls of the Cathedral […] and he hoped it would inspire other Worcester

women to see if they could not win the same mark of distinction.109

Despite Wood’s insistence upon her role as wife, registered in her choice of name: Mrs

Henry Wood, and her son’s emphasis upon her role as a devoted mother, this

commemoration, almost thirty years after her death, remembers her as a woman who

deserved distinction in her own right. In this public setting she is remembered foremost

as a female writer to serve as a role-model for other women. Moreover, Shuttleworth

records that because Charles Wood was unavailable to unveil the memorial to his

mother on the assigned day, it was thought that “because Assize Sunday and Sermon

were frequently mentioned in Mrs Henry Wood’s works, it would be very appropriate if

the unveiling were performed by one of His Majesty’s Judges”.110

This signals an

awareness of the prominence of crime, its detection and prosecution in Wood’s works

only two decades after the author’s death and usefully supports my focus upon domestic

detection in her writings. In more recent times, this importance of crime and detection

in Wood’s works has been obscured, in part because of the association of her writing

with sensation, a category that I will now explore further in order to elucidate my own

approach.

Worcester committee. This interview with Wise was featured in the newspaper of the New

Jersey School for the Deaf in an article by Yvonne Pitrois, “From the Old World” The Silent

Worker 28:7 (April 1916), 122. 109

Shuttleworth, p.24. 110

Shuttleworth, p.7. A Mr Justice Avory is the person chosen to unveil the memorial, and this

points to the central role of crime and detection in Wood’s novels.

31

Terrors “much closer to home”: Sensation

The Maze is a place – with its labyrinth of trees and its secret passages

and outlets – unusually favourable to concealment.111

Within the Maze literalises the guilty home, staging the domestic as a site of crime and

mystery. However, the Maze is not the only domestic space featured in the novel. Karl

Andinnian lives at nearby Foxwood Court with his new bride, protecting her from the

knowledge of his fugitive brother. Indeed, the wives of both Andinnian brothers are

drawn into the crimes and family secrets, suffering alongside their husbands. Karl

Andinnian’s unease is intensified when his wife’s visiting relative, Theresa Blake,

becomes very curious about the mysterious tenants of The Maze and their relation to his

family. Miss Blake is described as having “a peculiar faculty for searching out

information” and, as the narrator insists “when an individual is gifted with this quality

in a remarkable degree, it has to be more or less exercised.” Indeed, the narrator goes on

to say that “Miss Blake might have been a successful detective: attached to a private

inquiry office she would have made its fortune”. 112

Even more alarmingly, Scotland

Yard becomes cognisant of a person being hidden at The Maze and a detective is

despatched to investigate. Although these detective figures manage to penetrate the

labyrinth, they are ultimately thwarted in their efforts to detect the domestic secrets of

the Andinnians.

Incarceration in the cottage in Within the Maze as the novel’s central image suggests the

trope of the home as a prison, a feature drawn from narratives of the female gothic.113

It

was this trope that many Victorian writers adapted for their novels at mid-century.

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) form two

of the best-known examples. Sensation writers continued the use of this trope and, for

this and other reasons, sensation fiction has been theorised as a branch of the gothic.

111

Ellen (Mrs Henry) Wood, Within the Maze (1872; London: Macmillan, 1900), p.376. It is

Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Game who describes the Maze in this way. 112

Wood, Within the Maze, p.109. Wood suggests that, without the ability to exercise her gifts

in the public sphere, Miss Blake becomes a meddler and a gossip. 113

The Female Gothic presents a nightmare vision of home. Maggie Kilgour in The Rise of the

Gothic Novel (London: Routledge, 1995), p.9, elucidates the implications of this depiction:

“The female gothic itself is not a ratification but an exposé of domesticity and the family,

through the technique of estrangement or romantic defamiliarisation: by cloaking familiar

images of domesticity in gothic forms, it enables us to see that the home is a prison, in which

the helpless female is at the mercy of ominous patriarchal authorities”. I discuss the female

gothic in relation to Wood’s East Lynne in Chapter One.

32

Fred Botting uses the idea of ‘home’ to explicate the relation between gothic and

sensation in his discussion of the “Homely Gothic”:

In the mid-nineteenth century there is a significant diffusion of Gothic

traces throughout literary and popular fiction, within the forms of realism,

sensation novels and ghost stories especially. Eighteenth-century Gothic

machinery and the wild landscapes of Romantic individualism give way

to terrors and horrors that are much closer to home, uncanny disruptions

of the boundaries between inside and outside, reality and delusion,

propriety and corruption, materialism and spirituality.114

According to Fred Botting’s definition, sensation takes on the aspect of a domesticated

gothic, deviating from the wildness of previous incarnations of the form, to emphasise

occurrences of the irrational, the scandalous and the shocking, “much closer to home”.

This echoes what Henry James, in 1865, described as the sensationalists’ preoccupation

with “those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries that are at our own doors”.115

Hence in the works of Wood and other sensation writers, the modern, English home

becomes a central focus.116

Lyn Pykett reflects on the effects of this focus on the

Victorian home and family where she states that, in these sensation novels, “the family

was not simply a refuge from change but also, more emphatically the site of change. It

was not only an arena in which an abstract moral struggle between good and evil was

played out, it was itself both the cause and site of struggle in which those abstract moral

categories were destabilised”.117

So Pykett registers the disruptive potential of depicting

homes and families as the sites of mystery and scandal. Wood’s works harness this

potential, not only to illuminate the hidden dangers of the English home, but also its

consolations. The gothic remained as an important influence upon Wood, and writers of

the nineteenth century can be considered as successors to this tradition.

114

Fred Botting, Gothic (London: Routledge, 1996), p.113. 115

As cited in Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p.7. 116

Indeed, prior to sensationalist focus upon the modern home, Jane Austen, in her famous

parody of the gothic genre, Northanger Abbey, takes up this argument. In Austen’s text, the

hero, Henry Tilney, admonishes the fanciful heroine, Catherine Morland, for her gothic

imaginings of the English home. He declares: “Remember the country and age in which we live.

Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your

own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you – Does our

education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be

perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is

on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and

where roads and newspapers lay every thing open?” (Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey and Other

Works (1818; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p.145. 117

Lyn Pykett, The Improper Feminine: The Women’s Sensation Novel and the New Woman

Writing (London: Routledge, 1992), p.76.

33

Maureen T. Reddy reflects upon the emergence of the female detective from classic

gothic plots such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1796). Reddy argues

that the central character, Emily, “courageously explores Udolpho, trying to uncover the

truth of Montoni’s past and of his present activities, searching for her aunt, and looking

for possible avenues of escape”.118

In particular, Wood’s debt to early gothic is

registered in her interest in the spiritual and supernatural in her works. In the period,

there was a slippage between what was termed sensation and supernatural and certainly,

supernatural presences are almost unavoidable amidst the homes and families of

Wood’s fiction. Ghosts, curses, mysterious predictions and visionary dreams inflect the

everyday Victorian world of her stories with uncanny shadows. Interestingly, Wood’s

characters, often women, often use these uncanny narratives to aid in domestic

detection. Dreams and predictions often guide investigations and indicate threats to the

home in a way that empirical evidence cannot. As the eighteenth-century narratives

show, the supernatural always requires some form of investigation and thus, domestic

detection in Wood’s writings remains haunted by older gothic forms. In Wood’s

writings, detection and the supernatural are closely connected, especially when the

gender politics of detection is considered. In addition to this link to the gothic, sensation

has been theorised in a number of other ways, and in what follows, I will explore this

category in more depth.

Victorian sensation has been the subject of many critical inquiries over the past few

decades. In 1982, Patrick Brantlinger asked the increasingly pertinent question: ‘What

Is “Sensational” about the “Sensation Novel”?’ in response to renewed scholarly

interest in this amorphous category.119

Interestingly, his question is remarkably similar

to one asked over a century earlier, by Alfred Austin in 1870. In his article “Our

Novels: The Sensational School” for Temple Bar, Austin asks: “What is a sensational

novel? And by what principle of discrimination do we affix to any existing class of

romance this special and scarcely complimentary title?”120

Austin identifies the use of

118

Reddy, p.191. 119

Patrick Brantlinger, “What Is “Sensational” about the “Sensation Novel”?”, Nineteenth-

Century Fiction 37 (June 1982), 1-28. Brantlinger includes Ellen Wood amongst the key

contributors to 1860s sensation and isolates “the element of mystery” as a distinguishing feature

of the genre (1-2). 120

Alfred Austin, “Our Novels: The Sensational School”, Temple Bar 29 (June 1870), 410,

reprinted in Andrew Maunder, ed. Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction, Volume 1, p.247.

34

‘sensational’ as a pejorative term in Victorian literary debates. This is important because

what has become clear in recent scholarship is that ‘sensation’ was a term coined by

critics to describe a new trend in fiction of the 1860s.121

The critical controversy that

surrounded sensation novels is, in part, a reaction to its perceived status as a mass-

produced, popular and ‘low’ cultural form. The exciting content of sensation fiction

registered a direct appeal to the senses and a focus upon the body, in a way that troubled

Victorian critics. This was a particular concern raised in “The Philosophy of

‘Sensation’” which appeared in St James’ Magazine, in 1862 where a working

definition of sensation is outlined:

As now used, it means a concentrated interest in any amusement brought

particularly under our attention; and it is not only artificially produced,

but apparently, as a greater recommendation, is commonly of illicit

manufacture, from sources generally considered unwholesome.122

According to this representation, sensation is associated with entertainments of the

unnatural, forbidden and poisonous kind. The writer goes on to compare the production,

by this literature, of “feverish sensation” to those works of literary genius that elicit a

“sensible elevation of feelings”.123

In this manner, the difference is likened to “the

gladdening exhilaration produced by a glass or two of Moet’s purest vintage, compared

with the horrible delirium tremens created by a debauch in which the most noxious

poisons have entered as elements of the intoxication”.124

In his famous essay “Sensation

Novels” from April 1863, H. L. Mansel attempts to distinguish the various effects of

sensation:

121

One critic writes, in 1863, “‘Sensation’ we regard as the most unmeaning and stupid epithets

of the day, and would like to know whether it is more applicable to our novels and dramas than

it would have been to Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Waverley’ or to Lord Byron’s ‘Don Juan’”. Unsigned

article, “Sensation”, The Literary Times (9 May 1863), reprinted in Maunder, ed. Varieties of

Women’s Sensation Fiction, Volume 1, p.66. The term ‘sensation’ has been found as early as

1856 in an unsigned review of Caroline Clive’s novel, Paul Ferroll, in the Saturday Review

(See Maunder, Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction, Volume 1, p.xxix). 122

“The Philosophy of ‘Sensation’”, St James’ Magazine, 5 (October 1862), reprinted in

Maunder (ed) Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction, Volume 1, p.17. This article appeared in

St James Magazine during the editorship of Anna Maria Hall, a good friend of Ellen Wood’s. 123

“The Philosophy of Sensation” reprinted in Maunder, ed. Varieties of Women’s Sensation

Fiction, Volume 1, p.22. 124

“The Philosophy of Sensation” reprinted in Maunder, ed. Varieties of Women’s Sensation

Fiction, Volume 1, p.23. The class politics of this delineation are palpable.

35

A great philosopher has enumerated in a list of sensations ‘the feelings

from heat, electricity, galvanism, &c,’ together with ‘titillation, sneezing,

horripilation, shuddering, the feeling of setting the teeth on edge, &c.;’

and our novels might be classified in like manner according to the kind of

sensation they are calculated to produce. 125

D. A. Miller would later echo the visceral nature of these illustrations in his compelling

twentieth-century description of sensation, as a form that transforms readers’ bodies

into “theaters of neurasthenia”.126

These critics employ imagery that resonates with

ideas of emotional disturbance and physical disease in order to emphasise sensation’s

effects.

The emergence of sensation is also linked strongly to the Victorian economic, social

and political context. In the 1862 definition outlined above, the writer emphasises that

sensation relates to “amusement brought particularly under our attention” [my italics]. I

would argue that this points to an awareness of sensation literature’s status as a

commodity. Brantlinger explains this further as he links the emergence of sensation

literature to the growth of modern consumerism, arguing that “sensation fiction seems

to capitulate to the desires of the mass reading public in a self-conscious manner that

distinguishes it from earlier writing and publishing practices”.127

Thus, sensation

participates in, and is a product of its economic moment. Pykett suggests that this

awareness of the demands of the market led to female sensation writers being

“adversely judged on account of their ‘professionalism’, in other words because they

made literature a business”.128

Sensation’s intrinsic relationship to the marketplace was

not as heavily masked as that of more ‘literary’ fiction. Additionally, Jennifer Poole

Hayward argues that sensation’s mode of publication, in serialised instalments in the

periodical press, contributed to an “added factor of enforced pauses to increase suspense

125

H. L. Mansel, “Sensation Novels”, Quarterly Review 13 (April 1863): 487. 126

D. A. Miller, “Cage aux folles: Sensation and Gender in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in

White”, Representations 14 (1986): 107. The description is also rather apt because of links

between sensation in literature and on the stage, in melodrama. 127

Patrick Brantlinger, The Reading Lesson, p.143. This emphasis upon consumerism is also

reflected in Henry Mansel’s “Sensation Novels”, 483, “A commercial atmosphere floats around

works of this class, redolent of the manufactory or the shop. The public want novels, and novels

must be made – so many yards of printed stuff, sensation-pattern, to be ready by the beginning

of the season.” 128

Pykett, “Women and the sensation business,” p. 28.

36

and long duration to increase identification with characters”.129

According to this

theory, the modern mode of periodical publication both created and sustained the

emerging sensation subgenre. Modernity itself is not only reflected in sensation’s mode

of publication, but also its content. Jenny Bourne Taylor suggests that the word

‘sensation’ as it was applied to the literature of the period, “encapsulated the experience

of modernity itself – the sense of continuous and rapid change, of shocks, thrills,

intensity, excitement”.130

These sentiments are reflected in the writings of one of the

earliest critics to address the new genre, Margaret Oliphant. In her well-known 1862

review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, “Sensational Novels”, Oliphant links

sensation strongly to its cultural milieu, perceiving that “it is only natural that art and

literature should, in an age which has turned out to be one of events, attempt a kindred

depth of effect and shock of incident”.131

During this time, the modern world is

imagined as one of startling discoveries and thrilling excitement, and literary modes

resonated with these sensations.

Sensation fiction is often considered in its relation to classic realism. Terry Lovell

argues that from 1840, fiction was “delineated along class lines, with ‘literary fiction’

being associated with bourgeois respectability, and also with realism”.132

However, I do

not want to suggest a binary, because sensation engaged with, rather than opposed,

realism in new and, for some critics, unsettling ways. Winifred Hughes describes

sensation as a “violent yoking of romance and realism, traditionally the two modes of

literary perception.” 133

It is worth noting that Hughes’ emphasis here, on violence,

resonates with sensation’s shock-value and disruptive potential as a literary force.

Indeed some twenty-first century critics retain this misgiving, as Richard Fantina and

Kimberley Harrison assert “among some guardians of the Western canon, the sensation

genre even today remains critically suspect and inferior in comparison to “classic”

129

Jennifer Poole Hayward, Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions form

Dickens to Soap Opera (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p.38. Hayward’s

useful study considers the power of the audience in shaping and engaging with the serial form

from the nineteenth, through to the twentieth century. 130

Jenny Bourne Taylor, In the Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, sensation narrative,

and nineteenth-century psychology (London; New York: Routledge, 1988), p.3. 131

Margaret Oliphant, “Sensation Novels,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 91 (May 1862):

565. 132

Terry Lovell, Consuming Fiction (London; New York: Verso, 1987), p.11. 133

Hughes, 9.

37

Victorian realism.134

It was sensation’s non-traditional blending of these modes:

depicting extraordinary events in contemporary, everyday settings that led to unease

amongst Victorian critics. Mansel argues that proximity is a key feature of sensation,

arguing that “a tale which aims at electrifying the nerves of a reader is never thoroughly

effective unless the scene be laid in our own days and among the people we are in the

habit of meeting”.135

Sensation fiction has also been theorised as a reaction against

domestic fiction which had dominated the literary market at mid-century. Charles Reade

asserted, in 1859, that domestic signified “tame” in its original Latin, implying that this

term, as it was applied to fiction indicated harmlessness, or a failure to excite or

entertain.136

The comparison then implies that sensation provided a more thrilling

offering to Victorian readers: a category characterised by excitement, adventure and

danger. This led to concerns about the moral implications of the new genre.137

As a form that relied on thrilling content and an appeal to the senses, questions were

raised about the suitability of the sensation novel for impressionable readers. Oliphant

was particularly concerned about the moral effects of the genre. She links this new kind

of literature to the sensation drama, but imbues the former with far more sinister

potential:

The rise of a Sensation School of art in any department is a thing to be

watched with jealous eyes but nowhere is it so dangerous as in fiction,

where the artist cannot resort to a daring physical plunge, as on the stage,

or to a blaze of palpable colour, as in the picture-gallery, but must take

the passions and emotions of life to make his effects withal.138

134

Richard Fantina and Kimberley Harrison (eds) Victorian Sensations: Essays on a Scandalous

Genre (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006), p.x. 135

Mansel, 489. 136

As cited in Helen Debenham, “The Victorian Sensation Novel” in William Baker and

Kenneth Womack (eds), A Companion to the Victorian Novel (Westport: Greenwood Press,

2002), p.209. While Debenham does not elaborate on the reference, it is from Reade’s novel

Love Me Little, Love Me Long (1859). 137

Brantlinger, in The Reading Lesson, p.143, notes that “metaphors of moral corruption,

disease, and poison proliferate” in reviews of sensation novels during the 1860s. 138

Oliphant,, “Sensation Novels,” 568. It is noteworthy that here, Oliphant goes on to link

Dickens to the rise of sensation, as she asserts “Mr Dickens’ successes in sensation are great”

(574). While Braddon, Wood and Collins were frequently identified as purveyors of the form,

the position of Dickens’ works and his use of sensation is less certain and his writing is often

aligned with Newgate novel instead. For a useful discussion of these two Victorian forms, see:

Lyn Pykett “The Newgate novel and sensation fiction, 1830-1868,” The Cambridge Companion

to Crime Fiction, ed. Martin Priestman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp.19-

39.

38

For Oliphant, it is the sensationalised depiction of “passions and emotions of life” that

seems to be particularly unsettling. In a similar manner, a reviewer in 1880 asserted:

“Our dramatic ideal is lower than our Novel ideal. We endure on the stage more

startling deviations from truth and reality than we can stand with equanimity in a

book”139

Anxiety surrounds the distortion, exaggeration or embellishment of sites

considered ‘realistic’ and everyday, especially in a form of entertainment that is popular

and easily obtained.140

However, not all critical viewpoints were alike. In the Argosy,

during Ellen Wood’s proprietorship, a defence of sensationalism in literature is mounted

in the article “Past ‘Sensationalists’”. Here, the author writes: “A wide survey of life

invariably entails the melodramatic spirit. Life itself is a melodrama. The common-

place yields to the romantic, the romantic to the ridiculous, the ridiculous to the

sublime.”141

This defence is clearly politic on Wood’s part. Jennifer Phegley argues that

Wood included essays and reviews in the Argosy that justified her own style of writing

and “advocated a more nuanced understanding of good literature by imagining a form

that combined elements of realism, sensationalism and sentimentalism.”142

Certainly, as

I will outline later, Wood’s own brand of sensation maintains strong ties to domestic

fiction and attempts to avoid the problematic classification of ‘dangerous’ fiction.

In sensation fiction, the institutions of the English middle classes are yoked for their

exciting, dangerous and criminal possibilities: marriage vows are forgotten, servants

and neighbours become sinister figures, wills are forged and tinctures are poisoned. In

Oliphant’s 1862 critique, she is particularly uneasy about sensation as “a kind of

literature which must, more or less, find its inspiration in crime”.143

As my discussion of

139

[Anonymous review], “Modern Novels”, Cambridge Review 2 (8 December 1880): 138. A

decade earlier, the Argosy had published an article, “The Sensation Novel”, in which the author

claims: “What gives success to the novelist today is the same as brings audiences to the theatre

– sensation” (E.B., “The Sensation Novel” Argosy 18 (1870), 143). Brantlinger in The Reading

Lesson, p.145, also claims that it is not possible to “distinguish [sensationalism] in any absolute

sense from what Peter Brooks calls ‘the melodramatic imagination’ both on stage and in

novels”. 140

Richard Altick, Victorian Studies in Scarlet (New York: Norton, 1970), p.78, argues that the

“prevailing temper of the time was positivistic, scientific, rationalist: it disdained, indeed

distrusted ‘romance’ insofar as the word connoted any imaginative departure from actuality”. 141

“Past ‘Sensationalists’”, Argosy 5 (December 1867): 53. This is reminiscent of what Dickens

said of his 1853 detective novel, Bleak House: “I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side

of familiar things” (Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853; New York: Norton, 1977), p.4). 142

Jennifer Phegley, “Domesticating the Sensation Novelist: Ellen Price Wood as the Author

and Editor of the Argosy Magazine,” Victorian Periodicals Review 38.2 (Summer 2005): 188. 143

Oliphant, “Sensation Novels,” 568.

39

the Road murder indicated, sensationalised reporting of crime in the newspapers was an

important influence upon literature of the time. The scandalous incidents of the

Victorian newspaper included detailed daily reporting of murder, bigamy and

kidnappings, and often these crimes involved the ‘respectable’ middle classes, not only

as victims but also as perpetrators. Richard Altick argues, in his early study of Victorian

murder, that these newspapers provided a justification for the incidents of crime that

pervaded fiction, as the press “made the extravagant credible”.144

Altick goes on to state

that it created a popular belief that, while “murder might not touch our own lives, the

news of the day assured us that it might well touch the lives of people just like us”.145

However, in the fictional adaptations of these true crimes, criminals were not always

punished and they often became intriguing heroes and heroines in the novels of the day.

This ambiguity was seen as a particular problem in a class of fiction aimed at a female

readership. Concerns were raised about the ambiguous characters created by sensation

writers; for example in “The Philosophy of ‘Sensation’” the writer is particularly

troubled by “hybrid combinations of the mean and the noble, the modest and the

impure, the hero and the scoundrel, and the angel and the tigress.” 146

This confusion of

moral categories is especially worrying for the writer because, as the article estimates,

women comprise “four-fifths of the novel readers in this country”.147

As a form of

fiction often produced by women writers, for a female readership with various models

of womanhood gracing its pages, the literature was heavily scrutinised.148

Winifred

Hughes points out that this problem of femininity, posed by sensation fiction, draws

together questions of gender, sexuality, class and nation:

144

Altick, p.79. 145

Altick, p.81. 146

“The Philosophy of Sensation” in Maunder, ed. Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction,

Volume 1, p.21. 147

“The Philosophy of Sensation” in Maunder, ed. Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction,

Volume 1, p.22. 148

Sensation’s nexus of women readers, writers and the depiction of proper and improper

versions of femininity, to borrow Pykett’s words, is something that I explore in my work and I

will return to this throughout my analysis. For an analysis of women and writing in the period,

see: Lyn Pykett, “A woman’s business: women and writing 1830-80,” An Introduction to

Women’s writing: From the Middle Ages to the present day, ed. Marion Shaw (New York:

Prentice Hall, 1998), pp. 149-176.

40

If the ideal middle-class society is founded on the cornerstone of

womanly purity, then it is quite understandable to find the “equivocal

heroines” of the sensation novel condemned as a threat to the entire social

and moral fabric of Victorian England.149

The threat posed to conventional morality by this new genre of fiction is a concern that,

as we have seen, many critics expounded. However, while sensation writers were

depicting provocative, seductive and powerful heroines in the vein of Braddon’s

beautiful bigamist, Lady Audley, Ellen Wood’s fiction, although very interested in

diverse female experience, attempted to avoid the appearance of threat, impropriety or

unwholesomeness. I would argue that the complexities within Wood’s oeuvre and the

vast differences between her texts and those of other writers labelled as ‘sensational’,

produces space for new approaches to her works.

In Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question (1999), Nicola Diane Thompson

argues for a rejection of labels such as radical or conservative in light of “the

complexity of the historically specific discourses and contexts in which the novels are

embedded”.150

Emma Liggins and Daniel Duffy follow Thompson, in Feminist

Readings of Victorian Popular Texts: Divergent Femininities (2001), and argue for a

more complex evaluation of popular fiction such as that written by Wood.151

They

assert that, “a diverse range of Victorian popular texts appeared both to endorse and

subvert ideological norms”.152

Indeed, twenty-first century scholarship surrounding

Victorian popular fiction demonstrates a movement away from what some scholars have

termed the “radical-conservative dilemma”.153

Pykett argues this point persuasively

149

Hughes, 46. This concern about “equivocal heroines” comes from Oliphant’s 1867 article

“Novels” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 102 (Sept 1867), 257-80. Here, Braddon comes

under fire for the overt sexuality of her female characters and for denigrating the “sanity,

wholesomeness and cleanness” (257) of English novels. 150

Nicola Diane Thompson, (ed). Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.4. 151

Emma Liggins and Daniel Duffy, eds. Feminist Readings of Victorian Popular Texts,

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 152

Liggins and Duffy, xvii. At the time, this study gave Wood’s works more (serious) critical

attention than any other existing scholarship. Novels such as East Lynne, The Shadow of

Ashlydyat and Danesbury House Elster’s Folly, St Martin’s Eve, East Lynne, Edina, The Master

of Greylands, Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, Lord Oakburn’s Daughters and Mildred Arkell

receive attention in two separate chapters by Liggins and Deborah Wynne. 153

Lyn Pykett “Afterword” in Marlene Tromp, Pamela K. Gilbert and Aeron Haynie, eds,

Beyond Sensation: Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Context (New York: State University of New

York Press, 2000) 279. See also Emma Liggins and Andrew Maunder, “Reassessing

41

where she criticises the potentially reductive strategy of applying terms such as

‘conservative’ or ‘radical’ to popular works. In 2005, Andrew Maunder emphasises the

variation within sensation fiction when he maps the genre, arguing, “to talk of sensation

fiction as though it were all of a single, homogeneous type … would be misleading”.154

In late 2008, Women’s Writing released a special issue dedicated to Wood that reflects

this discursive complexity and the diversity of scholarly approaches to her works. My

present work continues in this vein, allowing for a complex consideration of Wood’s

popular fiction. Accordingly, the heterogeneity and instability of sensation is

illuminated when Ellen Wood’s contributions are considered in more detail.

Wood and Sensation

Wood’s work has always occupied an unstable position within the scholarship

surrounding sensation. In his 1976 study, Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in

English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle, Ian Ousby includes Ellen Wood in a chapter

titled “Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists” comparing Wood and Braddon

unfavourably to their male rival, Collins. Ousby argues that the women writers’ reliance

on Providence and Destiny reveals an “underlying intellectual void” in their works.155

Similarly, Thomas Boyle characterises Dickens and Collins as masters of exploring the

social and psychological condition and suggests that Wood is “essentially a writer of

sentimental romances who seems to wander inadvertently within range of critical

opprobrium”.156

This form of gendered critique is also evident in Ernest Baker’s History

of the English Novel (1936) and later in Nicholas Rance’s Wilkie Collins and Other

Sensation Novelists (1991) where Wood is designated, as Maunder puts it, as a “crude

imitator” or “acolyte of a male mentor”.157

It is, however, relevant to my argument that

Wood’s works were included, albeit marginally, in Ousby’s discussion of the detective

Nineteenth-century Popular Fiction by Women, 1825-1880,” Women’s Writing 11.1 (2004): 3-

9. 154

Andrew Maunder, “Mapping the Victorian Sensation Novel,” Literature Compass 2 (2005):

5. Boyle, p.145, previously argued that “Aside from dealing with distressingly criminal or

immoral aspects of the human condition, with realistic contemporary English settings, the

Sensation novelists are really not all that similar”. 155

Ousby, Bloodhounds of Heaven, p.116. 156

Boyle, p.145. 157

Maunder, “Ellen Wood was a Writer”, 18.

42

in fiction as far back as the 1970s. This indicates a trend towards acknowledging the

importance of detection in her writing.158

Wood’s fiction has been more fully located through the essential recovery work of

feminist scholars during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1977, Elaine Showalter in A Literature

of Their Own: From Charlotte Brontë to Doris Lessing, argues for the latent feminism

of Wood’s fiction.159

Showalter also argues that “[t]he sensationalists made crime and

violence domestic, modern, and suburban; but their secrets were not simply solutions to

mysteries and crimes; they were the secrets of women’s dislike of their roles as

daughters, wives, mothers” (p.158). As my analysis of Wood’s texts will reveal, there is

a discursive complexity surrounding Wood’s negotiations of female roles, especially in

relation to the domestic sphere. Wood’s heroines embrace domesticity just as often as

they reject it. In this way, my work will aim to extend important early feminist

revisionist work such as that of Showalter and will complicate and expand upon her

readings of Wood’s fictions. In other feminist approaches, Wood and Braddon were

often compared to each other, with Wood positioned as the ‘less-radical’ sensationalist.

For example, in 1980, Winifred Hughes’ early work in the field, The Maniac in the

Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, suggests that Wood’s writing displays

“ignorance” and “innocence” in comparison to Braddon’s more radical texts.160

Over a

decade later, Pykett questions whether the sensation category is the correct place for

Wood’s works, labeling her novels as “sensation-influenced” rather than sensation

proper.161

When Pykett later edited a reprinting of Wood’s St Martin’s Eve (1866), as an

example of “Gothic Sensationalism” she seems more comfortable with locating Wood

as a sensationalist, but nevertheless acknowledges that she “has always sat uneasily in

158

Altick had previously mentioned Wood very briefly in his 1970 study of Victorian murder,

Victorian Studies in Scarlet, however she is always aligned with Mary Braddon, despite the

many differences between the two writers. 159

Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: from Charlotte Brontë to Doris Lessing. (1977.

Rev. ed. London: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp.171-173. In the same year, a brief

analysis of Wood’s East Lynne was included in Sally Mitchell, “Sentiment and Suffering:

Women’s Recreational Reading in the 1860s”, Victorian Studies 21.1 (1977): 35. 160

Hughes, p.119. Hughes’ work responds to the gaps in Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

(New Haven, Yale University Press, 1979). Given the scope of their work, it is not surprising

that the female sensationalists were overlooked: Mary Braddon is mentioned only once (p.473)

and Ellen Wood is not mentioned at all. 161

Pykett, The Improper Feminine, p.114.

43

the ranks of the sensation novelists”.162

Emma Liggins agrees with Pykett’s position,

arguing that Wood’s writing “does not fit comfortably into the sensation genre”.163

Undue focus on these twentieth- and twenty-first century critical positions can obscure

the original reception and recognition of Wood’s work from the 1860s. For example,

Oliphant compares Wood’s East Lynne to Collins’ The Woman in White and Dickens’

Great Expectations.164

Her description of East Lynne as “a clever novel … which some

inscrutable breath of popular liking has blown into momentary celebrity” seems to

express a desire for the ephemerality of this work, and its genre.165

Of course, the

popularity of East Lynne in the following decades would not bear out Oliphant’s hopes.

Maunder draws our attention to the 1864 Athenaeum review that designated Wood,

rather than Collins, as the “originator and chief of the sensation school of English

novelists”.166

This reviewer was John Cordy Jeaffreson, a novelist and social historian

who may have been reflecting the publicity surrounding East Lynne in the years after its

publication. This success included many stage adaptations of East Lynne as a

melodrama. I will discuss this in more detail in Chapter One, but during this period,

Wood’s most famous work became associated with the sensational in more ways than

one.

It was not long before subtle distinctions between the authors of the ‘sensation school’

were being drawn. In 1863, Wood’s Verner’s Pride and Braddon’s Aurora Floyd were

reviewed in Littell’s Living Age, where despite many misgivings about her work, the

reviewer prefers Wood’s carefully managed ‘respectable’ image. He argues that Wood

“bases her fiction on a womanly notion of right, and shows a sense of delicacy that

restrains her from the coarser imaginings of the sensation novelist”.167

The article’s title

162

Pykett, “Introduction,” Gothic Sensationalism, Ellen Wood, St Martin's Eve (1866), Volume

3 of Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction, 1855-1890, General ed. Andrew Maunder,

Consulting ed. Sally Mitchell (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2004), p.viii. 163

Liggins, “Good Housekeeping”, p.59. 164

As noted earlier, Dickens’ position among the sensation school was as unstable as Wood’s.

Henry Mansel, 488, argues that Dickens is “a grievous offender” in employing the techniques of

sensationalism, but “by a just retribution, the passages that are written in this spirit are generally

the worst in his works”. 165

Oliphant, “Sensation Novels,” 567. 166

Maunder, “Introduction”, Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction, Volume 1, p.xxxvi. The

unsigned review in question is, “New Novels,” Rev. of Lord Oakburn’s Daughters. By Mrs

Henry Wood. Athenaeum 1927 (1 Oct 1864): 428-9. 167

Rev. “Mrs Wood and Miss Braddon”, Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction, Volume 1

p.58. Harriet Martineau also apparently disliked the label “sensation” as it was applied to

44

“Mrs Wood and Miss Braddon” is a telling reminder of the difference between a

respectably married female writer and a suspect, unmarried authoress. In addition,

Braddon’s emphasis upon female sexuality in the depiction of her heroines led to

concerns about detrimental effects on readers. A similar sentiment underlies the 1868

article “Women’s Novels” where the unnamed author writes of Wood “though her

pages teem with horrors, there is a wholesome tone about the books themselves”. The

comparison to Braddon is made as the author goes on: “there is an absence of horsiness

and Bohemianism, which makes us prefer her to her fair rival”.168

Wood’s carefully

managed image and more circumspect negotiation of sensation tropes aimed at avoiding

the criticisms levelled at Braddon: what Pamela K. Gilbert summarises as the image of

the female writer as “prostituted hack paid to produce a sensation”.169

Wood’s success

in avoiding these unseemly associations is reflected by Adeline Sergeant, who argues

that “Mrs. Wood's stories, although sensational in plot, are purely domestic”.170

While it is not my intention to abandon ideas of genre altogether, I do wish to

problematise Wood’s relationship to sensation in order to suggest an alternative

approach to her works. As I have shown, her works occupy an imprecise position in the

sensation category and I will draw out the nuances of this unstable location. Moreover,

my work will extend the focus on Wood’s works from their role in the sensation debate

of the 1860s, to consider the importance of her earlier and later writings. In what

follows I will outline in more detail, the second of the two organising principles around

which I will approach Wood’s writings: the domestic.

Wood’s Verner’s Pride. In an extract from a letter Martineau remarks “I am entirely displeased

with the Reviews […] I don’t like to hear it called a Sensation novel seeing how admirable is

the character drawing”. Extract of a letter from Harriet Martineau to Ellen Wood, 18 Mar 1863,

Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The

University of Texas at Austin, uncatalogued. 168

“Women’s Novels” The Broadway 1(1868) 504-9, reprinted in Maunder, ed. Varieties of

Women’s Sensation Fiction, Volume 1, p.222. It is common in Wood’s earlier writings to

encounter hints of crimes such as bigamy or murder that never actually come to fruition. 169

Pamela K. Gilbert, Disease, Desire and the Body in Victorian Women’s Popular Novels

(Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997) p.77. Wood, no doubt aware of the

importance of distribution for commercial success, would have had an eye to inclusion in the

circulating library. An author’s unblemished image and narratives with a ‘wholesome’ tone

were key to attaining the respect of powerful figures such as Charles Mudie. See Lovell, pp.75-

7. 170

Sergeant, p.187.

45

Navigating the domestic in Ellen Wood’s fiction

“This was her horrible death, then – to be walled up alive.”171

The discovery of a murdered woman’s mouldering corpse in the foundations of her

former lover’s home forms the climax of “Gina Montani” (1851), one of the earliest

works attributed to Ellen Wood. This short story depicts the sacrifice of a powerless

woman to the home, and provides a useful explication of what would become Wood’s

preoccupation with detection and the domestic in her later works. “Gina Montani” is set

in a mediaevalised Tuscany and is replete with gothic trappings such as European

castles, aristocratic characters and sinister servants. The eponymous heroine is the

young, virtuous middle-class daughter of an English (and Protestant) mother and Italian

father. At the outset of the story, Gina argues with her lover, the Count di Visinara. He

implores her to convert to his own faith, to enable their marriage, but when she refuses,

he weds a wealthy Roman Catholic heiress. Soon after, the heartbroken Gina secretly

takes up a position in the Count’s household as an attendant to his new bride. When an

inquisitive servant, loyal to the Countess, notices a secret understanding between the

Count and Gina, she investigates the newcomer. Gina’s true identity is discovered, the

women of the household conspire to remove her, and she mysteriously vanishes.172

Many years later, after the death of the Countess, apparently from the strain of guilt,

Gina’s corpse is revealed, walled-up in the Count’s castle and her ghost returns to haunt

the descendants of his family.

171

Ellen (Mrs Henry) Wood, “Gina Montani” in Adam Grainger and Other Stories (London:

Macmillan, 1899) 246. This story originally appeared in the New Monthly Magazine from

October – December 1851 as “The punishment of Gina Montani”. This was the first year in

which writing attributed to Wood appears in print. 172

Wood’s bestseller, East Lynne (1861) would repeat this intrusion of the heroine into the new

home of a former lover when Isabel disguises herself as a governess to gain access to her former

home and family. In “Gina Montani”, prior to her death, Gina already haunts the Tuscan,

Roman Catholic aristocracy. Wood repeatedly positions Gina as the more acceptably English

character who is persecuted in a Roman Catholic country. When we first encounter Gina, the

narrator emphasises her “fair, open countenance, the complexion of which resembled more that

of an English than an Italian one, inasmuch as a fine, transparent colour was glowing on the

cheeks” (186). This becomes a preoccupation of the narrative with constant references to Gina’s

upbringing in “the Reformed faith” (190), which provides an impediment to her marriage to the

Catholic, Count di Visinara. It is worth noting that in the same year that “Gina Montani” was

published, Wood’s earliest known work of fiction, “Seven Years in the Wedded Life of a

Roman Catholic” (1851) appeared in the New Monthly Magazine. Marie Riley, p.169, asserts

that in this work, “Wood gives voice to fairly virulent but topical anti-Catholic sentiments” and

positions “European Catholicism in opposition to the British domestic ideal”. This is a strategy

that is repeated in “Gina Montani” where anti-Catholicism clearly underwrites the narrative.

46

Despite being first published in the New Monthly Magazine as “The Punishment of Gina

Montani” Wood has not constructed a simple morality tale. While the heroine is

punished for her indiscretions, she exacts her own vengeance in a ghostly return. In my

reading of the story, “Gina Montani” intervenes in and investigates discourses of the

domestic as Wood invokes the supernatural and the female gothic to explore the ideas

that circulate around the Victorian home. Marriage is depicted as an institution subject

to religious, economic and social pressures, and Wood selects religion for particular

criticism. In the tale, the powerful priest, Father Anselmo, undermines the Count’s

domestic authority, secretly counselling the Countess to protect her household and to

‘remove [Gina] in any way’ necessary (228).173

The Count is precluded from assisting

in his own domestic affairs because his wife resorts to the power of the priest, rather

than the authority of her husband. Through these depictions, Wood clearly constructs

Roman Catholicism as an oppressive anti-family and anti-democratic faith, positioning

Protestantism as a more acceptably domestic religion.174

At the end of the story, a critique of the mismanaged domestic space is made overt.

While the Count oversees alterations to his castle ahead of his remarriage, he protests

that the foundations of his home and castle are sound. Then, as a wall is removed, the

corpse of his former lover is discovered in the foundations – a past sacrifice to his home

and family. 175

While the mystery of Gina’s disappearance is solved at this point, both

173

Although Father Anselmo does not realise he is giving absolution for a murder, the Countess

misunderstands his orders, further reinforcing Wood’s Anglican belief that disallowing direct

interpretation of the Bible can lead to distortion. In the story, when Gina’s past is discovered,

she is examined by Father Anselmo. Here, it is her faith, rather than her relations with the

Count, that is scrutinised. Her rival, the Countess condemns Gina’s faith as “dreadful heresy”

(228) and she is instructed by the priest to see that Gina is removed. However, at this point in

the tale, the reader is unaware of the manner of Gina’s death, only that it occurs via a conspiracy

between the Countess and her jealous servant, Lucrezia. 174

In her later writings, Wood would characterise Roman Catholicism as a “dark and

superstitious creed” that encourages young women to become slaves to the priests, in “A Word

to England” New Monthly Magazine 97 (Feb 1853): 182. Wood also stresses the anti-domestic

nature of Catholicism where she cites an anecdote about a woman who abandons her family for

the Church (“A Word to England”, 186). See also “The Sequel to ‘A Word to England’” New

Monthly Magazine 97 (Mar 1853) 336, 340. Wood’s anti-Catholicism is still discernible in her

later fiction. Pires, 182, ascribes Wood’s “general attachment to English values and morality” to

“female social insecurity, which is counterbalanced by the dual moral and national identity

afforded by Anglicanism”. 175

For this tale, Wood possibly owes a debt to Edgar Allan Poe. His story, The Black Cat (1843)

features a man who murders his wife and walls her up in the cellar of his home. He tells the

police that his is “an excellently well-constructed house” (p.572) before the cat that he has

accidentally entombed with the corpse, reveals his crime.

47

for the reader and for the Count, the detection of this truth cannot purge the guilt from

his home as Gina’s haunting presence represents what (and who) is excluded from

dominant institutions and discourses. “Gina Montani” stresses the injustices of religious

intolerance and mercenary marital unions and, as an early example of Wood’s fiction, it

foreshadows her later preoccupations with discourses of the domestic and its

associations with nation, religion, home and family.

In Wood’s writing, and more broadly, the domestic operates as a complex and

multifaceted set of ideas. Often the domestic space of a dwelling and the affections

associated with the home are conflated to signify the domestic as tied to the space of a

household or residence. However, the domestic is also bound up with formations of

community that extend beyond the residence and reach across villages, cities, regions

or nations. In literary criticism, the domestic has recently been signaled as a key

category through which to read Wood’s writings, a strategy that I take up in this work.

In 2001, Emma Liggins acknowledges the difficulty of fitting Wood’s works into the

sensation genre, arguing that they bear “more resemblance to what we now refer to as

family sagas”.176

More recently, Jennifer Phegley’s 2005 article, “Domesticating the

Sensation Novelist: Ellen Price Wood as the Author and Editor of the Argosy

Magazine,” classifies Wood’s works as a decidedly domesticated brand of

sensationalism. In the same year, Andrew Maunder charts the broad category of

sensation, and labels Wood’s works as a “domestication of the domestic Gothic”.177

As

a category with evident importance in Wood’s writing, and as a key term underlying my

own approach to her works, I will now examine the domestic and its multitude of

significations in more detail.

During the 1860s, and a decade after the publication of “Gina Montani”, Wood shifts

her focus from gothic imaginings of Tuscan castles, to the representation of nineteenth-

century English homes. Despite this relocation to English soil, the entrance of

foreigners into these domestic settings, as figures of difference and desire, demonstrates

the importance of foreignness to the construction of Englishness. While in “Gina

Montani” English domestic values are embodied by the threatened heroine, Wood’s

176

Liggins, “Good Housekeeping”, p.59. 177

Phegley, “Domesticating the Sensation Novelist”, 180-198; Maunder, “Mapping Sensation”,

21.

48

later fiction reveals more subtle strategies.178

Daniel Bivona argues that the ‘foreign’ is

inherent within constructions of the domestic.179

Hence, even when the presence of this

‘Other’ is not made explicit via foreign settings or characters, there is a form of

imperialist unconscious that is fundamental to Victorian domestic discourse. In 1862,

the reviewer of The Channings asserts that Wood’s text follows a trend in recent novels

which: “merely wish to embody the permanent principles that ought to prevail in

English family life”. The reviewer praises the novel for its “even flow of moderate good

sense, virtue and decency, which keeps us at the accustomed level of ordinary life in

England.” 180

This reviewer merges notions of nation, family, morality, tradition,

rationality and the everyday in order to valorise middle-class respectability. In the

novel, the virtuous, middle-class, churchgoing Channing family are repeatedly

contrasted with the indolent, aristocratic, half-Irish Yorke family.181

Hence, in a novel

that revolves around the detection of class and national difference, the reviewer’s

assumption that The Channings represents ‘ordinary life in England’ clearly indicates a

desire to elide difference in order to promote a unified, homogenous Englishness.

Anthony Easthope argues that the force of national desire attempts to synthesise nation

(institutions and practices) and culture (language, literature, discourse) into a “single

national characterisation”. In England, this produces an “apparently unified object,

‘Englishness’, which invites subjects into identification with it (and so each other) in a

process which gives the effect of national identity”.182

The reviewer’s assertion that

Wood’s novel represents “ordinary life in England” participates in this construction of

Englishness. However, I want to argue that the operations of domestic detection in

Wood’s writings often dramatise the work involved in claiming the “ordinary” or

commonplace as a neutral site.

178

The gothic status of “Gina Montani” resonates with Canon Schmitt, Alien Nation:

Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fictions and English Nationality (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1997), p.24. In his analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, Schmitt states

“Englishness manifests itself at the level of character in the shape of a Gothic heroine who

stands out in high relief against the sinister backdrop of foreign landscapes and villains”. 179

Daniel Bivona, Desire and Contradiction. Imperial Visions and Domestic Debates in

Victorian Literature (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp.vii-ix.

Bivona acknowledges his debt to Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) in theorising this

relationship between the domestic and its ‘others’. 180

Rev. of The Channings, Saturday Review 13 (1862): 540. 181

I will discuss this aspect of The Channings in greater detail in Chapter Two. 182

Anthony Easthope, Englishness and National Culture (London: Routledge, 1999), pp.55-6.

49

Englishness, in Wood’s writing and in general, is a complex term that signifies the

production of English national identity. As Simon Gikandi argues, Englishness is a

“cultural and literary phenomenon.”183

Wood’s popular writings necessarily contribute

to the shaping of this phenomenon in the mid-Victorian context. In 2008, Matthew Pires

argues that Wood’s reputation as “a quintessentially English writer” is a well-deserved

one, as the construction of Englishness forms a fundamental feature of her works.184

Indeed, under her proprietorship, the Argosy was undoubtedly part of this construction

of Englishness. As Bettina Wirth, a reader and contributor to the magazine, living in

Vienna writes to the editor: “I cannot continue without having first thanked you heartily

for having sent me your monthly all this long time. It makes me feel like shaking hands

with dear old England once a month!”185

Despite this, Julian Wolfreys’ useful study

emphasises the “fragmented and often paradoxical vision of Englishness” offered by

nineteenth-century writers.186

Not least because, as David Powell reminds us, England

itself “remained a country of regions, the unifying bonds of ‘Englishness’ cross-cut with

other loyalties of community, denomination and class”.187

Indeed, Wood’s own

Englishness often has, as Pires notes, “a regional flavour” as Worcestershire is

fictionalised and centralised in many of her works.188

Wood’s representations of

provincial English life can be considered in relation to Elizabeth Helsinger’s, argument

that “[r]ural scenes possess peculiar power to give the abstract conception of nation a

local, lived meaning”.189

However, this abstraction has its problems, as Helsinger

registers the “seductions and mystifications” inherent in these kinds of

(mis)representations which include “naturalizing historical transformations, obscuring

social and economic relations, and ignoring local differences”.190

In Wood’s works, her

183

Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p.xii. 184

Pires, 169. 185

Letter from Bettina Wirth to Charles Wood, 8 Nov 1880, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff

Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin,

uncatalogued. 186

Julian Wolfreys, Being English: Narratives, Idioms and Performances of National Identity

from Coleridge to Trollope (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), p.1. 187

David Powell, Nationhood and Identity: The British State since 1800 (New York: I.B. Taurus

& Co, 2002) p.x. 188

Pires, 169. 189

Elizabeth Helsinger, Rural Scenes and National Representation: Britain 1815-1850

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p.19. 190

Helsinger, p.19.

50

depictions of rural village life transform between her earlier and later works, revealing

the tensions inherent in imagining and representing Englishness.191

Rosemary Marangoly George, formulating the politics of home, argues that ‘home’ is a

notion organised around exclusions and inclusions, that homes and nations are defined

by distance or in confrontation.192

However, this is not a clear-cut process as these

inclusions and exclusions are always dynamic and multifaceted. For example, during

this time, England, as part of the United Kingdom defined itself both with and against

its neighbours: Scotland, Wales and Ireland. England was also geographically near to,

but ideologically separate from other European nations. Furthermore, Wood wrote most

of her works during the period of High Imperialism, and accordingly, the project of

empire was one that Wood, like many writers, was grappling with in her works. Daniel

Bivona argues that imperialism is the unconscious of nineteenth-century Britain –

beneath the surface of a variety of discourses.193

And the discourse of detection is no

exception. Nineteenth-century writers confronted the problem of maintaining a coherent

sense of Englishness as the boundaries of the British empire were expanding.

Wood explores this uneasy category of Englishness most explicitly when her novels

depict foreign characters or spaces. Wood’s characters often travel across the English

Channel to France and some journey further, to the very borders of the empire. These

characters are frequently defined by this distance from home. For example in Roland

Yorke (1869), the aristocratic thief from The Channings (1862) returns ‘home’ to

England from Africa as a changed man – becoming a much more conventionally

middle-class, masculine hero. Wood also introduces foreign characters into her English

settings. Occasionally these characters are benign or heroic – for example, Madame

Charlotte Guise from The Master of Greylands (1874) who travels to England to solve

the mystery of her husband’s disappearance in an English village. Wood depicts the

clever Frenchwoman sympathetically, although at the novel’s end, Madame Guise is left

unaware of the true nature of her husband’s murder.194

At times, the category of ‘the

191

I will address these tensions in Chapter Two. 192

Rosemary Marangoly George, The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and

Twentieth-Century Fiction (Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1996), p.9. 193

Bivona, p.viii. Bivona also argues forcefully that the ‘domestic novel’ reflects the imperial

experience and carries “traces of its cultural imprint” (p.vii). 194

The crime is solved and concealed by her brother-in-law, who stands to inherit the title of

Master of Greylands and, hence, has a vested interest in protecting the family name. He protects

51

foreign’ is invoked to explore threats to ‘the home’. In Roland Yorke (1869) and the

“Johnny Ludlow” story, “The Mystery at Number Seven” (1877), the temporary

insanity of the murderers is explained by their half-Spanish bloodline. In Mrs

Halliburton’s Troubles (1862), the governess, Mademoiselle Varsini, becomes a key

criminal figure. Varsini is constructed as both French and Italian (also alternately

Protestant and Roman Catholic) and her instability is explained according to

understandings of gender and class. As this, and the example of “Gina Montani” shows,

religion and class are central features of Wood’s constructions of the domestic.

In 1897, Adeline Sergeant describes Wood as “chiefly concerned with the great middle-

class of England”, arguing that her class politics are emphatically bourgeois.195

However, Sergeant’s claim is quickly made more complex as she acknowledges that

Wood, “describes lower middle-class life with a zest and a conviction and a sincerity

which we do not find in many modern writers”.196

Indeed, over a century later, Deborah

Wynne agrees that Wood is most preoccupied with the lower middle classes or the “less

securely positioned bourgeoisie”.197

Wood’s works often express anxiety about

downward mobility – depicting characters who have been reduced in status and

position, including the working middle classes and the shabby genteel.198

Indeed,

Wood’s works are implicated in what Gary Day argues are the class conflicts that arose

after 1830, where intra-class relations become as fraught and complex as inter-class

relations.199

Marie Riley explains how Wood consciously “position[ed] herself as the

authentic voice of the mercantile middle-class” and,

the reputation of his uncle who had usurped the title of Master of Greylands and had been a

lynchpin in the local smuggling operation to build the family wealth. It is discovered that when

Madame Guise’s husband had come to claim his right to the title, he stumbled across the

smugglers and was shot in an affray. 195

Sergeant, p.187. 196

Sergeant, p.187. 197

Wynne, p.91. 198

For an insightful discussion of the shabby genteel in Wood, see Tamara S. Wagner,

“‘Essentially a Lady’ : Resistant Values of the Shabby-Genteel in Ellen Wood’s Novels of High

Life”, Women’s Writing 15:2 (2008): 199-218. 199

Gary Day, Class (London; New York: Routledge, 2001), p.9. Day states that “the middle

class and the working class not only begin to oppose one another but also to divide internally,

with the former separating into lower and upper sections and the latter into skilled, semi-skilled

and labouring ones. These intra-class relationships were based on status considerations such as

dress, attitudes and behaviour and they contrasted with inter-class relationships based on an

opposition of economic interests” (9). Wood’s characters demonstrate the complexities of these

intra-class divisions as her works are populated with characters of all classes, positions and

financial standings.

52

While not averse to incorporating elements of aristocratic life into her

novels, she was primarily concerned with aligning herself with the norms

and values of a lower middle-class readership, using fiction as a medium

to validate bourgeois ambition, and consistently promoting the values of

hard work, self-help and thrift as the key to upward mobility.200

Therefore, claims about Wood’s class politics are as complex as claims of her

‘quintessential’ Englishness. Both class and national identity are fundamental to

Wood’s negotiations of domestic politics in her works, but they are also cross-cut with

questions of religion.

Wood’s novels, especially her early works, are punctuated with biblical references and

usually commence and conclude with psalms, pious quotations or moral lessons. This

might suggest a conventional Christian morality at work within the novels, however,

Beth Palmer argues that Wood’s use of religious rhetoric was “a conscious strategy

rather than a symptom of her gender, her class or of the modes in which her work was

consumed”.201

This sentiment was certainly echoed during Wood’s own time, most

notably by Charlotte Riddell who labelled Wood “simply a brute; she throws in bits of

religion to slip her fodder down the public throat.”202

It is more than probable that

Wood uses religion strategically in her works, and I would argue that this is also linked

closely to her construction of the domestic. In another early work from Wood, “The

Sequel to ‘A Word to England’” (1853), she compares French and English homes. After

a long tirade about the threat of Catholicism, she argues:

Of domestic happiness abroad there is none; they are unacquainted with

its name; and cannot be made to understand how an Englishman and his

wife can find enjoyment in each other’s society at their own fireside.203

Here, Wood valorises the Protestant ability to interpret the bible in the comfort and

privacy of the home. In opposition, she argues, the French Catholics still need to consult

with, and involve the priesthood in their religious lives – a danger that she dramatised in

“Gina Montani”. Wood’s article, which ties the household to the nation and religion,

200

Riley, 176. 201

Beth Palmer, “’Dangerous and Foolish Work’: Evangelicalism and Sensationalism in Ellen

Wood’s Argosy Magazine”, Women’s Writing 15:2 (August 2008) 196. 202

As cited in Malcolm Elwin, Victorian Wallflowers (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1935),

p.241. 203

Wood, “The Sequel to ‘A Word to England,’” 336.

53

elucidates Susan Meyer’s argument that the “domestic space of the home is at once an

individual domicile and suggestive of the domestic space in a larger sense, the domestic

space of England”.204

Thus, the households depicted in Wood’s writings, in which the

bible forms a key part of the domestic rituals, signify her desire to convey a moral role

for the nation as a whole. For Wood, religion is strongly linked to ideas of Englishness

and both are key components of her particular versions of the domestic.

In 1859, Samuel Smiles, in his famous work, Self-Help, explicitly links the Victorian

home with the nation when he writes, “The Home is the crystal of society – the nucleus

of national character; and from that source, be it pure or tainted, issue the habits,

principles and maxims which govern public as well as private life. The nation comes

from the nursery”.205

Rosemary Marangoly George usefully reflects upon the gender

politics of these domestic issues when she examines the politics of home. She argues

that, “the tales and tasks of homemaking (understood to be gendered female) are not

very different from the tales and tasks of housekeeping on the national scale (usually

gendered masculine)”.206

Taking the ideas of Smiles and George together, the masculine

project of nation-building and the female prerogative of homemaking are linked in a

way that assists to theorise Wood’s negotiations of domestic discourses. I have already

addressed Wood’s desire to carefully promote herself as a respectable female writer and

so it is not surprising that she uses domestic discourse to further this aim. Regular

contributor to the Argosy, Alice King, explains this strategy in more detail when in 1872

she draws together these ideas of home, nation, readers and writers. In “A Few Words

about Novel Writing” she outlines the task of the female writer:

Every novelist is in a certain degree a monarch, for he or she has his or her

own greater or smaller circle of readers over whom to hold sway. Let, then,

the authoress of fiction take good care that in her literary kingdom the

moral tone may be of the highest and purest. The female novelist is best

unmarried. It is hardly possible (though of course there are exceptions to

this rule) that a woman can at the same time devote herself to her

profession, and do her duty as mistress of a family. But let not the wife and

mother look with scorn on her who in all sincerity and singleness of mind

devotes herself to art. Their spheres of action are different, but their

204

Susan Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s Fiction (London: Cornell

University Press, 1996) 7. 205

Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859; London, John Murray, 1876), p.361. 206

George, p.5.

54

womanly mission is the same. One rules over the home circle, the other

over many minds far away. The influence of the one is immediate but more

narrow; the influence of the other is less direct but wider. One strikes the

moral and religious key-note of the family, the other that of public taste.207

While King asserts that the roles of authoress and mother are best separated, there is

implicit praise of her editor, Wood, who has managed both roles.208

There is also an

evident connection between the work of women writers and mothers. The writer, in

King’s depiction, is the mother to her readers and her use of the term “monarch” to

describe the novelist, echoes the ideas that surround Queen Victoria as a mother to the

nation. The depiction of the English reading public as an extended family then, ensures

that the “womanly mission” to exercise moral influence is extended to include the

nation.209

King and her editor Wood are clearly intervening in the discourse

surrounding women writers (and readers) being debated in the periodical press of the

time.210

Almost a decade earlier, Henrietta Keddie had written “A Word of

Remonstrance With Some Novelists. By A Novelist” in Good Words. In this essay,

Keddie responds to the fashion for sensation writing and beseeches authors to “exorcise

this evil possession of our literature, that we may not have the sorrow and shame of

knowing that the reign of good Queen Victoria, our true woman and wife, will be

identified in after generations with the reign of female criminals in English

literature”.211

If we take King and Keddie’s assertions together, there is an emphasis

207

Alice King, “A Few Words about Novel Writing”, Argosy 13 (Jan 1872) 52. 208

This is a theme that Charles Wood stresses repeatedly in his biography of his mother. 209

This is not a new strategy. Carol Shiner Wilson, explicates the ways in which women writers

of the Romantic period envisioned a broader woman’s mission, in “Lost Needles, Tangled

Threads: Stitchery, Domesticity, and the Artistic Enterprise” in Barbauld, Edgeworth, Taylor

and Lamb', Re-Visioning Romanticism. British Women Writers 1776-1837, ed. Carol Shiner

Wilson & Joel Haefner (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp.167-192. 210

Wood’s Argosy had become a vehicle not only for her own works, but also for various other

female writers of the time, including Alice King, Julia Kavanagh and Hesba Stretton. The artist

Mary Ellen Edwards also illustrated many of the serialised works in the Argosy (see: Cover

image). 211

Henrietta Keddie (unsigned), “A Word of Remonstrance with Some Novelists. By a

Novelist”, Good Words, 4 (July 1863), 524-6, reprinted in Maunder, ed. Varieties of Women’s

Sensation Fiction, Volume 1, p.86. Elwin, p.244 indicates that in Keddie’s reminiscences, it is

clear that she has met Wood. Elizabeth Langland in “Women’s writing and the domestic

sphere” in Women and Literature in Britain 1800-1900 ed. Joanne Shattock (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.129, argues that Queen Victoria represented “a new

feminine ideal that endorsed active public management behind a façade of private retirement”.

This is an influential model given that writers such as Wood and Elizabeth Gaskell emulated the

Queen’s exercise of power from behind a “screen of domestic virtues”. Indeed, in the later

decades of her reign the role of Victoria as monarch is insistently tied to hard work. In “The

Queen as a Woman of Business” Time 1 (1879): 40-47, her work as the monarch is detailed, and

55

upon the moral responsibility of the author, particularly the female author, to depict

acceptable versions of English womanhood. Whether responsible for “the home circle”

or “many minds, far away” women as mothers, wives, and writers were given great

power over the operations and representations of the domestic.

Man and Woman detectives are necessities of daily English life.212

In this statement from Andrew Forrester’s 1864 novel, The Female Detective, the

narrator/investigator, Mrs G, who works for the Metropolitan Police, argues that

detectives are not only a fact of English life, but an essential component of the Victorian

everyday. Ellen Wood’s works seem to bear out the views of Forrester’s female

detective, as the everyday sites and spaces of her writings reveal a network of hidden

detectives and spies. However, as I have shown, the domestic character of Wood’s

works has often obscured the detection narratives embedded in her writings. Malcolm

Elwin wishes to reductively frame Wood’s writing, characterising the formulaic nature

of her novels as “written to a recipe”.213

And while Wood’s writings have been

characterised as domestic, sentimental and formulaic, I continue to argue that she used

her public power as an author to create complex visions of the home and to investigate

domestic discourse. In staging the work of detection in the home, as Dinah Birch writes,

she “makes detectives of her readers”.214

However, I want to emphasise that Wood’s

texts do not comprise simple subversions of Victorian norms. Instead, the work is

situated in a complex relation with Victorian culture. Tamar Heller reflects on the

intricacy of this relationship:

If we are to read Gothic and sensation fiction as a rebellion against some

monolithic Victorian establishment, we will want to be careful in defining

both the subversion and the hegemony – and perhaps avoid so crisp an

antithesis. It may well be more accurate, while acknowledging the

ideological disruptiveness of these genres, to see them not so much apart

from their culture as inextricably part of it, sites of contestation and

the writer argues that “All, or very nearly all, of the more essential work that the Prince Consort

did for her Majesty, the Sovereign does for herself; and she only succeeds in accomplishing so

much because she addresses herself to it methodically” (44). 212

Cited in Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, p.11. 213

Elwin, p.249. 214

Birch, Dinah. “Fear among the Teacups.” London Review of Books 23.3 (February 2001). 19

May 2009. Online: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n03/birc01_.html.

56

negotiation of the debates surrounding gender, class, and national and

sexual identities during the Victorian period.215

Therefore, I want to suggest that Wood’s writings are inextricably part of Victorian

culture, reflecting and participating in crucial debates of the period. At times, Wood’s

works demonstrate strategic interventions in discourses of gender and power, at other

times she adopts more conventional positions on issues such as sexual and national

identity. It is through the discourse of domestic detection that I wish to illuminate and

investigate these complex strategies.

In Chapter One I reconsider Ellen Wood’s most famous novel, East Lynne (1861) in

light of its often-overlooked detection plot. While the story of the erring wife, Isabel

Vane, is the central focus of the novel, the subplot, which involves a murder mystery is

also an important aspect of Wood’s bestseller. I demonstrate that the discourse of

detection is the site of a gendered struggle by the two amateur detective figures –

Barbara Hare and, the novel’s hero, Archibald Carlyle. In this way, East Lynne can be

read as a fundamental response to contemporary debates and anxieties regarding gender

and power. This novel is overtly concerned with the authority of its amateur detectives

to interpret, their motives as storytellers, and their roles in the construction of ‘truth’.

The intersection of these epistemological concerns with Victorian gender ideologies is

my focus.

In Chapter Two, the issues of national identity that surround domestic detection are

examined. To this end, I shall draw together three of Wood’s more popular novels from

the 1860s: The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles from 1862, and Roland

Yorke from 1869. I begin by considering the setting of all three novels in the fictional

cathedral town of Helstonleigh. This site forms a ‘home’ ground from which characters

travel and return. It is the place in which ideas of personal and national identity

circulate. The plots of The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles share many

similarities but also, reveal important differences. While both were written in the same

year and are set in Helstonleigh, no characters recur and the townspeople are different.

Moreover, while these early narratives ostensibly revolve around the Victorian

everyday: middle-class homes and families, in each of the novels there are,

215

Tamar Heller, “Recent Work on Victorian Gothic and Sensation Fiction,” Victorian

Literature and Culture, 24 (1996): 349-50.

57

nevertheless, sensational crimes and episodes that draw upon gothicised images of class

and race. It becomes clear that Wood’s depictions of deviance and criminality inform an

understanding of what is excluded in her particular conception of Englishness.

However, in The Channings’ sequel, Roland Yorke, these attitudes are modified. In her

later novel, Wood’s use of gothic conventions to represent foreignness, in opposition to

an ideal, modern Englishness, ultimately exposes the constructedness of both categories.

In Roland Yorke, it is the newly powerful detective, Butterby, who has a vital role in

this shift. Consequently, in the detection narratives of Wood’s novels, home and foreign

intersect, exposing power structures and the operations of domestic discourses.

In Chapter Three, I explore the operations of the everyday in relation to Victorian

constructions of masculinity in the “Johnny Ludlow” series of short stories (1868-91).

These mystery stories were very popular in Wood’s Argosy magazine and have been

considered among her best-written works. I examine Wood’s motives in initially

publishing these stories pseudonymously, as a man recalling his boyhood. Wood’s

domestic detective, Johnny Ludlow, demonstrates her attempt to create a domesticated

hero in series fiction. In these and other writings, Wood reveals her interest in depicting

versions of Victorian masculinities. Detection in the stories calls attention to the

operations of male figures in the domestic sphere and unsettles conventional

understandings of the gendered everyday. I argue that these stories demonstrate how the

role of the male detective and narrator is problematised and complicated. I will also

show how domestic detection is a discourse characterised by instability via both the

thematic and formal systems of the Johnny Ludlow series. The series structure is

suggestive of incompleteness and the mysteries that Ludlow and other detectives

investigate reveal that domestic detection is an ongoing practice.

In Chapter Four, I draw attention to Wood’s supernatural fiction and its relation to

domestic detection. As I have previously indicated, the supernatural and sensational

were often conflated in Victorian literature and Wood’s works were clearly indebted to

gothic forms. In this chapter, I compare the early, popular novel, The Shadow of

Ashlydyat (1863), to later and lesser-known works, Dene Hollow (1871) and Pomeroy

Abbey (1878). The span of novels from the early-1860s to the late-1870s demonstrates

a transformation of Wood’s supernaturalism. I argue that Wood’s supernatural writings

register the counter-narratives that Victorian investments in realism and empiricism

58

evade, neglect or exclude. These supernatural narratives dramatise the tension between

mystery and resolution, investigating claims of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ and hence reflect

another version of detection in Wood’s writing. However, in her later novel, Pomeroy

Abbey, a tone of parody is evident. In her fiction, Wood employs the supernatural as a

device to suggest alternative ways of knowing, seeing and interpreting the world that

are often marginalised by discourses of science and classic realism in the period.

59

Chapter One

Storytellers’ struggles: Detection and Gender in East Lynne

Writing in 1897, Adeline Sergeant proclaimed that Ellen Wood had “the gift of the born

story-teller” and insisted that Wood was:

gifted simply with a desire (and the power) of telling a story as a story,

with no ulterior motive, with no ambition of intellectual achievement, the

Scheherazade of our quiet evenings and holiday afternoons. 216

Similarly, Malcolm Elwin declares that Ellen Wood’s “one crowning virtue” was that

“she knew how to tell a good story”.217

In both contemporary reviews and in later

criticism of her writing, Ellen Wood is repeatedly figured as a storyteller.218

These

views reflect a critical tendency to trivialise Wood’s writing, characterising it as mere

entertainment.219

However, I want to argue that this emphasis on storytelling is more

significant, especially Sergeant’s assumption that it is a transparent process without

“ulterior motive”. Indeed, Sergeant’s invocation of Scheherazade is problematic given

that she suggests that storytelling is a neutral project, whereas the impetus for

Scheherazade’s storytelling was to intervene in the power of the king and stave off her

own execution. Ellen Wood’s status as a female author, in constant negotiation with

male editors and publishers, suggests an awareness of the particular intersections of

gender, power and storytelling. In contrast to Sergeant’s assumptions, Wood’s works,

specifically East Lynne, demonstrate that storytelling is not a neutral project. In

particular, the operations of the characters in East Lynne suggest a gendered struggle for

the control of ‘storytelling’. This chapter will address how the figurative storytellers in

216

Sergeant, pp.192, 174. 217

Elwin, p.253. 218

Henrietta Keddie asserts that Wood is “perhaps more essentially the storyteller of her

generation than most of her fellow writers” in Three Generations (London: John Murray, 1911),

p.319. Further, Mary Phillips’ 1947 article repeats the reference in “Victorian Scheherezade

(Mrs Henry Wood)” The Lady Supplement 14th

August, 1947, 108. Similarly, Elizabeth Gaskell

is also frequently described with this ‘storyteller’ label. Hilary M. Schor in Scheherazade in the

Marketplace: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Novel (New York: Oxford University Press,

1992), p.3, investigates the woman writer in the Victorian literary marketplace and refers to an

1851 letter, written by Charles Dickens, in which he addresses Gaskell as “my dear

Scheherazade”. 219

As I have already discussed, this reflects the critical tendency to deride women’s writing and

especially ‘sensational’ works of the period, for their lack of substance.

60

East Lynne control the means of representation and have considerable power to produce

certain ‘truths’.

East Lynne was the best-selling novel that established Ellen Wood’s reputation as a

popular author. East Lynne’s popularity is suggested by its publishers’ claim that by

1901 its sales figures had exceeded 500 000 copies, and Susan Balee insists that the

book was “the best-selling novel of nineteenth-century England”.220

Dennis Goubert

argues that even Tolstoy was influenced by the novel and included Ellen Wood on a list

of mid-Victorian authors, along with such luminaries as George Eliot and Anthony

Trollope, who had made a great impression upon his own work.221

The central plot

concerns the tragic heroine, Isabel Carlyle, who abandons her children and sacrifices her

marriage to the ‘noble’ middle-class hero Archibald Carlyle when she is seduced by the

aristocratic scoundrel (and murderer) Sir Francis Levison.222

Here, modern domestic

sites become embroiled in crime, and Victorian families are disrupted by suffering and

guilt.223

This emotionally wrought subject matter made East Lynne ideal fodder for the

stage, and melodramatic adaptations of the novel abounded in theatres soon after the

novel’s publication. Andrew Maunder identifies the first adaptation of East Lynne for

the London stage as a production named Wedding Bells that was performed at the

Effingham Theatre, Whitechapel in 1864.224

Elisabeth Jay also traces some earlier stage

adaptations of the novel across the Atlantic and cites two New York productions: Edith,

220

Susan Balee, “Correcting the Historical Context: the Real Publication Dates of East Lynne”

Victorian Periodicals Review 26:3 (1993): 143. Sergeant, p.183, notes that the novel was

translated widely and cites editions in “Hindustanee and Parsee” in particular. According to

Macmillan, total sales of Wood’s works had reached 2.5 million (cited in Jay, p.xxxviii). By

1916, sales stood at over 5, 750, 000 copies (C. B. Shuttleworth, p.8). For further discussions of

Wood’s contemporary popularity, see also Royal A. Gettmann, A Victorian Publisher: A Study

of the Bentley Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p.111, and Maunder,

“Ellen Wood was a Writer”, 17-31. 221

Dennis Goubert, “Did Tolstoy read East Lynne?” Slavonic & Eastern European Review 58.1

(Jan 1980): 22-39. Despite calling East Lynne, “one of the most widely read bad novels of the

nineteenth century” (39), Goubert nevertheless argues that the plots of Wood’s East Lynne and

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877) have significant resonances. 222

Carlyle’s name clearly points to influential writer, Thomas Carlyle, famous for his

championing of middle-class ascendancy and a call for heroic leadership in works such as Past

and Present (1843). See also, Jay, p.xxix. 223

Suffering has been a key focus of scholarship on East Lynne. See in particular Ellen Bayuk

Rosenman, "Mimic sorrows": Masochism and the gendering of pain in Victorian Melodrama”,

Studies in the Novel 35.1 (Spring 2003): 22-43. Rosenman compares the characters of Isabel

and Archibald and the way in which suffering, or the refusal of such, intersects with the gender

politics of East Lynne. 224

Andrew Maunder, “’I Will Not Live in Poverty and Neglect’ East Lynne on the East End

Stage” in Victorian Sensations: Essays on a Scandalous Genre, eds. Kimberley Harrison and

Richard Fantina (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2006), pp.173-87.

61

Or the Earl’s Daughter in 1862, followed by East Lynne in 1863.225

Dramatisations of

East Lynne became regular features of theatre repertory in England and America into

the early twentieth century.

As the central ‘fallen woman’ plot of East Lynne suggests, the novel interrogates

Victorian gender ideologies and problematises the ideal of domesticity. East Lynne

negotiates conflicting discourses of Victorian modernity by invoking enlightenment

notions of rationality and progress, but also depicting its gothic undercurrents –

irrationality, crime and transgression. Elisabeth Jay, in her introduction to the 2005

Oxford edition of East Lynne, highlights Wood’s propensity for “writing along the

cultural faultlines of her society”.226

And yet Wood negotiates these potentially

treacherous faultlines in a way that lent her work an air of middle-class respectability. In

East Lynne she packages adultery, divorce, murder, mistaken identity and just a hint of

bigamy, in a way that ensured its favour with the readers of the circulating libraries.

Indeed, by 1886, Wood’s bestseller is considered appropriate reading material for young

ladies. Edward G. Salmon, in “What Girls Read” emphasises that East Lynne, is a novel

“to which the girls of England are much attached”. He goes on to state “East Lynne, in

my humble opinion, should be placed in every girl’s hands as soon as she has arrived at

an age when she may find that life has for her unsuspected dangers”.227

This marks out a

space for Wood’s novel among the advice literature of the era, and designates its

purpose as an instructive one. In Rhoda Broughton’s Cometh Up as Flower, the heroine

reads a work with remarkable similarities to East Lynne:

I am buried in an arm-chair in my boudoir, reading a novel. It interests me rather,

for it is all about a married woman, who ran away from her husband and suffered

the extremity of human ills in consequence. I have made several steps in morality

of late I flatter myself, but even now, I can hardly imagine that I should have been

very miserable if Dick had taken me away with him.228

225

Jay, p.xxxvi. In this introduction, Jay also usefully records the ‘afterlife’ of the novel in

twentieth-century television, film and radio adaptations. 226

Jay, p.xxvii. 227

Edward G. Salmon, “What Girls Read”, The Nineteenth Century (October 1886): 524.

Salmon cites a survey of the favourite authors of girls aged 11-19 years, in this research Mrs

Henry Wood is ranked 7th

on a list of 48 writers. Wood ranks below authors such as Dickens,

Scott and Shakespeare but scores ten more votes than George Eliot, and 40 votes higher than

Mary Braddon. (527-8). 228

Rhoda Broughton, Cometh Up as Flower (1867) reprinted in Varieties of Women's Sensation

Fiction, Volume 4, ed. Tamar Heller (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2004) p.436.

62

Despite this unnamed novel’s deviations from the plot of East Lynne, Elaine Showalter

argues that the heroine of Broughton’s novel “reads East Lynne and decides not to run

away from her husband”.229

However, this is not as straightforward as Showalter

assumes. It seems, in the passage cited above, that reading the novel offers the heroine

more complex strategies for identification: she can compare her own moral progress to

the sinner of the novel, but the narrative simultaneously allows her to fantasise about

life away from her husband. Here, Broughton implies that reading Wood’s novel does

not completely dispel the heroine’s urges to flee her unhappy marriage and offers her a

space for escapist fantasy.

Pykett usefully reflects on this issue in relation to Bahktinian theory. Pykett argues that

“[t]he subversive sub-text of East Lynne (what Kaplan 1989, following Jameson 1981,

calls its political unconscious) derives from the way in which it allows (or even

requires) its readers to think two otherwise contradictory things at once.”230

Pykett goes

on to argue that:

The dialogism, by means of which East Lynne subverts its own norms, is

also a function of the novel’s movements between different sets of generic

conventions. This generic slippage, which is found in a great deal of

women’s sensation fiction, is one of the main sources of the moral and

structural ambiguity of the central female characters. The meaning and

significance of a particular female character fluctuate according to the

generic conventions through which she is mediated at different points in the

narrative.231

This dialogism suggests a more complex position for the novel, especially as it relates to

the depiction of female characters. Late-twentieth-century scholars have explored the

role of the mother in East Lynne in great depth. Jeanne B. Elliott’s 1976 article on East

Lynne, “A Lady to the End: The Case of Isabel Vane” focuses almost exclusively upon

the Lady, wife, mother and ‘fallen woman’, Isabel.232

A useful comparison of Isabel and

Barbara as mothers and mistresses of East Lynne, is found in Sally Shuttleworth’s

chapter, “Demonic mothers: Ideologies of bourgeois motherhood in the mid-Victorian

229

Showalter, p.173. 230

Pykett, The Improper Feminine, p.132. 231

Pykett, The Improper Feminine, p.134. 232

Jeanne B. Elliott, “A Lady to the End: The Case of Isabel Vane”, Victorian Studies 19.3

(March 1976): 329-44.

63

era”.233

Ann Cvetkovich, in her work on Victorian sensationalism labels East Lynne as

“maternal melodrama” and Laurie Langbauer has also interrogated representations of

motherhood in the novel.234

Nina Auerbach’s analysis of East Lynne in Woman and the

Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth examines representations of women in the

Victorian cultural imagination and engages with depiction of the fallen woman and the

spinster in East Lynne.235

My approach will engage with female roles, but will shift

from the traditional focus to offer a close reading of a role that is often disregarded in

the novel: the detective. Pykett’s attention to the importance of generic slippage allows

a reconsideration of the character of Barbara and her role as a detective in the novel.

Deborah Wynne remarks observantly that, “the sad, maternal sob story which has

dominated the focus of recent criticism is not the only story embedded in Wood’s

novel”.236

This was something that was clear to Victorian readers of East Lynne when

the Saturday Review noted that the novel “turns on the frailty of a wife and on a

murder”.237

In this 1862 review, the detection plot is given equal importance to the

maternal melodrama. The reviewer acknowledges that the plot of the erring wife-and-

mother forms “the main incident of the story” but not before a lengthy discussion of the

crime narrative:

Mrs Wood has hit upon and managed very skilfully to combine two great

sources of interest. In the first place, she has got a capital murder. Its merits

are numerous. It is so managed that we do not know how it was effected

until quite the end of the book, although the general clue has been furnished

long before, and although, throughout the story, this murder and its many

consequences are coming constantly before us. This is a very considerable

233

Sally Shuttleworth, “Demonic mothers: Ideologies of bourgeois motherhood in the mid-

Victorian era”, Rewriting the Victorians: theory, history, and the politics of gender, ed. Linda

M. Shires (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp.31-51. 234

Ann Cvetkovich, Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture and Victorian Sensationalism

(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp.97-127, and Laurie Langbauer, Women

and Romance: The Consolations of Gender in the English Novel (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell

University Press, 1990), pp.171-5. See also, Laurie Langbauer, “Women in White, Men in

Feminism”, Yale Journal of Criticism, 2:2 (1989): 219-243. 235

Nina Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge; London:

Harvard University Press, 1982). In her analysis, Auerbach also analyses the role of the ‘old

maid’ in Wood’s 1865 novel, Mildred Arkell. 236

Deborah Wynne, The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine (Basingstoke:

Palgrave, 2001), p.61. 237

Review of East Lynne, Saturday Review , 186.

64

success for a murder is a difficult department of art. It is hard to make it at

once obscure, probably, fruitful of results, and not too horrible or ghastly.238

The murder occurs eighteen months prior to events depicted in the novel, thus ensuring

that it is tastefully “obscure” and that the focus is on the detection of the perpetrator/s

rather than the “ghastly” nature of the crime itself. This subplot revolves around the

middle-class home of the Hare family. The eldest son, Richard Hare, has fled after

being named as a suspect in the murder. At the time of the shooting of the local man,

Hallijohn, Richard was secretly courting Hallijohn’s beautiful, but capricious, daughter

Afy. He was seen by several witnesses hurriedly leaving the scene of the crime and was

consequently accused of the crime. When Richard returns, in disguise, to his home to

insist upon his innocence, his sister, Barbara, collaborates with the novel’s hero and

local lawyer, Archibald Carlyle, to detect the real criminal. This murder plot ensures

that East Lynne earns a place in the chronology of crime fiction in the Cambridge

Companion to Crime Fiction (2003).239

Stephen Knight argues that East Lynne

combines “detailed, George Eliot-like, domestic realism with an intricate set of

mysteries”, pointing to the domesticated nature of this detection plot.240

By focussing on

this often-neglected detection subplot of East Lynne, the intersection of these concerns

with gender ideologies will be revealed.

Elisabeth Jay cites the anecdote of an 1862 trip to Egypt in which Edward, Prince of

Wales, convinced members of his party, including the Professor of Ecclesiastical

History at Oxford, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, to read East Lynne. According to Stanley’s

correspondence, the party discussed Wood’s novel and he asked of the Prince and his

party: “With whom did Lady Isabel dine on the fatal night?” While the question went

unanswered, Jay notes that,

the Poirot-like mode in which he posed his tricky question might suggest that

East Lynne (1861) was a story of crime and detection and the novel does indeed

introduce a murder that requires solving, but the ‘fatal night’ to which Stanley

referred involves the novel’s central misdemeanour, a social crime… (p.vii).

238

Review of East Lynne, Saturday Review, 187. Marie Riley also asserts that East Lynne is “a

satisfying murder mystery” (p.168). 239

Martin Priestman (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2003), p.xi. 240

Knight, Crime Fiction 1800 – 2000, p.43. In this text, East Lynne is also included in “A

Chronology of Crime Fiction” (p. 210).

65

However, when he seduces Isabel in what Jay labels the “central misdemeanour” or

“social crime” of the novel, Sir Francis is already the author of the legal crime of

murder. Thus, I would argue that Levison’s dual roles, as adulterer and murderer, draw

the narrative threads together and ensure that crime (and its detection) is a significant

feature of the novel. Detection then, is a pervasive discourse in East Lynne. The novel is

organised around crime and mystery and perhaps Stanley recognises this in his “Poirot-

like” response to the text.

The detection plot in East Lynne is a fundamental response to contemporary debates and

anxieties regarding gender, class and power. In analysing the embedded story of

detection in East Lynne, it is apparent that the depiction of ‘detection’ as a process

brings into question the act of storytelling itself. Tzvetan Todorov argues that detective

fiction necessarily involves two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the

investigation. He thus classifies the ‘whodunit’ as characterised by this “duality”.241

In

East Lynne, the role of the storyteller of this second story is a contested one, as Barbara

and Archibald compete in the discourse of detection. Additionally, the detective

occupies a legitimate position in this storytelling role where others are limited. This is

reinforced within the novel where the first story, the narrative of the murder, is

constantly retold, interpreted and rewritten through different voices. However, despite

these numerous witness accounts of the crime, the middle-class detectives are the

controlling figures in reconstructing the history of the crime.242

It is middle-class

detection that is privileged in the novel. In the chapter “Wilson’s Tongue” the servant

Wilson is warned against her pursuit of a “prying system” within the household at East

Lynne.243

Jay observes that, “Barbara’s well-deliberated household management cannot

adequately police the servants’ conversations nor secure their loyalty”.244

This

permeability of the middle class home perhaps necessitates an extension of the role of

domestic manager into domestic detective. Wilson’s illegitimate position reflects Mills’

241

Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, Trans. Richard Howard (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

1977), p.44-5. 242

The middle-class detectives’ role in controlling the representation of the upper and lower

classes will be addressed later in this chapter. 243

Ellen Wood, East Lynne, ed. Elisabeth Jay (1861; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),

p.180. All subsequent references to East Lynne will be to this edition and will appear in the

body of the text. This edition of East Lynne is a reprinting of the first three-volume edition of

the novel published by Bentley on 19 September, 1861 and, as Jay asserts “offers a better idea

of the racy, slang-ridden narrative that Wood originally wrote” in comparison to other editions

that rely on the 1862 one-volume version (p.xli). 244

Jay, xxx.

66

argument that, “access to those discursive frameworks which circulate in society is not

equally available to all”.245

This reading of East Lynne demonstrates how the discourse

of detection becomes the site of a gendered struggle by the two detective figures –

Barbara Hare and Archibald Carlyle. East Lynne is overtly concerned with questions of

epistemology: the authority of its detectives to interpret, their motives as storytellers,

and their construction of ‘truth’. In the text, Barbara Hare is situated as an embodiment

of gender conflict, and her struggle for a voice in the discourse of detection will be

analysed. By focusing on Barbara’s use of alternative narratives such as gossip and

dreams to assist her detection, a comparison to the methods of Archibald can be

produced. Ultimately, it is the implications of Barbara’s engagement with the discourse

of detection that compels my reading of this novel.

East Lynne’s original conditions of publication reflect the gendering of certain genres

and discourses in the period. Deborah Wynne points out that when East Lynne was

serialised in Harrison Ainsworth’s New Monthly Magazine, this publication was “rigidly

divided” into “‘manly’ fact and ‘feminine’ fiction”.246

Articles on politics, military and

social issues were routinely promoted over fiction, such as East Lynne. Jennifer Phegley

explains how Victorian critical debates surrounded the demarcation of ‘realist’ works

from ‘lesser’ genres and that “the authority that realism signalled was frequently played

out in gendered terms”.247

The gender and literary politics that marginalised feminised

fictional genres in relation to masculinised realist forms, parallel the struggle in East

Lynne’s detection plot between gendered knowledges. In East Lynne, masculinised

‘rational’ discourses, such as law, compete with feminised ‘irrational’ discourses of

dreams and gossip to blur the simplistic representation of ‘truth’. In this way, the novel

reflects the Victorian interest in realist modes but also dramatises the counter-narratives

that realism excludes. For example, although the prophetic dream narratives of Mrs

Hare are ridiculed as being irrational by various characters in the text, there is a

perceptible counter-argument that this knowledge is both powerful and legitimate. Ann

Cvetkovich elucidates this tendency:

245

Mills, p.14. 246

Wynne, p.64. 247

Phegley, 187.

67

Mrs Wood’s chronicling of small-town life implies that the prosaic

realist narrative is the locus of truth, yet she also attends in

melodramatic excess to how this reality is lived by women, and she

narrates a story about emotions and interiority as well as including the

details of social context. Mrs Hare’s belief in dreams, the women who

exaggerate when they gossip, the poisonous paranoia of jealousy – all

those forms of female behavior that attend to the life of romance and

feeling are fictions, but given that Mrs Hare’s dreams prove to be right,

and that gossip is a means by which facts are transmitted, the distinction

between fact and fiction, or realism and sensation blurs.248

Where the division of realism and sensation is blurred, the ability to determine or

represent a singular ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ is made uncertain. By extension, Cvetkovich’s

argument shows how Barbara and Archibald, as detective figures, enact a struggle for

power in which modes of realism and sensation are in conflict. In East Lynne, this

conflict highlights the gender politics that surround the production of knowledge and

truth.

Barbara Hare is the wilful nineteen-year-old daughter of the Hare family who performs

multiple roles in East Lynne – daughter, sister, friend, wife, mother and, as I will argue,

detective. At the novel’s conclusion, Barbara becomes Archibald Carlyle’s wife,

mistress of East Lynne and a model of bourgeois femininity. As Andrew Maunder

emphasises, Barbara develops into “a paragon of good health, biological performance

and middle-class vigour, not to mention an upholder of domestic values”.249

Most recent

critics have focussed on Barbara’s domestic roles of mother and wife, specifically in

comparison to the ill-fated upper-class heroine, Isabel Vane. However, Barbara’s

construction as this idealised feminine model is made more complex, especially during

the earlier sections of the novel, and as her role as a detective expands.

Sally Mitchell is one of only a few critics who include Barbara explicitly in the

detection plot when she asserts that: “Sensation novels popularized the amateur

detective in characters such as Walter Hartright, Robert Audley, or Archibald Carlyle

and Barbara Hare who ask questions, add-up evidence, and try to untangle the

248

Ann Cvetkovich, pp.109-10. 249

Andrew Maunder, “Stepchildren of Nature: East Lynne and the Spectre of Female

Degeneracy, 1860-1”, Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation, eds. Andrew Maunder and

Grace Moore (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p.67.

68

mystery”.250

However, she does not expand on the implications of Barbara’s role as an

amateur detective. John Kucich similarly acknowledges Barbara’s keen intuition, canny

evasiveness and aptitude for performance in East Lynne, although he stops short of

identifying her role as that of a detective.251

More recently Stephen Knight labels

Barbara “the detecting friend” of Archibald Carlyle, describing “the doggedly inquiring

nature of Barbara Hare: finally given more scope than Marian Halcombe, she is perhaps

even a source for the soon-to-appear lady detectives, Mrs G – and Mrs Paschal”.252

It is

significant that Knight tentatively claims Barbara as a source for these later professional

lady detectives. Mrs Paschal appears in Revelations of a Lady Detective (c.1864) and as

a widow in need of funds, works for the Detective Department of the Metropolitan

Police. Kestner argues that this female detective demonstrates “pragmatic

professionalism” in her methods and is “tough, in ways not totally acceptable according

to the patriarchy”.253

Forrester’s lady detective, Mrs G, defends herself as a respectable

woman, arguing that she is careful to avoid “hardheartedness” in her profession.254

Kestner describes Forrester and Hayward’s female detectives as constituting “a strong

fantasy of female empowerment” given their marked deviation from the lives of real

Victorian women.255

In contrast to these later professional female detectives, Wood

ensures that her female detective in East Lynne is an amateur, and that Barbara’s role is

one that readily accords with the traditional feminine ideal. After all, Barbara becomes

250

Sally Mitchell, “Introduction” to East Lynne (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,

1984), p.xii. Mitchell signals the wealth of scholarship that considers detection in Collins and

Braddon’s novels, but ignores its role in Wood’s work, a tendency that still occurred almost a

decade later, in Joseph A. Kestner’s Sherlock’s Sisters. Kestner briefly mentions the anxiety of

spying servants and the role of Isabel (disguised as governess Madame Vine) in East Lynne

(p.85). While I agree that Isabel performs a surveillance role in the household, the role of

Barbara as a detective figure is significantly overlooked. Kestner fails to acknowledge Wood’s

character, Barbara, in his list of “intrepid female investigators” from works of the 1860s and 70s

where he cites writers such as Braddon, Eliot and Broughton (p.3). 251

John Kucich, The Power of Lies: Transgression in Victorian Fiction (Ithaca, Cornell

University Press, 1994), pp.184, 186, 193. Although he acknowledges Barbara’s skills, Kucich

designates the detection role as a masculine one, occupied primarily by Carlyle and focuses

upon Barbara’s role as a mother (p.166). In this chapter Kucich also points to dishonesty and

deception as key characteristics of the successful professional practice of Archibald Carlyle and

the bourgeois motherhood of Barbara Carlyle. 252

Knight, Crime Fiction 1800-2000, p.43. Knight usefully identifies Wood’s preoccupations

with detection, noting that that the lawyer’s “inherently disciplinary” detection is more

marginalised in the novel than Barbara’s tenacious investigations. 253

Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, p.10. 254

Cited in Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, p.11. 255

Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, p.17. Knight points out that “[i]n fact there were no actual

women detectives until the twentieth century: those who were appointed in the 1880s to the

detective department were merely there to search and guard women prisoners” (Crime Fiction

1800-2000, p.34).

69

the novel’s model wife and mother. Unlike the economic necessity that prompts Mrs

Paschal’s detection, Barbara does not detect for financial gain, but for personal reasons

– to clear her brother from the charge of murder. Barbara’s detection reflects what

Birgitta Berglund describes as a strategy in early detective fiction that allows

respectable women to temporarily turn detective, which is “to put the heroine in a

situation which demands, or at least excuses, that she solves a particular crime”.

Berglund explains:

The heroine, or someone close to her, may be wrongfully suspected or

accused of the crime in question, or she may be anxious to clear the

name of a deceased relative, or she may have reason to suspect that

either she or somebody close to her will be the next victim of the

murderer. In all of these situations, the heroine will be seen as acting

either in self-defence or out of a laudable sense of duty, and she can be

allowed to express a feminine reluctance to the task while getting on

with it.256

In East Lynne, Wood rejects the fantasy of the professional female detective, but instead

creates an everyday, domestic detective in the character of Barbara. So while scholars

such as Mitchell, Kucich and Knight gesture towards Barbara’s role as a detective, I

rather more confidently claim Barbara as a source for later female detectives.

Barbara’s complex roles as clever detective, dutiful sister, ideal wife and mother

problematise Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan’s assertion in The Lady Investigates:

Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction, that:

The apparent feminism of many of the early stories featuring women

sleuths is at odds with the sentimental endings which popular authors

often felt obliged to append to their works. However, the general idea

behind the use of a female detective is bound to appear progressive,

irrespective of how it is worked out. 257

Wood’s work complicates this use of a progressive-conservative dichotomy as it

demonstrates the way is which “apparent feminism” and “sentimental endings” are not

256

Birgitta Berglund, “Desires and Devices: On Women Detectives in Fiction”, The Art of

Detective Fiction, Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales, and Robert Vilain, eds. (Basingstoke:

Macmillan, 2000), p.143. 257

Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in

Fiction (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1981) 12.

70

irreconcilable, but reflect diverse and contradictory responses to female experience in

Victorian popular culture. This echoes Pykett’s argument that Wood’s works “both

embody and work through (while remaining within) the ideological battles,

contradictions and confusions of the mid-Victorian period”.258

Furthermore, Pykett

argues that the heroines of novels such as East Lynne embody “uncertainty about the

definition of the feminine” and thus, I would suggest that Barbara’s role as a detective is

an important factor in this complex figuring of female experience.259

In East Lynne,

Barbara engages with the discourse of detection in order to negotiate her own role.

Thus, the complexities of power relations in the text problematise a simple reading of

her function in the novel.

The gender politics of the novel are exposed within the ‘guilty’ home of the Hare

family. In Chapter 3, we are first introduced to the neighbourhood of West Lynne and

the Hares’ home. This is achieved by means of comparison with the neighbouring

property, East Lynne, which is described as a “beautiful estate” and the house itself as

“white and remarkably cheerful, altogether a charming place to look upon” (p.20).260

In

stark contrast, local magistrate Mr ‘Justice’ Hare’s property – the Grove – contains a

“square ugly red brick house” with “a narrow middle gravel path, to which you gained

access from the road by a narrow iron gate” (p.20). The description establishes a

disapproving tone, emphasising the ‘narrowness’ of the Hare home. This is further

developed as we enter the domestic space of the sitting room and encounter the invalid

Mrs Hare and her daughter, Barbara. Mrs Hare is described as “a pale, delicate woman,

buried in shawls and cushions” who speaks timidly to her indifferent husband (p.21).

She is represented as if she has become merely part of the furniture of this domestic

space, alternately ignored or ordered about at the whim of Mr Hare. Furthermore, we

observe that Barbara is “listlessly turning over the leaves of a book” and is “tired, not

with fatigue, but with what the French express by the word ennui” (pp.21-2). Indeed,

the word “listless” is repeated several times during this passage and suggests Barbara’s

dissatisfaction with her domestic role. Mrs Hare is primarily occupied with a debate

over whether tea may legitimately be served twenty-nine minutes early. The narrator

draws our attention to the way in which expectations of domestic conduct operate, when

258

Lyn Pykett, The Improper Feminine, p.81. 259

Pykett, p.81. 260

At this point in the novel, the reader is aware that East Lynne has been acquired by middle-

class lawyer Archibald Carlyle from the ailing and decadent aristocrat, the Earl of Mount

Severn.

71

we are told: “It may occur to the reader that a lady in her own house, ‘dying for her tea’,

might surely order it brought in” (p.21). This serves to accentuate the way in which the

Hare home functions differently. In fact, in the home of Mrs Hare, the ideal of “a lady

in her own house” is distorted, as the narrator explains:

Since her husband had first brought her home to that house, four-and-

twenty years ago, she had never dared to express a will in it; scarcely, on

her own responsibility, to give an order. Justice Hare was stern,

imperative, obstinate and self-conceited; she, timid, gentle, and

submissive. She had loved him with all her heart, and her life had been

one long yielding of her will to his: in fact, she had no will; his, was all in

all. Far was she from feeling the servitude a yoke: some natures do not:

and, to do Mr Hare justice, his powerful will, that must bear down all

before it, was in fault; not his kindness: he never meant to be unkind to his

wife (p.21).

The intimidation suffered by Mrs Hare, its characterisation by the narrator as ‘servitude’

and the frustration of Barbara contribute to a distinctly negative portrayal of

domesticity. While the crime that has affected the Hare family has not yet been revealed

to the reader, the narrator clearly registers disapproval regarding the gender dynamics of

the home and the way in which the law of the father has degenerated into tyranny.

In terms of Victorian gender ideologies, we can see how in East Lynne, the Hare home

is constructed as one in which prevailing notions of gender roles have been distorted to

extremes. In his often-quoted discussion, Wood’s contemporary, John Ruskin,

articulates Victorian ideals of gender in “Of Queens’ Gardens” by giving men an active

role: “the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender”. According to Ruskin, men are

speculators, inventors, adventurers, soldiers and conquerors. Women perform a passive

function, limited to “sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision” within the home where

“she is protected from all danger and temptation”. Ruskin’s notions of “the true nature

of home” as “the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror,

doubt and division” are subverted by the depiction of the Hares’ home in which Mrs

Hare’s “terror” and “doubt” are palpable. 261

Moreover, this passage demonstrates how

Mrs Hare’s submission to her husband’s powerful will ensures she does not use her

power for “rule” or “decision” even in her own sphere. The reader later learns that Mr

261

John Ruskin, “Of Queens’ Gardens,” Sesame and Lilies (1865; London: George Allen,

1905), pp.107-8.

72

Hare’s oppressive will and resolute faith in the legal system has resulted in his son’s

exile. We discover that after a coroner’s inquest into the murder of Hallijohn, which

found Richard to be the likely murderer, Justice Hare “took an oath in the justice-room,

in the presence of his brother magistrates” to “deliver [him] up to justice” (p.35). His

decision, made in an emphatically masculinised, public space, ignores what Ruskin

outlines as Mrs Hare’s female moral imperative as ruler of the home sphere and ignores

the sacrosanct ties of love and family. Thus, the Grove is constructed as an oppressive

masculine space.

Initially, this buried murder narrative haunts the site of the Hares’ home, as it is

represented in deferrals, displacements and gaps. This reflects what Botting describes as

a nineteenth-century adaptation of the gothic where “the family became a place

rendered threatening and uncanny by the haunting return of past transgressions and

attendant guilt on an everyday world shrouded in strangeness”.262

At first, as the

narrator lists the Hare children, the discussion is abruptly suspended when speaking of

the absent son: “Richard, the eldest – But we shall come to him hereafter” (p.21).

Similarly, when Carlyle visits Barbara and Mrs Hare at home, he only whispers

Richard’s name, and he “glanced round the room, as if fearful the very walls might

hear” (p.27), suggesting a domineering patriarchal presence that seems to have seeped

into the foundations of the Grove. Furthermore, Mrs Hare’s suppressed suffering over

her son’s absence appears to be manifesting in dreams of the crime.263

These dreams are

constructed as feminine and secret narratives, an impression which is reinforced in the

halting, secretive exchange between Barbara and Archibald when he expresses concern

over Mrs Hare’s health:

262

Botting, p.11. 263

This depiction of the Hares recalls the episode “Poor Peter” in Elizabeth Gaskell’s, Cranford

(1853; London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp.49-60, where a father’s severe treatment of

his son, Peter, leads to his exile from home. In Gaskell’s story, Peter’s mother suffers greatly as

a result and eventually dies from her grief. In addition, Elisabeth Jay, p.xiii, observes the

similarities between the depiction of the Hares in East Lynne with the similarly named, Hale

family of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1854). Certainly Wood must have read

Gaskell’s works, she admits as much in her 1864 letter to Gaskell in which she seeks autographs

for a fete. Wood adds a postscript “A note such as this is not exactly the medium by which I

ought to speak of your writings and you will probably deem so, but I cannot close it without

telling you how greatly I admire them and what pleasure they have given me.” Letter from Ellen

Wood to Elizabeth Gaskell, 5 May. 1864, The John Rylands University Library, The University

of Manchester. English MS 731/108. Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and

Director.

73

‘You know she suffers a little thing to upset her, and last night she had

what she calls one of her dreams,’ answered Barbara. ‘She says it is a

warning that something bad is going to happen, and she has been in the

most unhappy, feverish state possible all day. Papa has been quite angry

about her being so weak and nervous, declaring that she ought to rouse

herself out of “nerves”. Of course we dare not tell him about the dream’.

‘It related to – the – ”

Mr Carlyle stopped, and Barbara glanced round with a shudder, and

drew closer to him as she whispered. He had not given her his arm this

time.

‘Yes; to the murder. You know mamma has always declared that Bethel

had something to do with it, she says her dreams would have convinced her

of it, if nothing else did, and she dreamt she saw him with – with – you

know.’

‘Hallijohn?’ whispered Mr Carlyle.

‘With Hallijohn,’ assented Barbara, with a shiver (p.28).

This section is clearly written to contrive a sensational thrill for the reader, to provide

some tantalising exposition of the key actors in the murder mystery and to stage an

intimate conversation between Barbara and her future husband, Archibald. However,

the way in which these dreams are figured also suggests the operations of a female

gothic.

Lyn Pykett explains how, in the Victorian period, the ‘female gothic’ registered and

explored fears of physical and psychological isolation and confinement in domestic

ideologies and conventional femininity.264

Certainly, the depiction of the suffocating

domesticity of the Hare home reflects this. These operations of the female gothic in East

Lynne are recognised by Dinah Birch when she states that Wood “identifies women as

those whose hidden misery often shadowed middle-class prosperity”.265

Thus, the

“hidden misery” reflected by Mrs Hare’s nightmares is generated by her husband’s

inflexible legal crusade to prosecute his son. On learning of these dreams, Archibald

Carlyle rationalises that “It is not to be surprised at, that she dreams of the murder,

because she is always dwelling upon it” (p.29). Moreover, Barbara also disavows any

investment in her mother’s uncannily prophetic dreams as she sets up an argument

vested in modernity: “Such nonsense, you know, Archibald, to believe that dreams give

264

Lyn Pykett, “Sensation and the fantastic in the Victorian novel,” The Cambridge Companion

to The Victorian Novel, ed. Deidre David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),

p.198. 265

Birch, <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n03/birc01_.html>.

74

signs of what is going to happen? so far behind these enlightened days!” (p.29). Thus,

Barbara echoes the rationality that underpins Archibald’s views by characterising

modern times with an argument steeped in enlightenment philosophy. However, the

figuring of Mrs Hare’s dreams sets up a familiar motif of the female gothic,

emphasising the suffering of women that haunts masculine progress. This conflict is

staged in the novel as Barbara shadows Archibald’s progress in detection, and is

registered as a conflict within the character of Barbara herself.

Wood establishes Barbara Hare as an embodiment of gender conflict. We are told,

“Barbara alone had inherited [her father’s] will, but in her it was softened” (p.21).

Therefore, Barbara is constructed as a hybrid of her parents’ divergent temperaments.

She does not easily submit to the authority of her father and instructs her mother to defy

his more arbitrary rules. Furthermore, the reader is told that, in their youth, Archibald

Carlyle had preferred Barbara’s sister Anne, because she was a “gentle, yielding girl ...

like her mother; whereas Barbara displayed her own will, and it sometimes clashed with

young Carlyle’s” (p.30). The character of Barbara, and her participation in the detection

plot, modifies and engages with the discourse of bourgeois femininity. In working to

bring justice to her brother and to detect the real murderer, Barbara progresses to

become a resourceful, “modern” model of femininity who will be rewarded in true

Victorian style – with a noble husband and a charming home. East Lynne suggests that

the Ruskinian ideal of a woman “protected from all danger and temptation” in marriage

is flawed. Instead, for Wood, a woman needs to be both loyal and loving to her

husband, but display enough will and knowledge to protect herself (and her family) in

the event of excessive male dominance. Barbara’s participation in detection functions to

disrupt categories of masculine and feminine, sensation and realism.

A comparison can be made here with the character of Marian Halcombe in Wilkie

Collins’, The Woman in White. In Collins’ text, Marian competes with Walter Hartright

for a voice in the discourse of detection and is constructed overtly as both feminine and

masculine, disrupting gender norms. However, unlike the conventionally beautiful

Barbara in East Lynne, Collins’ female detective, Marian, physically contests gender

assumptions as Walter is struck by “the rare beauty of her form” only to be surprised by

her “large, firm masculine mouth and jaw”. 266

At the same time, In The Woman in

266

Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (1860; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.31-2.

75

White Hartright is also uneasy about his own masculinity. He betrays his bitterness

regarding the neutering effects of his occupation as a drawing master when he states: “I

was admitted among beautiful and captivating women, much as a harmless domestic

animal is admitted among them”.267

While Hartright’s narration states that he

“composedly” and reasonably accepts the constraints upon his gender by his status, the

image of a “domestic animal” betrays a sense of frustration and inadequacy. It is only

once he has travelled on an expedition to “the wilds and forests of Central America”

that he returns “a changed man”.268

Only now is he able to rescue Laura, the heroine,

and resolutely expose the class deceptions and criminal activities of Sir Percival Glyde

and Count Fosco. Both Collins’ and Wood’s texts suggests how gender and power

intersect in the discourse of detection.

The dynamics of detection are established early in Wood’s novel where Barbara defers

to Archibald in the investigation. However, it is through Barbara’s initial investigations

that the reader hears the first comprehensive narrative of the crime. When Barbara sees

a figure (Richard) hiding in the trees at the Grove, she realises that: “she must fathom it;

she must see who and what it was” (p.31). This recalls Ruskin’s notions of an active,

masculine power which “must encounter all peril and trial.”269

In addition, the narrator

asserts that Barbara, “possessed more innate courage than falls to the lot of some young

ladies” (p.32). Barbara questions Richard carefully to ascertain the details of the crime,

and as he insists upon his innocence, she instigates notions of an investigation. She

directs her brother to enlist the assistance of the lawyer when she insists: “why not tell

the whole circumstances to Archibald Carlyle? If anyone can help you, or take means to

establish your innocence, he can. And you know that he is true as steel” (p.36). Later,

when Barbara implores Archibald to assist her, she gushes, “You are so clever; you can

do anything,” and “I appeal to you in all my troubles ... as I and Anne used to do, when

we were children” (p.42-3). Barbara clearly constructs herself as his intellectual inferior,

assuming the role as Ruskin’s ideal woman whose “intellect is not for invention or

creation”.270

However, this is closely followed by her openly instructing him:

267

Collins, p.64. 268

Collins, p.414-5. 269

Ruskin, p.108. 270

Ruskin, p.107.

76

‘I shall not like to come here again,’ interrupted Barbara. ‘It might excite

suspicion; someone might see me, too, and mention it to papa. Neither

ought you send to our house’ (p.43).

Barbara’s caution is both an attempt to protect her brother from her father’s wrath, but

also a canny negotiation of gender expectations. Although Archibald is her distant

relative, as a young woman, she must carefully avoid public knowledge of any intimate

meetings with men. Indeed, her meeting with Archibald is immediately questioned by

his domineering sister, Cornelia, who spies Barbara leaving the office and expostulates,

“‘Why – what on earth!’ began she – ‘have you been with Archibald?’”(p.44). When

Barbara attempts to excuse her presence as a trifling errand for her mother, Cornelia

responds: “‘Then, if it’s nothing, why were you closeted so long with Archibald?’”

(p.44). While Barbara is at pains to conceal her role in this initial investigation, she is

also under scrutiny as her compliance with accepted gender roles is closely monitored.

This surveillance is particularly troubling for Barbara because her roles as devoted sister

to her brother and loyal daughter to her father are in conflict. In addition, she does not

want Archibald to detect the depth of her feelings for him. In order to observe gendered

expectations of her behaviour, Barbara’s self-construction as a submissive and

deferential woman is suggested as being a performance, as she conceals her actions that

demonstrate that she is equal to Archibald as a forthright investigator and planner.

Throughout East Lynne, Barbara frequently masks her role as a detective. When

Barbara’s detection uncovers information about their suspect, she contrives various

excuses to convey the news to Archibald, including the pretexts of visiting his wife and

baby or retrieving dressmaking patterns. The significance of this masquerade is made

clear by a later event in the novel where the discourses of femininity and detection

intersect. In Chapter 26, “The Secret Scrap of Paper”, a letter is delivered to Barbara

from her sister, Anne. At the Hares’ breakfast table, Justice Hare snatches up the letter

for perusal but soon “threw it down, grumbling” (p.253). He quickly declares that

Anne’s communication is valueless: “she won’t set the Thames on fire as a

correspondent. As if anybody cared to hear about the baby’s being short-coated!”

(p.253). He marks out the triviality of everyday domestic concerns and delineates them

from ‘real’ news or worthwhile information along gender lines, recalling Ainsworth’s

separation of ‘manly’ fact and feminine fiction in the New Monthly Magazine.

Langbauer discusses these gender politics in relation to the theory of the everyday

77

where she argues that “[w]omen have been especially marginalized through those

cultural practices that theorists tend to characterize as belonging to the everyday –

domestic maintenance, the repetitive production of food and children”. However, she

goes on to argue that “[p]art of the richness of the everyday might be that it offers

women room within it that (masculine) theorists ignore”.271

Thus the value of the

everyday for women operates in the spaces that masculinist critics fail to appreciate.

While this tendency is clear in East Lynne, other strategies are also at work.

In this chapter, Anne is aware of the likelihood that their father will inspect the letter, so

she has secreted a second, smaller note intended only for Barbara, detailing information

about their fugitive brother Richard. In my reading of this exchange, the main letter

comprises a performance of conventional femininity, as we are told that Barbara “read

her sister’s letter, and laid it open on the table for the benefit of anybody else, who

might like to do the same” (p.253). This letter’s detailing of domestic concerns mirrors

the feminised errands with which Barbara masks her detection. The concealed note then.

represents a resistance to these feminine ideals – the aspects of female experience that

are excluded from ideological expectations. Thus in East Lynne, conventional

femininity is figured as a performance, which is based on the exclusion of aberrant traits

or experiences.272

These deviations from the discourse of bourgeois femininity mirror

what Mills describes as the work of discourses, which are “principally organised around

practices of exclusion”.273

The discourse of detection similarly involves selective

inclusions and exclusions in controlling the representations of ‘truth’. Through the

figure of Barbara, the discourse of Victorian femininity and the discourse of detection

intersect, exposing the power relations of both. This demonstrates Foucault’s notion

that: “[d]iscourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines it

and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it”.274

The function of

271

Langbauer, Novels of Everyday Life, p.143. 272

This notion of gender performance is registered more overtly in the figure of Isabel,

Archibald’s disgraced first wife, when she returns to East Lynne in disguise as a governess. For

a discussion of how Isabel’s role as Madame Vine transforms the domestic space of East Lynne

into a ‘stage’ see Joseph Litvak, Caught in the Act: Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century

English Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). See also Jonathan Loesberg in

“The Ideology of Narrative Form in Sensation Fiction” Representations 13 (1986): 115-138. In

his early work on the sensation novel, Loesberg discusses the effects of Isabel Vane’s

masquerade. 273

Mills, p.12. 274

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol 1 (Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1978), pp.100-1.

78

the two detectives in East Lynne exposes the power relations circulating within the

discourse of detection, opening up fractures where alternative strategies, such as those

contained within female experience, are perceptible.

Barbara operates largely within the domestic and private worlds of the home, and this

extends to visiting other women in their homes. This sets up a sphere of operation that,

as the depiction of the Hare home has shown, can be oppressive, but as a detective

figure Barbara uses this sphere for more constructive purposes. During the investigation

of the crime, Barbara voices her female frustration to Archibald: “Were it in my power

to do anything to elucidate the mystery, I would spare no pains, no toil; I would walk

barefooted to the end of the earth to bring the truth to light” (p.238). However, the

reader becomes aware of just how tirelessly Barbara combines investigation with her

errands, domestic and social duties as we are told:

Too keenly she felt the truth of her own words, that she was powerless,

that she could, herself, do nothing. When she rose in the morning, after a

night passed in troubled reflection more than in sleep, her thoughts were,

‘Oh that I could this day find out something certain!’ She was often at the

Herberts’; frequently invited there, sometimes going uninvited. She and

the Miss Herberts were intimate, and they pressed Barbara into all the

impromptu fêtes got up for their brother now he was at home. There she

of course saw Captain Thorn, and now and then she was enabled to pick

up scraps of his past history. Eagerly were these scraps carried to Mr

Carlyle (p.245).

The “truth” that Barbara is “powerless” is directly undermined by the subsequent details

of her activities. Barbara’s use of gossip also suggests a more complex view than that of

Isabella Beeton who warns the mistress of the household to avoid “as a pestilence” a

“gossiping acquaintance, who indulges in the scandal and ridicule of her neighbours”.275

Instead, this passage resonates with Spacks’ assertion that gossip “embodies an

alternative discourse to that of public life, and a discourse potentially challenging to

public assumptions; it provides language for an alternative culture.”276

In this way,

Barbara’s use of gossip in her detection, is a valuable alternative resource to that of

Archibald’s public activity. We are told later that Carlyle had discovered most of the

same information via alternative channels but that he “always received Barbara with

275

Beeton, p.3. 276

Patricia Meyer Spacks, Gossip (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p.46.

79

vivid interest” (p.245). While a note of condescension might be detected in this

statement, nevertheless, the two methods of investigation are revealed to be similarly

useful and successful and Barbara’s detection can be seen to complement and energise

the work of Archibald.

In addition to the use of gossip as an alternative discourse, Barbara slowly begins to

invest in her mother’s dream narratives and this is also privileged as a valuable resource

for the women. When Mrs Hare’s dream of the murder recurs later in the novel, Barbara

again figures it as irrational when she characterises it as a “foolish dream” in opposition

to “good sense” (p.230), recalling her earlier enlightenment argument. However,

Barbara then presses for details of the dream and, when told that the murderer appeared

to be a gentleman, the narrator notes that her “mind was full of Captain Thorn” (p.232).

Here, Barbara is using the dream – a non-realist narrative – to assist in interpreting and

theorising the crime. However, Barbara is conflicted in her response as she again avows,

“I do not believe in dreams,” and denounces belief in dreams as “the greatest absurdity

in the world,” but then soon after asks: “I wish you could remember what the man was

like in your dream ... Was he tall? Had he black hair?” (p.232). When Barbara reports

the narrative of her mother’s dream to Archibald, he declares that she is becoming “a

convert to the theory of dreams” to which she maintains: “I am no believer in dreams”

but then, “I cannot deny that these, which take such hold upon mamma, bear upon the

case in a curious manner” (p.235-6). Later, when Mrs Hare’s dreams return again in the

novel’s final chapters, the practical Cornelia Carlyle declares that “people who put faith

in dreams [are] only fit for a lunatic asylum” (p.463). To which we are told:

Barbara looked distressed. She did not believe in dreams, any more than

did Miss Carlyle; but she could not forget how strangely peril to Richard

had supervened upon some of these dreams (pp.463-4). 277

In this way, Mrs Hare’s uncanny dream narratives are marginalised and de-legitimised

by their intersection with discourses of rationality through the characters of Archibald

and Cornelia Carlyle. However, while Barbara initially shares these views, by the end of

277

In Wilkie Collins’ “The Diary of Anne Rodway” (1856), the amateur female detective also

dreams of finding clues to a murder, although the portentous aspect is less apparent. Kestner,

Sherlock’s Sisters, p.15, refers to this narrative as “the most significant example of the amateur,

unofficial female detective before the 1880s”.

80

the novel she occupies a conflicted space where the distinction between realism and

sensation blurs.

Archibald’s profession as a lawyer and his authoritative public position allows him to

discover information through channels that are unavailable to Barbara. Early in the

novel, when Richard tells Archibald what he terms “the true history” (p.50) of the

crime, the details are revealed to the reader in a style that suggests full disclosure and

without the emotional intensity of the moonlit confession to Barbara. Indeed, to

encourage Richard’s narrative, Archibald states, “there’s an old saying, and it is sound

advice, ‘Tell the whole truth to your lawyer and your doctor’” (p.51) thus lending this

narrative the appearance of objectivity based on bourgeois professional practices.278

This dialogue is also a gendered one, as Richard condemns his own “cowardice” in

absconding, likening his behaviour to that of “a woman ... in petticoats” (p.53). This is

suggested as being the most authoritative and ‘realist’ account of the crime thus far,

placing it in opposition to Mrs Hare’s dream narratives which have been motivating

Barbara’s detection. On another occasion, Archibald is able to question a suspect

candidly, when the man approaches him for some unrelated legal advice. However,

these resources are not unproblematically privileged as methods of detection in the text.

For example, when Carlyle encounters the suspect, Otway Bethel on the street, he is

able to confront him directly about his role in the murder, insisting, “I want you to

answer me truly” (p.74). However, as we discover later, Bethel lies to him, denying any

knowledge of the suspect ‘Thorn’. Later, Archibald questions another witness, the

victim’s daughter Afy Hallijohn, about the crime and demands, “Who was it that

committed the murder?” using, “a grave and somewhat imperative tone” (p.336). Again

he is deceived, as Afy insists that the innocent Richard was the murderer. Indeed,

Carlyle’s approach to detection here echoes the bullying tactics of Justice Hare.

Moreover, Carlyle’s attempt at intimidation only produces false evidence and is shown

to be an unproductive strategy as opposed to Barbara’s more subtle approach. In

addition, due to Archibald’s secretive meetings with Barbara, his wife, Isabel, suspects

an affair. When Barbara delivers a note about her brother to Archibald, their exchange is

observed by his wife and sister and when questioned, he refuses to divulge its contents,

asserting “I cannot betray a confidence” and “it is unreasonable to expect me to betray a

278

For a compelling analysis of the figure of the professional in East Lynne, see Kucich “The

Professional and the Mother”, in The Power of Lies: Transgression in Victorian Fiction,

pp.158-95.

81

young lady’s secrets, although she may choose to confide them professionally to me”

(pp.257-8). Andrew Mangham suggests that East Lynne “questions the effectiveness” of

the public/private division in the professional lives of men, given the disastrous

consequences of Archibald’s decision to keep this information from his wife.279

While

Archibald’s sex, his adherence to masculine gender ideology and his legal profession

allow him more direct methods of investigation than Barbara, they are not uniformly

privileged in the novel.

While Barbara’s sphere of influence is more limited than Archibald’s, Barbara’s sex

often works for her in detection. When she and Mrs Hare go to visit East Lynne, Sir

Francis Levison (whom readers can already identify as a key suspect for the murder)

says to himself on sighting Barbara with her mother: “It’s a deuced lovely girl, whoever

she may be. I think I’ll approach: they don’t look too formidable” (p.236). However, it

is at this meeting that Barbara’s suspicions of Levison are aroused when she suspects he

is eavesdropping on her conversation with Archibald about the murder. Carlyle

dismisses her concerns but the reader is aware that her instincts are correct. Later in the

novel, when Richard revisits the town and espies a suspect, we are told that: “He

described the man as accurately as he could to Mr Carlyle and Barbara, and told them

they must look out” (p.275). Here, with the emphasis on “they”, Richard is too fearful to

investigate for himself, but also explicitly acknowledges Barbara’s equal role in the

planned surveillance. When Archibald protests later that there is no one at West Lynne

to whom Richard’s description of the murderer would fit, Barbara conspicuously

replies, “At West Lynne – no” (p.318). The subtext here is very apparent to the reader,

as Barbara believes at East Lynne there is a clear suspect – Levison – who had

absconded with Carlyle’s wife Isabel on the same night. However, when Barbara tacitly

questions Archibald, she finds that he has no suspicions of Levison as the murderer,

which, as the narrator describes, “sealed Barbara’s lips” (p.318). While Barbara

cautiously reserves her suspicions from Archibald, the reader is aware that her

reasoning is sound when she confides in the servant, Joyce.280

Later, Barbara’s skills as

a detective are reinforced when the conclusion that Sir Francis Levison is the real

murderer is reached. While Archibald eventually puts together the story of the crime

279

Mangham, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction, p.134. 280

For a discussion of how Archibald’s extreme privacy implicates him in an “obstruction of

justice” see Brian W. McCuskey, “The Kitchen Police: Servant Surveillance and Middle-Class

Transgression,” Victorian Literature and Culture 28:2 (2000): 372.

82

following some incidental information from a legal clerk, Barbara has already detected

Levison’s resemblance to a previous description of their suspect:

Barbara, under cover of her dainty lace parasol, turned her eyes upon

him. At that very moment he raised his right hand, slightly shook his head

back, and tossed his hair off his brow. His hand, ungloved, was white and

delicate as a lady’s, and his rich diamond ring gleamed in the sun. The

pink flush on Barbara’s cheek deepened to a crimson damask, and her

brow contracted as with a remembrance of pain.

‘The very action Richard described!’(p.476).

It is significant that, Barbara, screened by her “dainty” feminine umbrella is able to turn

her detecting gaze upon Levison, who avoids returning her gaze. In his study of

fictional female detectives, Kestner argues that these kinds of instances of female

surveillance challenge Mulvey’s theories of the supremacy of the male gaze.281

Indeed,

the fictional female detective, Mrs G asserts that, “the woman detective has far greater

opportunities than the man of intimate watching”.282

It is this ability of women to

surreptitiously scrutinise and eavesdrop that leads Summerscale to suggest that “[i]n

theory, detection was understood as a distinctly female talent”.283

Certainly, Barbara’s

role in the discourse of detection is supported by her feminine investigative tools, what

Judith Johnston argues are the woman’s ability to read not just documents, but bodies,

actions, gestures and faces.284

When Barbara tells Archibald that she had long suspected

Levison, she marvels: “I wonder you did not. I have wondered often” (p.484). This

certainly suggests the superiority of Barbara’s skills in detection over the professional

abilities of Archibald. While limited in her operations, Barbara is shown to be equal to,

if not more perceptive than, the lawyer in reasoning, planning and detecting.

Archibald and Barbara function to maintain the privacy and respectability of their

homes. This is made overt through an incident that occurs at the conclusion of the

novel, when Madame Vine’s real identity is revealed only to key members of the

Carlyle family and household. Here, the narrator declares that, “of course that was Mr

281

Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, pp.17-22. 282

Cited in Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, p.11. 283

Summerscale, p.187. 284

Judith Johnston extends Kestner’s approach in her unpublished conference paper “Sensate

Detection in Wilkie Collins's The Law and the Lady' (1874-5)” given at the AVSA conference

(Feb 3-5, 2009) in which the issue of ‘intimate watching’ is examined. Johnston discusses

intimate watching as a peculiarly female investigative tool and an effective counter to the threat

of crime within the respectable Victorian home in The Law and the Lady.

83

Carlyle’s affair, not West Lynne’s” (p.621). This resonates with the plot of Mary

Elizabeth Braddon’s, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). At the conclusion of Braddon’s text,

the lawyer (and amateur detective) Robert Audley conspires with a physician to

incarcerate his uncle’s bigamist wife in a foreign asylum. He does this, as he states, to

avoid “any exposure – any disgrace” that a criminal trial may bring to his family.285

In

both of these early novels from Wood and Braddon, the amateur detectives are take on

the moral role of delineating private matters from broader social and legal concerns.

Brian McCuskey argues that in East Lynne, the law is “held at a distance from the

community, at least long enough for the community to interrogate and police itself

before yielding to an outside authority”. 286

Indeed, the power of the police is seen to be

a distinct threat when it is used on several occasions by Levison for his own villainous

purposes. In Chapter 35, Richard flees to West Lynne, stating that “The Bow-street

officers were after me in London” and “It is Thorn who is setting the officers upon me”

(p.350-1). Later, when Levison faces the prospect of returning to West Lynne, he uses

the resources of Scotland Yard to ascertain the whereabouts of Otway Bethel, who can

identify him as “Thorn” (p.455-6). Throughout the text, Sir Francis Levison is

characterised as a threat to bourgeois homes, as Barbara explains that he “was the one

who wrought the disgrace, the trouble, to Mr Carlyle’s family; and it is he, I have every

reason now to believe, who brought equal disgrace and trouble upon mine” (p.492). The

aristocratic privilege of Sir Francis enables him to control the police force for his own

ends. This marks out a rationale for domestic detection to protect middle-class homes

due to the corruptibility of an amoral investigating force. The role of women in this

more moral form of detection is a necessary one.

The figure of Barbara Hare complicates Craig and Cadogan’s analysis of female

detective figures, especially where they argue that:

There are many varieties of investigator, but two basic methods of

approach are soon discernible. There is the person who succeeds, time and

again, because of specialized ‘feminine’ knowledge which suddenly

acquires a new respectability, if only for the duration of the tale; and there

is the person who competes with male detectives on equal terms. Both of

285

Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862; Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1998), p.380. 286

McCuskey, 368.

84

these contributed something to the evolving feminist ethic, though it is

undeniable that the latter was the more radical and far-reaching.287

This passage again reveals the problems inherent in labelling Victorian popular fiction –

a form that offers various and contradictory strategies to readers – as “ more [or less]

radical”. Indeed in East Lynne these “two basic methods” of investigative approach are

not necessarily mutually exclusive or oppositional. In the character of Barbara, these

two methods are combined as she uses both ‘feminine’ knowledge, such as her mother’s

dreams, in her investigations, and simultaneously competes as an equal to Archibald,

where it is apparent to the reader that she has the superior insight into the murderer’s

identity. Significantly, Barbara performs a domesticated and feminised version of the

generic detective’s revelation when she recounts the story of the crime and its detection

to Madame Vine in the grey parlour of East Lynne. The emotional focus of this scene is

on how the revelation affects (the disguised) Isabel, when she discovers that her

seducer, Sir Francis Levison, is also a murderer and that her jealousy of Barbara and

Archibald’s private meetings was misplaced. However, the resemblance of this passage

to a detective’s revelatory speech is marked. This “history” of the detection process

extends for seven pages and is the longest account of the detection in the text thus far.

Barbara’s narrative characterises herself as Archibald’s equal in the detection as she

commonly uses “we” or “Mr Carlyle and I” and does not downplay her own successes

in discovering the truth (p.493). As a storyteller to an exclusively female audience,

Barbara is powerful and can privilege her own role and authority in the construction of

truth.288

However, this is a limited pursuit, as Barbara is contained in this domestic,

private space. Through Archibald’s professional power, evidence and witness testimony

are gathered, with male figures ultimately determining the narrative of the crime.

Nevertheless, the reader can see the extent to which female experience and knowledge

have competed in the struggle over the discourse of detection.

The crime is finally and formally rewritten at a court hearing – a distinctively

masculinised space, without the appearance of the detectives.289

Archibald has

287

Craig and Cadogan, p.12. 288

It is interesting to compare Barbara’s narrative of the crime with an earlier narrative by the

servant Joyce, whose father was the murdered man, Hallijohn. This description of the events is

also delivered to Isabel, and demonstrates that there are multiple perspectives and competing

voices in attempting to fix the narrative of the crime. 289

See Ronald Thomas’ chapter “The letter of the law in The Woman in White” for a discussion

of how lawyers’ control over identity in sensation novels reflects the growing power of the

85

smoothed the way for another lawyer to represent Richard in the final court hearing,

declaring “My part is over now” (p.509). The reasoning here is a desire not to resurrect

the old dispute between Levison and himself and to protect the privacy of his family.

However, this absence of Barbara and Archibald from the final decision demonstrates

the way in which institutions of the state are arranged to reproduce dominant discourses.

The middle-class detectives, while being the impetus behind the detection of the crime,

are rendered invisible in its final decision which publicly announces the guilt of the

aristocratic scoundrel. Nevertheless, the reader is aware of how ‘truth’ has been

produced from the detectives’ (re)construction of narrative, confirming Thoms’

argument that Victorian detective narratives uncover “the detective’s motives of

controlling the representation of both himself and others, a discovery which in turn

significantly undermines the authority of his solutions”.290

The function of the

detectives and their control of discourse is loaded with class anxieties regarding the

protection of bourgeois homes, families and secrets.

At the conclusion of East Lynne, Richard Hare has been vindicated, and following a

series of strokes that leave Justice Hare “in a state of half-imbecility” and “[a]lmost as a

little child” (p.605), the Hare home appears to be transformed into a haven:

Richard had returned to his home, had become, to all intents and purposes,

its master: for the justice would never be in a state to hold sway again. He

had reassumed his position; had regained the favour of West Lynne,

which, always in extremes, was now wanting to kill him with kindness. A

happy, happy home, from henceforth (p.607).

Richard reinforces this blissful domesticity as he vows to his mother: “happiness we

shall find, in this our own home, living for each other, and striving to amuse my poor

father” (p.607). However this strong emphasis on the happiness of the Hare home is not

assured, given the “extremes” of West Lynne’s favour and that his “happy, happy

home” was only achieved following the severe disabling of the father. Indeed, the

description of Justice Hare’s debilitation contains a tone of celebration “the most

wonderful characteristic being, that all [his] self-will, [his] surliness had gone”

professional classes and the depiction of medical and legal institutions as “centers of immense

power” (p.69). 290

Thoms, p.8.

86

(p.605).291

Moreover, further problematising an easy resolution is the description of Sir

Francis Levison’s torment in prison, which directly follows the depiction of the Grove.

A note of smugness is overt in the image of “gay Sir Francis Levison working in chains

with his gang!” as the narrator asks: “Where would his diamonds and his perfumed

handkerchiefs and his white hands be then?” (p.607-8). Finally, the hidden price of

Levison’s imprisonment is made vivid for the reader as the ongoing disgrace of his

crime ensures that the plight of his wife is vividly described as “lost in horror” (p.674).

The moral victory is a problematic and difficult one. Similarly, although Barbara and

Archibald’s lives conclude in domestic bliss, this is not realised easily. Liggins

emphasises that:

the novel is typical of Wood’s contradictory attitudes to domesticity;

although the text may ultimately work to reposition women as domestic

creatures, the signalling of women’s discontent remains high on the

agenda ... The satisfaction of Barbara, Carlyle’s second wife, an excellent

household manager and ‘the unmistakable mistress of the house and

children’, seems illusory, given the patterns of illness, discontent and

sexual frustration mapped out by Wood as symptomatic of the bourgeois

marriage.292

Indeed, if it had not been for Archibald’s prudent decision to formally divorce Isabel

despite having confirmed reports of her death, he would have been bigamously married

to Barbara. Consequently, at the conclusion of East Lynne, uncertainty is registered

about Ruskin’s ideal of the “true nature of home – it is the place of Peace; the shelter,

not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt and division.”293

Certainly, a

perceptible anxiety regarding potential threats to women within marriage remains.

Instead, George’s argument that “[h]omes are not about inclusions and wide open arms

as much as they are about places carved out of closed doors, closed borders and

screening apparatuses” seems more applicable.294

George’s “screening apparatuses”

gesture towards the role of the domestic detective, because at the conclusion of East

291

Compare this transformation of Justice Hare to that of Mrs Joe in Charles Dickens’ Great

Expectations (1861). After a severe beating, Mrs Joe is transformed from a violent, abrasive

woman into a patient, good-tempered, although severely mentally and physically impaired

version of herself. 292

Liggins, “Good Housekeeping?”, p.61. 293

Ruskin, p.107-8. 294

George, p.18.

87

Lynne, the cosy domesticity of the Grove and East Lynne has not been easily attained

and nor is it assured.

Sara Mills asserts that truth “is something which societies have to work to produce,

rather than something which appears in a transcendental way”.295

While Barbara’s

efforts are not acknowledged in the public domain, and the detectives function to shore

up class boundaries, the reader is aware of the knowledges that have been privileged

and excluded in the construction of truth. East Lynne’s depiction of detection and

storytelling conveys clearly that all stories are haunted by those alternatives that they

exclude. I will continue this exploration in the following chapter that investigates the

operations of domestic detection for the construction of Englishness in Wood’s works.

As Jay observes in East Lynne, it is the mobility of this provincial community and “the

new ease with which people come and go that makes it imperative to police the sanctity

of the home”.296

This is something that attains greater prominence in the three novels

under discussion in Chapter Two: The Channings, Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles and

Roland Yorke, as the domestic detectives have to police foreign threats, while

negotiating the professional detectives who also compete to control the discourse of

detection.

295

Mills, p.18. 296

Jay, p.xxviii.

88

89

Chapter Two

Domestic Threats: Policing the boundaries of Englishness in

The Channings, Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles and Roland Yorke

In the year following the success of East Lynne, Ellen Wood released two novels: The

Channings (1862) and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles (1862).297

Both of these texts are

largely preoccupied with the everyday lives of struggling middle-class families, living

in a rural English town. On publication, these texts were immediately compared, often

unfavourably, to their more sensational forerunner, East Lynne. The Times reviewer

compares Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles to George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss insofar as

both works evoke “a relentless picture of dull, grovelling, prosaic life”.298

The reviewer

also contends that, in Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, Wood has produced a “common tale”

and warns that:

the ground she treads is perilous, and will not sustain her long ... having

achieved her first success in a novel which very much depended on a

startling situation, Mrs Wood now proposes to interest us by ignoring

secrets and neglecting the wonderful in order to dwell upon simple,

dingy every-day truths.299

That phrase, “dingy every-day truths”, is supposedly oppositional to the startling secrets

that underpinned Wood’s previous novel; however, it gestures towards something other

than “simple” truths. Instead it is suggestive of the darker possibilities that reside within

the everyday. The reviewer’s emphasis upon the commonplace narrative of the novel

refers to the story of the impoverished (but virtuous) Halliburton family, but ignores the

detection of a murderer – a mysterious Italian woman – that forms the focus of the third

part of the novel. Similarly, The Channings revolves around the home of the struggling

Channing family and Maunder describes The Channings as, “a realist study of

endurance and self-sacrifice among a middle-class family” and argues that “the worst

297

The Channings was serialised in The Quiver from 1861-2 and Mrs Halliburton's Troubles

was serialised weekly in The Quiver from 19 April - 6 December 1862. 298

Rev. of Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, by Mrs Henry Wood, Times (January 22, 1863): 7.

Another comparison of Wood’s Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles to George Eliot (this time, Adam

Bede) appears in Maunder, “Ellen Wood was a Writer”: 26. 299

Rev. of Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, 7. This sentiment is echoed in Adeline Sergeant’s

assessment of Wood’s works. In Sergeant’s opinion these texts comprise “a pleasant and

homely picture of the vicissitudes of English life” and that “Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles and

The Channings ... are stories of more entirely quiet domestic interest than East Lynne. The

situations are less tragical and the plots less complicated” (p.184).

90

crime committed in this story is petty theft”.300

However, while The Channings depicts

relatively minor crimes, the subsequent detection of the culprits – an aristocratic, Irish

family – is a pervasive and complex exercise. Detection in both novels intersects with

ideas of English national identity, or what will be referred to in my discussion as

Englishness.

For Wood and other writers, the construction of Englishness operates as a middle-class

desire for a shared history. This desire motivates the production of a narrative of

national identity that is evident in Wood’s novels. However, this narrative of

Englishness is also exposed by the very practices that construct and sustain it. Mary

Poovey writes that:

The consolidation of a national identity or national character is

necessarily a protracted and uneven process, just as its maintenance is

always precarious and imperfect … the process by which individuals

or groups embrace the concept of the nation as the most meaningful

context for self-definition necessarily involves temporarily

marginalizing certain categories that could also provide a sense of

national identity.301

This precarious process of consolidating and maintaining Englishness is evident within

The Channings, Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles and Roland Yorke. While Wood’s

narratives ostensibly revolve around middle-class homes, families and events within the

Victorian everyday, in each of the novels there are, nevertheless, sensational events and

episodes that draw upon gothic images of class and race. What is interesting, is that the

critiques of Maunder and the Times reviewer, although written in very different contexts

and very different time frames, both emphasise the realism or “every-day truths” of the

texts. Both critics work to separate these texts from the category of the sensational, but

in so doing, their analyses risk masking the complexity and hybridity of Wood’s

writing. I want to tease out the implications of ruptures in the “every-day truths” of the

narratives that result from Wood’s attempts to map Englishness in the texts. This

gestures towards what Cannon Schmitt describes as the “formal hybridity” of the

300

Andrew Maunder, “Ellen Wood was a Writer”: 26. Interestingly, Maunder is following

Wood’s own descriptions of the novel, as he cites a letter in which she describes The Channings

as “a very different class of story from East Lynne”. However, I can discern significant

similarities between the texts, specifically in their intersections with the discourse of detection. 301

Mary Poovey, Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation 1830-1864 (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1995), p.55.

91

sensation novel, where domestic realism is combined with the Gothic.302

Schmitt

argues:

Sensation novels stage the interpenetration of underworld and domestic

world, the confusion between drawing room and asylum, the overlap of

middle-or upper-class woman and lower-class criminal. Their effects

depend upon figurative miscegenation at all levels.303

Schmitt’s use of the term “miscegenation” is significant, registering pervasive Victorian

anxieties about contamination. Schmitt detects in gothic literature of the period

depictions of a foreignness that “penetrates English domestic space literally and

figuratively – a penetration that then serves as the rationale for still more urgent

attempts to ensure national purity.”304

Wood’s novels demonstrate a literal and

figurative penetration of the foreign into domestic spaces.

Detection remains a pervasive discourse in the novels. Marie Riley describes The

Channings as a “family-orientated detective story” echoing an 1862 reviewer who

argues that the novel “pleases us by the ingenuity with which the great secret of the

book is kept, by the natural and unexpected explanation, and by the easy way in which

everything is cleared up”.305

In these early novels by Ellen Wood, the discourse of

domestic detection is again a site of struggle, and this time, middle-class anxieties

surrounding Englishness are negotiated. The criminal figures of these texts reveal

significant anxieties regarding class and nationality: in Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles an

Italian governess commits a crime of passion, and in The Channings, an entire family

with Irish heritage is found guilty of various crimes. Wood’s depictions of deviance and

criminality indicate what is excluded from her particular conception of Englishness. It

becomes clear that, within these texts, Englishness is being mapped as distinctly

Protestant and middle-class, and consequently, other ethnicities, religions and classes

302

Schmitt, p.111. 303

Schmitt, p.111. 304

Schmitt, p.14. He goes on to argue that, “Gothic fictions not only registered this work of

nation-making but provided a glossary of figures and narrative conventions with which

Englishness was defined and redefined. His work clearly follows from H. L. Malchow, Gothic

Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), who

argues that both the gothic novel and racist discourse “dwell on the chaos beyond natural and

rational boundaries” (p.5). 305

Rev. of The Channings by Mrs Henry Wood, Saturday Review 13 (1862): 540. Despite this,

the review is not entirely complimentary, describing the novel as “decidedly second-rate” (540).

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are defined as threatening and/or criminal.306

Daniel Bivona reflects upon this ‘othering’

tendency where he states that: “the discourse on the other is primarily an inadvertent

form of self-representation or self-revelation on the part of its producer”.307

In the

detection narratives of Wood’s novels, home and foreign collide, exposing power

structures and the operations of domestic and nationalist discourse. Additionally, in all

three of Wood’s novels under discussion, class concerns provoke ambivalence towards

the official figures of detection. Wood has expanded the role of the police in these

novels. In East Lynne, the police were represented as a rather indistinct threat, largely

located in London. However in these novels, Wood constructs individualised police

detectives who travel outside London to penetrate the boundaries of Helstonleigh and

the homes therein. Police detectives become sinister figures who provoke anxiety with

their power to intrude and disrupt the home. This motivates a self-policing function of

the middle class, where detection becomes dispersed amongst several characters. D. A.

Miller’s analysis illuminates this pattern, when he argues that, “the move to discard the

role of the detective is at the same time a move to disperse the function of the

detection”.308

In all three texts, a multiplicity of other detectives replaces the official

detective figures. However, in the sequel to The Channings – Roland Yorke (1869) –

attitudes regarding Englishness and detection are adjusted.309

In this novel a wealthy

lawyer of Spanish descent commits murder and certain class and ethnic features again

become markers of criminal deviance. However, representations of Englishness and

foreignness are significantly modified and the official detective, Butterby, is more

closely aligned with the project of protecting the English home and nation.

In this chapter, I will argue that ideas of Englishness are implicated in the discourse of

detection in Wood’s novels. I will show how Wood’s use of gothic conventions to

represent foreignness, in opposition to an ideal Englishness, ultimately exposes the

constructedness of both categories. My argument operates around the premise that the

domestic space of home operates as the nation in microcosm. The ideal home of

306

As Hilary Fraser, Stephanie Green and Judith Johnston in Gender and the Victorian

Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.128, argue: “Englishness is

always constructed in opposition to others; European others, indigenous others, colonised

others”. 307

Bivona, p.vii. Bivona is clearly drawing from Said’s work here. 308

D. A. Miller, The Novel and the Police, p.42, (emphasis Miller’s). Here, Miller is referring

specifically to Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (1868), but I find his discussion useful for my

exploration of detection as a discourse. 309

Roland Yorke was serialised in The Argosy from January to December, 1869.

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Wood’s novels promotes a particular version of Englishness, which necessarily

negotiates multiple threats from lower- and upper-classes, and also from ethnic ‘others’.

I shall first address the construction of ideas of ‘home’ in the texts before moving on to

a discussion of the detection narratives in The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s

Troubles. I will conclude with an analysis of Roland Yorke, to discuss the evolving

representations of detection and its intersections with Englishness in the text.

Home and Helstonleigh

What is remarkable about these three texts, is their setting in the same fictional town:

Helstonleigh. In these stories, the use of this same space, suggests Wood’s attempt to

map out a specific small locality: a domesticated space or home ground, to enact the

detection of difference and the exclusion of certain ‘types’. This investment in the

notion of home is important to my discussion of the discourse of detection. Rosemary

Marangoly George elucidates the politics of home where she states:

One distinguishing feature of places called home is that they are built

on select inclusions. The inclusions are grounded in a learned (or

taught) sense of a kinship that is extended to those who are perceived

as sharing the same blood, race, class, gender or religion. Membership

is maintained by bonds of love, fear, power, desire and control ... Its

importance lies in the fact that it is not equally available to all. Home

is the desired place that is fought for and established as the exclusive

domain of a few. It is not a neutral place.310

The exclusivity of home, suggests that its construction involves the detection (and

exclusion) of aberrance, criminality or otherness. Home establishes difference to what is

foreign. As George states, “[h]omes and nations are defined in the instances of

confrontation with what is considered ‘not-home,’ with the foreign, with distance”.311

Furthermore, as Mike Hepworth argues, the Victorian home is “a kind of battleground:

a place of constant struggle to maintain privacy, security and respectability in a

dangerous world”.312

As the preceding analysis of East Lynne demonstrates, Wood’s

fiction problematises the Victorian ideal of home as a place of safety, particularly for

310

George, p.9. While this text focuses on twentieth-century literature, its argument can be

generalised to include the nineteenth-century literature of Ellen Wood. 311

George, p. 4. 312

Mike Hepworth, “Privacy, Security and Respectability: The ideal Victorian home,” Ideal

Homes? Social Change and Domestic Life, eds. Tony Chapman and Jenny Hockey (London;

New York: Routledge, 1999), p.19.

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women. Indeed, George’s emphasis that home is “the desired place that is fought for”

and Hepworth’s analogy of a “battleground” suggests that the domestic ideal is neither

easily achieved nor unproblematically maintained. Therefore, home, whether

represented as a single, private dwelling or a home-town such as Helstonleigh, gestures

toward the inclusions and exclusions involved in constructing ideas of nation. However,

in these three novels, Wood’s mapping of Englishness is not an easy task, as the power

structures which acts of mapping necessarily involve, are exposed.313

While Helstonleigh is introduced in The Channings and recurs in the sequel, Roland

Yorke, the recycling of this fictional town for the setting of Mrs Halliburton's Troubles

is noteworthy. No characters from The Channings reappear in Mrs Halliburton's

Troubles, merely the setting, and this re-entry into Helstonleigh is preceded by the

narrator’s appeal to the reader:

I believe that most of the readers of “The Channings” will not like this

story less because its scene is laid in the same place, Helstonleigh.

I narrate to you, as you may have already discovered, a great deal of

truth: of events that have actually happened, combined with fiction. I

can only do this from my own personal experience, by taking you to

the scenes and places where I have lived. Of this same town,

Helstonleigh, I could relate to you volumes. No place in the world

holds so green a spot in my memory (p.56).

The appeal to ‘truth’ in the depiction of these narratives, works to lend a note of realism

to the events that occur, and perhaps, to domesticate the more sensational aspects of the

texts. Moreover, due to this address to the reader, and because of more specific

resemblances, some critics have argued that Wood’s cathedral town, Helstonleigh, is

based upon her real-life experience of Worcester. Sergeant insists that the success of

these “less sensational” novels is due to the fact that:

the scenes and characters are drawn largely from real life. Mrs.

Wood's long residence at Worcester made her familiar with the life of

the college boys, who haunt the precincts of the stately old cathedral,

and she has introduced her knowledge of their pranks with very great

effect. Her descriptions of the old city itself, of the streets, of the

cloisters, of the outlying villages and byways, are remarkably

313

Wolfreys, p.6, argues along similar lines, that “certain gaps open up in the questioning of

English identity” in the literature of the Victorian era.

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accurate, and remind one of the use which Charles Dickens made, in

the same way, of Rochester and its cathedral.314

Additionally, Maunder argues that Helstonleigh comprises “a version of Anthony

Trollope’s Barchester”.315

His claim is derived from Elwin’s assertion that Wood’s

experience of Worcester comprised “the narrow, artificial society of a cathedral town

like Trollope’s Barchester or the Polchester of Mr Hugh Walpole”.316

Another possible

influence is Mary Mitford’s sketches of village life that were first published in the

Lady’s Magazine from 1822, and immortalised as Our Village: Sketches of Rural

Character and Scenery (1824). This very popular collection depicts the rural village of

Three Mile Cross where Mitford lived and the sights and sounds that, as the author

claims, “meet us in our walks every day”.317

Taken together, these various claims for

Helstonleigh, produce a composite of Worcester, Rochester, Barchester, Polchester,

Three Mile Cross and other imagined or actual English rural towns and villages.

However, what is at issue here is the way in which this site of Helstonleigh implicates,

interrogates and reveals much about the ideas of home and nation.

At this point, and in addition to the speculations about the origins of Helstonleigh

among the works of Dickens, Trollope, Walpole and Mitford, I would suggest that

Elizabeth Gaskell is another key source for Wood. Gaskell’s Cranford sketches that first

appeared in Household Words during the early 1850s, might have suggested to Wood

the wisdom of revisiting a single setting in order to evoke a sense of place. More

specifically, I would argue that Gaskell’s depiction of the town Helstone, in North and

South (1855), is a further influence upon Wood. In bestowing the name Helstonleigh

upon her setting, Wood likely draws upon the fame of Gaskell’s novel: a narrative that

314

Sergeant, p.189. Dickens’ depiction of Rochester occurs in The Pickwick Papers (1836-7)

and again in Great Expectations (1861) as an unnamed town and also as ‘Dullborough Town’

published in All the Year Round (30 Jun. 1860) where the narrator returns to his childhood home

town and states: “All my early readings and early imaginations dated from this place”.

Reprinted in Charles Dickens: Selected Journalism 1850-70, ed. David Pascoe (London:

Penguin, 1997) 72. 315

Maunder, “Ellen Wood was a Writer”: 26. 316

Elwin, p.233. Elwin is here referring to Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire novels, which were

The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage

(1861), The Small House at Allington (1864) and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). Elwin

also cites Hugh Walpole’s three stories set in Polchester: Jeremy (1919), Jeremy and Hamlet

(1923) and Jeremy at Crale (1927). 317

Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village (1824; London: George G. Harrap, 1947), p.31.

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is deeply concerned with place and class threat.318

At one point, Gaskell’s heroine,

Margaret Hale describes her home of Helstone as “like a village in a poem” and asserts

that: “I can’t describe my home. It is home, and I can’t put its charm into words”.319

This strong intertwining of ‘home’ with Helstone, resonates strongly with construction

of home in Wood’s three texts, linked to the common setting of Helstonleigh.

Furthermore, it is singular that Margaret likens Helstone to a ‘village in a poem’

because every initial entrance into the space of Helstonleigh in Wood’s texts is preceded

by the Longfellow poem “My Lost Youth”. In The Channings, the seventh and ninth

stanzas of Longfellow’s poem feature as a preface to the novel:

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

Across the schoolboy’s brain;

The song and the silence in the heart,

That in part are prophecies, and in part

Are longings wild and vain.

And the voice of that fitful song

Sings on, and is never still:

‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’

Strange to me now are the forms I meet

When I visit the dear old town;

But the native air is pure and sweet,

And the trees that o’ershadow each well-known street,

As they balance up and down,

Are singing the beautiful song,

Are sighing and whispering still:

‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ 320

Similarly, early in Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, when the Halliburton family move from

London to the countryside, half of the ten stanzas of “My Lost Youth” are quoted,

including the lines that emphasise the “pleasant streets of that dear old town” where

318

For a specific discussion of the way in which ideas of class operate in North and South, see

Day, pp.135-40. 319

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1855; London: Penguin, 2000), p.14. 320

Ellen (Mrs Henry) Wood, The Channings (1862; London: Bentley, 1895). All subsequent

references to The Channings will be to this edition and will appear in the body of the text. The

citations of Longfellow’s poem in Roland Yorke and Mrs Halliburton's Troubles are abridged,

with the stanzas referring to the nautical aspects of ‘Deering’ removed. For the full version see:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (London:

Routledge, 1862), pp.636-8.

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“my youth comes back to me”.321

More specifically, in the chapter titled “Looking out

for a Home”, a desire to move the ailing Mr Halliburton to a place free of London’s

“fogs or smoke” (p.49) leads to the restorative rural setting of Helstonleigh. Indeed, the

doctor constructs a binary between the destructive potential of the city and the

recuperative power of Helstonleigh, insisting that, for Edgar Halliburton, it is “London

versus life” (p.47). In contrast, in Roland Yorke an uncanny Helstonleigh is depicted

and another abridged version of Longfellow’s poem appears, with the emphasis upon

the lines “Strange to me now are the forms I meet/When I visit the dear old town”.322

While the meaning of Longfellow’s poem shifts in each text, in The Channings and Mrs

Halliburton's Troubles, it participates in the construction of home as an idealised and

nostalgic representation. The emphasis in the poem upon “the dreams of the days that

were” indicates loss, longing and haunting that surround this depiction of home. Home

becomes a symbolic imagining or an act of nostalgic reconstruction, rather than a set of

‘real’ geographic locations. I will argue that the space of Helstonleigh in these texts acts

as a device that reveals the ideological operations of the domestic – the inclusions and

exclusions, based on class and nationality. In this way, the desire (for a shared history or

a communal identity) that underpins the construction of Englishness is evident.

Helstonleigh becomes the site upon which an ideal of Englishness is staged, threatened,

policed and upheld. This will be furthered explored through a closer analysis of

detection in The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles.

The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles

The plot of The Channings revolves around two prominent Helstonleigh families: the

Channings and the Yorkes. In the first chapter, an initial misdemeanour occurs when, in

a schoolboy prank, a bottle of ink is tipped on to a chorister’s vestment. While the

culprit is not publicly revealed, young Charlie Channing witnesses the suspicious-

looking Gerald Yorke discarding an inkbottle. While this incident seems somewhat

minor, it foreshadows the novel’s central detection plot involving the older brothers of

the two boys. When Charlie’s older brother, Arthur, is suspected in the theft of twenty

pounds from his workplace, the shame of suspicion plagues the Channing family. While

321

Ellen (Mrs Henry) Wood, Mrs Halliburton's Troubles (1862; London: Bentley, 1897), pp.56-

57. All subsequent references to Mrs Halliburton's Troubles will be to this edition and will

appear in the body of the text. 322

Ellen (Mrs Henry) Wood, Roland Yorke (1869: London: Bentley, 1892), p. 352. All

subsequent references to Roland Yorke will be to this edition and will appear in the body of the

text.

98

Arthur’s employer, Mr Galloway, eventually calls off official investigations into the

affair, Arthur’s questionable behaviour still exacerbates suspicions amongst the

Helstonleigh townspeople. The reader is aware, however, that Arthur did not take the

money, and is actually screening suspicion from his own brother, the eldest Channing

son, Hamish, who is known to be in financial difficulty. Hamish was present at the

scene of the crime and has lately been acting in a mysterious manner. The detective

investigating the theft – Butterby – is an ambivalent figure who presents a distinct threat

to the Channing family and to the peace of Helstonleigh. Inevitably, the real thief turns

out to be another employee (and older brother of the schoolboy prankster), Roland

Yorke, who confesses his crime, exonerating Arthur and the Channings and, by

association, implicating his own family, the Yorkes. During the course of the novel, the

middle-class home of the Channings is scrutinised and valorised, while the more

aristocratic and half-Irish Yorke family are denigrated as corrupt and criminal. Wood

employs a similar formula for Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, which is again set in

Helstonleigh, and revolves around the virtuous and industrious Halliburton family and

the extravagant and indolent Dare family.323

The first minor crime is the theft of a

cheque by the son of the prominent Dare family, Cyril. Sergeant Delves, the official

detective in this novel, detects and conceals Cyril’s crime to maintain the reputation of

the well-respected Dare family. Later, the family is implicated in murder when the

eldest son, Anthony, is violently killed in their home, and his brother, Herbert, arrested

as the prime suspect. In this instance, Sergeant Delves is strangely written out of the text

just as he seems cognisant of the murderer – a passionate and dangerous Italian

governess. In both novels, the criminals confess to their crimes and escape legal

punishment. In The Channings and Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, the proliferating figures

of detectives and criminals illuminate, negotiate, police and breach the boundaries of

Englishness.

In an analysis of The Channings and Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, it is useful to consider

their original conditions of publication as serialised fiction in The Quiver during 1861

and 1862. Patricia Anderson refers to The Quiver in this period as “sober and

unillustrated” including fiction and non-fiction with “strong religious and moralistic

323

The similarity of these two plots was noted by the Athenaeum reviewer, Lena Eden, who

writes that Mrs Halliburton's Troubles is “little better than a repetition of The Channings”. Rev.

of Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, Athenaeum, 731.

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overtones”.324

The original sub-title of this rather austere weekly magazine was

“Designed for the Defence and Promotion of Biblical Truth, and the Advancement of

Religion in the Homes of the People.”325

Clearly, publication in this magazine required

Wood to produce works that were more scrupulously moralistic and conservative than

East Lynne. As Maunder writes in his discussion of similar publications:

The domesticated, religious and conservative accents of these magazines

with their emphasis on ‘usefulness’ and ‘instruction’ are not ones that

we immediately associate with sensation fiction but there were several

novelists – Ellen Wood, and the lesser known Mary Cecil Hay among

them – who were seen to offer a less morally ambiguous form of

sensationalism than many of their contemporaries, mixing the sacred

and secular and using sensational techniques for religious ends which

made them more acceptable.326

Accordingly, the depiction of the industrious and pious Channing and Halliburton

families in the novels conforms to certain reader expectations generated by the

periodical itself. Both novels are rather didactic – depicting the success and happiness

of families that uphold Christian values and the failures of those who merely pay lip

service to religion.327

This is made explicit in Mrs Halliburton's Troubles when the

Halliburton and Dare families are compared:

The young Halliburtons, their cousins once removed, had knelt and

thanked God for the day’s good, even though that day to them had

been what all their days were now, one of poverty and privation. Not

so the Dares. As children for they were not in a heathen land, they had

been taught to say their prayers at night; but as they grew older, the

custom was suffered to fall into disuse. The family attended church on

Sundays, grandly attired, and there ended their religion (p.174).

324

Patricia Anderson, “Illustration”, Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society, eds. J. Don

Vann and Rosemary T. VanArsdel (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994), p.140. 325

Simon Nowell Smith, The House of Cassell: 1848-1958 (London: Cassell, 1958), pp.59-60. 326

Andrew Maunder, “Mapping the Victorian Sensation Novel”: 25. 327

Additionally, while most of Wood’s early novels, would end with some implicit reference to

Christian values, The Channings and Mrs Halliburton's Troubles conclude explicitly with

quotes from the Psalms. Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles concludes with Psalm 91:14, “Because he

hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him up because he hath known

my name” (p.461). The Channings concludes with Psalm 37:25, “I have been young, and now

am old; and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread” (p.454).

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This technique of comparison is established in The Channings where the differences

between the well-reared and respectful Channing family and the self-willed and

arrogant Yorkes are marked. The Yorke family constantly quarrel among themselves

and have a “noisy scrambling, uncomfortable sort of home”, whereas the Channings’

home “was ever full of love, calm and peace”. The narrator knowingly asks: “Can you

guess where the difference lay?” (p.31). This allusion to the importance of religious

instruction in a successful English home is one that The Quiver repeatedly invoked for

its readers with columns such as “Our Pulpit”, “Scripture Explained”, “Eminent

Christians” and “Progress of the Truth” which detailed the successes of missionary

work. One reviewer remarked upon Wood’s insertion of religion into the plot of The

Channings:

the instructive passages, the Scriptural quotations, and the teachings of

parental wisdom, come in very heavily. They are put in as a matter of

business, because it is right that people of the supposed character,

under the supposed circumstances, should say something of the sort.

They are quite proper and true, and the authoress evidently feels

honestly their propriety and truth. There is no sham or humbug in

them, but they come in exactly as grace comes in at dinner-time. 328

For Wood, religion is both an essential part of a successful home, and of the English

nation, nevertheless, as the reviewer suggests, it also forms part of her marketing

strategy. This emphasis on religion and morality becomes important to the depiction of

the detective figures in the narratives, depictions that expose the class politics at work in

all three novels.

In The Channings, when a twenty-pound note is stolen from Mr Galloway’s offices, the

detective Mr Butterby is summoned. At this point, we learn that:

Mr Butterby puzzled Helstonleigh. He was not an inspector, he was

not a sergeant, he was not a common officer, and he was never seen in

official dress. Who was Mr Butterby? Helstonleigh wondered. That he

had a great deal to do with the police, was one of their staff, and

received his pay, was certain; but, what his standing might be, and

what his particular line of duty, they could not tell. Sometimes he was

absent from Helstonleigh for months at a time, probably puzzling

328

Rev. of The Channings, Saturday Review, 540.

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other towns. Mr Galloway would have told you he was a detective; but

perhaps Mr Galloway’s grounds for the assertion existed in his own

opinion. For convenience-sake we will call him a detective;

remembering, however, that we have no authority for the term (p.149).

This is an ambivalent depiction of Butterby, with his “standing” and “authority” in

detection clearly destabilised. As Lillian Nayder argues in her exploration of Victorian

detection and sensation narratives, this type of fiction “blurs the boundary between

detection and crime” with detectives often proving to be “the most suspicious

figures”.329

A similar tone is evident in Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, as the official

detective, Sergeant Delves, is first encountered when the lawyer Anthony Dare uses him

for his own, underhanded purposes. Dare enlists Delves’ services in order to investigate

a stolen cheque, and instructs him to “work sub rosâ – you understand” and urges that

“any information you may obtain, bring quietly to me” (p.230). Their conspiratorial

relationship raises doubts as to the integrity of the detective, especially as we discover

that the unscrupulous Mr Dare “had had dealings with [Delves] before” (p.230).

Moreover, Delves is described as “a portly man with a padded breast and a red face,

who, in his official costume, always looked as if he were choking” (p.230). Ian Ousby

argues that this passage constructs Delves as “a resoundingly lower middle-class and

mildly comic bureaucrat”.330

But Delves seems to be a more sinister figure than Ousby

recognises. His ability to ‘delve’ into the domestic secrets of Helstonleigh residents for

nefarious purposes, takes on a disquieting air. Thus, in both novels, the ‘official’

detectives hold an ambiguous class position, which undermines their authority in

detection.331

These are figures who seem unable to protect Helstonleigh from any

potential threats and even pose dangers themselves. Wood overtly questions the

professional detectives’ abilities to detect and alleviate threats to the privacy and

respectability of middle-class homes. While they may have legal powers, for Wood,

these detectives lack moral authority.

329

Lillian Nayder, “Victorian Detective Fiction”, A Companion to the Victorian Novel, eds.

William Baker and Kenneth Womack (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002), p.178. 330

Ousby, p. 113. 331

Indeed, Delves in particular resembles Dickens’ famous Inspector Bucket from Bleak House

(1853). However, in Bleak House, Bucket successfully solves a murder, whereas in The

Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, Butterby and Delves do not have anything like his

power or success in detection.

102

In both novels, the official detectives have their authority in detection subverted. In The

Channings, Butterby’s investigations are undermined when he suspects Arthur

Channing as the thief of Mr Galloway’s twenty pounds. The chapter in which police

come to arrest Arthur at the Channings’ home is entitled “An Interrupted Dinner” and

creates a sensational spectacle of the disrupted domestic space. The scene is described

as follows:

The disturbed dinner-table; the consternation of those assembled at it;

Mr Channing (whose sofa, wheeled to the table, took up the end

opposite his wife) gazing around with a puzzled, stern expression; Mrs

Channing glancing behind her with a sense of undefined dread; the

pale, conscious countenances of Arthur and Constance; Tom standing

up in haughty impetuosity, defiant of everyone; the lively terror of

Charley’s face, as he clung to Arthur; and the wide-opened eyes of

Annabel expressive of nothing but surprise – for it took a great deal to

alarm that careless young lady; while at the door, holding it open for

Arthur, stood Judith in her mob-cap, full of curiosity; and in the

background the two policemen (pp.162-3).

The presence of the police in the house and the Channings’ reactions of “dread”,

“terror” and “surprise” create a display of alarm and disorder. There is a clear emphasis

upon the intrusion into a private, family ritual. It becomes clear that Butterby’s actions

have motivated the proceedings against Arthur as we learn “it was not Mr Galloway

who had driven matters to this extremity … Mr Butterby had assumed the

responsibility, and acted upon it” (p.167). Indeed, as soon as Galloway returns to town

and discovers that criminal proceedings against Arthur are underway, he exclaims

“Butterby has exceeded his orders” (p.173). Furthermore, we learn that Butterby has a

reputation for meddling in the affairs of others, when Williams, the church organist,

recounts a previous incident involving the theft of a ring by a local woman. Williams

declares that Butterby’s investigation was not wanted, and that, “it produced great

annoyance; all parties concerned, even those who had lost the ring, would rather have

buried it in silence” (p.184). This preference to have unpleasant events “buried in

silence” is repeated in the present case when Galloway refuses to swear in court that he

put the banknote in the envelope from where it went missing. As a result, the

magistrates end the case against Arthur Channing, leading an angry Butterby to declare

“I have been checkmated” (p.189). This ‘checkmating’ of Butterby recalls Charles

Dickens’ description of a detective’s investigations as ‘games of chess, played with live

103

pieces”.332

More importantly though, this episode also mirrors the events of the Road

Murder investigation in 1860, in which Detective Whicher’s case was dismissed in

court. This courtroom scene in the Channings has marked similarities to that of the

unsuccessful prosecution of Constance Kent due to lack of evidence, after which,

Whicher was criticised in the press for disturbing the middle-class home of the Kent

family. Summerscale details the barrister’s argument that depicted Whicher as “vulgar,

greedy, rapacious” and suggested that “the policeman was a clumsy, lower-class

despoiler of a virginal innocent”.333

In these accounts, Whicher was depicted as

suspiciously lower-class and a dangerous meddler, a depiction that I would argue Wood

borrowed for her characterisation of Butterby in The Channings. Following this episode

in The Channings, the authority in detection shifts for the remainder of the novel and

the official detective in the case, Butterby, is rendered powerless.

In Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, a similar subversion of the official detective, Sergeant

Delves is perceptible. However, instead of being overtly challenged by other authority

figures, the subversion occurs when the detective is strangely written out of the

narrative just as he seems to detect the murderer of Anthony Dare. He describes himself

as “baffled” by the crime but then astutely insists that “I could almost have been upon

oath at the time that the murderer was in the house; hadn’t left it” (p.381). Delves’

further conversation with Herbert Dare, suggests that he has correctly pinpointed the

murderer as Mademoiselle Varsini, the Dare family’s governess:

“To suspect any girl is ridiculous,” observed Herbert Dare. “No girl, it

is to be hoped, would possess the courage or the strength to

accomplish such a deed as that.”

“You don’t know ‘em as we police do,” nodded the sergeant. “I was

asking your father only a day or two ago, whether he could make sure

of his servants, that they had not been in it – ”

“Of our servants?” interrupted Herbert, in surprise. “What an idea!”

(p.382).

332

Charles Dickens, “Detective Police,” Household Words (27 Jul., 10 Aug. 1850). Reprinted in

Charles Dickens: Selected Journalism 1850-70, ed. David Pascoe (London: Penguin, 1997),

p.261. 333

Summerscale, pp.156-158.

104

However, Delves’ ability to solve the murder is circumvented as this is his final

appearance in the novel and, like the shift in detection in The Channings, the power to

produce the narrative of the crime is transferred to the middle class.

In these novels, the narratives are organised to undermine the power of the police

detectives: a class of men who often derive from the lower classes and whose

occupation is dubious in the eyes of the middle class. These attitudes regarding the

detectives were influenced by depictions generated in novels and magazines of the

period. Indeed, Delves in particular resembles Dickens’ famous Inspector Bucket from

Bleak House (1853). However, in Bleak House, the intrusive Bucket successfully solves

a murder, whereas in The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, Wood refuses to

allow Butterby or Delves the power or success of Dickens’ detective. Bucket’s earlier

incarnation, Inspector Field, from Dickens’ journalism in Household Words, is another

possible influence for Wood. In “On Duty with Inspector Field”, Dickens’ detective

searches out crime with his “shrewd” and “roving” eye, and would have informed

Wood’s constructions of her official detectives.334

Moreover, an aspect of Dickens’

detective figures which would have been particularly troubling for Wood, arises in the

two-part article, “Detective Police” wherein, despite being “respectable-looking men; of

perfectly good deportment”, the reader becomes aware that the officers operate closely

among the criminal and lower classes in the course of their duties. This blurring of class

divisions creates character types who would be deemed morally ambiguous, and thereby

inappropriate guardians of Wood’s English homes.335

Furthermore, Dickens’ narratives

tend to accentuate the power of the police to detect criminality and deviance. His

depictions of seemingly omniscient detectives have led recent critics to point out his

naïve faith and exaggeration.336

Nevertheless, these powerful figures would have been

troubling for the Victorian middle classes, lest they turn their searching eyes outside of

the slums. Although Simon Joyce argues that Dickens might be attempting to encourage

334

Charles Dickens, ‘On Duty With Inspector Field’ Household Words (14 June 1851).

Reprinted in Charles Dickens: Selected Journalism 1850-70, ed David Pascoe (London:

Penguin, 1997), pp.306, 308. 335

In Conan Doyle’s late-nineteenth century detective stories, Sherlock Holmes would

frequently disguise himself and mix with those of dubious moral character with impunity. 336

Simon Joyce, for example, suggests that Dickens provides a ‘fantasy of police power’ in that

a detective squad of eight officers seems to control London’s entire criminal element, in Capital

Offenses: Geographies of Class and Crime in Victorian London (Charlottesville: University of

Virginia Press, 2003), pp.122-3. See also, Martin Kayman, p.109, who emphasises the

“mystification” of the detection process and “almost magical level of mastery” which Dickens

bestows upon his detectives.

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“much-needed public confidence in the new detective force” this makes them all the

more suspicious for Wood.337

Indeed, Butterby, in particular, is constructed as a kind of

spy or neighbourhood gossip, poking and prying into private affairs, leading Hamish

Channing to label him as a “confounded old meddler” (p.180). The subversion of

official detectives in The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, suggests a wish

for limitations on police power and a desire for more respectable figures of moral

authority to police English homes.338

The circumvention of the police detectives and the lack of faith in legal channels is

something that is conveyed from the outset of both texts, as an opposition between legal

and moral justice is firmly established. In The Channings, this occurs when the

Channing family discover that their Chancery suit, involving a large amount of money,

has been lost. The narrator informs the reader that this suit, “ought, long ago, to have

devolved peaceably to Mr Channing” (p.11) which is emphasised as Mr Channing

maintains that, “it was mine by full right of justice, though it now seems that the law

was against me” (p.14). Similarly, early in Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, the Dares

defraud the Halliburtons of a fortune from a mutual relative. Julia and Anthony Dare are

present at the deathbed decision of Julia’s uncle to alter his will and bequeath half his

fortune to Mr Halliburton. Both Mr and Mrs Dare witness the statement:

I, Richard Cooper, do repent of my injustice to my dear nephew,

Edgar Halliburton. And I desire, by this my last act on my death-bed,

to bequeath him the half of the money and property I shall die

possessed of; and I charge Anthony Dare, the executor of my will, to

carry out this act and wish as strictly as though it were a formal and

legal one. I desire that whatever I shall die possessed of, save the

bequests to my servants, may be equally divided between my nephew

Edgar and my niece Julia (p.54).

Although this final request is not overtly “formal and legal”, it is explicitly an attempt to

remedy “injustice”. This is emphasised when in his death throes, Mr Cooper again

refers to the “injustice” of his current will and says to Anthony: “Julia has no right to

more than her half share; she must not take more: money kept by wrong, acquired by

injustice never prospers” (p.55). This statement is portentous for the Dare family, with

337

Joyce, p.123. 338

I will return to this point later, in my discussion of the transformation of the detective

Butterby, in Roland Yorke.

106

their later fall from grace explicitly aligned with this earlier injustice as Mr Dare

concludes: “Ill-gotten money brings nothing but a curse, and that money brought it to

us” (p.447).339

In both novels, this early distinction between what is legally right and

what is morally right is significant to a consideration of detection. These early incidents

establish doubt regarding official legal channels whilst valorising an alternative form of

moral law. In a similar way, in policing the boundaries of Englishness in the novels, the

official detectives are inadequate moral guardians and this responsibility is reassigned to

the middle classes.

Once the detectives, Delves and Butterby, have been subverted, detection nevertheless

persists in the novels through the actions of other characters. As Kayman astutely

remarks, “it is far from always the detective who solves the mystery” and the

representation of detection in fiction “permits the interrogation of this model of

mastery”.340

In The Channings, much of the dispersed detection is evident as

surveillance within the Channings’ home. When the Channings’ eldest son, Hamish,

exhibits behaviour changes, his siblings, Arthur and Constance, closely monitor him.

They are assisted by the loyal servant to the Channing family, Judith, who observes any

changes to the routines of the household. Later, the local lawyer, Mr Huntley, attempts

to discover the truth about the banknote theft, using his professional knowledge, a

depiction that invites comparison with Archibald Carlyle’s disciplinary detection in

East Lynne. However, in The Channings, Huntley acts in the private role of a family

friend to the Channings and his detection is less successful than Carlyle’s. In Mrs

Halliburton’s Troubles, the function of detection is also dispersed. In this novel there is

a binary established in which the novel’s hardworking, middle-class hero, William

Halliburton, claims a position in the discourse of detection whereas the clever

governess, Bianca Varsini, is excluded.

Even prior to the theft of the banknote, suspicions are raised within the household about

the eldest son Hamish. Firstly, as Arthur learns of Hamish’s extensive debts, we are told

that “a dark shadow had fallen upon his spirit, as a forerunner of evil” (p.58). Following

directly from this passage, the housekeeper Judith confides in the Channings’ eldest

339

The wrongdoings of the Dare children resonate with Samuel Smiles’ assertion that: “The

characters of parents are thus constantly repeated in their children; and the acts of affection,

discipline, industry, and self-control, which they daily exemplify, live and act when all else

which may have been learned through the ear has long been forgotten” (p.361). 340

Kayman, p.98.

107

daughter, Constance, telling her that she has noticed Hamish sitting up in his room,

burning candles at night. As a result, Judith has been monitoring his nightly activities,

and describes her surveillance: “I moved my bed round to the other corner so as I could

see his window as I lay in it; and I have got myself into a habit of waking up at all hours

and looking” (p.61). With the emphasis on Hamish’s suspicious nightly activities the

reader assumes that they are connected to his spiralling debts. This intensifies when

Arthur discovers that, soon after the theft, Hamish’s debts have been repaid. At this

point, the reader is addressed: “You, my reader, will probably have glanced at it as

suspiciously as did Arthur Channing ... He knew himself that he himself had not

touched the money, and no one else had been left with it, except Hamish” (p.144). This

impression continues as we are constantly given access to the troubled thoughts of

Arthur but are restricted from those of Hamish. While we later discover that Arthur is

misreading the signs of Hamish’s guilt (just as Butterby does), this misdirection by the

narrator leads to a similarly false impression for the reader.341

However what is

significant here is that domestic space is filled with detectives with a vested interest in

protecting the good name of the family. Judith, the housekeeper, is loyal to the

Channing family, and hence does not present the threat that Butterby represents. Later,

the authority in detection shifts, when close family friend and respected Helstonleigh

lawyer – Mr Huntley – resolves to investigate. He states, “[i]f there is a mystery, I’ll try

to come to the bottom of it” and we are told that “Mr Huntley was one of the few who

read character strongly and surely, and he knew Arthur was incapable of doing wrong”

(p.226). Hamish’s budding relationship with Huntley’s daughter, Ellen, is also another

motivation for her father to take on the role of detective. Huntley warns his daughter

that, by association with the Channings, their home is at risk as he declares that Hamish

has “forfeited my regard now, as he must forfeit that of all good men” (p.266). The

increasing surveillance of, and detection into, the affairs of the Channings leads Huntley

to confess his suspicion that Arthur and Hamish colluded in the theft. Although he is

wrong, he is given authority to detect the crime and to defend the ideal English home of

the Channings fulfilling the role of moral policeman in a way that Butterby cannot.

Detection in The Channings is a dispersed activity, conducted in the interest of

protecting the middle-class home and family, but it is only a confession from the

criminal that will finally ‘solve’ the mystery.

341

It eventually emerges that the suspicious activities and improved finances of Hamish result

from nothing more than a concealed second career as a journalist, but at this point in the novel,

misdirection is necessary to conceal the identity of the actual thief until the conclusion.

108

In Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, the reader is positioned to witness and judge the contest

of detection between William Halliburton and Mademoiselle Varsini. When the reader

is made aware that Cyril Dare has stolen a cheque from his employer, Mr Ashley, the

novel’s characters remain unaware of this fact. As a result, when the Dare family’s

governess, Mademoiselle Varsini, suspects Cyril’s guilt, the reader is in a position to

affirm her superiority in detecting what we already know. Varsini remarks to Cyril’s

older brother Herbert:

“It must have been Cyril who robbed Mr Ashley.”

“Mademoiselle!” interrupted Herbert indignantly.

“Ecoutez mon ami. He was blanched as white as a mouchoir, while

your father spoke of it at dinner – and did you see that he could not

eat? ‘You look guilty, Monsieur Cyril,’ I said to myself, not really

thinking him to be so. But, be persuaded it was no other. He must have

taken the paper-money – or what you call it – and come home here for

your cloak and cap to wear, while he changed it for gold (p.250).

The narrator makes this point explicit: “Ay, never was there a shrewder than Bianca

Varsini. Mr Sergeant Delves was not a bad hand at ferreting out conclusions; but she

would have beat the sergeant hollow” (pp.249-50). Later, Varsini’s misguided

affections for Herbert Dare lead her to follow him one night, where she sees him

rendezvous with the pretty villager, Anna Lynn. After her surveillance, Varsini, with a

“face like a tiger” falls into a jealous rage, which results in the novel’s sensational

murder.342

This image of the tiger is one used in Joseph Stapleton’s, The Great Crime of

1860 to speculate about the effect of Mrs Kent’s hereditary insanity upon her murderous

daughter, Constance Kent: “The tiger’s cub is at first an amusing and gentle playfellow

to handle and to pet; but it will, on quick occasion, show that it inherits, with a tiger’s

face and fangs, a tiger’s instincts too”.343

Like this depiction of Constance Kent, Varsini

has inherited her “mother’s temper” (p.232) and is a dangerous occupant of the Dare

home. However, Varsini is not the only voyeur to these lovers’ trysts. The novel’s

virtuous hero, William Halliburton, also detects a secrecy between Herbert and Anna

Lynn when he observes the pair exchanging “glances of confidence – as if they had a

342

The depiction of Varsini resembles that of Mademoiselle Hortense in Charles Dickens, Bleak

House. Mademoiselle Hortense murders the lawyer, Tulkinghorn, and when she is exposed as

the murderer, is described as “tigerish” (p.648), tigress-like (652) and is referred to, by Inspector

Bucket, as an “intemperate foreigner” (p.648). 343

As cited in Mangham, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction, p.61.

109

private mutual understanding” (p.273). He confirms his suspicions, like Varsini, by

spying on a secret meeting between the two lovers. However, in contrast to Varsini,

William’s surveillance shores up his role as moral policeman as he warns Anna Lynn

about the damage to her reputation and the “incalculable harm in the eyes of the world”

that the knowledge of these trysts would cause (p.275).344

For Wood, an authoritative

voice in the discourse of detection is based upon the class, ethnicity and status of the

individuals involved. Consequently, the novel affirms a certain type of detective as a

model: privileging the activities of the church-going, middle-class English hero,

William Halliburton, over the natural shrewdness, and emotional detection of Italian

governess, Bianca Varsini. The governess is marked out as a sinister presence within the

household.345

In contrast to the loyal Judith from The Channings, Varsini has no loyalty

to the home, and her sexually motivated surveillance is registered within the text as a

threat.

344

William’s role as moral policeman extends to the lower class inhabitants of Honey Fair. The

free intrusion of middle-class hero William Halliburton (and indeed the narrator) into the lower-

class homes of the residents of Honey Fair in Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles points to the class

politics that intersect with issues of privacy in the novel. In her Athenaeum review, Lena Eden

quips, “the improvement of Honey Fair … is chiefly brought about by collecting the men

together after working hours, and given them a comfortable room to sit in, good books to read,

pleasant little lectures, and, above all, friendly sympathy” (731). 345

I will turn to an analysis of Varsini’s foreignness in due course. In opposition, Wood

endorses a model of English womanhood that draws upon images of Queen Victoria. In The

Channings, the virtuous Constance Channing is governess to the indolent Caroline Yorke and

questions her habit of late-rising. Caroline argues that early rising is not for ‘real ladies’, and

declares that “Mary Joliffe says she never gets up until half-past eight, and that it is not lady-

like to get up earlier” (p.186). In response, Constance narrates a story about how the Duchess of

Kent instilled the habit of early rising in her daughter Princess Victoria who is now the “first

lady in the land” (p.186). Here, Wood’s model of proper English womanhood includes the idea

of self-discipline and resonates with Isabella Beeton’s prescription in The Book of Household

Management (London, 1861), p.2, that “[e]arly rising is one of the most essential qualities

which enter into good Household Management”. Hence, Constance acknowledges that Colonel

Jollife’s daughters are ladies, but “in position” only (p.186). Interestingly, Mary’s sister, Louisa

Joliffe becomes the model of inadequate, unprincipled and even dangerous Victorian

womanhood in Roland Yorke, seven years later. Wood’s ideas echo those of Elizabeth Eastlake,

née Rigby, from “Lady Travellers” in Quarterly Review 76 (1845): 98-137, who describes the

ideal English middle-class woman and argues that: “The truth is that no foreign nation possesses

that same class of women from which the great body of our female tourists are drafted. They

have not the same well-read, solid thinking, — early rising — sketch-loving — light-footed —

trim-waisted — strawed-hatted specimen of women; educated with the refinement of the highest

classes, and with the usefulness of the lowest; all-sufficient companion to her husband, and all-

sufficient lady's maid to herself” (Reprinted in Harriet Devine Jump, Women’s Writing of the

Victorian Period, 1837-1901: An Anthology (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), p.42). This

model of Englishness is of an educated, practical, vigorous, and yet feminine and well-

mannered woman. Class and nationality intersect in the depiction of Victorian Englishness.

110

The collision of Englishness and foreignness is explicitly staged at the conclusion of

The Channings, when it is discovered that the aristocratic, half-Irish Roland Yorke is

the thief of the banknote. However, Roland is not punished, and instead, guilt tends to

fall primarily upon his family who, it is suggested, have invited trouble into their home

through imprudence and extravagance. Ultimately, Roland escapes British legal

prosecution and confesses to his crime via a series of letters written just prior to

boarding the ship Africa, bound for Port Natal. His confession contributes to a

somewhat sympathetic depiction and he apologises for letting suspicion fall on Arthur,

professing that, “a gentleman born does not like to own himself a thief” (p.408). Roland

Yorke’s status as a thief undermines the earlier observation by an office clerk to Arthur,

that implies men of certain classes should be above suspicion in the theft because, as the

clerk puts it: “you and Mr Yorke are different; you are gentlemen. Mr Galloway would

no more suspect you, than he would suspect himself” (p.142). Indeed, Roland’s

confession still attempts to separate his actions from those of an ordinary ‘petty’ thief,

when he argues: “I never meant to steal the note. I am not a Newgate thief, yet. I was in

an uncommon fix just then, over a certain affair” (p.407). However, his confession

implies that adverse circumstances can produce the motivation for crime in any

individual – gentlemen as well as Newgate thieves. Class position does not necessarily

alleviate the potential for criminal acts. Indeed, the impression that Wood gives is that

the aristocratic pretensions of the Yorkes have contributed to their troubles.

In The Channings, following the revelation that Roland is the thief, a careful distinction

between the Yorke and Channing families is emphasised. Throughout the text there

have been signposts: we know that Roland’s mother is “daughter of an Irish peer” (p.31)

and when Roland intervenes loudly at Arthur’s public examination, we are told that

“[w]arm-hearted and generous, by fits and starts, was Roland Yorke; he had inherited it

with his Irish blood from Lady Augusta” (p.171). This ethnic difference becomes

pronounced after Roland’s confession, when Lady Augusta storms into the college

school to redress wrongs and dispel the proliferating rumours about the Channing

family. We are told that “[s]he had not come to shield Roland; and she did not care, in

her anger, how bad she made him out to be; or whether she did it in Irish or English”

(p.425). To emphasise the point, her speech becomes dominated by an Irish accent when

reprimanding her sons: “I’ll be giving ye a jacketing for ye’re pains. Let me tell ye all,

that it was not Tom Channing’s brother took the bank-note; it was their brother –

111

Gerald’s and Tod’s! It was my ill-doing boy Roland, who took it” (p.425). At the

conclusion of The Channings, the Yorkes are marked out as aberrant figures in

Helstonleigh, due to their dubious Irish origins and their inability to conform to

accepted standards of class behaviour. In this instance, Wood utilises what Mary

Poovey crystallises as the “long tradition of English prejudice” 346

against Ireland,

which in this period intersected with pseudo-scientific discourses of race and Protestant

anti-Catholicism to mark out an (inferior) Celtic race and culture, separate from

Englishness.347

In The Channings, what Poovey describes as “competing cultural strains

within the kingdoms of Great Britain”348

are manifest in the depiction of the relationship

between the Channing and Yorke families. This fantasy of English superiority is evident

in The Channings, but is modified in the sequel Roland Yorke, a tendency to which I

will return later in this chapter.

In Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, the category of foreignness is invoked more explicitly to

explore threats to the home. In this novel, the “fashionable foreign governess” (p.227)

Mademoiselle Varsini, becomes a dangerous criminal figure. Varsini is clearly marked

by her nationality when she is first encountered at the Dares’ dinner table:

You must not mistake her for a French woman; she was an Italian. She

had been a great deal in France, and spoke the language as a native ...

English also she spoke fluently, but with a foreign accent (p.227).

Varsini’s nationality is ambiguous, and her age is also questionable, as the narrator

assures us: “it is difficult to guess with certainty the age of an Italian woman” (p.227).

This follows from a close description of her face and figure, notably her olive skin and

strangely pale eyes which rendered her “peculiar-looking” (p.227). Varsini’s difference

346

Poovey, p. 65. Poovey emphasises that “even when living in England, the Irish were

consistently said to have their own (inferior) culture” (p.2). See also Eric Evans, “Englishness

and Britishness, National Identities, c. 1790–c. 1870,” Uniting the Kingdom? The making of

British History, ed. Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer (London: Routledge, 1995), pp.223-

43. Evans highlights that the influx of Irish immigrants into England, Wales and Scotland

during the nineteenth century led to widespread stereotyped representations in the popular press. 347

Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-

1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp.100-1. Here, Brantlinger discusses prevailing

beliefs in England about Irishness that circulated around the famines of the mid-nineteenth-

century. See also, Cannon Schmitt’s discussion of Irishness and the paranoia of English racial

degeneration in the Victorian period, in relation to Bram Stoker’s, Dracula (1897), pp.145-9. 348

Poovey, p. 1.

112

is unmistakeable.349

Her position in the household and her background is again

problematised as we learn that:

Mr Dare had never approved of the engagement of this foreign

governess. Mrs Dare had picked her up from an advertisement, and

had persisted in engaging her, in spite of the written references being

in French, and that she could only read one word in ten of them

(p.227).

Clearly, the Dares are inadequate managers of their home, unable to detect threats to its

security.350

Soon after, we learn that Herbert Dare and the governess are known to

engage in evening “Italian lessons” (p.231). While the narrator is reluctant to elaborate,

the suggestion of a more intimate arrangement is clear, especially when Herbert

addresses the governess by her first name in private. It becomes apparent that Bianca

Varsini is attempting to climb the social ladder when she tells Herbert that she was

raised to hope, despite her poverty, for a marriage match based on her beauty and

accomplishments, and immediately asks “Do you think me belle?” (p.233). The threat

posed by Varsini to the Dare family and home is made plain, and revolves around

Victorian anxieties of contamination and miscegenation. Varsini manipulates anxieties

regarding what Malchow describes as: “a deep, often unconscious and sexual, fear of

contamination” which threatens the “destruction of the simple and pure by the

poisonously exotic, by anarchic forces of passion and appetite, carnal lust and blood

lust”.351

While the Dare family are not represented as being ‘simple and pure’, their

hometown, Helstonleigh, certainly is. For Wood, the Dares are culpable for jeopardising

the security and moral purity of the village (and, by association, the nation) by inviting

an exotic threat into their home. Varsini confides in Herbert that her mother was an

actress, and that she has inherited her mother’s passionate temper but struggles to, as

she puts it, “let the evil spirit lie torpid” (p.234). The depiction draws upon Victorian

notions of Italians as a hot-blooded and sensual race. Furthermore, Varsini’s religious

faith is also cast on or off depending on the context as she tells Herbert candidly, “I am

a Catholic or Protestant, as is agreeable to my places” (p.235). Varsini advocates a

349

Malchow, p.5, discusses nineteenth-century gothic and racial discourse and elucidates this

focus on Varsini’s appearance where he states that there are often “readable signs of depravity

and the demonic concealed in physiognomy, dress and mannerism”. 350

Indeed, Isabella Beeton, p.7, warns the mistress of the household to inquire amongst

acquaintances or “respectable registry offices” and to “have an interview, if at all possible, with

the former mistress” to secure a domestic of good character. 351

Malchow, p.5.

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pragmatic view of religion as she later judges the utility of Catholicism over

Protestantism for a dying sinner: “the Roman Catholic religion is the most convenient to

take up when you are passing. Your priests say they cannot pardon sins” (p.442).352

Mademoiselle Varsini: lower class, female, Italian, religiously ambiguous is othered

along multiple lines of exclusion. Varsini’s presence within the Dare’s home, and her

relationship with Herbert, echoes a related anxiety regarding foreign threats to

Englishness.

Like Roland Yorke’s confession in The Channings, Wood affords the same courtesy to

the murderer of Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, Bianca Varsini, who confesses her crime to

William Halliburton. This occurs in a chance encounter, when the novel’s hero (and

bastion of Englishness) Halliburton, travels with his new wife through France and

encounters Varsini who is on her deathbed. In a similar manner to Roland Yorke’s

depiction, Varsini’s final confession contributes to a sympathetic reading of her

character. In a stilted disclosure, in which she frequently breaks into French, Varsini is

able to give her own account of the accidental killing of Anthony Dare. She asserts that

she mistook Anthony for his brother and her tormentor, Herbert, whom she only

intended to wound:

“He used me ill; yes, he used me ill, that wicked Herbert!” she

continued in agitation. “He told me stories; he was false to me; he

mocked at me! He had made me care for him; I cared for him – ah, I

not tell you how. And then he turned around to laugh at me. He had

but amused himself – pour faire passer le temps!” (p.439).

So while Varsini is revealed as the responsible party for killing Anthony, ample blame

is levelled at Herbert for his role in provoking her. William ultimately withholds the

information of her guilt, only revealing it later to key senior figures in Helstonleigh.

Furthermore, the Dare family become scapegoats for their imprudence in inviting this

foreign ‘tigress’ into their home. While in The Channings, where the Yorke family

continue their residence in Helstonleigh, and are merely excluded from good society, in

Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, the Dare family are more literally excluded, as they leave

352

This sentiment is recycled from Wood’s, “The Sequel to ‘A Word to England’” (1853). In

this piece, an anecdote by Madame de St. J ––– about the common practice of French Roman

Catholics: “You English think you must lead good lives, and spend dull Sundays, but when our

time comes to die, we send for the priest, confess, he gives us absolution, and – voilà tout”

(338).

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the town to seek asylum in Australia, “away from mortifying Helstonleigh” (p.452).

These various inclusions and exclusions contribute to the conceptualisation and policing

of Englishness in the novels.

Roland Yorke

The space of Helstonleigh and the discourse of detection feature in more complex ways

when they recur seven years later in Roland Yorke (1869). Roland Yorke is the

sensationalised sequel to The Channings, published in the Argosy. The difference in

tone and audience between the Quiver, where The Channings was serialised, and the

Argosy, is reflected in the more sensational content of Roland Yorke. The Argosy was

marketed as a family magazine, in contrast to the more sober tone of The Quiver, and

while Wood’s serialised fiction was always domestic, the overt religiosity and austerity

of The Channings is muted in the sequel. The Athenaeum reviewer points to the

importance of mystery and detection in the later novel:

This is a story after a type not unknown to the readers of Mrs Wood’s

novels. A murder is started, pursued, worried, treated in fact like a

hunted criminal. Anxious to find its proper home, it seeks refuge, first

under a flimsy disguise of suicide, then in the arms of this or that

innocent person. The most unlikely persons are pitched upon

inevitably by the reader, and the lead author of the disaster is

untouched by suspicion up to the very last moment. We must, in

fairness, give Mrs Wood credit for much care and ingenuity in keeping

us in the dark so long.353

As this reviewer emphasises, the focus of Roland Yorke is the mysterious death of a

young lawyer, John Ollivera, in Helstonleigh. This is the locale of the narrative’s

opening “Prologue” that depicts the burial of Ollivera, the coroner’s inquest and various

inquiries by the detective, Butterby. The second part of the story begins four years later,

in the solicitor’s office of Ollivera’s cousin, Bede Greatorex, in London. Here, we are

reintroduced to Roland Yorke, the aristocratic thief from The Channings who returns

home to England from Africa as a changed man – becoming a more conventional,

middle-class hero. He is now working as a clerk in the solicitor’s office alongside

various other minor characters from The Channings who have relocated to London. In

353

Almaric Rumsey [unsigned], “New Novels,” Rev. of Roland Yorke by Mrs Henry Wood,

Athenaeum (October 16, 1869): 495.

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this context, the story of the murder is retold, and when Butterby reappears to

investigate the theft of a cheque in the solicitor’s office, he finds that the key figures in

the old murder are in London and begins covertly reinvestigating. Again, as I will show,

Helstonleigh functions as an important space in the novel, but London features as the

primary setting. These places become more complex in Roland Yorke, developing

beyond the simple binary of destructive London/restorative Helstonleigh depicted in

Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles. The criminal figure of the text, is the solicitor (and

murderer), Bede Greatorex, who confesses in a letter that he and Ollivera were engaged

to the same woman and argued heatedly. Bede explains that his shooting of his cousin

was caused by a temporary madness, engendered by his (dangerously foreign) Spanish

blood. Again, there are many detective figures, but importantly, the depiction of the

detective, Butterby, evolves in this novel. In a similar way to The Channings and Mrs

Halliburton’s Troubles, discourses of Englishness circulate in representations of

detection, home and nation.

From the outset of the novel in the “Prologue”, a gothicised Helstonleigh is established.

In the first chapter, “In the Moonlight”, Helstonleigh is reintroduced as “a certain

cathedral town, of which most of you have heard before” (p.1).354

However, the

formerly restful rural village, Helstonleigh, is now depicted in a sinister light, as it is

“close upon midnight” (p.1) and various townspeople are silently stealing to an

abandoned churchyard to attend the burial of a recently-suicided young lawyer. Here,

Wood employs gothic conventions to hold up a refracted mirror to home and

Helstonleigh. It is not the peaceful, idealised place of home from The Channings and

Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles. Indeed, and as I discussed in the first section of this

chapter, when Roland Yorke returns ‘home’ later in the novel, the strangeness of

Helstonleigh is emphasised. It is a different space that, by the end of the novel, will be

seen as an inadequate locale to support Wood’s modified version of Englishness.

Roland Yorke departs from the formula of the previous two novels as Helstonleigh

becomes an uncanny site and home becomes a more complex space.

In opposition to The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, where crime and

detection form subplots to the main narratives, the suspicious death of Ollivera and the

354

This is a strategy that is typical of Wood, as an attempt to encourage readers to seek out her

earlier works.

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detection of his killer, forms the central narrative of Roland Yorke. In the first chapter,

John Ollivera is buried without a service:

Amidst a dead silence, disturbed only by the creaking of the cords,

amidst a shiver of sympathy, of pity, of awful thoughts from a great

many of the spectators, the black covering was thrown aside and the

coffin was lowered (p.5).

Furthermore, no sooner is the burial complete when a local woman – Alletha Rye –

fosters doubt over the cause of his death by her mysterious graveside declaration that

“he did not die by his own hand” (p.7). Following the dispersal of the astonished

townspeople, a small group of mourners conduct a service over the grave. These include

a clergyman – the brother of Ollivera – who declares:

From the bottom of my heart, I believe a foul murder to have been

committed on my good and dear brother. It shall be the business of my

life to endeavour to bring it to light, to clear his name from the cruel

stain resting upon it; and my whole time, apart from what must be

spent in my appointed duties, shall be devoted to this end (p.10).

From this gothic opening chapter in the graveyard, there follows a methodical

description of the known movements of Ollivera in the days leading up to his death.

Following this, we are told that:

Five hundred conjectures were hazarded and spoke: five hundred tales

circulated that had no foundation. Perhaps the better way to collect the

various items together for the reader, will be to transcribe some of the

evidence given before the coroner. The inquest took place on the

Wednesday morning, in the club-room of an inn near at hand (21).

This novel foregrounds the narrative of the crime: the conjectures, tales and evidence

that circulate around the death of Ollivera, and Wood proposes a surprising figure to

resolve this central mystery.

In this first part of the novel, the character of the title: Roland Yorke, does not appear.

Instead, the narrative revolves around the figure of Butterby, the detective, as he

investigates the crime. Butterby is introduced during the first chapter of the “Prologue”.

As the midnight burial is occurring, we are told that:

117

In the churchyard, having taken up his station behind an upright

tombstone, where tombstones were numerous, stood an officer

connected with the police. He was in plain clothes – in fact, no one

remembered to have seen him in other ones – and had come out to-night

not officially but to gratify himself personally. Ensconced behind the

stone, away from everyone, he could look on at leisure and take his own

observations, not only of the ceremony about to be performed, but of

those who were attending it. He was a spare, middle-sized man, with a

pale face, deeply sunk green eyes, that had a habit of looking steadily at

people, and a small, sharp, turned-up nose. Silent by nature and by habit,

he imparted the idea of possessing a great amount of keenness as a

detector of crime: in his own opinion he had not in that respect an equal.

No one could discern him, and he did not intend that they should (p.5).

As in The Channings, Butterby is again an ambiguous figure. He is connected with the

police, but is present in an unofficial capacity. He hides, takes notes on the events that

occur, and concludes the chapter with the observation that the night’s events form “the

queerest start we’ve had in this town for many a day” (p.10). This signals that, in this

sequel, Butterby will take more of a central role. Despite the fact that this initial

description casts doubt on Butterby’s actual powers in detecting crime – he merely

imparts the “idea” of keenness in detection and “in his own opinion” he has no equal –

he is fairly successful in this novel. During the coroner’s inquest into Ollivera’s death,

his “keen-eyed” presence is barely noticed and he is described as: “looking on

unobtrusively from a remote nook of the room” (33). This is a marked difference to his

bold interfering and failures in The Channings. I would argue that an important

influence upon this more favourable depiction of Butterby is the intervening seven years

in which the Road Murder had been solved and Whicher’s suspicions of Constance

Kent were corroborated. Like Whicher, Butterby has been transformed from a meddling

lower-class police detective into a more successful investigator.

The Butterby of Roland Yorke is a less threatening figure than his depiction in The

Channings suggested, as we are now given his background which suggests a lack of

official standing:

He was not a sergeant of police; he was not an inspector; people did

not know what he was. That he held sway at the police-station, and

was a very frequent visitor to it, every one saw. But Mr Butterby had

been so long in the town that speculation, though rife enough at first

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upon the point, had ceased as to what special relations he might hold

with the law. When any one wanted important assistance, he could, if

he chose, apply to Mr Butterby, instead of to the regular inspector

(p.47).

Butterby has been transformed into a valuable tool for the middle-classes to quietly

investigate. He operates in the manner of a private detective (although this is never

stated explicitly) and as an alternative to official detectives, reducing the threat to

privacy. While Butterby’s legal authority is unclear, his moral authority is more assured.

When he later reviews the Ollivera case, noticing discrepancies of evidence regarding

the alleged suicide note, he resolves to “inquire into things a little, in a quiet way”

(p.55).355

He then discreetly investigates the case. This gestures toward a politics of

detection in the novels, as Butterby’s status as a private and amateur (as opposed to an

official, public detective) allows him to increase his class status. Conan Doyle’s

consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, who is frequently pitted against the public

detective force and found to be the superior detective, will demonstrate this later in the

century.356

As Kayman asserts:

Holmes is not part of the commercial market; he works entirely for

himself, and is professionally above both state (‘government’) and

commerce (‘private’)”.357

As a result, Holmes makes middle-class

interference in the privacy of the genteel home entirely respectable

and the residual anxiety of the detective in relation to suspicions and

tyranny are totally absent.358

As in The Channings, class ideologies intersect with detection in Roland Yorke, but in

this sequel Wood is more willing to endorse Butterby as a domestic detective and

articulates this by giving him a private rather than a public standing.

355

Butterby’s ability to detect the criminal via his handwriting is a noteworthy investigative

skill. Thomas, p.12, discusses the detection process in Britain’s “first detective novel”, Bleak

House. He argues that Inspector Bucket, is able to “not simply identify the foreigner as the

criminal, but to formulate the techniques with which the detective is able to identify the

“foreignness” of the criminal in our midst, the one who threatens the entire nation as much as

any individual in it”. In Roland Yorke, Butterby is able to use handwriting, as a marker of

identity, to delineate the words of the victim from those of his killer. 356

Poe sets up this contest between the detective and the police in his 1841 story “The Murders

In the Rue Morgue”, when detective C. Auguste Dupin states: “The Parisian police, so much

extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more. There is no method in their proceedings, beyond

the method of the moment” (Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination (London: J. M.

Dent, 1984), p.425). These policemen are unable to detect the inherent foreignness of the orang-

utan criminal. 357

Kayman, p.224. 358

Kayman, p.215.

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In Roland Yorke, Butterby’s mastery in detection is emphasised. When a cheque is

stolen from the offices of Greatorex and Greatorex, Butterby is brought in to

investigate. However, he is instructed by Bede to keep his investigation concealed:

“All that I have said to you must be kept secret; doubly secret from my

father. He must suppose you to be at work, investigating; whereas, in

point of fact, the thing must drop. Only, if you can gain any private

information, bring it to me” (p.151).

When Butterby discovers that a clerk in the office, Mr Brown, is actually Godfrey

Pitman – a man wanted for questioning in regard to the death of John Ollivera, Bede

implores the detective to stop investigating: “I feel sure Pitman had no hand in the

matter … I wish this information you have given me to remain a secret between you and

me” (p.302). While Butterby agrees to this arrangement, his curiosity is piqued and he

resumes his investigation despite Bede’s injunction. In opposition to The Channings,

Butterby plays an important role in bringing events to a conclusion, but, like the earlier

narratives, ultimately leaves the murderer to confess – urging others to exercise patience

and wait until the right time for disclosure. When he is questioned by Roland as to the

outcome of the investigation, Butterby describes it as “the queerest case that ever fell

under mortal skill; and we are content for the future to let it alone” (p.452). However,

the reader is informed that Butterby “knew the truth” (p.452) about the case. This

patient, unofficial detective has evolved from the earlier Butterby of The Channings

who had been clearly ‘checkmated’ by other actors. Butterby exercises caution to ensure

that the reputation of the Greatorex family is not unduly compromised by his findings.

Indeed, one can detect the influence of Wilkie Collins’ Sergeant Cuff from The

Moonstone (1868) in Wood’s modified depiction of Butterby.359

As Thoms points out,

in Collins’ novel, “[w]hile Cuff obviously intends to detect the truth, he also intends to

suppress it” to protect the reputation of the family”.360

The detective has become an ally

to the English home.

359

Riley, p. 172, makes this point when she notes that “Butterby develops from the same literary

milieu as Dickens’s Inspector Bucket and Wilkie Collins’s Sergeant Cuff”. 360

Thoms, p.95. However, Worthington, p. 172, points to “Sergeant Cuff’s failure to read the

clues correctly and reach the right conclusion while in the Verinder household: once the case

moves beyond the bounds of domesticity, Cuff is shown to be able to function efficiently once

again”. Butterby, in Roland Yorke, is a more successful domestic detective, something that

Wood will explore further in her Johnny Ludlow stories, a topic I address in Chapter Three.

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Despite a new emphasis upon Butterby as a benign and non-threatening investigator,

there are still other figures attempting to negotiate positions in the discourse of

detection. For example, the Reverend William Ollivera, who vowed at his brother’s

grave to uncover the mystery surrounding his death, continues his detection. A clerk in

the solicitor’s firm tells Roland that the Reverend, “has always held that Mr Ollivera did

not commit suicide, and has ever since been trying to get evidence to prove it” (p.91).

Indeed, the Reverend confronts Butterby four years later, declaring that his brother was

“barbarously murdered” and insists that: “if I were a member of the detective force,

endowed with their acuteness for discovering crime, I should have brought the matter to

light long ago” (p.193). Indeed, Ollivera’s frustration here echoes that of Barbara Hare,

in her speech to Archibald in East Lynne: “Were it in my power to do anything to

elucidate the mystery, I would spare no pains, no toil; I would walk barefooted to the

end of the earth to bring the truth to light”.361

Like Barbara, the Reverend expresses his

frustration at not having professional authority in the detection of a crime that has

deeply personal significance. Despite this, it is the Reverend who confirms the true

nature of the alleged suicide note, determining that his brother intended to write a letter

to a friend in India, and that the final scrawled, morbid words, “The pistol is ready to

my hand. Good-bye,” (p.19) must have been added by the murderer to contrive a suicide

letter. Later, his close scrutiny of Alletha Rye reveals that she is concealing information

about the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death. Again, detection is motivated

by a domestic concern: to protect the home and reputation of his own family. In another

subplot of the novel, Arthur Channing disappears, and Roland Yorke becomes a type of

detective, as he inquires haphazardly and frantically searches around London. We are

told that he “wildly dashed about” and “made small presents to policemen,” even

advertising in the Times, offering rewards for information (p.333). Given that, by the

end of the novel, Roland will marry into the Channing family, his detection is (like

Ollivera’s) motivated by familial concerns. However, Roland’s emotional and

haphazard style of detection suggests that he is a well-meaning, yet unsuitable detective

– and Wood implicitly endorses the more discreet, methodical Butterby.

In Roland Yorke, detection of foreignness remains fundamental to the plot. From our

first introduction to Bede Greatorex in Roland Yorke, his depiction is inflected with

361

Wood, East Lynne, p.238.

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foreignness in a way that recalls the representation of Roland’s Irishness in The

Channings. Bede’s countenance is specifically compared to John Ollivera’s, however,

Bede’s key distinguishing features are that: “his hair and eyes were dark, and his

complexion a clear, pale olive” (p.13). We learn that his complexion is derived from his

mother, who has “dark olive” skin and is of “Spanish extraction” (p.38). This

inheritance is extended to traits such as “constitutional indolence” derived from “his

mother’s warm Spanish blood” (p.242). Indeed, this constant emphasis upon Bede’s

half-Spanish heritage exposes the function of racist discourse. In Malchow’s discussion

of nineteenth-century images of race, he identifies that an individual of “mixed-race

parentage” was widely considered to be a “curious, unstable, and inconvenient, perhaps

dangerous, anomaly”.362

This is suggested when we are told that Bede is given to

“intemperate fits of anger” (p.137), and Butterby himself is privy to this during an

argument, when we are told that, “a lightning glance from Bede Greatorex’s fine dark

Spanish eyes flashed out on the detective” (p.186). Clearly, such depictions manipulate

(and are motivated by) anxieties regarding contamination as they construct a version of

acceptable Englishness.363

Like Bianca Varsini in Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, Bede Greatorex confesses to

murder from France on his deathbed, and like Roland Yorke’s disclosure in The

Channings, it is in the form of a confessional letter. This letter comprises the final

section of the last chapter in the book and allows Bede’s record of events to stand as an

authoritative version. In the letter he states that his motivation for the crime was Louisa

Joliffe’s deception in simultaneously becoming engaged to both him and his cousin,

John Ollivera. He characterises the effect of her deception as transforming them into

“rival tigers” and explains that, “[w]henever my Spanish blood got up I was a madman”

(p.465). He asserts that he had “no intention” of killing his cousin and insists that, “in

my mad rage I was conscious of nothing” (p.466). Nevertheless, this is followed by a

lengthy description of how he rationally contrived to conceal the crime after the fact.

Indeed, in Bede’s confession, Louisa bears the brunt of blame, when Bede indicts her,

362

Malchow, p.180. 363

Wood recycles this plot device in “The Mystery at Number Seven” (1877) in Johnny

Ludlow: Sixth Series (London: Macmillan, 1899). In this text, the murderer’s insanity is linked

directly to her foreign bloodline, as her mother was “a Spanish woman ... of a wild

ungovernable temper, subject to fits of frenzy” (46). In Wood’s text, it is the murderer’s

outwardly British appearance that is made most sinister, suggesting the anxiety regarding

miscegenation.

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labelling her “a traitor” (p.468) and explaining his decision to marry her as “sinful” as

he was “fooled” by love as he “yielded” to her charms (p.468). Indeed, just prior to

Bede’s damning confession, Louisa’s part in the crime is told, with the narrator

repeatedly highlighting her covetousness and deceit, labelling her as Bede’s “curse”

(p.463). Louisa Joliffe is ultimately marked out as the “primary cause” (p.462) of the

death of John Ollivera. However she is given no position from which to speak or defend

her role. Indeed, Bede’s confession does much to ameliorate his crimes. He explains

that:

I am not a murderer by nature, and John and I were dear friends. My

days have been one long, wearing penance: regret for him and his

shortened life, dread of my crime’s discovery; one or the other filling

every moment of my time: remorse and repentance, repentance and

remorse (p.468).

In this final letter, Bede is given the opportunity to express remorse, to admit the crime

and, most importantly, he is given the power to narrativise the events, unlike Louisa.364

He characterises himself as a suffering sinner, the victim of temporary insanity at the

mercy of his Spanish passions. It is interesting that it is the murderer, rather than the

detective, who is given the final authority to depict the events. With the death of his

oldest son, Bede, and the expulsion of his extravagant daughter-in-law, Louisa, from his

home, the father, Mr John Greatorex attempts to recuperate the ideal of the English

home with his remaining son, Frank, as we are told:

With Bede’s death, a month ago now, things in the office had

undergone some fresh arrangement. Frank Greatorex was now his

father’s sole partner. Frank was soon to bring home his wife, and it

was to be hoped that she would make a happier home of the dwelling

than its late mistress had made. There could be little doubt of it; and

Mr Greatorex stood a fair chance of regaining some of his domestic

comforts (p.456).

Frank, like Bede, is of Spanish extraction, but, for Wood, the influence of a properly

middle-class wife will enable their home to remain respectable. However, this signals a

364

Rumsey notes this injustice in his review of Roland Yorke, where he states, “We should have

liked this story better, however, if the author had bestowed less sympathy on the real murderer

and less vindictive ire on the unfortunate Louisa, who, notwithstanding her selfishness,

extravagance and coquettish disposition, should surely stand in a higher plane than a man who

shoots his cousin through the head in a sudden fit of jealousy” (495).

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modified approach by Wood, with foreignness remaining, at the end, within the

Greatorex home in London.

At this point, I wish to return to my discussion of place, and the significance of London

as the setting of these investigations. In deviating from Helstonleigh as a primary setting

for Roland Yorke, Wood draws upon familiar depictions of London as a barren, gothic

locale. London takes on a more sinister aspect when, in a subplot to the murder

narrative, Arthur Channing disappears. In Roland’s haste to discover Arthur’s

whereabouts he:

Went tearing about like a lunatic. From one place to another, from this

spot to that, backwards and forwards and round again, strode Roland.

His aspect was fierce, his hair wild. The chief places, at which he

halted by turns, were Scotland Yard, Waterloo Bridge, and the London

docks. The best that Roland’s fears could suggest was, that Arthur had

been murdered. Murdered for the sake of the money he had about him,

and then put quietly out of the way. Waterloo Bridge, bearing a

reputation for having once been a receptacle for mysterious carpet-

bags, was of course pitched up on by Roland as an ill-omened element

in the present tragedy (p.313).

This passage refers to the crime that would have been familiar to Victorian readers. In

October, 1857 the remains of a man were found in a carpet bag on the pier of Waterloo-

bridge, in a mystery that was widely reported, but never solved.365

As Kalikoff argues,

this incident demonstrated the “volatile, inexplicable nature of contemporary violent

crime” and Wood uses this famous case to inflect her own narrative with the darker

realities of Victorian London. When Arthur remains missing, it is reported in the

newspapers as “the mysterious disappearance of a public gentleman” (p.326). But the

futility of Roland’s attempts at detection is suggested in the following passage:

One very singular phase of the matter was this – so many people

appeared to be missing. The one immediately in question, Arthur

Channing, was only a unit in the number. Scarcely an hour in the day

passed but the police either received direct news of somebody’s

365

Beth Kalikoff, Murder and Moral Decay in Victorian Popular Literature (Ann Arbor: UMI

Research Press, 1986 ), p.58. This carpet bag murder is also discussed in Altick, p.133.

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disappearance; or, through their inquiries after Arthur, found it out for

themselves (p.326).

This paints a picture of London as a treacherous, modern city, a depiction echoed in

Walter Benjamin’s suggestion that in modern times “everybody will be in a situation

where he has to play detective”.366

Almost seventy years earlier than Benjamin, Wood

draws upon circulating representations of the gothic aspects of the modern city.

Certainly, a Dickensian gothic London like that of Bleak House (1853) and “Night

Walks” from The Uncommercial Traveller (1860) is perceptible. Dickens’ Great

Expectations (1861) depicted London as contaminated not just by disease or pollution,

but also by crime. Similarly, London is often represented as an infectious site in Wood’s

works where characters, like Mr Halliburton, remove to the country to escape the

noxious city. In Roland Yorke, like Great Expectations, metropolitan crime adds to this

representation of London as a source of contamination. Later, James Thomson's poem

“The City of Dreadful Night” (1870-4) would use similar techniques to represent

London’s dark underbelly. Therefore, Wood’s depiction of London as, alternatively: a

barren wasteland, a confusing maze and a sinister locale draws upon sensational

techniques and contributes to a depiction of a fascinating, yet terrifying modern city.

Roland’s colonial return from Natal also influences the depiction of place in the novel.

When Roland finds that Mrs Jones, a Helstonleigh native, is now living in London, he is

struck by her presence, as he puts it “in this desert of a place” and he goes on to state

that England’s capital is “more of a desert to me than Port Natal” (p.103). Roland looks

to obtain lodgings in Mrs Jones’ London rooms, exclaiming that, “to get into her house

will seem like going home again” (p.103). For Roland, the city of London, the seat of

English culture and power, is bleaker than Africa. Wood’s depiction of Natal was

certainly influenced by current discourses. Nancy Henry, discusses how, by the 1860s

the empire’s wealthy middle-class parents, including Eliot, Dickens and Trollope,

encouraged their sons to travel to the colonies of Australia, Canada, South Africa and

India.367

Henry notes that African exploration narratives and reviews of travel literature

were frequently featured in the periodical press, including Blackwood’s Edinburgh

Magazine.368

She argues that “[b]y the early 1860s, when Natal was more settled with

366

Benjamin, p.40. 367

Nancy Henry, George Eliot and the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2002), p.42. 368

Henry, p.34.

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Englishmen, official government propaganda was adept at promoting the virtues of

frontier life and downplaying the brutality of some English settlers as well as the twin

threats of physical danger and moral degeneration through contact with native

populations”.369

However, in contradistinction to the government propaganda, Natal

was a complete disaster for many who visited, including the sons of George Henry

Lewes. Roland Yorke does not make his fortune there, encounters poverty and violence

and is lucky to escape with his life. Clearly what happened to the Lewes boys in reality

was a common story from that part of the world. Norman McCord describes the area as

a “poor, chronically ill-governed, pastoral state” transformed in 1886 by the discovery

of gold—but too late for ill-prepared colonists like the Lewes boys or Roland Yorke.370

Almaric Rumsey, reviewing the novel in 1869, comments on the depiction of Natal:

There is something of original conception in the character of Roland

Yorke; and the summary of his history at Natal is a caution to hasty

emigrants, from the time of his arrival there, with a stock-in-trade of

frying pans (for which, unfortunately, he finds that there is no special

market), till his return to England, with his coat out at the elbows and

ninepence in his pocket.371

Roland’s return to England in poverty displays anxiety about colonial failure and a

potential warning about purely economic expansion. His ill-conceived frying pan

scheme represents a belief in “easy money”, something that Roland has to remedy on

his return to England with hard work as a lowly lawyer’s clerk and his oft-repeated

determination to put “his shoulder to the wheel”.372

Thus, for Wood, Roland has

become more adequately middle-class.

As opposed to the virtuous heroes of The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles,

the hero of this later novel, Roland Yorke, provides a more complex model. He

represents the changed man returned from (and improved by) his experiences at the

margins of the empire, as we are told:

369

Henry, p.32. 370

Norman McCord, British History 1815-1906. The Short Oxford History of the Modern World

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p.390. 371

Rumsey: 496. 372

See, for example, p.225, the opening to the chapter “Roland Yorke’s Shoulder to the Wheel”.

The phrase derives from the Aesop’s fable “Hercules and the Wagoner” in which Hercules tells

a wagoner who is stranded to put his shoulder to the wheel rather than praying for assistance.

The clear message that ‘the gods help those who help themselves’ is conveyed and intersects

with Victorian moral discourses, exemplified by Samuel Smiles’ 1859 work, Self-Help.

126

More than seven years have elapsed since he was of age, and went

careering off on a certain hopeful voyage to Port Natal, told of in

history. He has changed since then. The overgrown young fellow of

twenty-one, angular and awkward has become quite a noble-looking

man in his great strength and height. The face is a fine one, good-

nature the predominating expression of the somewhat rough features,

which are pale and clear and healthy. The indecision that might once

have been detected in his countenance has given place to earnestness

now (p.73).

Roland’s “earnestness” suggests that he has acquired a Protestant work ethic and a

middle-class ethic of self-mastery. Indeed, a former Helstonleigh resident remarks to

Butterby that Roland is “no more like the proud, selfish aristocrat he used to be than

chalk’s like cheese” (p.169). However, due to his past crimes, Roland does not feel he

can easily return ‘home’ to Helstonleigh. When prompted to return later in the novel,

the old town wears a strange aspect:

Many a time and oft had poor Roland dreamt of the charms of these

Helstonleigh streets when he was fighting with starvation at Port

Natal. Looking upon them now, he rubbed his eyes in doubt and

wonder. Could these be the fine wide streets of the former days? They

seemed to have strangely contracted, to be mean and shabby. The

houses appeared poor, the very Guildhall itself small. The gold had

lost its brightness.

Roland walked on with the slow step of disappointment, scanning

the faces he met. He knew none of them. Eight years had passed since

his absence and the place and the people were changed to him (p.352).

Helstonleigh is overtly revealed as a constructed ideal, imagined by Roland during his

colonial experiences in Africa. Roland is now encountering Helstonleigh as an outsider.

He is excluded from it. His memory has constructed a version of ‘home’ that cannot

easily fit with that of the reality. This forms part of a broader trend in representations of

rural communities, as Helsinger notes a similar tendency in George Eliot’s novels in the

1860s and 1870s. She argues that Eliot’s works often “contradict their own project of

creating a cohesive national identity because they register painful memories of

exclusion, and still more dangerously, of complicity in excluding others”.373

For Wood,

as for Eliot, the task of imagining a national community is a difficult one and

Helstonleigh is no longer an ideal home for Wood’s hero.

373

Helsinger, p.236.

127

This depiction of Helstonleigh, in conjunction with the gothic prologue, diverts strongly

from the idyllic town constructed in both The Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s

Troubles. Roland Yorke has also been transformed; with his Irish nature now less

threatening, he is a new British hero who requires a new home.374

For these reasons, at

the conclusion of the novel, not only is Helstonleigh an inadequate residence for

Wood’s hero, but London is also rejected, and a new site is proposed. In the final

chapters, despite a new title, a sizeable inheritance and an impending union with

Annabel Channing, Sir Roland and his wife have vowed to live in “moderation” with

“no town house, no fashion, no gaiety” (p.453). A new, middle-class order is

established as the union of Annabel and Roland signifies a collapse of distinctions

between the Channings and the Yorkes established in The Channings. They express a

sober, middle-class desire to live like “[r]ational people” (p.452) in their new, idyllic

rural seat of Sunny Mead. Their new home is also away from the “monotonous life” of

Helstonleigh (p.454). The depiction of acceptable homes and Englishness in Roland

Yorke has evolved to incorporate the returned colonial, with reduced anxiety about his

Irish heritage. As a result, both London and Helstonleigh form inadequate sites to map

out a home for the new British subject.

Daniel Bivona emphasises that imperialism is the unconscious of nineteenth-century

Britain – hidden beneath the surface of a variety of discourses, and it would seem that

the discourse of detection is no exception.375

In all three novels, Wood’s detectives are

involved in policing the boundaries of acceptable Englishness, necessarily implicating

Victorian ideas of class, ethnicity and religion. In these novels, control over storytelling

and the possession of an authoritative voice in the discourse of detection is often

wrested from official legal channels and placed in the hands of the middle classes, and

ultimately even the criminals themselves. However, in the space between The

Channings and Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles and the end of Roland Yorke, notions of

home and nation are revealed as heavily policed ideological constructs. Helstonleigh is

transformed from idealised space of English middle-class harmony into an uncanny,

strange and inadequate place, no longer able to support the new idea of the home, the

374

This change from his depiction in The Channings, seven years earlier, is possibly a reflection

of the Reform Act of 1867, which David Powell, pp.68, 90, indicates had a democratising effect

and created a “more genuinely integrated political system” across Britain. 375

Bivona, p.vii.

128

nation and the hero. In this later novel, the figure of the detective is transformed,

becoming an ally of the English middle-classes. I will extend this analysis in the next

chapter by examining Wood’s domesticated detective hero, Johnny Ludlow.

129

Chapter Three

The Domestic Detective: Mapping Masculinities in

Ellen Wood’s “Johnny Ludlow” series

You have heard of the skeleton in the closet, Johnny Ludlow. Few

families are without one. I have mine.376

This confession marks the opening to the 1884 story “Roger Bevere” where, during a

cosy breakfast in London, a male acquaintance discloses his family’s secret to the

narrator, Johnny Ludlow. This scene aptly demonstrates the domestic underpinning of

detection in Ellen (Mrs Henry) Wood’s “Johnny Ludlow” series of short stories, which

were published in the Argosy from 1868 to 1891. These fictional recollections of

English rural life are a generic mix of detection, romance, the supernatural, mystery and

crime, which, as Joanne Shattock asserts, form Wood’s “best contributions to the

magazine”.377

Ellen Wood became editor of the Argosy in 1867 and in the following year the “Johnny

Ludlow” stories became a regular feature of the magazine.378

Over the following

twenty-three years, until 1891, almost half of the editions of the Argosy contained a

“Johnny Ludlow” tale among their pages.379

The stories were subsequently published in

376

Ellen (Mrs Henry) Wood, “Roger Bevere” in Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series (London:

Macmillan, 1899), p.313. This particular story was first serialised in the Argosy in 1884, but

first collected in volume form in 1890. In this chapter, I am referring to a later edition (1899) of

the collected volume. I have chosen to use the pagination of the reprinted volumes as these are

more readily available, however I will continue to refer to the dates of the stories’ original

publication to elucidate their original relation to each other. 377

Joanne Shattock, p.473; Bruce F. Murphy in The Encyclopaedia of Murder and Mystery

(New York: Palgrave, 1999), p.535, echoes these sentiments, describing the Johnny Ludlow

stories as Wood’s “best work”. Despite this praise, scholarship on the “Johnny Ludlow” stories

has been limited. While the works are mentioned in a number of articles and anthologies, the

only focused discussions occur in Alan S. C. Ross, “Mrs Henry Wood’s Johnny Ludlow: An

Essay in Historical Microlinguistics,” Moderna Sprak 69.1 (1975): 1-20, and my own work,

Alison Jaquet, “Domesticating the Art of Detection: Ellen Wood’s Johnny Ludlow Series,”

Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction, Ed,

Paul Fox and Koray Melikoglu. (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2007), pp.179-195. 378

In the first four years, Ludlow appeared with great frequency: in ten issues in 1868, eleven in

1869, ten again in 1870 and nine in 1871. During the 1870s the stories appeared in around half

of the monthly issues but in the 1880s this frequency of publication declined, although the

stories continued to appear in at least three Argosy issues each year until Wood’s death in 1887.

After this a single Johnny Ludlow story was published in December of 1887 and two final

novella-length stories appeared in 1889 and 1891. 379

The exact figure is 125 issues out of a total 276.

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volume form between 1874 and 1899.380

The first collected volume was published

pseudonymously in 1874 and received good reviews.381

When the second series of

“Johnny Ludlow” stories was published in 1880, the authorship of the tales had been

revealed and the Athenaeum reviewer praised the work, asserting that “Johnny Ludlow

is always worth listening to” and that with this collection, “Mrs Wood has made a

welcome addition to the list of contemporary works of fiction.”382

The stories are named after their narrator, who recalls his experiences as a young orphan

living with a wealthy family in Worcestershire.383

The Todhetley family consist of the

patriarch: the Squire a wealthy local magistrate; his son, Joseph, nicknamed Tod; Mrs

Todhetley, the step-mother of both Johnny and Tod; and the two younger children,

Hugh and Lena.384

The Todhetleys have two properties – Dyke Manor which is on the

border of Worcestershire and Warwickshire and Crabb Cot, in Worcestershire. In the

stories, Johnny Ludlow is enclosed within firm familial and domestic structures, and

consequently, the mysteries he narrates (and participates in) depict and explore notions

of home and the everyday. The stories revolve around incidents including theft, murder,

mistaken identity and fraud, which implicate various family members, friends,

380

The stories were collected and published in six series between 1874 and 1899. Here, the

chronology of the serialised stories was disrupted and two stories: “Shaving the Ponies’ Tails”

(1868) and “Fred Temple’s Warning” (1873), were not reprinted. 381

As one reviewer writes “Most people who have read the pleasant papers that have appeared

from time to time in the Argosy under the signature of “Johnny Ludlow,” will be glad to see

them collected; and anybody who has not yet read them better do so without loss of time”

(“New Novels” The Academy (May 2 1874): 482-3). 382

“New Novels,” Rev of Johnny Ludlow Second Series by Mrs Henry Wood, Athenaeum

(October 9, 1880): 462. 383

For the origin of the name, ‘Johnny Ludlow’ a possible source arises in Kate Summerscale’s

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. In this work, she identifies a Henry Ludlow as a landowner and

magistrate for Wiltshire who was drawn into the Kent affair. When the case was dismissed

against Constance Kent in 1860, Summerscale argues that Ludlow was one of the few

individuals involved in the case who believed Whicher’s suspicions (correctly, as it would be

found) in Kent’s guilt (p.158). Later, Ludlow was chief magistrate at the Trowbridge police

court in 1865 when Constance Kent was finally committed to trial after her confession

(Summerscale, pp.237-40). At several points in the Johnny Ludlow stories, his father, William,

is revealed to have been a magistrate and wealthy landowner. 384

In the Johnny Ludlow stories, the Squire is not Johnny’s legal guardian – that responsibility

falls to Mr Brandon, to whom Johnny goes at various points to discuss financial concerns.

However, Johnny is under the guardianship of Squire Todhetley to the extent that he lives with

the Todhetley family and he is raised alongside the Squire’s son, Tod. The Squire undertakes

day-to-day responsibility for Johnny, whereas Mr Brandon’s concerns are to maintain and look

after Johnny’s financial interests until he comes of age, at twenty-five. In a complex

relationship, Mrs Todhetley was formerly married to Johnny’s father and when he died, she

married the Squire who was, at the time, a widower. Hence, Johnny and Tod’s mothers are both

dead.

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neighbours and servants. Some stories are set at Johnny and Tod’s school but most

occur during holidays where they are at home and involved in various neighbourhood

goings-on. The stories are set amongst nearby villages of North and South Crabb,

Timberdale, Islip, Evesham and Church Dykely. Occasionally, London, Oxford, France

and various seaside holiday locations provide settings for the tales. Many stories recount

romances between local men and women, some focus on the plight of the poorer

villagers and even where the tales do not have an explicit crime at the heart of the

narrative, there is usually some form of mystery that requires solving.

While Johnny’s role as an investigating figure in these mysteries is a complicated one,

often contested by other detective figures, he nevertheless engages in detective work.

For this reason, I would argue that the “Johnny Ludlow” stories present an early (if not

the earliest) example of the boy-detective series. The detective series became a regular

phenomenon of later nineteenth century British fiction, including the iconic Sherlock

Holmes series from 1887 and Harry Blyth’s Sexton Blake series from 1893. In a related

trend, the boy-detective genre gained momentum from the late-Victorian ‘Boy’s Own’

adventure stories. 385

The most widely-recognised boy detectives emerged in the

bestselling Hardy Boys series from the 1920s. The “Johnny Ludlow” series is unique

for its appearance in the mainstream British periodical press from the 1860s.

The domestic focus of these mysteries ensures that the home becomes a place subject to

internal as well as external threats. Hence, the “Johnny Ludlow” stories, like many of

Wood’s writings, reveal the inherent contradictions of the discourses circulating around

and within the Victorian domestic sphere. Like Wood’s other works, these stories

invoke ‘domestic detection’ but the role of the male detective and narrator is

problematised and complicated. Indeed, detection in the stories calls attention to the

operations of male figures in the domestic sphere. Furthermore, the “Johnny Ludlow”

385

The shared readerships of the Johnny Ludlow series and the Boys Own Papers are also

suggested by the marketing of the works. The cover of the first edition of the Johnny Ludlow

series from 1874, held in the British Library, has a bold and impressive design: gold writing on

a peacock blue background. This design resembles the brightly coloured, gilt covers that would

characterise the Boy’s Own Annual from 1879. Indeed volume thirteen of the Boys Own Annual

(1890-1) resembles the bright blue and gold design of the first Johnny Ludlow volume. For a

discussion of the boy-detective in the Boy’s Own papers, see Kelly Boyd, Manliness and the

Boys’ Story Paper in Britain: A Cultural History, 1855 – 1940 (Houndmills, Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

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stories reveal how domestic detection is a discourse characterised by instability via both

the thematic and formal systems of the series.

Victorian Sensation, Detection and Masculinity.

As I have discussed throughout this work, Ellen Wood’s detection narratives are

implicated in Victorian debates about gender. This is implicit in Michael Cox’s

discussion about the relation between sensation and detection:

It was within the uniquely Victorian matrix of sensation fiction that the

detective story progressed towards maturity. In its key elements – episodic

incident, the emphasis on plot rather than character, contemporary settings,

the manipulation of actual events, murder, forgery and robbery, mistaken

identity, and formulaic construction – sensation fiction provided the bridge

between Poe and the true tale of detection as created by Conan Doyle.386

Here, Cox uses the works of male writers, Poe and Conan Doyle, to bookend this

“matrix of sensation fiction”. His use of the term “maturity” to describe the ‘progress’

from sensation to detection is telling, especially given his characterisation of Conan

Doyle as the “true” proponent of detection. Cox also conflates the “detective story” with

“detection” and this is problematic given that detection is a broader term that, as I have

been arguing, forms a discourse evident within Victorian sensation fiction. In response,

I will show that Wood’s “Johnny Ludlow” stories extend and complicate the gender

politics of Cox’s assumption. A consideration of Wood’s writing, specifically through

the figure of Johnny Ludlow, can allow a small intervention in this masculinised

discourse of Victorian detective literature.387

So while Wood’s “Johnny Ludlow” tales

can, at one level, form part of this “bridge” between Poe and Doyle, detection in the

stories demonstrates clear differences from the better-known Victorian narratives by

Poe and Conan Doyle.

386

Michael Cox, “Introduction,” Victorian Detective Stories, ed. Michael Cox (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1992), p.xv. 387

I am not suggesting that Cox neglects female writers of detection, and indeed his collection

includes Ellen Wood’s “The Mystery at Number Seven”. Instead, I wish to draw attention to

some of the inherent problems with theorising detection in the Victorian period, prior to the

recognition of “detective fiction” proper.

133

As narrator, Johnny has what Cox describes as a necessary feature of the short story: “a

credible and engaging narrative voice”.388

However, Johnny blurs the roles in the

discourse of detection because he simultaneously performs a narratorial function, like a

Watson-figure, observing and assisting the detective process, but at other times, he

becomes the overt detective. It is interesting to note that a 1966 catalogue of Victorian

detective fiction identifies the narrator as the detective in the Johnny Ludlow, Fourth

Series when this is not always the case.389

Frequently, Johnny Ludlow is simply an

observer in the company of other detective figures and performs as an assistant, a

messenger or merely a spectator. Detection in the “Johnny Ludlow” narratives is a much

more dispersed concern in comparison with the clear roles demarcated in Poe and

Conan Doyle’s narratives. To briefly return to Cox’s assumption that this demarcates

the stories as examples of a less-developed brand of detection, I would argue that

detection in the texts is merely different, with aims and effects that diverge from those

in Poe or Conan Doyle. Just as Kestner theorises, in Sherlock’s Men: Masculinity,

Conan Doyle and Cultural History, that the Holmes stories can be read as “modes of

modelling manliness” for late-Victorian and Edwardian readers, 390

so too can Wood’s

“Johnny Ludlow” stories be seen to engage in representations of masculinities relevant

to the earlier decades of the Victorian period.391

The similarities and differences

between Johnny Ludlow and Sherlock Holmes as detectives become apparent when we

consider the underlying gender politics of detection.

388

Cox, p.ix 389

Glover, p.119. Indeed, a survey of the nine collected stories that make up the fourth Johnny

Ludlow series reveals various detective figures, including the Squire and Captain Jack Tanerton

in “A Mystery” (1882), Tod in “Sandstone Torr” (1874) and Tom Chandler in “Verena

Fontaine’s Rebellion” (1880). 390

Joseph A. Kestner, Sherlock’s Men: Masculinity, Conan Doyle and Cultural History

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), p.3. In employing Kestner’s chosen language, I do not wish to

conflate ‘male’ with ‘manliness’ the term used for the articulation of historically-specific

Victorian values or with ‘masculinities’ which is a more recent term with broader implications.

For more on this, see John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain:

Essays on Gender, Family and Empire (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005). These terms are

clarified in Herbert Sussman, Victorian Masculinities: manhood and masculine poetics in early

Victorian literature and art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.13, when he

argues that for the Victorians, “the hegemonic bourgeois view defined “manliness” as the

control and discipline of an essential “maleness” fantasized as a potent yet dangerous energy”.

Research into Sherlock Holmes and late-Victorian masculinity is continued in Diana Barsham,

Arthur Conan Doyle and the Meaning of Masculinity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 391

It is important to signal that Wood is particularly preoccupied with middle-class Victorian

masculinities.

134

The narrator and sometime-detective, Johnny, occupies a liminal space in relation to

social and cultural norms. As an orphaned teenaged boy, he is on the precipice of

manhood and he is also an outsider figure, with only a temporary home in the Todhetley

household. Squire Todhetley frequently makes private inquiries into various mysteries

and (although often mistaken) is repeatedly appealed to publicly in his capacity as a

local magistrate. Many of the stories involve Johnny and the Squire working in concert,

and thus Johnny (and his style of detection) is often contrasted to the gruff masculinity

of the Squire. This also demonstrates a divergence from the Dupin and Holmes models

of detection as they live in homosocial, anti-domestic structures while Johnny operates

largely within the domestic sphere and demonstrates how the traditionally feminised

category of the domestic can be masculinised.392

John Tosh in A Man’s Place:

Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England notes that “[t]he

nineteenth-century cult of the home is commonly associated with women and – often an

afterthought – with children. The defining imagery is feminine”.393

Tosh argues that, in

actuality, “from the 1830s to the 1870s – didactic writers in Victorian England were

almost at one in declaring that bourgeois men not only had time for domestic life, but a

deep and compelling need of it”.394

One famous example of this trend occurs in John

Stuart Mill’s 1869 essay “The Subjection of Women”. In his essay, Mill intervenes in

the gender debate and argues that the role of men in the era was changing:

The association of men with women in daily life is much closer and more

complete than it ever was before. Men's life is more domestic. Formerly,

their pleasures and chosen occupations were among men, and in men's

company: their wives had but a fragment of their lives. At the present time,

the progress of civilisation, and the turn of opinion against the rough

amusements and convivial excesses which formerly occupied most men in

their hours of relaxation — together with (it must be said) the improved tone

of modern feeling as to the reciprocity of duty which binds the husband

392

Kestner, Sherlock’s Men, p. 34, likens the “domestic arrangements of 221B Baker Street” to

a man’s club “in microcosm”. In Poe’s, “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the narrator describes his

and Dupin’s domestic isolation: “Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visitors. Indeed the

locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it

had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed within

ourselves alone” (pp.414-415). 393

John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p.5. 394

Tosh, p.6.

135

towards the wife — have thrown the man very much more upon home and

its inmates, for his personal and social pleasures…395

Wood’s writings form part of this trend to strongly connect bourgeois masculinity to

domesticity, however in the “Johnny Ludlow” stories, the domestic realm becomes a

compelling site of drama and mystery.396

John Tosh acknowledges that in the Victorian period, “domesticity was difficult to

square with the traditional association of masculinity with heroism and adventure.397

The “Johnny Ludlow” stories suggest a working-out of this tension by Wood. In these

stories, Wood negotiates ideas of Victorian masculinity and domesticity, tying the two

together in the figure of her hero, Ludlow. While the stories focus on mundane domestic

settings and the minutiae of everyday life, which might be interpreted as a conservative

tendency, I consider the everyday to be fluid, contradictory and productive terrain.

Indeed, Wood uses these domestic, everyday spaces as fertile ground for her staging of

masculinities. As Gardiner argues, the everyday can be theorised as not merely the

“realm of the ordinary”, but instead, “a domain that is potentially extraordinary”.398

The

“Johnny Ludlow” stories demonstrate Wood’s attempt to marry her version of

masculine heroism with domestic ideology. This can be usefully explicated with a

comparison to the masterful heroism of Sherlock Holmes, who acknowledges the

extraordinariness of the everyday. In “A Case of Identity” (1891) he imagines himself

and Watson flying over London, removing the roofs of the houses and peering into the

extraordinary lives of the people who live there.399

However, Wood prefers to depict her

detectives, including Johnny, as amidst what Holmes describes as, “the queer things

which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the

wonderful chains of events, working through generation, and leading to the most outré

395

John Stuart Mill, “The Subjection of Women,” The Subjection of Women: A Critical Edition, ed.

Edward Alexander (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2001), p.91. 396

The homosocial nature of Conan Doyle’s detective stories is theorised in Kestner, Sherlock’s

Men, p.6-7, who argues that Holmes stories arose out of the desire to “inculcate the masculine

script” amidst the late-Victorian crisis of masculinity. 397

Tosh, A Man’s Place, p.6. 398

Michael Gardiner, Critiques of Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 2000), p.6. 399

This image toys with the etymology of the word ‘detect’ which derives from the Latin

‘de-tegere’ which means to uncover or unroof (Summerscale, p.157). See also: Anthea Trodd,

pp. 3-5, who points to the figure of Asmodeus, the demon who unroofs houses, as an influential

image for Victorian writers to depict the private and yet suspiciously secretive home.

136

results”.400

Johnny Ludlow is not a detached figure like Holmes, he is a domesticated

detective hero.

Wood’s interest in constructing a domestic hero can be seen in its infancy in the first

“Johnny Ludlow” story. “Shaving the Ponies’ Tails” was first published in 1868, but

was not collected amongst the other “Johnny Ludlow” tales, and has never been

reprinted. As the earliest tale, it stands somewhat apart from the rest of the series, but it

remains useful for my discussion.401

It recounts an act of childish mischief and there is

no mystery to solve, but what is interesting about this story is its preoccupation with

masculinity, an interest that will continue throughout the series. In this story Johnny

introduces himself by way of contrast to Tod, with whom he is raised like a brother:

Tod was turned seventeen, and as big as a house; tall, and strong, and dark,

with an imperious manner and a will of his own. I was fifteen; fair,

delicate, and timid. People called me a muff; and they said Tod looked

nearly old enough and wise enough to be my father.402

Here, as in later stories, the strong-willed, domineering Tod acts as a foil for the more

reserved, thoughtful, younger narrator, Johnny.403

Moreover, in this first story Tod is

400

Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Case of Identity” in The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London:

Penguin, 1981) 190-191. See also: Stephen Knight, Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction

(London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 74, for a discussion of this particular passage as “fascinatingly

double” in its tone. 401

Michael Flowers points specifically to the act of violence in the tale perpetrated by Johnny’s

guardian, Squire Todhetley, which is out of character with his depiction in the rest of the series.

“The Johnny Ludlow Stories” [http://www.mrshenrywood.co.uk/ludlow.html, accessed 24

February 2008] 402

Johnny Ludlow, “Shaving the Ponies Tails”, Argosy, Vol. 5 (Jan 1868): 112. In the collected

first series, this story is not reprinted, so these details are repeated in the first tale “Losing Lena”

by way of introduction for new readers. Compare this description of Johnny to that of Sherlock

Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1887; Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1999), p.14: “His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most

casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to

be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing … and his thin, hawk-like nose gave

his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and

squareness which mark the man of determination.” 403

As if to emphasise this point, Johnny is frequently mistaken for Tod and often corrects the

mistake by way of comparison. For example, in “The Beginning of the End” (1869) reprinted in

Johnny Ludlow First Series (London, Bentley, 1895), p.173, Johnny makes the comparison:

“Tod is a great, strong fellow … I am only Johnny Ludlow”. Again in “Jerry’s Gazette” (1869)

reprinted in Johnny Ludlow First Series (London, Bentley, 1895), p.195, the Squire corrects the

assumption of a new acquaintance that he is Johnny’s father with: “My son! Law bless you! My

son is a strapping young fellow, six feet two in his stockings. This is Johnny Ludlow”. The

character of Johnny echoes the depiction of manliness in Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays as

outlined in Claudia Nelson, in Boys will be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children’s

137

very concerned about the proper gendering of his young half-brother. Tod tells Johnny:

“we can't let Hugh grow up a milksop, you know, Johnny … that’s what his mother is

doing for him. I tell the Pater so”.404

Tod reveals anxieties about the detrimental

influences of domesticity on developing boys. Johnny expresses similar, albeit less

vehement, concerns about Mrs Todhetley’s influence on young Hugh:

Hugh had a new purple velvet affair on. If I call it an affair, it's because I

don't know what else to call it; it was not a coat, and it was not a frock. He

was seven, and yet Mrs. Todhetley dressed him like a girl; his short white

drawers had frill to 'em; and this was made another grievance of by Tod.405

John Tosh notes, in his chapter “Boys into Men” that, “The progress of the middle-class

boy from infancy to manhood was marked by a sequence of well-defined stages. First

came the acknowledgement, at the age of six or so, that he was not only a child but a

male child and therefore entitled to wear breeches or trousers.”406

Tosh explains the

importance of this early ‘breeching’ not just as a symbolic move, but also because:

“Once out of petticoats boys’ horizons expanded. Greater freedom of movement

allowed them to spend more time out of doors, to engage in rough-and-tumble, and to

team up with other boys”.407

As a consequence, the mother’s failure to move Hugh

through this stage of masculine social development is resented by the older boys,

particularly Tod.

It seems significant that both Tod and Johnny’s mothers have died during their infancy.

Tod, in particular, regards his father’s marriage, and the entrance of his stepmother into

their home as “an invasion”.408

Indeed, the tension between Tod and his stepmother

seems to be caused by her domesticating effect upon a previously masculine home:

Everything Mrs. Todhetley said, everything she did, Tod resented. Not to

herself, you know, but to himself. Before she came to the manor, things were

conducted there with a profuse hand; the Squire spending all his income;

Fiction, 1857-1917 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), p.44. Here Nelson

characterises Hughes’ ideal of manliness as asexual and anti-masculine – a type that Wood’s

Johnny Ludlow mirrors. For example, while Tod has romantic attachments to Sophie Chalk and

Anna Whitney in the series, Johnny remains outside of this sexual economy. 404

Ludlow, “Shaving the Ponies Tails”: 112. 405

Ludlow, “Shaving the Ponies Tails”: 113. 406

Tosh, A Man’s Place, p.103. 407

Tosh, A Man’s Place, pp.103-4. 408

Ludlow, “Shaving the Ponies Tails”: 111.

138

since then, expenses have been curtailed. First, this extravagance was cut off,

next that toned down, until the outlay became moderate. Tod resented this

worst of all.409

Although in this first “Johnny Ludlow” story there is no depiction of detection, the story

centres on the tension between male figures in the sphere of home and family. At the

outset of the narrative, Tod is unjustly punished (with his father’s whip) for encouraging

his younger brother, Hugh, into boyish mischief. Thus arises the central conflict of the

story, when Tod shaves the Squire’s ponies’ tails as a form of resistance to his father’s

authority. The intersections of the home and family with various figurings of

masculinity (Tod, Johnny, the Squire, Hugh) are a central focus. It is my contention that

this staging of Victorian masculinities is a deliberate strategy on Ellen Wood’s part.

In 1880, when Ellen Wood released her statement acknowledging authorship of the

“Johnny Ludlow” tales, she cites her “only motive” in publishing the stories

anonymously as to maintain the impression that they were “told by a boy”.410

Hence, at

least initially, the idea that these narratives derived from a male author was fundamental

to their reception.411

The success of this impression is substantiated by several sources.

In one letter to Charles Wood in 1880, the writer, Bettina Wirth, asks: “Who is Johnny

Ludlow? An advertisement in the Daily News gave me the notion that Mrs H. Wood

and Johnny Ludlow are the same. Is this possible? The latter has such a peculiar way of

writing that I cannot believe it to be a person who writes two “genres”. 412

Anna Maria

409

Ludlow, “Shaving the Ponies Tails”: 112. 410

Preface to Johnny Ludlow: First Series, Fifth Edition (Bentley: London, 1883). Alexander

Japp’s praise for Wood included her compelling depictions of what he terms “boy-nature”. He

states: “In Mrs Henry Wood you have the English boy set before you precisely as he is, with all

his frank honesty, with all his ingenuousness, with all his unconscious rudeness, his

insouciance, his trickiness, and his queer mixture of unaffected affection and capacity for

cruelty, in certain directions. No lady-writer, in this respect, has ever approached her” (cited in

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.294). Charles Wood attributes this to his mother’s observation of

her brothers and their college friends. He goes on to assert, “Out of this element was evolved

Johnny Ludlow, with all his realism; a character so true as life” (p.296). Other examples include

the boys of The Channings (1862) and the lesser-known William Allair, or Running Away to

Sea (1864) and Orville College. A Story (1867) which was originally serialised in Routledge’s

Every Boys Magazine. Christine Gibbs in “Sensational Schoolboys: Mrs Henry Wood’s The

Orville College Boys” The Lion and the Unicorn 24:1 (2000): 45-60, provides an interesting

comparison of this work to East Lynne and argues that that this later text expresses “anxieties

about gender identity” (50). However, Gibbs gives the original publication date as 1871, when

the British Library catalogue indicates that editions of the work appeared four years earlier,

from 1867, just prior to the arrival of the “Johnny Ludlow” stories in the Argosy. 411

Kucich, p.188, speaks of Johnny Ludlow as Wood’s attempt at ‘narrative cross-dressing’. 412

Letter from Bettina Wirth to Charles Wood, 8 Nov 1880.

139

Hall offered a similar sentiment in an 1875 letter to Wood where she tells of hearing a

rumour from fellow author, Isabella Fyvie Mayo, that Wood herself wrote as ‘Johnny

Ludlow’. Hall declares that it is “simply impossible” and yet, goes on to praise the

character of Ludlow to Wood, asserting that: “he is so original”; “He is keen as the East

wind – and yet his nature is gentle as a girl’s – He is true – and brave…”413

Hall’s letter

points to the ambiguous gendering of Johnny as “keen” “true” and “brave”, traditional

masculine qualities, and yet with the “gentle” nature of a young woman. However

Hall’s interpretation is not necessarily representative. In an earlier Letter to the Editor in

response to the publication of the “Johnny Ludlow” story “Our First Term at Oxford” in

the January 1873 edition of the Argosy, Johnny’s masculinity is unquestioned. The letter

is addressed to “Johnny Ludlow, Care of the Editor, ‘The Argosy’” and I will quote the

letter in its entirety in order to draw out some relevant points:

Dear Sir,

I think if you look at the end of this letter at the signature, and remember

notices that have appeared in the paper I edit, you will believe I address

you from a friendly motive – still more when I tell you, that I write this in a

time of sore affliction, when taking up the Argosy partly because a man’s

duty must be done whatever his private sorrow may be, and partly because

there has always been so healthy a tone in your writing – I was struck as I

was last month by several marked inaccuracies of your account of Oxford

life, which jar so much the more because of the verisimilitude of all you

write. It seems almost presumptuous to offer to “coach” you in these

points, but I take a genuine interest in your writings, and if I could be of

any service to you I should be happy indeed to assist you by pointing out

where the errors lie – perhaps in a short time, when the first bitterness is

over I might if you would allow me ask you to come to smoke a cigar with

me, and talk over Oxford.

Believe me the offer comes from one who sincerely admires your work,

and in no affectation of the knowledge which is due to mere accident.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Hood.414

413

Letter from Anna Maria Hall to Ellen Wood, 29 Mar 1875, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff

Collection, Harry Ransom Research Center, U of Texas at Austin, uncatalogued. 414

Letter from Tom Hood to Johnny Ludlow c/o- The Editor “The Argosy”, 7 Feb 1873, Ellen

Wood Papers, Wolff Collection, Harry Ransom Research Center, U of Texas at Austin, 7274a.

140

This letter displays an overtly masculine tone of address, as the writer refers to the

obligation of “a man’s duty” and extends a friendly invitation to “come smoke a cigar

with me, and talk over Oxford”. Indeed, based on the writer’s reference to his editorship

of a journal, we can surmise that the author is the humorist, illustrator, writer and editor

Thomas Hood (1835-74).415

Hood attended Oxford in 1853 and went on to edit Fun, a

satiric weekly journal and imitator of Punch.416

Thus, it might be assumed that Hood

was aware of Wood’s role as author of the Ludlow stories. His reference to the

“verisimilitude” of the previous Ludlow stories perhaps suggests that he is warning

Wood that, by attempting to depict Oxford, she has strayed too far. However, although a

tone of fun can be detected, this letter incorporates Johnny Ludlow-as-author into a

homosocial discourse of Oxonian upper-middle class masculinity.

Wood’s attempt to create a masculine style is a telling ploy, and not the first time she

had adopted the strategy. I would like to take a brief excursion into some of Wood’s

earlier writings in order to tease out the implications of her exploration of Victorian

masculinities. Wood’s “Ensign Pepper” letters were published in the New Monthly

Magazine from 1854-55 and were attributed to a male author, Ensign Thomas Pepper, a

British soldier fighting in the Crimean War. In July 1854, these “Stray Letters from the

East” have “fallen into [the] possession” of the Reverend Jonadib Straithorn, who

characterises them as “the effusions of a young hypocrite of wrath, styled in worldly

parlance”.417

The hypocrisy refers to the adjustments that Ensign Pepper makes in his

accounts of the war as he writes to different members of his family and friends. To his

Aunt Priscilla he represents himself as a devoted nephew, avoiding temptations and

commenting largely on topics of conventionally feminine interest, such as food and

Further, in Robert Lee Wolff, Nineteenth-century fiction : a bibliographical catalogue based on

the collection formed by Robert Lee Wolff, Volume IV (New York: Garland, c.1981), p.276, a

note indicates that Charles Wood mentions the letter inaccurately in his Memorials, omitting to

include Hood’s motivation in writing to ‘Johnny Ludlow’ – to indicate errors. It seems that

despite Wood’s ability to mimic the style of a male writer, her lack of detailed knowledge of

Oxford evidently produced the discrepancies to which Hood refers. Indeed, in the Memorials,

Charles Wood merely lists it as evidence of those people who were curious about Johnny

Ludlow’s true identity (p.210). 415

Elwin, p.243, mentions Tom Hood very briefly in relation to reviews of Wood’s works. 416

Craig Howes, “Hood, Thomas (1835–1874)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography –

Volume 27, eds. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),

p.941. Howes also notes that Hood did not receive a degree from Oxford, but that his novel

Love and Valour (1871) contains “Oxford scenes which may be partly autobiographical”. 417

Ensign Thomas Pepper, “Stray Letters from the East”, New Monthly Magazine 101 (July

1854): 344.

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dress. To his guardian, he is a steady, dutiful ward, detailing military life and its

politics. In “More Stray Letters from the East” in September, 1854 he writes to his

English girlfriend, Fanny Green. In these letters he becomes the romanticised war hero:

“We are in the midst of gore and glory, and it is uncertain whether I may ever see you

again, for you cannot, my dearest girl, picture the difficulties of a soldier’s life”.418

Pepper’s letters to his friend Gus, detail the life of a young soldier – gambling, drinking,

and smoking – in fact, he is often more preoccupied with whether he can grow facial

hair than military endeavour. In the correspondence with his young male friend, one

assumes the more ‘authentic’ events are detailed, which enables an often amusing and

sometimes troubling comparison with the less candid versions depicted in the letters to

his aunt, girlfriend and guardian. Deborah Wynne argues that, in writing these letters,

Wood adopted the “jaunty masculine bias” of the New Monthly Magazine, to depict “the

comic bravado of the young man away from home.”419

However, in the 1855 sequels to

these missives, “Tom Pepper’s Letters from the Crimea” and the final group of letters,

“Ensign Pepper’s Letters from Sebastapol,” the tone is less comic. Indeed, the later

letters take on a different aspect. They are more consistently focused upon the horrors of

war, candidly revealed in letters to Gus, with these gory details omitted in letters to his

aunt and girlfriend. Presumably, Wood constructed her fictional missives from the

coverage of the war in the periodical press. It is difficult to ascertain how they were

received at the time, although Charles Wood mentions two particular acquaintances of

Wood’s who read the letters in the New Monthly Magazine and asserted that, “We are

both certain they are genuine”. Charles Wood recounts their apparent “astonishment at

finding that the author of those masculine and realistic letters was none other than the

calm and gentle lady whose acquaintance they had so recently made”.420

Although this

anecdotal evidence cannot be verified, it is interesting to note that a century later, in a

1956 article for Military Affairs, the authenticity of these letters is undisputed. In

“British-French Amphibious Operations in the Sea of Azov, 1855” James Merrill uses

the testimony of Ensign Thomas Pepper to support his historical analysis of the military

418

Thomas Pepper, “More Stray Letters from the East,” New Monthly Magazine 102

(September 1854): 50. Pepper’s tone is overly affected in letters to Fanny: “a soldier braves all

danger: his red coat puts into him a lion’s heart” (51). Compare this with the description to his

friend Gus: “You’d go dead of the mopes if you were out here: there’s nothing to do or eat,

worse than nothing to drink, no fighting and no talk of any” (49). 419

Deborah Wynne, “See What A Big Wide Bed it is!” p.99. 420

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.280. Regardless of how much truth can be attributed to this

anecdote, the emphasis upon the “masculine and realistic” nature of the writing is echoed in

accounts of the early reception of the Ludlow tales.

142

tactics in the Crimean War.421

Merrill cites the words of Wood’s fictional Ensign

alongside war correspondents from the Times and official correspondence between

military commanders.

In the final “Ensign Pepper” letters, the death and despair of the soldiers is recounted at

length and Pepper explains the politics of truth to his friend, Gus:

I have been writing to my old governor of a guardian, and if you can

borrow the letter from him, do so, and read it. It will afford a fair specimen

of the average official letters that go out from camp. We call them

“official” when we don’t give the truth. Confidential letters are very

different things: but we only venture upon them when we know they won’t

come out to the public. Of course in these “official” letters we cannot

altogether disguise matters, as they are, but we put the best construction on

things. The fact is, Gus (for you may be sure my letter to you is not

“official”), things here are in an awful state. We are going at railroad speed

into our graves.422

The central theme of these letters is male conduct. The missives are ostensibly

supposed to warn against hypocrisy, but what they also do is reflect various, often

conflicting, versions of masculinity. Wynne identifies in the earlier letters “Wood’s

flexible writing practices in terms of awareness of the demands of different

audiences”,423

however I would extend her analysis to suggest that Wood reflects the

turning popular opinion of her audience that by the end of 1854 saw the war differently.

Following the disastrous cavalry charge in the Battle of Balaklava on October 25th 1854,

captured vividly in Tennyson’s poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, there was

much speculation in the periodical press about the controversial orders given by the

421

James Merrill references and quotes from several of the 1855 “Ensign Pepper” letters in his

article: “British-French Amphibious Operations in the Sea of Azov, 1855” Military Affairs 20:1

(Spring, 1956): 16-27. Apart from this article, the 1855 letters have generally been overlooked

by scholars, even by those such as Wynne and Riley, who address the 1854 letters. The

existence of these 1855 letters was highlighted by Eilleen M. Curran’s “Additions to and

Corrections of the Wellesley Index of Victorian Periodicals”, June 2004 edition,

http://victorianresearch.org/ci604.html . The Curran Index drew attention to the existence of the

subsequent letters, citing Burgauer, p.99-100 for the source. 422

Thomas Pepper, “Tom Pepper’s Letters from the Crimea”, New Monthly Magazine 103

(February 1855): 162. In a similar strategy, Wood’s “A Record of the Gold-Fever” (1854), uses

diary entries of a middle-class Englishman, who is seeking his fortune in Australia. Here, the

man discusses how he suppresses the more distressing details of his life in letters to his wife: “I

write in the highest spirits to Clara, and paint things in different hues from the reality. To do so

is a general practice here – at least with those in my own class of life” (64). 423

Wynne, “See What A Big Wide Bed it is!”, p.99.

143

commanding officers. Tennyson’s poem was published in The Examiner on December 9

of that year, celebrating the heroism of the ordinary soldier and famously recording the

military oversight in the line: “Some one had blunder’d”.424

Wood also engages in this

debate in “Tom Pepper’s Letters from the Crimea” published in February, 1855. Pepper

writes his version of the events of the “heroic soldiers” with Tennyson’s poem echoing

in Wood’s prose: “They all knew, and saw, that they were going right into the mouths

of a hundred cannons, and to effect no good and no earthly purpose; but not one

flinched, and they met their fate as none but Englishmen can do.”425

While in his

‘official’ letter to his guardian Pepper lays the blame for the military blunder on the

shoulders of Captain Nolan, who died in the charge, his subsequent letters to Gus and

Fanny depict Commander Raglan as aloof, untouchable, hinting at the problems in

command. These letters were a fictional addition to increased reports about the war

during 1855. As Norman McCord notes: “A growing volume of reports of appalling

conditions began to reach home, partly in letters from the Army, partly in dispatches

from the newspaper correspondents covering the war”.426

The “Ensign Pepper” letters

display Wood’s canny use of her social and political context to stage an examination of

masculinities. They also work to problematise the idea of truth and the authority of a

narrator. The letters, organised and published by the clergyman, Reverend Jonahib

Straithorn, depict a soldier who is at the military mercy of army commanders and who

struggles to represent certain accepted versions of masculinity to his family and friends

in England. These are all concerns to which Wood returns in the “Johnny Ludlow”

stories.

Certainly, these early texts show how Wood conformed her writing to a certain style –

the male adventure narrative – in order to report on the Crimean War in the New

Monthly Magazine. Deborah Wynne argues that, following this, Wood refocused her

gaze on “female experience in the middle class home” in order to follow the emerging

trend for sensation.427

Marie Riley repeats Wynne’s assertions, arguing that Wood’s

“natural constituency was overwhelmingly feminine” but acknowledges that “Wood

appeared to enjoy utilising a male narrator as evidenced by her later long-running

424

Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854). 425

Pepper, “Tom Pepper’s Letters from the Crimea”, 154. 426

McCord, p.247. 427

Wynne, “See What A Big Wide Bed it is!”, p.100.

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“Johnny Ludlow” stories.”428

However, I would argue that Wood’s early use of a

masculine voice in her “Ensign Pepper” letters displays a style that she modifies and

domesticates in her later “Johnny Ludlow” stories. These stories demonstrate Wood’s

ongoing interest in, and negotiations with, Victorian masculinities. Several of the

“Johnny Ludlow” stories are set at Johnny and Tod’s public school and detail boyish

schoolyard pranks, misadventures and minor crimes such as petty theft. Here, Johnny

and his friends seek out the wrongdoers in order to preserve the moral integrity of their

school.429

In these stories, Wood carefully delineates proper and improper versions of

masculinity through the depictions of the teenaged boys.430

As Johnny and Tod age,

these school stories shift to the setting of Oxford, however the focus on versions of

honourable and dishonourable male behaviour continues. Despite the public nature of

these settings, the focus on domesticity is never too far removed, and the depictions of

school and university sites echo what Nelson refers to in other Victorian school novels

as “pseudodomestic” settings.431

Many tales are set during holidays, when Johnny and

Tod are at Dyke Manor and Crabb Cot, and detail the romantic entanglements,

mysterious events and criminal activities that involve various homes and families of the

surrounding Worcestershire towns. The ever-present figures of Johnny, Tod and the

Squire ensure that the relationship between Victorian masculinities and the home are

constantly debated and depicted.

Detection, the series, and the everyday

The series format of the “Johnny Ludlow” stories also has important implications for

domestic detection. This is usefully explained by way of an analogy by Alison Light, as

she likens the detective story to the familiar trope of the jig-saw puzzle: “a narrative

428

Riley, p.169. 429

The influence of Harriet Martineau’s The Crofton Boys (1841), Frederic Farrar’s Eric; Or,

Little by Little (1858) and Thomas Hughes’ famous novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) is

discernible here. Indeed, Johnny and Tod follow Tom Brown’s lead in going to Oxford, the

sequel to Hughes’ novel being Tom Brown at Oxford (1861). For a discussion of British

imperial history and the rise of the ‘Boys Own’ adventure narrative from 1860-1920, see Joseph

Bristow, Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man’s World (Hammersmith: Harper Collins, 1991). 430

For an extended analysis of how deviance from normative masculinity was policed through

these kinds of disciplinary practices, see Andrew Dowling. Manliness and the Male Novelist in

Victorian Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). Dowling explores the conflicts within the

Victorian discourse of manliness and considers masculinity as a site of anxiety. He argues that

the dominant codes of masculinity in this period are underpinned by notions of discipline, and

that deviance is inherent within this definition of manliness. The discourse of detection in

Wood’s works involves processes to manage such “deviant” individuals and behaviours. 431

Nelson, p.117.

145

whose break-up of linear development and continuities is only a temporary

fragmentation, the pieces deliberately scattered for the express pleasure of putting them

back together again”.432

What is particularly interesting about Light’s choice of analogy

is that a jigsaw puzzle is itself a form of domestic activity: a parlour game. However,

this image of the puzzle suggests a recoverable totality, which detection in the “Johnny

Ludlow” series undermines. In this series, the dispersal of the detective function as it

intersects with everyday, domestic concerns, complicates questions of authority in

reconstructing the ‘puzzle’ and representing the crime. Moreover the continuum of the

series, contributes to a further dispersal of, and a struggle for, power.

Like the opening confession in “Roger Bevere” cited at the outset of this chapter, and

elsewhere in the series, acts of storytelling are staged as specific ‘cases’, puzzles or

domestic mysteries that require detection and representation by various detective

figures. At first glance, the short story form of the “Johnny Ludlow” series suggests

limits and boundaries, and, like Poe’s Dupin stories and Conan Doyle’s Holmes cases,

demonstrates how the short story form has shaped Victorian detection. However, in the

“Johnny Ludlow”stories, this frame of the short story intersects with the overarching

series structure, to create a complex formal structure. Like the Holmes series, and to a

lesser extent, the Dupin stories, the “Johnny Ludlow” mysteries are implicated in a

series impulse. In “Sherlock’s Children: the Birth of the Series” Martin Priestman

defines the series as “the form which repeats, theoretically ad infinitum, the same kind

of action in roughly the same narrative space or time-slot, featuring at least one

character continuously throughout”.433

While I am arguing that the ‘birth’ of series

detection proper predates the advent of the Holmes stories, Priestman provides an

interesting counterpoint. He concludes his discussion with a comparison to modern

television and argues that professionals such as “police detectives, doctors and nurses”

are the ideal heroes of the series as their work combines “the unique, personal interest

drama of the individual episode and the reassuring repetition of the continuum”.434

This

432

Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, literature and conservatism between the wars

(London: Routledge, 1991), pp.91-2. This image is not, in itself, in error. I use it to demonstrate

the difference in the specific case. Certainly, Light’s focus on the pleasure of reconstructing the

‘puzzle’ is apt. 433

Martin Priestman, “Sherlock’s Children: the Birth of the Series” in The Art of Detective

Fiction, eds. Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales and Robert Vilain (London: Macmillan, 2000)

p.50. 434

Priestman, “Sherlock’s Children”, p.57. The desire that this form generates for its reader is

suggested in a letter from Anna Maria Hall, where she writes “That wonderful Johnny keeps

146

is important to my discussion, as the “Johnny Ludlow” series mirrors this episodic and

repetitious form, but importantly, it refuses the heroism of the professional. Unlike the

ideal professional that Priestman posits, Johnny is clearly positioned as an amateur, who

investigates mysteries that circulate within the everyday domestic world. Importantly,

the repetitive impulse is significant to the “Johnny Ludlow” series’ focus upon everyday

domestic spaces. Laurie Langbauer has theorised both the everyday and the series as

foregrounding “repetition and ongoingness”.435

So, taken together, these definitions

emphasise the episodic and continuous nature of series detection.

The series structure of the “Johnny Ludlow” stories reflects how crime, mystery and

detection continually repeat and circulate. Often, particular characters such as doctors

and lawyers reappear to assist in the investigation of medical or legal aspects of the

mysteries. For example, in “The Story of Dorothy Grape” (1881) the character of Dr

Pitt who was previously depicted in the story “Sandstone Torr” (1874), reappears

unexpectedly in the narrative in which Johnny and the Squire uncover the truth about a

spate of disappearances.436

Indeed, Johnny often assists various professionals in the

narratives who tend to take a special interest in him. In several stories Johnny is chosen

by local doctors as an assistant to solve various mysteries and crimes.437

But the

“Johnny Ludlow” series resists vesting authority in these professional figures. Instead,

the figure of the amateur detective is favoured, like the character of Captain Jack

Tanerton who, in “Verena Fontaine’s Rebellion” (1880) is accused of a murder, but

becomes a detective figure in “A Mystery” (1882) to assist Johnny and the Squire in

their investigations into the suspicious disappearance of a local man.

Furthermore, while the settings of the stories shift from rural England, to London, and

France, in all of these sites, the characters of the stories often derive from the same

bothering my brain from month-to-month in a most aggravating manner…the only thing is that

he is apt to stop short – just as I want him to go on”; “I do hope that “Johnny” will abide in “The

Argosy” – to the end of my days” (Letter from Anna Maria Hall to Ellen Wood, 29 Mar 1875). 435

Langbauer, Novels of Everyday Life, p.235. 436

Similarly, Dr Featherston first appears to tend the ailing Ned Sanker in “The Beginning of

the End” (1869) which was reprinted in Johnny Ludlow First Series (1874), and makes his final

appearance twenty years later in “Featherston’s Story”, published in 1889, two years after

Wood’s death and collected in Johnny Ludlow Fifth Series (1890). 437

In just a couple of examples, in “Roger Monk” (1868) Dr Duffham asks for Johnny’s help in

inquiring into a poisoning, and in “Featherston’s Story” (1889) Dr Featherston requests

Johnny’s company on a trip to France where they investigate a murder. Both stories were

collected in Johnny Ludlow. Fifth Series (1890).

147

small Worcestershire towns. This is a tendency that I have already discussed in relation

to Roland Yorke, where several Helstonleigh natives from The Channings, reappear in

London. Wood uses this technique again and, in her “Johnny Ludlow” stories, this

permeation of characters into different locales suggests a continuum, as the characters

will weave in and out of stories, often resurfacing years later. For example, if we return

to “The Story of Dorothy Grape” (1881), the serendipitous discovery of the mysterious

Dorothy Grape in London occurs when Johnny and the Squire are visiting Roger Bevere

– a character who will not have his narrative told until three years later.438

Moreover,

the reader is informed that Johnny Ludlow is already in the city, visiting a family friend

– Miss Deveen. Regular readers of the Argosy would have realised that Johnny’s visit to

Miss Deveen refers back to the events of the previous year’s mystery, “Verena

Fontaine’s Rebellion” (1880) which also occurred in London. Interestingly, Miss

Deveen previously featured as an amateur sleuth in “The Game Finished” (1869) to

discover a jewel thief, Sophie Chalk. In turn, four years later in “Our First Term at

Oxford” (1873), Sophie returns to cause more trouble while Johnny and Tod are at

university. So there is a sense that the individual stories, which are framed as distinct

narratives, actually intersect in chronological terms. Often stories occur simultaneously

and their intersection is marked in the narrative by an address to the reader. For

example, while narrating the events of “Robert Ashton’s Wedding-Day” (1870) Johnny

mentions an adventure that is omitted because, in his words, “I have not space just here

to tell you”.439

This missing story forms the subject of the following month’s tale

“Hardly Worth Telling” (1870). Again, at the conclusion of “Verena Fontaine’s

Rebellion” Johnny laments his lack of time, asserting that, “I have not time at present to

tell you about Coralie; I don’t know when I shall have”.440

Eighteen months later

Johnny apparently finds time to detail Coralie’s story in “Mrs Cramp’s Tenant” (1881).

This creates a world in which the everyday (and its attendant mysteries) are interlaced

where themes are repeated and characters circulate and recirculate.

438

Further to this, it is clear that Wood had Roger Bevere’s story in mind even earlier, as a

passing mention is made of this story in “Seeing Life” (1871), reprinted in Johnny Ludlow. First

Series (1874). and “The Curate of St Matthews” (1879), reprinted in Johnny Ludlow Fourth

Series (1890). 439

Ellen Wood, “Robert Ashton’s Wedding Day” in Johnny Ludlow Second Series (London:

Macmillan, 1899), p.82 440

Ellen Wood, “Verena Fontaine’s Rebellion” in Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series, p.292.

148

So while particular crimes and mysteries might be resolved in an individual story, the

criminals or other characters entangled in the mysteries will often resurface later. This

emphasis on repetition and lack of resolution creates an effect, usefully described by

Langbauer:

The paradox of the series is that, in seeming in its expansiveness to enclose

so much, it exposes that totality as only an illusion. It highlights instead that

there is simply more than we can ever enclose. Something must always be

left out.441

Accordingly, the world created in a series ultimately exists in excess of its own

parameters, and becomes only recovered fragments of an unrepresentable whole. While

each episode is contained in a short story, the reference to past (and sometimes future)

events, characters and tales emphasises how the series impulse undermines this

containment. For example, although many of the earliest stories are set at school or on

school holidays, the prevalence of these school narratives abates in the later stories and

we see Johnny and Tod attend and graduate from Oxford which conveys a sense of

progressing gradually through time. In these later stories Johnny often revisits

characters from earlier narratives who have aged several years. However, although this

linear trajectory is faintly perceptible, it is soon interrupted. Despite stories from the

mid-1870s where Johnny and Tod have finished studies at Oxford, “Caramel Cottage”

(1885) revisits an earlier time when Johnny is at school before an older Johnny returns

in “A Tragedy” (1886). The most prominent example of this is the death of John

Whitney, a close friend of Johnny’s. Whitney’s death is foreshadowed in early stories –

he is ill during “Wolfe Barrington’s Taming” (1870) and his tragic death is the focus of

“At Whitney Hall” (1872). However, over a decade later in “A Curious Experience”

(1883) John is alive again, albeit ailing, requiring the holiday that takes him and Johnny

to the haunted house in Pumpwater. Like Wood’s novels, in which family sagas can

cover two or more generations, many “Johnny Ludlow” stories span several decades. In

“Sandstone Torr” (1874) the beginning of the story details mysterious events from the

Squire’s youth, and as the story progresses and the conflict moves to the younger

generations, Johnny and Tod feature in its resolution. This tendency is addressed

explicitly in “Helen’s Curate” (1877), when the reader is reminded that “these stories

told by “Johnny Ludlow” are not always placed consecutively as regards the time of

441

Langbauer, p.14.

149

their occurrence, but go backwards or forwards indiscriminately”.442

It is clear that

Ludlow, as narrator, has the power to select and recount narratives from any time, and

hence the series reveals the signs of his mastery.

The effect of this non-consecutive arrangement is ultimately revealed in the final story

of the “Johnny Ludlow” series, “The Silent Chimes” (1891) which is a mystery that

originates from the Squire’s history. Detection is again thrown back into the past, as the

final mystery in the series circles back around and definitively refuses closure. While

Johnny is not present in the story, his power as narrator is evident. In his closing

remarks, Johnny states:

And that’s the history. If I had to begin it again, I don’t think I should write

it; for I have had to take its details from other people – chiefly from the

Squire and old Mr Sterling, of the Court. There’s nothing of mine in it, so to

say, and it has been only a bother.443

Johnny’s attempt to efface his presence in the story only draws more attention to his

powerful role in choosing to reconstruct (or omit) certain events. As the final story, and

published five years after Wood’s death, the reference to the ‘bother’ of (re)writing the

history hints at fatigue in the face of an endless pursuit.444

The recurrence of characters

throughout the series and constant shifts in time and place demonstrate how the series

structure itself hints at an excess, an incompleteness, which can never be completely

contained or represented. Later, Conan Doyle will reflect this incompleteness in “The

Adventure of the Second Stain” (1904), as Watson states, “I have notes of many

hundreds of cases to which I have never alluded”.445

Returning to Light’s analogy of the

jigsaw, we can see how in Wood’s stories, figures like Johnny might attempt to

reconstruct a puzzle, but the form of the series reinforces that this is always a partial

442

Ellen Wood, “Helen’s Curate” in Johnny Ludlow Third Series (London, Macmillan, 1899),

p.185. 443

Ellen Wood, “The Silent Chimes” in Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series, (London: Macmillan,

1899), pp.397-8. 444

This suggestion of fatigue might be usefully theorised in relation to Laurie Langbauer’s

chapter “The City, the Everyday, and Boredom” in Novels of Everyday Life. Langbauer argues

that the serial nature of detection in the Holmes series suggests that, “[r]ather than mystery

offering an escape from Holmes’s boredom, the tedious everyday becomes the mystery he

cannot escape” (p.139). This inescapable mystery is performed in the series form which both

Holmes’ and Johnny’s detective work is recorded. 445

Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Second Stain” in The Return of Sherlock

Holmes (London: Michael O’Mara Books, 1987), p.279.The Sherlock Holmes stories echo the

Johnny Ludlow series in that Watson will often mention past and future stories and characters.

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recovery of the fragmented whole. The completed jigsaw remains as an illusory fantasy,

the mystery is always ongoing. While Johnny might attempt to discover the criminals in

his cases and contain the ‘truth’ in his narratives, their status as memories of the past

undermines his attempts and again renders the puzzle incomplete.

The narrator-function of Johnny Ludlow, and the series’ presentation in a memoir form

therefore has important implications. Like the narratives of Poe and Doyle, which take a

‘case’ or memoir form, Wood’s stories are presented by the now-older Johnny Ludlow,

recalling the histories of his family, friends and various acquaintances. Dennis Porter, in

another context, points to this memoir form as a method used in detective fiction to

create distance, contributing to a style of calm reasoning rather than thrilling action.446

However, I would suggest that this style of ‘calm reasoning’ is used by Wood to further

domesticate detection, in opposition to detection as a professional and at times frenetic

activity. Moreover, this memoir style emphasises that the detection narrative is overtly a

construction, which foregrounds the role of storytelling and the power of the storyteller.

Ludlow is recalling a past that is inexorably tied to the domestic realm, the homes and

friends of his early life. To explain this further, I would recall the arguments of Peter

Thoms who labels nineteenth-century detective fiction as “an inherently self-reflexive

form” and states that “narrative is not what is – an unproblematic mirroring of events –

but what is made, and that process of construction becomes the very subject of these

works . . . the resulting solution confronts us as an artifice”.447

In the “Johnny Ludlow”

stories, as in other early detective fictions, detectives become authorial (but not

necessarily authoritative) figures, and this is emphasised by the narrator who is recalling

events from the unstable, subjective narrative of memory. This is overtly demonstrated

in “A Mystery” (1882) when Ludlow addresses the reader with: “I scarcely know how

to go on with this story so as to put its complications and discrepancies of evidence

clearly before you”.448

Here and elsewhere, Ludlow is an uncertain narrator and

detective, a far cry from the trademark egoism and control of Sherlock Holmes. Here,

the work of storytelling is foregrounded and the process of reconstruction is neither

transparent nor simple. Therefore, the notion of ‘solving’ the mystery is itself

446

Dennis Porter. “The Language of Detection” in Popular Culture, ed, Tony Bennett (London:

Routledge, 1990), p.86. 447

Thoms, p.1. 448

Ellen Wood, “A Mystery” in Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series, p.82.

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destabilised. It is clear that truth is produced by certain figures under certain

circumstances and detection becomes a contested site.

Domestic Detection

The “Johnny Ludlow” stories contain circulating questions of truth and authority. In

these stories, the ability to read, know and articulate, represent or resolve mystery

becomes paramount. Often in the stories, the reader can perceive just whose voices are

privileged and omitted in the discourse of detection. While Ludlow is only one of many

detective figures in the stories, he frequently performs as the primary investigator. As he

states: “It is my habit always to try to account for things that seem unaccountable; to

search out reasons and fathom them; and you would be surprised at the light that will

sometimes crop up”.449

In “Charlotte and Charlotte” (1878), Johnny is initially blamed

for “making a mystery” out of his observations and he is often accused of having fancies

and unreasonable suspicions which, of course, are revealed to be neither fanciful nor

unreasonable.450

This is because Ludlow possesses a much-emphasised talent for

detecting the truth about people. In the first collected tale, “Losing Lena” (1868),

Johnny asserts that:

I was always reading people’s faces and taking likes and dislikes accordingly.

They called me a muff for it at home (and for many other things), Tod

especially; but it seemed to me that I could read people as easily as a book.

Duffham, our surgeon at Church Dykely, bade me trust to it as a good gift

from God. One day, pushing my straw hat up to draw his fingers across the

top of my brow, he quaintly told the Squire that when he wanted people’s

characters read, to come to me to read them. The Squire only laughed in

answer. 451

The surgeon’s action – to examine Johnny’s brow – and Johnny’s propensity for reading

faces, bear the influence of the pseudosciences of phrenology and physiognomy. Sally

Shuttleworth explicates the difference between the two popular sciences: “[w]hile

physiognomy claimed to be based on an extension of intuitive understanding, on

449

“A Mystery” in Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series, p.29. 450

Ellen Wood, “Charlotte and Charlotte” in Johnny Ludlow Third Series (London: Macmillan,

1899), p.244. 451

Ellen Wood, “Losing Lena” in Johnny Ludlow First Series (London: Bentley, 1895), p.14. In

another example, in the later story, “The Ebony Box” (1883) in Johnny Ludlow Fifth Series

(London: Macmillan, 1899), p.328, Johnny is characterised as able to “read the riddles in a

man's face and voice”.

152

evidence open for all to see, phrenology necessitated the acquisition of a special body of

knowledge in order to interpret skull information”.452

Dr Duffham displays his

possession of specialised phrenological knowledge whereas Johnny can readily access

physiognomy to make assessments of character. Johnny’s ‘gift’ for ‘reading’

countenances is a form of intuitive detection and although it is often ridiculed, Johnny is

also consulted because of it. For example, the Squire, who as the previous quotation

demonstrates, mocks the suggestion that Johnny has a special gift, nevertheless trusts a

woman’s evidence in “Sandstone Torr” (1874) based solely on Johnny’s instinctual

impression that she is reliable.453

While Johnny also uses more traditional methods of

investigation such as observation and gathering evidence, his intuitive style of detection

operates in stark contrast to the emphasis on rationality and logic that characterises the

methods of Dupin and Holmes. Johnny’s role as a detective is a contested one and the

discourse of detection is, as always, a site of struggle.

As a domestic detective, Johnny often stumbles over mysteries in his everyday roles as

a confidant to friends and by monitoring gossip.454

Time after time, various

townspeople and family members confide their secrets in Johnny and/or ask him to

assist in investigating private matters. Miss Deveen requests Johnny’s assistance in her

investigation of a jewellery theft in “At Miss Deveen’s” and “The Game Finished”

(1869) and again in “A Great Mystery” (1873) she asks Johnny to help her stake out her

own home to discover a potential thief.455

In “Lost in the Post” (1870) the chemist,

Rymer, confesses to Johnny that his son has been involved in money laundering and

then five years later in “Margaret Rymer” (1875) the repentant son, Ben Rymer, secretly

452

Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Bronte and Victorian Psychology (Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 1996), p.61. Peter J. Hutchings discusses the role of phrenology and

physiognomy in nineteenth-century discourses of criminality in The Criminal Spectre in Law,

Literature and Aesthetics: Incriminating subjects (London: Routledge, 2001). See in particular

Chapter 5: “Modern forensics: photography and other suspects”. For a more general discussion

of phrenology in the nineteenth-century, see Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular

Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-century Britain

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 453

“Sandstone Torr” in Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series, p.121. This instalment was originally

serialised as “The Cries in the Trees” in the Argosy, March 1874. 454

Sherlock Holmes also uses gossip to assist in his investigations, in one instance in “The

Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” (1903) he criticises Watson’s attempts at detection as being

too straightforward, instead insisting that going to “the nearest public house” and listening to the

“country gossip” would have proved a more useful strategy (The Return of Sherlock Holmes, p.

96). 455

“A Great Mystery” (1873) is reprinted as “Our Visit” in Johnny Ludlow Third Series. This

story bears the influence of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (1868), as the ‘thief’ is actually

unaware of her involvement, as she has been sleepwalking.

153

returns to the village to ascertain from Johnny that his secret has been kept. In “The

Other Earring” (1874) Lucy Bird arranges a secret meeting with Johnny to confess that

her husband’s friend has stolen Mrs Todhetley’s valuable earring and returns it him.

Johnny himself ruminates over his particular privilege in aquiring the confidences of

various acquaintances in “Getting Away” (1871) when he muses: “Why it is that all

kinds of people seem to put confidence in me and trust me with matters they’d never

speak of to others, I have never found out”.456

Indeed, at this moment, he compares

himself to Tod, speculating that the man who reveals important information about the

criminal activities of his family, would not have confided in Tod. It certainly seems that

Johnny’s less imperious version of masculinity gives him certain advantages in being

able to investigate sensitive private matters. As a result, he has a more powerful position

in the discourse of domestic detection.

When Johnny narrates stories that are not from his own experience, or uses witness

accounts, he will disclose the sources of the stories. There is a pattern of references to

the construction of narratives in the stories through the depiction of letters, statements

and witness evidence. These become the building blocks of discourse. This is illustrated

in the story “Caramel Cottage” (1885) where Ludlow pauses in his narrative of the

crimes to address the reader with, “of course the reader fully understands that I am, so

far, writing of what I knew nothing about until later” (84). Thoms describes this

assemblage of the real as, “an intelligible chain of narrative constructed from discovered

information”.457

Similarly, in “A Tale of Sin” (1870) Johnny acknowledges at the outset

that, “The history is Duffhams’; not mine” refering to his use of diaries, letters and

other papers on loan from the doctor to reconstruct the events.458

During this story,

these other texts are often inserted into the narrative as evidence of the private thoughts

and feelings of the characters. Despite this reliance on evidence, Johnny depicts the

events according to his own sensibilities. The so-called ‘sinner’ of the story, a young

girl who becomes pregnant out of wedlock, is treated in a very sympathetic light, with

Johnny acknowledging at the end of the story that, “[Duffham] called it a tale of sin. I,

Johnny Ludlow, think it is more like a tale of suffering”.459

This underlines the point

that Johnny’s construction of these narratives always entails a rewriting.

456

“Getting Away” (1871) Johnny Ludlow First series, p.424. 457

Thoms, p.1. 458

“A Tale of Sin” in Johnny Ludlow Second series, p.153 459

“A Tale of Sin”, p.230.

154

By this definition, the power of the detective figures is exposed by this staged

construction of ‘truth’. For example in “Featherston’s Story” (1890) where a suspicious

death occurs, we are told that the women at the centre of the story both kept diaries and:

“But for that fact, and also that the diaries were preserved, Featherston could not have

arrived at the details of the story so perfectly”.460

Several entries from the diaries are

then recounted, but again the authority of these narratives is destabilised as we see, in

one instance, an addendum between April 16th

and May 1st when we are told that some

“entries of little importance” have been omitted.461

The controlling hand of Dr

Featherston, and ultimately the power of the narrator, Ludlow, work to frame the

everyday experiences detailed in these women’s narratives. However, this does not

prevent an appeal to the ‘truth’ value of these narratives later in the text:

And now I come into the story – I, Johnny Ludlow. For what I have told of it

hitherto has not been from any personal knowledge of mine, but from diaries,

and from what Mary Carimon related to me, and from Featherston. It may be

regarded as singular that I should have been, so to say, present at its ending,

but that I was there is as true as anything I ever wrote. The story itself is true

in all its chief facts; I have already said that; and it is true that I saw the close

of it.462

The emphasis on truth here, borders on an anxiety. What is apparent though is that in

this story, as in many of the “Johnny Ludlow” stories, the detective is a figurative writer

or creator, constructing truths and producing knowledge. The use of everyday narratives

such as letters, diary entries, newspapers, and witness testimony all have the effect of

producing evidence, but also that of producing ‘reality’. While, as narrator (and

sometimes detective) Johnny is a powerful figure in the struggle to produce truth in the

discourse of detection, his is not the only voice.

In the “Johnny Ludlow” stories, power circulates through a dispersed system of

detectives, as crime becomes a form of domestic politics. While crimes such as murder,

bigamy, fraud and theft all motivate detection in the stories, they inevitably intersect

with domestic issues such as inheritance, family secrets, marriage and the maintenance

of respectability. In “The Story of Dorothy Grape” (1881) a young orphaned woman

460

“Featherston’s Story” in Johnny Ludlow Fifth Series, p.29. 461

“Featherston’s Story”, p.29. 462

“Featherston’s Story”, p.180.

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who is coerced into a hasty marriage is warned by her neighbour to “make inquiries in

London” and “ask for proof” to verify the means and respectability of her suitor.463

Here, detection involves maintaining the privacy and respectability of the home and

family. Later, in “Featherston’s Story” (1890) the ability to read faces (and detect

criminals), is situated in the characters of Lavinia Preen and Mary Carimon. Lavinia

becomes a domestic detective when the suspicious Captain Fennel weds her sister and

she immediately detects “a shifty look” in his otherwise attractive face.464

Lavinia’s

detection into the Captain’s history is motivated by the potential threat to her family’s

reputation and position. Moreover, after Lavinia’s suspicious death, a family confidant,

Mary Carimon, begins to watch Captain Fennel carefully. We are told that the guilty

Fennel dislikes Mary because “[h]e believed she read him pretty correctly”.465

Here,

certain characters, notably females, are negotiating positions of power in the discourse

of detection. This process of reading, observing and detecting also suggests that a

dispersed system of surveillance is necessary to preserve the domestic sphere. Like the

homes previously discussed in Wood’s novels these Victorian households reflect

Hepworth’s definition, as places “of constant struggle to maintain privacy, security and

respectability in a dangerous world”.466

Certainly, the domestic spaces of Wood’s

stories seem to necessitate a broad system of surveillance and detection. Like the loyal

and observant housekeeper, Judith, in The Channings, servants and other local villagers

also perform a detective function in the “Johnny Ludlow” stories. In “Caromel’s Farm”

(1878), the blacksmith Dobbs spies on a property in which sightings of ghosts have

lately occurred. When he is discovered covertly watching this neighbouring farm by

Johnny Ludlow and the Squire, he says: “There's something uncanny in this place; some

ugly mystery. I mean to find it out if I can, sirs, and this is the third night I've come here

on the watch”.467

In this way, detection is a system to monitor potential threats to the

village, and makes ironic the earlier claim that, “people don't go prying into their

neighbours' closets to look up their skeletons”.468

Domestic detection becomes a

necessary and ongoing process in the protection of homes, families, ideology and the

status quo. In the “Johnny Ludlow” series, there are various figures negotiating for

463

“The Story of Dorothy Grape” in Johnny Ludlow Third Series, p.331. 464

“Featherston’s Story”, p.40. 465

“Featherston’s Story”, p.156. 466

Hepworth, p.19. 467

“Caromel’s Farm”, Johnny Ludlow Third Series, p.266. 468

“Caromel’s Farm”, p.223.

156

positions in a system of domestic detection, with the outcomes organised by Johnny’s

narration.

Detection in these stories is staged in a way that reveals a pattern of distrust regarding

the power to represent or narrativise. In this way, domestic detection is clearly linked to

threats to privacy. For example, in an ambivalent depiction in “A Tragedy” (1886), the

victim of a theft is investigating his own monetary loss and forthrightly asserts “I don’t

like detectives”.469

When the Squire and Johnny make private inquiries into his loss, it

eventuates that the victim’s own son perpetrated the deception – a fact that is

suppressed. This investment in privacy that underpins domestic detection is reiterated in

“The Ebony Box” (1883) when an amount of money disappears from a house and the

owner informs the police. After an innocent man has been publicly tried for the crime

and advertised as a criminal in the newspapers, the owner is warned, “he should have

had it investigated privately”.470

This blundering by police detectives recalls the

depiction of Delves in Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles, and the early Butterby in The

Channings. Indeed, in several stories there is an outright fear of official detection, as

family members are compelled to undertake roles as domestic detectives. In the gothic

story, “Caramel Cottage” (1885) a young woman, Katrine Barbary, suspects her father

of killing her fiancé and becomes a domestic detective to discover the truth. Here, the

family home becomes an oppressive site of fear and terror. However, Katrine ultimately

fears others’ detection of this potential murder more than her father. When she sees a

shadowy figure observing her father digging a grave in the garden she speculates: “Was

it an officer of the law, come to spy upon her father and denounce his crime?”471

However Katrine is relieved as she suspects the figure’s true identity is Johnny Ludlow,

and gasps, “Oh, I pray that it may be! I think he would not betray him”.472

Clearly, there

is a marked delineation between those entrusted with domestic detection and those who

do not have legitimate positions in the discourse. Sometimes even ostensibly

respectable individuals like the Squire have less power in the discourse due to their lack

of sensitivity to domestic issues. For example in “The Other Earring” (1874) when Lucy

Bird returns Mrs Todhetley’s stolen earring to Johnny, he and Mrs Todhetley make

certain that Tod and the Squire are not informed to save Lucy the public shame of her

469

“A Tragedy”, Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series, p.188. 470

“The Ebony Box”, Johnny Ludlow Fifth Series, p.316. 471

“Caramel Cottage”, Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series, p.99. 472

“Caramel Cottage”, p.99.

157

husband’s involvement. Johnny believes that the Todhetley men would certainly pursue

official avenues of justice and hence conspires with Mrs Todhetley to conceal the truth.

Thus, while privacy concerns ensure that more official detectives, and indeed, more

authoritarian male figures, become potential threats, the detective function becomes

dispersed among a circle of family members and concerned friends whose activity is as

much directed at hiding the facts as it is to bring about disclosure.

This concern over the power to detect and to represent truths becomes an extra-textual

concern, as the self-reflexivity of the “Johnny Ludlow” series implicates the implied

readers of the stories in the discourse of domestic detection. In the opening to “A

Mystery” (1882) Johnny visits Dr Darbyshire, and tells us that:

I had chanced to look in upon him one evening when he was taking rest in his

chimney-corner, in the old red-cushioned chair, after his day's work was

over, smoking his churchwarden pipe in his slippers and reading “The Story

of Dorothy Grape”.473

By staging this cosy domesticity as a site for the reading of her stories, Wood overtly

transforms the familiar into the uncanny.474

This spectacle of the domestic complicates

ideas of public and private, and reality and its representations. With the use of this

image, the domestic space of a potential reader is implicated in the represented domestic

spaces of the stories. Interestingly, this domestic cosiness, is an image echoed 64 years

later by George Orwell in his essay, “Decline of the English Murder” (1946):

It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep

in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You

put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the

News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce,

followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of

mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is

drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well

alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it

that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.475

473

“A Mystery”, Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series, p.1. 474

Karen Chase and Michael Levenson, The Spectacle of Intimacy: A Public Life for the

Victorian Family (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p.17. 475

George Orwell, “Decline of the English Murder” in Decline of the English Murder and Other

Essays (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965), p.9

158

The readers of texts in the home, mirror the domestic detectives in Wood’s stories.

Moreover, the figure of Dr Darbyshire as a consumer of the texts, locates a possible

reader firmly within the middle-class. In this particular story, the doctor urges Johnny to

embark on telling the current narrative because, as the doctor insists, “you seem good at

telling of unaccountable disappearances”, implicit praise of the author herself.476

Johnny’s role as a storyteller or author-figure is therefore explicitly staged, but the role

is complicated as, at the conclusion of “A Mystery” the central murder remains

unsolved. Instead, the reader is addressed with the challenge: “you must decide for

yourselves, if you can, on which side the weight of evidence seems to lie”.477

This

strategy implicates the reader of detective fiction by foregrounding how the problem of

knowledge and the continued circulation of Victorian domestic ideology requires an

extra-textual domestic detective. In the later stories, the events of previous narratives are

often recounted to new listeners. In “Lady Jenkins” (1879) the mystery of the missing

emeralds from “Sophie Chalk” (1869) is told to an avid circle of listeners. Also, in “The

Last of the Caromels” (1878) Nash Caromel’s faked death is a ‘copycat’ crime, as he

informs Johnny and the Squire that the villainous events of “Sandstone Torr” (1874)

were the inspiration: “It had come to light, you know, not long before. Stephen

Radcliffe had hidden his brother in the old tower, passing him off to the world as dead;

and so, I suppose, it was thought that I could be hidden and passed off as dead”.478

This

self-reflexive retelling and representation of the stories exposes the power relations

inherent in the “Johnny Ludlow” series.

476

“A Mystery”, p, 1. Compare this to Doyle who seems always a little ashamed of his Holmes

stories. Knight asserts that Doyle viewed his Holmes stories as “vulgar potboilers which kept

him from the scholarly and overtly moralising work of his historical novels” (Form and

Ideology, p. 98). For evidence of this self-deprecation, see “The Sign of Four” (1890) and “The

Adventure of Wisteria Lodge” (1908) where Holmes belittles the narratives of his cases that

Watson publishes. However, in the later story, “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier” (1926)

he seems to praise Watson and indicate the difficulty of narrativising the case, something that

echoes the heroism of Wood’s narrator and suggests the challenge of navigating the politics of

storytelling that the Johnny Ludlow stories emphasise. For an extended discussion of the

metafictional techniques in the Holmes stories, see Rudolph Glitz, “Horrifying Holmes: Conan

Doyle’s Bachelor Detective and the Aesthetics of Domestic Realism” in Formal Investigations.

Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction, eds. Paul Fox and Koral

Melikoglu (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2007), pp.1-28. 477

“A Mystery”, p.60. 478

“The Last of the Caromels”, Johnny Ludlow Third Series, p.275. An interesting side note is

that the story of “Sandstone Torr” revolves around the Radcliffe family, and indeed contains a

character Annette Radcliffe – perhaps a nod to Ann Radcliffe’s gothic influence.

159

In Ellen Wood’s “Johnny Ludlow” series, detection is a domesticated discourse

characterised by instability and circularity. The stories bring crime and other mysterious

threats into close proximity with the domestic world of the nineteenth century to suggest

that the site of the everyday is one that necessitates constant surveillance and detection

from within. However it also demonstrates how the domestic is a complex and

contradictory site, as the art of detection becomes a dispersed system, with multiple

detective figures struggling to produce truths. The stories raise questions regarding acts

of reading and signifying as they stage the construction of discourse. Often it is women,

or particular versions of masculinity that are privileged. Johnny, as a young and less

authoritative male figure, is given privileged access to information, especially from

marginalised figures such as women, children and servants. In the world of Johnny

Ludlow knowledge may be recovered or represented, or conversely, may also be

suppressed, depending either on the whim of the figurative storytellers or the narrator

himself, or on the demands of domestic ideology. Detection, when it intersects with the

domestic in Wood's Victorian fiction, reveals a discursive complexity in stark contrast

to the more straightforward masculine narratives of the late-Victorian and Edwardian

eras.

160

161

Chapter Four

Supernatural strategies in The Shadow of Ashlydyat,

Dene Hollow and Pomeroy Abbey.

This is a ghost story. Every word of it is true.479

This opening to Ellen Wood’s short story “Reality or Delusion?” (1868) playfully

unsettles categories of reason and madness, natural and supernatural. While the title

establishes an apparently stable opposition of reality or delusion, what quickly follows

is an invocation of the supernatural alongside a claim to truth. The narrator, Johnny

Ludlow, insists upon the veracity of this story in which a woman witnesses the ghost of

her lover at the moment of his suicide. However, at the conclusion of the text, the reader

is left to decide whether the story belongs in the realm of the real or the fantastic.480

Ultimately, the question: “Reality or Delusion?” is left unresolved, a tactic that Wood

employs repeatedly in her works, indicating the difficulties inherent in representing

‘reality’ or ‘truth’. Wood’s writings often engage in the debate over supernaturalism by

registering the counter-narratives that Victorian investments in realism and empiricism

evade, neglect or exclude. Like this story, ghosts, curses, mysterious predictions and

visionary dreams fill the pages of Wood’s narratives and inflect the everyday Victorian

world of her stories with uncanny shadows. Supernatural presences are almost

unavoidable amidst the homes and families that are the sites of her sensational

narratives and she has received recognition as a significant contributor to Victorian

supernatural fiction.481

These supernatural narratives dramatise the tension between

479

Mrs Henry Wood “Reality or Delusion?” Johnny Ludlow First Series (London: Bentley,

1895 [1874]), p.293. Originally serialised in the Argosy, December 1868. This story was

subsequently reprinted amongst those by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, J.S. Le Fanu, Robert

Louis Stevenson, Mary E. Wilkins, M.R. James and Amelia B. Edwards in Classic Ghost

Stories, ed. John Grafton (Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 1998). 480

Botting, p.126, refers briefly to this short story as an example of how Victorian supernatural

fiction explored ideas of reality. 481

Eve M. Lynch briefly mentions Wood among the many female Victorian writers who were

preoccupied with the supernatural, in “Spectral Politics: the Victorian ghost story and the

domestic servant” in The Victorian Supernatural, Nicola Bown and Carolyn Burdett and Pamela

Thurschwell (Eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.69; Vanessa D.

Dickerson, Victorian Ghosts in the Noontide: women writers and the supernatural (Columbia:

University of Missouri Press, 1996), p.9; p.135, also refers briefly to Wood in her study of

British female writers of the supernatural. Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert (eds) include Wood’s

story “Reality or Delusion?” (1868), in the collection, The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost

Stories, pp.115-29; James L. Campbell discusses Wood’s supernatural short stories and novels

in, “Mrs Henry Wood,” Supernatural Fiction Writers. Fantasy and Horror, E.F. Bleiler (ed)

(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985), pp.279-86; Malcolm Elwin, p.252, also

162

mystery and resolution, investigating claims of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ and hence reflect

another version of detection in Wood’s writing. In her fiction, Wood employs the

supernatural as a device to suggest alternative ways of knowing, seeing and interpreting

the world that are often marginalised by discourses of science and classic realism in the

period.

The proliferation of supernaturalism in Wood’s fiction presents certain challenges in

narrowing a field of inquiry.482

James L. Campbell argues that Wood’s total

contribution to the supernatural genre can be quantified as one novel: The Shadow of

Ashlydyat, two novellas: Adam Grainger and Sandstone Torr and twenty short stories.

However, this chapter considers a broader definition of Wood’s supernaturalism and

suggests the limitations of Campbell’s viewpoint. Indeed, as Vanessa Dickerson notes,

sensation and the supernatural are closely aligned, and the Victorians often conflated the

two categories.483

I will take as a starting point the mid-nineteenth-century context and

the cultural fascination with, and enthusiasm for, the supernatural. Wood was embedded

within a literary community that keenly debated and depicted the supernatural,

struggling to understand, define and demarcate boundaries between natural and

supernatural, ordinary and extraordinary, temporal and spiritual. Wood’s position in this

context ensures that her works are complex sites of tension and debate. I will investigate

the function of the supernatural in three of Wood’s novels, The Shadow of Ashlydyat

(1863), Dene Hollow (1871) and Pomeroy Abbey (1878). These three texts have been

chosen as examples of her early, middle and later works in which the supernatural is a

pervasive influence.484

While at times I employ critics who refer to the generic category

acknowledges Wood’s predilection for the supernatural. Andrew Mangham engages with the

supernatural aspects of The Shadow of Ashlydyat in his discussion of Wood’s female gothic in,

“‘I See It; But I Cannot Explain It’: Female Gothicism and the Narrative of Female

Incarceration in the Novels of Mrs Henry Wood”, Victorian Gothic, ed. Rosemary Mitchell and

Karen Sayer (Hosforth, Leeds: Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, 2003), pp.81-98, a

discussion that he continues in his 2007 work, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction: Crime

Medicine and Victorian Popular Culture, pp.149-158, and Adeline Sergeant, p.190, briefly

discusses Wood’s supernatural fiction as, “works of pure imagination”. 482

Campbell, p.280. 483

Dickerson, p.133. Indeed, in the 1867 article “Past ‘Sensationalists’” Argosy 5 (Dec 1867):

49-56, a history of ‘sensationalist’ literatures is detailed. This discussion includes the gothic

novels of Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis and Mary Shelley who peppered their novels with

supernatural trappings. 484

The term ‘spiritualism’ is used by the Victorians to describe the almost religious dedication

to spiritual beliefs. However, while I will discuss in detail how Victorian spiritualist beliefs and

movements provide a background to these works, Wood was not herself dedicated to

spiritualism.

163

of ‘ghost stories’ I find the term ‘supernatural’ is more useful to represent the broad

spectrum of inexplicable and otherworldly manifestations in Wood’s works, including

spectres, hauntings, curses, omens and dream warnings. In the novels under discussion,

only The Shadow of Ashlydyat contains an actual ghost whereas in Dene Hollow and

Pomeroy Abbey the apparitions are revealed to be hoaxes or of non-spiritual origin. In

all of these texts, uncanny shadows, hauntings and prophecies are inextricably linked to

the domestic sphere, troubling Victorian homes and tormenting domestic spaces. The

domestic focus also ensures that the supernatural is brought into close contact with the

lives of women, often as a strategy to manage the dominance of men. This strategy is

extended in Dene Hollow to explore the politics of class. In Pomeroy Abbey the politics

of gender and class intersect as a network of women employ supernatural strategies. In

all three stories, supernaturalism often becomes an alternative discourse with which to

express feminine desires and fears, which are often marginalised by, or inaccessible

through, masculinised public discourses. Thus, the supernatural and detection intersect

to reveal certain truths that scientific or rational inquiry cannot determine. Even as

Wood’s narratives reveal an investment in the ability to detect these ‘truths’, they also

suggest the limitations of certain frameworks in the investigative pursuit.

The Victorian Supernatural: Wood and her contemporaries

Wood’s supernatural preoccupations are illustrative of the revival of interest in the

occult, mesmerism and spiritualism during the nineteenth century. As the Victorian

enthusiasm for science and empiricism increased, questions were raised about the

limitations of these dominant discourses, not least their lack of metaphysical

consolations. Consequently, the supernatural became an area of intense debate and

scrutiny among Victorian writers and thinkers who sought alternative explanations and

interpretations.485

The period saw increased interest in events such as telepathy, séances

485

Indeed, both sides of the debate are reflected in several pieces from around mid-century in

Bentley’s Miscellany: Charles Mackay “A Chapter on Haunted Houses” in Bentley’s Miscellany,

7 (1840): 161-71, recounts several seventeenth-century anecdotes in which the supernatural was

attributed to natural causes or human intervention. Similarly, Mrs Romer’s “Story of a Haunted

House” in Bentley’s Miscellany 26 (1849): 436-45, recounts a ‘haunting’ in a house in Egypt

that was eventually ‘exorcised’ by the setting of rat traps. Later pieces, however, reflect a

diversity of opinion. The anonymous “Modern Ghosts” in Bentley’s Miscellany 43 (1858): 32-7,

recounts various anecdotes of unexplained ghosts and spirit warnings. A more sceptical and

scientific tone is evident in “Table Turning and Spirit Rapping” in Bentley’s Miscellany 48

(1860): 568-78, with the author testifying to “simple and reasonable explanations” for the

phenomena (578). In “Ghost Stories” in Bentley’s Miscellany 54 (1863): 269-77, excerpts of a

work by H. Spicer, Strange Things Among Us, are published with the article providing evidence

164

and table-rapping, with ‘real-life’ accounts of supernatural occurrences published

alongside sensational ghost stories in the popular press. As a writer in this period, Ellen

Wood was no exception. Wood’s small social circle included public figures who were

deeply invested in the debate over the supernatural. Charles Wood asserts in his

Memorials that, “some of [Wood’s] best friends, such as Mrs Howitt and Mrs Milner

Gibson, took up the question of spiritualism, and spent much time in what had become a

fashion of the day”.486

A recollection of a séance that Wood had attended in France is

then produced and Charles depicts her as a sceptic who “narrowly scrutinize[s]” the

medium and his craft. 487

At this séance, when no spirits are made manifest, the medium

explains that, “there is someone in the room antagonistic to them, and they will not

perform before her. The séance must terminate.”488

In Appearances of the Dead: A

Cultural History of Ghosts, R. C. Finucane details the ‘rules’ of Victorian séances that

asserted “the best results were attained only with ‘sympathetic’ participants”.489

He

explains that certain individuals, designated as “Hostile skeptics” were thought to

prevent the medium from summoning the spirits. However, as Finucane argues, these

sceptics also disrupted “the group’s common desire for transient self-deception”.490

In

the account given, Wood is overtly figured as a hostile sceptic. According to her son,

Wood’s belief in “things unseen” was “too deep and reverential to allow of their being

lightly handled”.491

However, Wood’s scepticism seemingly only extended to these

more theatrical supernatural encounters, while her beliefs in spirits, visions and dreams

remained.

from apparent sceptics and reputable sources attesting to the existence of ghosts and other

spiritual manifestations. While I have used only one of many periodical titles published at the

time, many other journals were publishing very similar material. 486

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.199. The radical socialite Susannah Arethusa Milner Gibson

was a close friend of Wood’s and was also very active in the spiritualist revival of the 1860s.

She is famous for holding a séance conducted by the infamous medium D.D. Home with whom

the Brownings were also acquainted. 487

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.200. 488

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.200-201. 489

R. C. Finucane, Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts (London: Junction

Books, 1987), p.189. This work also provides an overview of the extent to which Victorian

middle-classes embraced supernaturalism in Chapter Seven: “The Thirst for Immortality”

pp.172-216. 490

Finucane, p.189. 491

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.199. It is worth noting that at the time Charles wrote the

biography of his mother, the enthusiasm for spiritualism was beginning to abate, some of the

more famous mediums having been revealed as frauds. Hence, he holds a more cynical lens up

to the spiritualist ‘craze’ of the 1850s and 60s.

165

Wood’s spiritual beliefs are widely recorded in biographical accounts of her life.492

In

one such instance, Lyn Pykett argues that Wood’s supernatural plots, in such works as

The Shadow of Ashlydyat, derive from the influence of her mother, Elizabeth Price.

Pykett asserts that Mrs Price possessed, “a very active imagination, was prone to strange

prophetic dreams and believed that she saw supernatural spirits”.493

In the Memorials of

Mrs Henry Wood the depiction of Elizabeth Price is remarkable for the emphasis placed

on her visionary dreams and spectral encounters. Charles Wood alleges that Price’s

dreams were often prophetic in nature, and he asserts that:

Mrs Price had many such dreams; and it would seem there are persons to

whom the veil dividing the material from the spiritual world is partially

withdrawn, so that they obtain glimpses others can never see, and are

susceptible to influences others can never feel. It appears evident that

some are in closer contact with the “things unseen” than others.494

Here, Charles Wood constructs his grandmother, Mrs Price, as a liminal figure –

positioned in the material world, as wife and mother, but inextricably tied to the

spiritual and the supernatural. These depictions of Mrs Price recall the character of Mrs

Hare from East Lynne, a woman who can access hidden truths via her prophetic dreams.

The special status of Wood’s mother, represented in this and other works, is noteworthy

because she is figured as a visionary, which, as I will discuss later, illuminates the

intersections of gender, the supernatural and detection in Ellen Wood’s works.

According to her biography, Ellen Wood was a regular visitor to the Highgate home of

writers William and Mary Howitt in the early 1860s.495

At this time, the Howitts were

both very active in spiritualist circles. During Wood’s visits, William apparently

attempted to convince Wood that his “extraordinary geometrical drawings” had been

completed “under spiritual influence”.496

The Howitts had previously published a

translation of The History of Magic by German author, Joseph Ennemoser in 1854.

492

Andrew Maunder, in his introduction to East Lynne, p.10, argues that Wood’s formative

years were influenced by her youthful companions – the servants of her grandparents – who

entertained the young Ellen with stories of ghosts and the supernatural; Campbell, “Mrs Henry

Wood”, p.281, details Wood’s interest in spiritualism toward the end of her life; Charles Wood

details her ingrained beliefs in spirits in Memorials, p.199. 493

Lyn Pykett (ed.), “Gothic Sensationalism: Ellen Wood, St Martin’s Eve (1866)”, Varieties of

Women’s Sensation Fiction – Volume 3, p.viii. 494

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.29. 495

Their personal relationship was linked to a professional one, as Ellen Wood’s “The Elchester

College Boys” appeared in The Golden Casket: A Treasury of Tales for Young People (1861),

edited by Mary Howitt. 496

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.199.

166

While William translated the text, the longer title of the work indicates that it included

“an appendix of the most remarkable and best authenticated stories of apparitions,

dreams, second sight, somnambulism, predictions, divination, witchcraft, vampires,

fairies, table-turning, and spirit-rapping, selected by Mary Howitt.” These selected

stories read as a supernatural miscellany – situating figures of foreign folklore such as

the vampire alongside more domesticated Victorian practices such as table-turning.

Amice Lee writes that Mary Howitt was often consulted by “well-known people” who

trusted in her “sincerity and good judgement” in matters of spiritualism.497

In 1863, the

same year that Wood’s The Shadow of Ashlydyat was published in volume form,

William Howitt’s investigation, The History of the Supernatural, was published. This

work formed part of a reaction against scientific attempts to demystify supernatural

occurrences and, as Howitt declares, aimed to create “an impassable barrier to the

ultimate and dreary object of scepticism.”498

Part of this sceptical contingent alluded to

here was Charles Dickens.

Dickens was a key contributor to the Victorian hunger for the supernatural. His abiding

fascination with supernatural phenomena ensured that the pages of his journals,

Household Words and All the Year Round, were filled with ghost stories and accounts of

apparently authentic supernatural phenomena.499

These avid investigations frequently

497

Amice Lee, Laurels and Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt (London: Oxford

University Press, 1955), p.234. This is substantiated by Mary Howitt’s autobiography, when she

writes that, “On Saturday afternoon the Hon. Mrs C------ came to inquire of me about

spiritualism as we understand it, because from the religious point of view she can alone accept

it. She stayed about three hours. She is seeking for an inner life, for a closer communion with

the Saviour, than she finds in the outward forms of the Church of England. She begged that the

Marchioness of Londonderry might come also, and hear what we had to say on the important

subject” in Mary Howitt: an autobiography, Volume II, ed. Margaret Howitt (London: Isbister,

1889), p.143. 498

William Howitt, The History of the Supernatural in all nations and in all churches, Christian

& pagan: demonstrating a universal faith (London: Longman, 1863), p.vi. Interestingly,

William Howitt held fast to his spiritualist beliefs until his death in 1879, writing to his daughter

that “[spiritualism] has been for us the chief fact of our earth pilgrimage” (as cited in Amice

Lee, p.300). However, in opposition, Mary Howitt recanted in later life, turning to Catholicism

and characterising spiritualism as “one of the greatest misfortunes that ever visited us; it was

false, all false and full of lies” (p.333). 499

One such report includes the Household Words article “A Haunted House” from July 23,

1853, reprinted in Charles Dickens, Miscellaneous Papers, Vol I (Millwood, Kraus reprint,

1983), pp.417-23. Here Dickens writes that “the particular case of which, in all its terrors, we

are about to give a short account, we must observe that every circumstance we shall relate is

accurately known to us, is fully guaranteed by us, and can be proved by a cloud of witnesses…”

(p.418). The haunted house’s “terrors” include dramatic temperature changes, unexplainable

shifts in light and darkness, strange odours, spectral forms, violent movement of objects and

persons and mysterious noises including incessant cackling, swearing and howling. Dickens

167

produced medical and scientific explanations of ‘supernatural’ events. As Louise

Henson notes, “All the Year Round strongly endorsed scientific explanations for ghosts”

with articles proposing that nervous disease and optical delusions were the natural

causes of apparently supernatural events.500

William Howitt, who, along with Mary, had

contributed to Dickens’ journals was disturbed by this promotion of rational

explanations for supernatural phenomena, and from 1859 the two authors were

embroiled in a public dispute over the subject.501

Ellen Wood’s literary rival, and a

close friend of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, also shared an avid interest in supernaturalism.

As Lyn Pykett outlines, in 1852 Collins contributed a series of reports on mesmerism,

animal magnetism and clairvoyance to the Leader.502

Following this, Collins’ interests

are clearly reflected in the prevalence of mesmerism in his best-selling novels, The

Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), both serialised in All the Year

Round.503

Another contributor to Dickens’ magazines, popular novelist, Sir Edward Bulwer-

Lytton, was also a renowned spiritualist. His work, A Strange Story, appeared in All the

Year Round from 1861, almost simultaneously with the serialisation of The Shadow of

Ashlydyat in the New Monthly Magazine from October of that year. Interestingly, both

works echo concerns about the ability of science to adequately account for supernatural

phenomena. Bulwer-Lytton’s keen interest in the supernatural was evidenced by his

attendance at séances and experiments by phrenologists, hypnotists and mesmerists.

Indeed, in Harriet Martineau’s autobiography, she asserts that it was Bulwer-Lytton

who first suggested mesmerism as a treatment for her protracted illness.504

In 1844

reports that, in the words uttered by the spirits, that an “Irish accent was very detectible in these

dreadful sounds” (p.419). The evil spirits also haunt beyond the threshold of the house,

accompanying family members to other towns to cause mischief and distress. 500

Louise Henson, “Investigations and fictions: Charles Dickens and ghosts,” The Victorian

Supernatural, eds. Nicola Bown and Carolyn Burdett and Pamela Thurschwell (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.60. 501

For an analysis of the debate between Howitt and Dickens see, Harry Stone, “The Unknown

Dickens”, Dickens Studies Annual 1 (1971): 1-22. 502

Lyn Pykett, Wilkie Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p.165-6. 503

The charismatic villain of The Woman in White, Count Fosco, exercises mesmeric powers in

order to control people and the hero of The Moonstone, Franklin Blake is put into a trance in

order to recover a hidden memory. For a fuller discussion of these texts, see Pykett, Wilkie

Collins, pp.165-81. 504

Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, Vol II (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1877), p.191.

Bulwer-Lytton’s letter to Martineau was written at the same time of the publication of Zanoni

(1842), which explored occultist themes. See Gavin Budge, “Mesmerism and Medicine in

168

Martineau launched a defence of the therapeutic use of mesmerism in her “Six Letters

on Mesmerism” published in the Athenaeum.505

Elizabeth Barrett Browning readily

accepted Martineau’s testimony, which supported her own interests in mesmerism and

spiritualism. In a letter to Robert Browning in 1845, Elizabeth Barrett declared that

“these are the days of Mesmerism and clairvoyance”506

but she was unable to convince

her more sceptical husband who penned the satirical poem “Mr Sludge the Medium” in

1864. In this work, the medium is figured as a fraud:

I cheated when I could,

Rapped with my toe-joints, set sham hands at work,

Wrote down names weak in sympathetic ink,

Rubbed odic lights with ends of phosphor-match,

And all the rest…(801-4). 507

The Brownings themselves can be seen to represent the debate between sceptics and

believers during the mid-nineteenth century. This general interest in supernatural

phenomenon culminated in the establishment of the Society for Psychical Research in

1882.508

Reflecting this broad enthusiasm for the supernatural during this time was the large

number of ghost stories that formed a staple of the Victorian periodical press. The mode

was famously popularised from mid-century by Charles Dickens’ Christmas ghost

stories, and included other contributors such as Sheridan Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins and,

later in the century, M. R. James. Importantly, Julia Briggs notes that this period saw

substantial involvement of women in spiritualist movements and, simultaneously, in

Bulwer-Lytton’s Novels of the Occult” in Victorian Literary Mesmerism, ed. Martin Willis and

Catherine Wynne (New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp.39-60. 505

See Harriet Martineau, Life in the Sick-Room, ed. Maria H. Frawley (Peterborough:

Broadview, 2003). In particular, see Appendix F – “Miss Martineau on Mesmerism” from the

Athenaeum (23 November 1844) , pp.239-51. 506

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

1845-1846, Volume I, ed. Elvan Kintner (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University

Press, 1969), p.31. 507

Robert Browning, The Complete Works of Robert Browning, Volume Five (New York:

Thomas Y. Crowell Co, 1898), p.247. 508

For a useful discussion of Victorian definitions of and debates regarding supernatural

phenomena, see Nicola Bown, Carolyn Burdett and Pamela Thurschwell (eds) The Victorian

Supernatural, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) particularly the “Introduction,”

pp.1-19. See also, Sarah A. Wilburn, Possessed Victorians: Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-

Century Mystical Writings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).

169

writing supernatural stories.509

Many female authors contributed to the wealth of

Victorian supernatural fiction including Mary Braddon, Amelia B. Edwards, Mrs J. H.

Riddell and, importantly, Ellen Wood, who wrote both novels and short stories with

distinctly supernatural preoccupations. Elwin accuses Wood of “favouring family

ghosts and similar manifestations of the supernatural – by which practice she was

largely responsible for the proverbially hysterical superstition of the late-Victorian

nursemaid” (252). While this is a rather grand claim, Wood’s interest in the ‘family

ghost’ is undeniable. Wood’s predilection for domestic disturbances is illuminated by

Julia Briggs, who suggests that “much Victorian fiction veers between asserting family

values and exposing their deceptions, the ghost story could do both at the same time”.510

This focus on the home and family is explicated by Cox and Gilbert, who assert that a

key feature of Victorian ghost stories was a reliance on “the prosaic detail of modernity”

to provide a convincing everyday setting for the intrusion of the supernatural.511

The

effect of this, as Fred Botting asserts, is that the stories produce realism’s uncanny

shadow, creating “gentle tremors along the line separating the supernatural world from

that of the Victorian empirical and domestic order”.512

So, this focus on the everyday

and the domestic sphere was a feature shared by the supernatural fiction produced by

both male and female writers. However, the underpinning gender politics of the

Victorian literary production is significant here. When the role of women in the

production of supernatural fiction is considered, these ‘gentle tremors’ that Botting

detects, wear a different aspect.

According to Vanessa Dickerson, male authors in the period wrote from a “hegemonic

position in society in which the masculine ways of knowing, thinking, and doing were

automatically acknowledged as best”. 513

In this context, male writers were less likely to

be considered frivolous or trifling for their literary excursions into supernatural realms.

509

Julia Briggs, “The Ghost Story,” A Companion to the Gothic, ed. David Punter (Oxford:

Blackwell, 2000), pp.128-9. For a discussion of the implications of Victorian women as

practising spiritualists, see Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism

in Late Victorian England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990) and Ann

Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, 2nd

edition (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001). 510

Briggs, p.127. 511

Cox and Gilbert (eds), “Introduction,” The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, p.xvi-ii.

This attention to the “sense of verisimilitude” that accompanies ghost stories is echoed by S. L.

Varnardo, Haunted Presence: The Numinous in Gothic Fiction (Tuscaloosa; London: University

of Alabama Press, 1987), p.5. 512

Botting, p.126. 513

Dickerson, p.7.

170

Accordingly, the choice by women writers to employ the supernatural mode suggests

that something more important than literary reputation is at stake. Clare Stewart’s

analysis elucidates this point:

The ghost story proved an ideal discourse for hidden agendas and deeper

textual levels, as well as representing, on the wider level, women’s own

marginalisation, like the supernatural, to the realms of the

irrational/Other.514

Here, Stewart theorises ghost stories as both a critique of, and alternative discourse to,

dominant narratives. In these terms, the non-realist mode of the supernatural becomes a

strategic choice for female authors in order to represent the often-marginalised

experiences of Victorian women. Dickerson echoes these sentiments as she argues that

“the supernatural tale, allows for play, speculation, investigation and redefinition” thus

presenting an important avenue for female writers to comment on their society.515

This

illuminates the operations of the supernatural and detection in Ellen Wood’s writings as

the intersection represents a form of investigation into, and redefinition of, the domestic

sphere. Her use of this mode is inextricably linked to a desire to locate a discourse

through which to represent the complexity of female experience.

The Argosy included many supernatural stories and pieces that explored otherworldly

phenomena. In 1870, a piece titled “A Remarkable Experience in Psychology”

supposedly written “By a Cambridge Man” but with the tone and style of Wood, details

experiments in psychic phenomena in which two Cambridge students share each other’s

thoughts.516

In the following year, 1871, an anonymous short story, “Chased by Wolves:

A Story of Clairvoyance” features Dr Caltran “a deeply scientific man and a great

mesmerist” who creates a mesmeric experience for a young woman that correctly

predicts danger to her absent fiancé.517

Like this story, Dene Hollow, appears in the

Argosy during 1871, and similarly affirms a belief in unexplained phenomena. Regular

contributor, Alice King, writes a piece in 1878, titled “Dreams” in which she talks of

superstitious belief in dream warnings and premonitions. However, despite a largely

514

Clare Stewart “‘Weird Fascination’: The Response to Victorian Women’s Ghost Stories,”

Feminist Readings of Victorian Popular Texts: Divergent Femininities, ed. Emma Liggins and

Daniel Duffy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p.114. 515

Dickerson, p.149. 516

“A Remarkable Experience in Psychology” Argosy 9 (1871): 451-458. 517

“Chased By Wolves. A Story of Clairvoyance,” Argosy 12 (1871): 221-6.

171

sceptical tone, King writes: “Notwithstanding all we have said to weaken faith in

dreams, we have ourselves known a few instances in which a dream has seemed in truth

a providential interposition. We will conclude this paper by relating two of them, which

are facts”.518

Providing a conclusion to her article that hovers between doubt and belief,

King allows for the possibility of faith in supernatural phenomena, something also

reflected in the novel being serialised during the same time, Pomeroy Abbey (1878).

Writing to Charles Wood in 1880, Argosy contributor, Bettina Wirth, seeks advice on a

new story for the magazine and asks: “would you like a little superstition in it? The

Argosy has always impressed me as being fond of making people’s hair creep”.519

This

predilection for the supernatural continued after Wood’s death. In 1889, the Argosy

published “Was it a Ghost?” another anonymous ghost story in which the spectre of a

dead woman appears to a governess. The question of the title is answered in the

affirmative by the events of the governess’s story, but with an ending that allows for

scepticism as the narrator asks the governess:

“And do you doubt that you saw a ghost?”

“I have my own opinion,” she replied; “but I generally keep it

to myself. The world is sceptical in such matters. You, I see, have formed

yours.”520

Like this narrative, supernatural stories in the Argosy often allowed for both belief and

scepticism on the subject of dreams, premonitions and apparitions.

In many of Wood’s short stories and novels, ghosts and hauntings are often discovered

to be hoaxes that conceal crimes and other misdeeds. Some examples of this tendency

occur in the novel Bessy Rane (1870) where the ‘ghost’ of a recently deceased woman is

seen, but it is later discovered that her death was faked for financial gain. This plot is

recycled in the “Johnny Ludlow” story, “The Last of the Caromels” (1878) where

sightings of a man’s ‘ghost’ are explained when it is revealed that his death was staged

to avoid financial ruin. In The Master of Greylands (1873) smugglers exploit the

superstition of a spectral monk, posing as the ghost to conceal their operation. Similarly,

in the “Johnny Ludlow” story “Sandstone Torr” (1874) the ‘ghostly’ cries from a

supposedly murdered man are rationalised when the man is found imprisoned, but alive.

518

Alice King, “Dreams,” Argosy 25 (1878): 193. 519

Letter from Bettina Wirth to Charles Wood, 8 Nov 1880. 520

“Was it a Ghost?” Argosy 47 (1889): 151-7.

172

In these narratives, Wood is careful to portray the fraudulent manifestations and empty

superstitions in order to carve out a space for more serious spiritual concerns. This

recalls the depiction of Wood as a sceptic when confronted by the Victorian mania for

séances and table-rappings, whilst maintaining genuine beliefs in other supernatural

phenomena.521

In Wood’s supernatural fiction, rational explanations are not always proposed and often,

spectres, visions and curses remain in her works as inexplicable and otherworldly

manifestations. For example, I have already alluded to Wood’s early short story, “Gina

Montani” (1851) which features a vengeful ghost and in another early work, “The

Surgeon’s Daughters” (1854) a psychic prediction comes to pass. Wood’s later writings,

in the “Johnny Ludlow” series, “A Curious Experience” (1883) and the novella,

Featherston’s Story (1889) involve homes haunted by the spirits of their previous

occupants. Both of these stories follow the formula of “Gina Montani” in that the ghosts

of slain women return to haunt the domestic spaces of their deaths. Also, supernatural

events such as dream warnings are prevalent in Wood’s works. In just a few examples,

“The Parson’s Oath” (1855) involves a man who receives visions of his missing

fiancée’s gravesite in his dreams, and the novel Anne Hereford (1868), as well as

shorter pieces such as “Mr North’s Dream” (1868) and “Sandstone Torr” (1874),

contain dream prophecies. As I have previously discussed, even Wood’s bestseller East

Lynne employs the device of the supernatural in its subplot that revolves around a local

murder. In East Lynne, the prophetic dreams of Mrs Hare cast light upon the true

murderer, assisting in her daughter’s investigation to exonerate her falsely accused

brother, Richard. These are just a few instances of supernatural encounters in Wood’s

writings, but as these examples show, female figures predominantly form the centre of

these narratives. This tendency can be usefully considered with reference to Vanessa

Dickerson’s arguments:

Further and further removed from the power-wielding occupations of the

world – law, science, medicine, even the formal administration of religion –

yet relegated to the higher realm of moral influence, the position of the

521

Her position might be compared to that of Anna Jameson writing to Elizabeth Barrett

Browning in 1854: “I am convinced, as you can be, of an external intelligence – I see it, I feel it

every where & have no need of chairs or tables as mediums”. Letter from Anna Jameson to Mrs

Browning, 12 Jan 1854, Wellesley College Library, English Poetry Collection.

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nineteenth-century female, as influential as it was, was yet equivocal,

ambiguous, marginal, ghostly.522

The ambiguous and spectral figure of the Victorian woman proliferates in Wood's

works and her presence foregrounds the domestic arena and demands that it be

scrutinised.

In “Making the Dead Speak: Spiritualism and Detective Fiction”, Chris Willis points to

the significance of the coterminous arrival of the fictional detective with the rise of

spiritualism. Willis argues that both detective fiction and spiritualism “attempt to

explain mysteries” using the figures of the medium and the detective “to make the dead

speak in order to reveal a truth”.523

Willis begins by using Conan Doyle as a well-

known example of this intersection of detection and spiritualism before citing various

examples of twentieth-century detective fiction that feature psychics, mediums and

soothsayers. Willis finds that in most of his examples, the largely female mediums act

as potential threats to the power of male detectives.524

This is a conjunction that Wood

also exploits in her nineteenth-century fiction where the role of medium and detective is

often combined. With the common spiritualist belief that women were more sensitive to

spirit influences than men, this provides new avenues for female leadership.

Previous appraisals of Wood’s work tend to underestimate the significance of her

supernatural strategies. In an early example of the criticism, Victorian novelist Adeline

Sergeant refers to Wood’s supernatural works as being “less worthy” than her other

fiction, and asserts that, “Mrs Wood would possibly have taken a higher place amongst

English novelists if she had avoided mere sensation, and confined herself to what she

could do well – namely, the faithful and realistic rendering of English middle-class

life”.525

In his twentieth-century analysis of Wood’s supernaturalism, Campbell

concludes that Wood presents a simple, sensational uncanny that “does not advance any

higher ideas” and merely provides a “means to intensify the world of domestic

reality”.526

It is interesting to note that, despite a gap of almost a century, Campbell

522

Dickerson, p.5. 523

Chris Willis, “Making the Dead Speak: Spiritualism and Detective Fiction” in The Art of

Detective Fiction, eds. Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales, and Robert Vilain, (Basingstoke:

Macmillan, 2000), p.60. 524

Willis, p.71. 525

Sergeant, pp.190-1. 526

Campbell, p.285.

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appears to be echoing the problematic assumptions of Sergeant. In their discussions,

both Sergeant and Campbell point to Wood’s popular status as an aspect that

undermines the aesthetic value of her works. However the cultural significance of

popular texts such as Wood’s remains and it is important to recognise that aesthetic

appraisals of literature are political acts. While Sergeant is preoccupied with questions

of realism, Campbell ignores Wood’s use of the supernatural to intervene in discourses

of domesticity. In response, this chapter will complicate these claims and suggest that

Wood’s use of the supernatural is more complex and significant than Campbell and

Sergeant allow. Furthermore, I will argue that a re-evaluation of the politics embedded

in Wood’s more uncanny texts is instructive and worthwhile.

The Shadow of Ashlydyat

The Shadow of Ashlydyat was published in 1863 and was apparently Ellen Wood’s own

favourite among her works.527

The narrative revolves around a supernatural curse,

which causes the downfall of the Godolphin family and the loss of their estate,

Ashlydyat. The mythology of the curse involves a murder committed by an ancestral

Godolphin who killed his first wife in order to remarry. When the murdered woman’s

father discovers the crime, he is also slain, but not before he utters a curse – that the

shadow of his daughter’s bier will forever haunt the grounds of Ashlydyat, to signal any

coming misfortune to the family. The Godolphins’ downfall begins when the patriarch

of the family ignores a related superstition – that the family must always reside at

Ashlydyat – when he is persuaded by his second wife to remove to a more modern

home built nearby. The Verralls, who rent Ashlydyat during Sir Godolphin’s absence,

lead the careless second son, George Godolphin, astray and he subsequently gambles

away the family fortune and takes up an intimate acquaintance with the charming and

cavalier Charlotte Pain, compounding his moral decline. Although it seems that Sir

Godolphin’s death, away from Ashlydyat begins the ruin of the family, the fraudulent

machinations and financial incompetence of George Godolphin offer a very rational

explanation for the downfall. In the course of the novel, once the family has finally been

reduced and the bones of the ancient murder victim are unearthed, the shadow

disappears. There are multiple plots at work within the novel, but I will concentrate on

the mysterious shadow curse of the title. It is significant that the shadow remains as a

527

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.255. The Shadow of Ashlydyat was first published in serialised

form in the New Monthly Magazine from October 1861 to November 1863 and followed

directly from the success of East Lynne in the magazine.

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supernatural event and is not given any logical explanation. Indeed, Malcolm Elwin

argues that “the ‘shadow’ of Ashlydyat claims eminence in the history of fiction as a

mystery unexplained at the end of the story, so remaining for ever unsolved”.528

The Shadow of Ashlydyat explores, through the device of the shadow, the effects of

enlightenment ideals of science and rationalism upon supernatural belief. Wood takes

up this debate early in the novel, when the narrator outlines the inability of science to

explain the mysterious “gift” of reading character. While the scientific progress of the

period is remarked upon, characterised as “the wonders of this most wonderful age” the

narrator argues that the gift of reading “what people are by their face” is one that is

bestowed only upon certain individuals, and something that science cannot explain.529

I

will discuss this in more detail later in the chapter, but it is evident that in the novel

science will be subject to a level of critique, as this extract suggests:

We send ourselves in photograph to make morning calls. The opposite

ends of the world are brought together by electric telegraph. Chloroform

has rendered the surgeon’s knife something rather agreeable than

otherwise. We are made quite at home with “spirits,” and ghosts are

reduced to a theory (46).

What at first seems to be a celebration of scientific and technological advancement ends

on what can be read as an ambivalent note. The assertion that “ghosts are reduced to a

theory” suggests the reductive potential of science and there is a perceptible tone of

dismay that these supernatural phenomena have been stripped of their mystery and

power. Here, Wood seems to echo the concerns of William Howitt, that the supernatural

must be carefully theorised to avoid diminishing its effects and significance. Like

Howitt, Wood is interested in preserving supernatural discourses, but for different

reasons.

In this novel, Wood’s use of the supernatural highlights the marginalised experiences of

women and proposes alternatives to dominant rationalist discourses. Andrew

Mangham’s compelling analysis of The Shadow of Ashlydyat emphasises the operations

of the female gothic. As he states:

528

Elwin, p.252. 529

Mrs Henry Wood, The Shadow of Ashlydyat (1862; London: Bentley, 1888) pp.45-6. All

subsequent references will be to this edition and will appear in the body of the text.

176

The fact that the first Godolphin victimised his wife becomes a

genealogical foundation on which the success of the race depends. Male

success, the legend suggests, needs to come from female submission and

death, which is epitomised in the domestic relationships of the original

gothic Godolphin marriage.530

Certainly, in The Shadow of Ashlydyat, the marginalised, spectral woman is central to

the plot and female suffering haunts the financial successes of the Godolphin family.

Furthermore, as Mangham argues, there is a definite critique of this “regime of female

submission to male tyranny” in the novel.531

Indeed, the text suggests that such an

outdated domestic strategy is incompatible with the world of modern Victorian

England. Throughout the text, the narrator alludes to the danger that unrestrained male

power presents to women. Even the novel’s hero – the noble heir to Ashlydyat, Thomas

Godolphin – is not above suspicion. Early in the narrative, as he walks down a narrow

lane, near Ashlydyat, contemplating his coming marriage, the omniscient narrator

remarks:

A murder had been committed on this spot a few years before: a sad tale

of barbarity, offered to a girl by one who professed to be her lover. She

lay buried in All Souls’ churchyard; and he within the walls of the county

prison where he had been executed. Of course the rumour went that her

ghost ‘walked’ there, the natural sequence to these dark tales (69).

That this haunting tragedy and reference to the ghostly feminine is narrated at the same

time that Thomas is considering the union with his fiancée, suggests the darker

possibilities that burden Victorian marriage, and echoes the legend of the shadow.

Indeed, the gothic depiction of the Godolphin men is made overt in the character of the

younger son, George. As we learn, George’s public face of happiness masks his inner

life, which is “kept for his own private and especial delectation, grim, dark and ghastly”

(251). Importantly, at several points in the novel, the narrator strongly criticises the

530

Mangham, “‘I See It; But I Cannot Explain It’”, 88. The female gothic is emphasised by the

depiction of Ashlydyat, which is overtly figured as a masculine space. We are told that, for the

Godolphins: “It was their pride, their stronghold, their boast. Had feudal times been in fashion

now, they would have dug a moat around it, and fenced it in with fortifications and called it

their castle” (p.10). Also, at several points in the novel it is said that the halls and passages of

Ashlydyat are haunted by mysterious sounds. Janet reports the “[m]oaning, sighing, rushing –

the passages at times seem alive with them” (p.222). This home takes on a life of its own and is

a representation of male tyranny. 531

Mangham, “‘I See It; But I Cannot Explain It’”, 90.

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long-suffering and submissive heroine of the novel, Maria, the wife of the wayward

George Godolphin. The narrator refers derisively to Maria’s “blind faith” (222) in her

unprincipled husband, suggesting that a capable Victorian wife needs to exercise her

own powers of reason, rather than naively deferring her judgement to the will of

others.532

While the threat of the incarcerated feminine underlies the domestic spaces of

the novel, a more complex attitude is apparent.

It is important to acknowledge that Wood’s texts reveal multiple attitudes toward

domesticity and that her works persistently position the domestic sphere as a powerful

realm for the action of women. With this in mind, Mangham’s discussion of the female

gothic can be extended to explore how the domestic and the supernatural intersect to

endorse alternative femininities. As Emma Liggins argues, readers are offered

“contradictory models of femininity” in the text, with Wood working to “activate a

variety of interpretations of the domestic woman”.533

Certainly, Wood rejects models of

femininity that produce female ‘shadows’ like the original murdered Godolphin bride,

or indeed like “timid, good, gentle, sensitive” (362) Maria. Moreover, ambivalent

attitudes are expressed toward the domineering female characters such as the

independently wealthy Lady Godolphin and the bewitching Charlotte Pain, who both

exercise significant financial and sexual power over men. However, while they are not

idealised as models of womanhood, neither are they entirely condemned. While Wood

tends to endorse more domesticated women, she is nevertheless alert to domestic

politics, and advocates a capable, intelligent and forthright model of woman to

withstand any potential tyranny in the home. Wood’s ideal woman will not tolerate the

“gradual and long continued ill-treatment” (219) that will lead to the death of Maria as it

did to the ancient bride. Hence, the ghostly feminine that haunts the Godolphin family

and the bewitching power of Charlotte Pain are not the only intersections of the

532

Geraldine Jewsbury echoes these sentiments in her review of the novel, describing Maria as

“a sweet and perfect wife – too perfect, for if she had expressed her own good sense with more

emphasis, it would have been better” in her review of The Shadow of Ashlydyat, “New Novels,”

The Athenaeum (Jan 23, 1864): 119. Anna Maria Hall had expressed similar sentiments in 1863.

She refers to the ending of the novel when Maria has died and George embarks on a sea voyage:

“I hope that man was drowned going to India –! I could not bear to think of him living and

prosperous if he did get there safely. I daresay he fell in love with some chit of a girl on the

voyage [and] married her – just the fellow to do it!” And of Maria, she writes: “The wife – how

pure and holy – how charming her faith and trust - in her clay idol. God help her and all such

when their eyes are opened [and] they see!” Letter from Anna Maria Hall to Ellen Wood, 20

Nov. 1863, Ellen Wood Papers, Wolff Collection, Harry Ransom Research Center, U of Texas

at Austin, uncatalogued. 533

Emma Liggins, “Good Housekeeping?”, p.64.

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feminine and the supernatural in evidence within the text. In this narrative, Wood seems

to endorse a model of womanhood operating outside of the marriage market, but still

tied to the domestic sphere and, significantly, the supernatural realm.

When Janet Godolphin, the eldest daughter of the haunted family, is introduced, the

reader is told that she is “past thirty: a sad, thoughtful woman, who lived much in the

inward life” (13). This description is extended:

Quiet in manner, plain in features, as was Thomas, her eyes were yet

wonderful to behold. Not altogether for their beauty, but for the power

they appeared to contain of seeing all things. Large, reflective, strangely-

deep eyes, grey, with a circlet of darker grey round them. When they were

cast upon you, it was not at you they looked, but at what was within you –

at your mind, your thoughts; at least, such was the impression they

conveyed (p.18).

While Janet lacks conventionally feminine attractions of beauty or gaiety, she retains a

powerful fascination. Her power is figured in supernatural terms, not least through her

“wonderful” and “strangely-deep” eyes that seem to betray mystical powers of

perception and understanding. Indeed, this description stresses the penetrative qualities

of her vision. While this might not provide her with the same kind of power that other

wealthier or married women hold, Janet retains a strong influence over her brothers and

sisters, and indeed, over the reader. Janet becomes the vehicle through which the reader

discovers the full narrative of the Shadow and, when she tells the story, she confronts

the disbelief of her sister (and, presumably the reader) with the assertion: “[w]e were

not all born into the world with minds similarly constituted, or to fulfil the same parts in

life” (223). Here, she asserts the simultaneous existence of different roles for women –

resonating with Liggins’ argument of multiple models of the feminine. Indeed, the

spiritual Janet is placed in opposition to characters such as her stepmother, Lady

Godolphin, who derides belief in the superstition of Ashlydyat as she declares, “I

thought we lived in the nineteenth century” (p.16). This recalls the role of Cornelia

Carlyle who derides Mrs Hare’s belief in dream warnings in East Lynne. In this later

novel, Lady Godolphin operates as the materialist foil for Janet. Both women have

competing claims to the role of mistress of the household and they exercise significant

power in domestic roles, but in divergent ways. Therefore, the female gothic of The

Shadow of Ashlydyat is not the only supernatural space in the tale as women are not

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merely shadowy victims of men. Janet Godolphin is constructed as a figure who is

given certain power by her investment in alternative discourses such as the supernatural.

As Janet asserts:

People accuse me of being foolishly superstitious touching this Shadow

and these old traditions. I can only say the superstition has been forced

upon me by experience. When the Shadow appears, I cannot close my

eyes to it and say “It is not there.” It is there: and all I do is to look at it,

and speculate (p.220).

Janet’s ability to “speculate” in the face of supernatural events, rather than to refuse

belief allows her deeper insight into the nature of things. Therefore, Janet can be

considered as a version of the detective – reflecting, speculating and striving for

understanding through her use of non-rationalist discourses.

At this juncture it is useful to more explicitly map detection within this supernatural

narrative. The intersection of detection with the supernatural is signposted in the

seventh chapter of The Shadow of Ashlydyat when the narrator states:

There are some people – and they bear a very large proportion to the

whole – to whom the human countenance is as a sealed book. There are

others for whom that book stands open to its every page. The capacity for

reading character – what is it? Where does it lie? (p.45)

Wood’s language here, refigures individuals as texts containing certain signs that can be

recognised and interpreted by these gifted ‘readers’. This can be usefully compared with

Peter Hühn’s argument that detective fiction stages the problematics of interpretation

with detectives themselves figured as readers.534

In Wood’s novel, the narrator insists

that this gift of reading character can neither be taught, nor explained in rational terms:

Neither art nor science can teach it; neither man nor woman can make it

theirs by any amount of labour; where the faculty is not theirs by divine

gift, it cannot be made to exist by human skill (p.46).

Often in Wood’s writings, detective figures will possess extraordinary and inexplicable

gifts in detection. At this point in The Shadow of Ashlydyat, these detective skills are

534

Hühn, 451

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presumably possessed by the narrator alone. There is no other character in the text who

is labelled as a “reader of character” (p.46) in quite the same way. However, later in the

novel, Janet’s role as a perceptive and keen speculator implies that she possesses the gift

as well. While the novel does not have a clear detective figure, themes of detection

remain perceptible and important.

Janet’s use of the shadow to ‘speculate’ upon family concerns casts her as a domestic

detective. Mangham observes that the shadow story is “told mainly through dialogues of

female characters, suggesting that the myth is kept alive and bequeathed by the family’s

women”. 535

When Charlotte Pain first mentions the shadow to George, he insists that,

of the Godolphins, only his “superstitious sister, Janet” (p.7) believes in it. Soon after,

when Janet insists upon searching out the shadow, George characterises her pursuit as

“nonsense” and their practical sister, Bessy, asserts that Janet will “turn into a ghost

herself some time” (p.21) for believing in the curse. However, the shadow signals

misfortune to the Godolphins, so instead of deriding it, Janet uses this supernatural force

to alert her to potential dangers to her family. Janet, more than any other family

member, takes an active interest in her siblings’ lives. When Janet tells Maria about the

shadow, the narrator states that a “strangely speculative look – it was scarcely an earthly

one – had come into her eyes” and when Maria asks if she fears that the shadow signals

an imminent end to the Godolphin line, Janet answers, “I seem to see that it is” (p.222).

Janet continues her reflection upon the shadow:

“I have looked for it ever since my father left Ashlydyat. I might say –

but that I should be laughed at more than I am for an idealist – that the

strangers to whom he resigned it in his place, would have some bearing

upon our fall, would in some way conduce to it. I think of these things

ever,” continued Janet, almost as if she would apologize for the wildness

of the confession. “They seem to unfold themselves to me, to become

clear and more clear: to be no longer fanciful fears darting across the

brain, but realities of life (pp.221-22).

So Janet’s fears, based on the appearance of the shadow are becoming ‘realities of life’

as she is aware of the negative influence of the Verralls who have rented Ashlydyat in

their father’s absence and led George Godolphin into financial ruin. Janet attempts to

use this knowledge, when she detects that George has been flirting dangerously with the

535

Mangham, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction, p.152.

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enchanting Charlotte Pain, a close acquaintance of the Verralls. However, when Janet

hints of her concerns about George’s careless conduct to Thomas, he warns her that she

must respect George’s liberty and not attempt to control him. To this, Janet sighs “If

young men could but see the folly of their ways – as they see them in after-life!” (67).

Despite her inability to act directly, the reader is made aware that Janet has accurately

predicted the danger where others, notably her brothers, refuse to perceive it. Later in

the novel, when George’s association with the Verralls has led to the loss of the

Godolphin fortune and the declining health of his wife, Janet tells him of how the

shadow forewarned of all the misfortunes that have plagued the family. George does not

respond, as the narrator says, “he had forfeited the right to argue with Janet” (415).

While Janet is limited in her ability to protect her family by virtue of her gender, it is

apparent that her use of the non-rationalist curse and her own powers of perception,

casts her in the mould of a domestic detective, identifying dangers to the home.

With supernaturalism debated within and among the characters, The Shadow of

Ashlydyat reveals the gendered operations of different discourses. Within the text, the

supernatural becomes a feminised site, in opposition to masculinised discourses of

realism and science. This gendering of discourse is evident when Thomas encounters

the shadow and the reader is told:

In spite of the superstition touching this strange Shadow in which Thomas

Godolphin had been brought up, he looked round now for some natural

explanation of it. He was a man of intellect, a man of the world, a man

who played his full share in the practical business of everyday life: and

such men are not given to acknowledging superstitious fancies in this age

of enlightenment (p.71).

Here, belief in the supernatural is overtly gendered as feminine. These “superstitious

fancies” operate in opposition to the masculinised public, “practical” and “everyday”

world. However, more ‘enlightened’ modes of reason provide an inadequate explanation

of the phenomenon as Thomas later admits on sighting the shadow “I see it: but I cannot

explain it” (p.248). When the Godolphin’s keen-sighted and superstitious servant,

Margery attempts to inform Thomas of “dreams, signs and tokens” that she has had of

his father’s coming death, he tells her, “You know that I am never very tolerant of your

182

dreams and signs” (p.108).536

Like Thomas, Bessy Godolphin also disbelieves the curse

of the shadow and adopts an immovably practical approach to life. In the first chapter,

Bessy’s unfeminine behaviour in walking alone to the village and refusing an escort or

carriage leads to the consternation of her stepmother. Indeed, we are told that Bessy

“had seen the Shadow more than once with her own eyes; but they were practical eyes

and not imaginative” so she maintains that it must be “thrown by some tree or other”

(p.219).537

In a similar manner, the supernatural is positioned in opposition to

‘enlightened’ Christian discourses. Early in the novel, the Rector, Mr Hastings, severely

chastises his daughter, Maria, for her curiosity regarding the ghostly Shadow. He asks

Maria: “Are you the child of Christian parents? have you received an enlightened

education?” (p.27) Futhermore, the Rector characterises Janet Godolphin as a “silly

dreamer” (p.28) for investing in the Shadow, clearly delineating belief along gender

lines, and separating less conventional spiritual beliefs from more rigid and

conventional Christian doctrine. Janet acknowledges these irreconcilable, and yet

coexistent, discourses when she later asserts: “there will be believers and unbelievers to

the end of time” (p.220).

After debating the supernatural Shadow throughout the novel, the narrator intrudes upon

a scene where Janet sits observing the phenomenon. Here, the narrator asserts that a

“great deal” of the narrative is “perfectly true” (p.415) and a defence of the supernatural

subtext of the story is then mounted:

There are things, as I have just said, which can neither be explained nor

accounted for: they are marvels, mysteries and so they must remain.

Many a family has its supernatural skeleton, religiously believed in; many

a house has its one dread corner which has never been fully unclosed to

the light of day. Say what men will to the contrary, there is a tendency

within the human mind to tread upon the confines of superstition. We

cannot shut our eyes to the things that occur within our view, although we

may be, and always shall be, utterly unable to explain them; what they

are, what they spring from, why they come (p.415).

536

Margery is a rather minor character in The Shadow of Ashlydyat, however her role as a loyal

servant, gifted with certain insights foreshadows the characters of Mary Barber in Dene Hollow

and Naomi Rex in Pomeroy Abbey. 537

The narrator is careful to assert that “in spite of its being pointed out to her that there was no

tree, which could cast a shadow on the spot, Bessy obstinately held to her own opinion” (p.219).

183

This argument asserts that supernatural ‘marvels’ and superstitions are still experienced

by ordinary people in the everyday world even if they are unable to be explained,

understood or rationalised. Here, at the conclusion of the text, the narrator openly

defends the usefulness of non-realist modes of representation. Indeed, this authoritative

assertion suggests that Wood is not merely registering alternatives to realism, but works

to modify representations of the real. Wood attempts to refashion ideas of realism by

explicitly inviting her readers to acknowledge the limitations of rationalist frameworks.

She uses the pronoun ‘we’ to create a shared understanding between the reader and the

authoritative narrator and in this way, the reader participates in a questioning of what

constitutes truth and/or reality. If the supernatural mode can be seen to reflect lived

experience, this unsettles the literary hierarchy that privileges realist fiction. In a similar

manner to the opening of “Reality or Delusion?” the narrator asserts the simultaneous

existence of “plain common sense” and also inexplicable “omens” “warnings” and

“curious incidents” (p.415). Importantly, the narrator then paraphrases Shakespeare’s

Hamlet, asking “Are there not more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our

philosophy?” (pp.415-6). Here, while refusing a definitive explanation, the narrator

clearly expresses the limitations of certain representational frameworks. Therefore,

through the special status accorded to Janet and the narrator as detective figures in The

Shadow of Ashlydyat, the supernatural and the feminine intersect to express the concepts

and experiences marginalised by, or inaccessible through, dominant discourses.

At the conclusion of the novel, Ashlydyat becomes the property of the benevolent Lord

Averil, who marries Cecil, the youngest Godolphin. This union promises to be a more

equitable partnership and produce a more harmonious domestic space than the previous

Godolphin marriages. When Cecil (now, Lady Averil) agrees to adopt the daughter of

Maria and George Godolphin, she assures the dying Maria that she does not need

permission from her husband as: “Lord Averil is more than indulgent” to her own

wishes (440). Moreover, as the new owner of Ashlydyat, Lord Averil, redevelops the

Dark Plain upon which the Shadow appears in an attempt to “do away entirely with its

past character and send its superstition to the winds” (p.435). This act unearths the

ancient skeleton, purging the supernatural from the home. The inheritors of this history

of tyrannical male oppression, the Godolphin men, have been similarly purged. The

original patriarch, Sir Godolphin and his heir, Thomas are dead and the younger son

George sets sail for Calcutta. Also, at the conclusion, Janet returns to Scotland, her gifts

184

for speculating upon and voicing marginalised discourses no longer required in the

modernised home of Ashlydyat.

Dene Hollow

Wood recycles the device of a supernatural shadow, as depicted in The Shadow of

Ashlydyat, in her 1871 novel Dene Hollow.538

The Athenaeum review of Dene Hollow

states that “[l]overs of the supernatural will find their taste gratified” by this narrative in

which “the supernatural element predominates.”539

In this text, representations of

gender, detection and the supernatural are complicated by their intersection with class.

This is exemplified in the construction of a detective figure who is not only female, but

also a servant. The narrative centres upon the village of Hurst Leet and the nearby estate

of the wealthy Clanwaring family. Dene Hollow is the name of the new road

constructed by the patriarch of the Clanwarings, Sir Dene. However, in order to build

the road from his estate directly to the village, he chooses to raze the home of old Mrs

Barber. This injustice produces a supernatural shadow that lies on the road, causing

many accidents. In a related plot, Mrs Barber’s daughter, Mary, the servant to a local

family, is a figure at the centre of the supernatural incidents of the novel. Mary is

plagued with prophetic dreams after her employer, Farmer Owen mysteriously

disappears. Following the discovery of Owen’s corpse in nearby Harebell Pond, various

sightings of his ghost are reported and suspicions of foul play surface in the village.

Ultimately, Mary’s dreams are corroborated when the deathbed confession of a local

smuggler, Randolph Black, reveals that he was responsible for Owen’s death. While he

admits to faking the ghost in order to divert attention from his criminal operations, the

shadow curse remains unexplained and Mary Barber’s visionary dreams remain as

prophecy. In Dene Hollow, there are many intersecting plots involving the families of

Hurst Leet, but as the title implies, the supernatural is a dominant feature and intersects

in interesting ways with gender and detection in the novel.

538

Dene Hollow was first published in serialised form in the Argosy from January to December,

1871. Rolf Burgauer, p.104, indicates that Wood had previously published short stories that she

later appropriated for sections of Dene Hollow. He finds that “A Light and Dark Christmas” in

the Christmas Supplement of Berrow’s Worcester Journal in 1865 and “The Ghost of the

Hollow Field” in Mixed Sweets from Routledge’s Annual in 1867 form two examples of this

practice. 539

“Novels of the Week,” Rev. of Dene Hollow by Mrs Henry Wood, Athenaeum (Oct 21

1871): 524-6.

185

Mary Barber and her mother are positioned at the centre of Dene Hollow’s supernatural

plots. Interestingly, they are not the class of characters usually made prominent in

Wood’s narratives. In fact, Mary resembles other characters such as the superstitious

servant Margery from The Shadow of Ashlydyat, the loyal housekeeper, Judith, from

The Channings, and the servant Joyce, from East Lynne. But in this novel, Mary is more

developed and claims a place as a central character. Eve M. Lynch explores the

intersection of class and the supernatural in Victorian ghost stories, which, as she argues

“turned their horror on the perceived proximity of servants to supernatural phenomena,

arcane folk beliefs, intuitive and irrational knowledge and the uncanny”.540

Thus the

strong association of the supernatural with lower class characters, like the Barbers,

might substantiate Lynch’s claim. However, the centrality of these characters in the

narrative, the sympathetic depiction of the women and Mary’s visionary powers suggest

a slightly more complex strategy, and cannot be dismissed as merely an anxiety.

Like the victimised Godolphin bride from The Shadow of Ashlydyat, Mrs Barber’s

destroyed home forms a symbol of buried injustice in Dene Hollow. It is interesting to

note that the cottage of Mrs Barber was originally her own, inherited from her father

and only sold to the previous estate owner, Mr Honeythorn, due to the financial

mismanagement of her husband. Thus, it is possible to read the “very pretty cottage”

with climbing yellow jasmine, as a female space – inherited by Mrs Barber, the early

home of her two daughters, jeopardised by her ineffective husband, and now subject to

the tyranny of the overbearing Sir Dene.541

Indeed, there is an extremely sympathetic

portrayal of Mrs Barber from the outset of the novel – her words of protest at being

evicted are the first dialogue in the text and the reader is given access to her distress at

losing her home. Prior to the road’s construction, Mary Barber petitions Sir Dene on

behalf of her mother. In an emotional plea, she beseeches him to be merciful, asserting:

“God will reward you for it” (p.24). When Mrs Barber is nevertheless forcibly removed

at the orders of Sir Dene, the act becomes a communal memory of injustice, and the

reader is incorporated into that community, being told that the scene became “an epoch

of local history, to be talked of at convivial meetings and related by father to son: Sir

Dene Clanwaring’s ejectment of the poor old widow Barber, when close upon her

eightieth year” (p.59). In a modification of the legend in The Shadow of Ashlydyat, the

540

Lynch, p.69. 541

Mrs Henry Wood, Dene Hollow (1871; London: Macmillan, 1911) p.4. All subsequent

references are to this edition and will appear in the body of the text.

186

tyranny of the powerful male figure, Sir Dene, over a vulnerable female, Mrs Barber,

mysteriously generates a supernatural shadow.

In contrast to the powerlessness of her mother, Mary Barber presents an alternative and

influential model of femininity. Mary takes centre stage early in the narrative when the

story of the Clanwaring and Owen families is interrupted in order to detail Mary’s

history. In the fourth chapter of Dene Hollow, entitled “In the Life of Mary Barber”, the

reader is told:

This chapter contains an experience that may almost be called the chief

event of Mary Barber’s life. It occurred some years before the epoch we

are at present concerned with, and was essentially supernatural. Not an

incident born of the imagination, but a reality – at least as far as the actors

and witnesses connected with it believed. The facts were peculiar, and for

my own part I do not see how they could reasonably accounted for, or

explained away. The details are given with simple and exact truth, just as

they happened (p.36).

With that rare and authorial ‘I’, the narrator betrays an intense desire to suspend the

reader’s disbelief. The language of the passage insists that this “supernatural” event is

nevertheless “a reality”. Moreover the references to “peculiar” facts and unaccountable

truths continue the unsettling of the reality/delusion, natural/supernatural binaries

already discussed in Wood’s other narratives. Wood invokes the expectations of ‘truth

and ‘reality’ associated with modes of realist fiction, to reshape expectations of

representation in general. This chapter of Dene Hollow is concerned with narrating

Mary’s encounter with an apparition of her sister who, at the moment of her death

appears to Mary, sitting on a stile in a roadway, miles from the place of her passing. It is

important to note that this account mirrors a supernatural encounter attributed to Ellen

Wood’s mother, Elizabeth Price in Memorials of Mrs Henry Wood. In this version of

the story, Mrs Price sees an apparition of a servant sitting on a stile in her wedding

clothes. It transpired that the woman’s sudden death on her wedding day occurred

simultaneously with the unexplainable sighting some distance away.542

Here, Charles

Wood echoes one of his mother’s intrusive narrators, asserting that Mrs Price’s ghostly

encounter is “an authentic record of an apparition, a fact not to be disputed” and he

challenges sceptics to “explain the circumstance to their own satisfaction, if they can do

542

Charles Wood, Memorials, pp.26-27.

187

so”.543

This invitation clearly stresses the limits of rationalist interpretations of the

event, resonating strongly with Ellen Wood’s use of supernaturalism to characterise

Mary Barber in Dene Hollow. In a manner that foreshadows the depiction of Mrs Price,

in Memorials, Mary Barber is constructed as a clairvoyant figure with special access to

the spiritual realm.

Mary Barber’s proximity to the supernatural ensures that she is an ambiguous figure,

and this marginality reverberates on many levels in the text. Like the unmarried Janet

Godolphin, from The Shadow of Ashlydyat, Mary also operates outside the Victorian

marriage market. The reader learns that an unnamed lover has betrayed Mary in the

past, as she refers at one point to a “faithless swain of mine” (p.44). Unlike her mother,

who jeopardised her home when she married an incapable husband, Mary rejects this

path. Moreover, Mary’s status as a servant is also complicated. When the reader is first

introduced to Mary, she is described as being “the faithful upper servant” of the Owen

household and indeed “regarded more as a friend than a servant” (p.14). We also learn

that Mary chooses her life of domestic service. Her sister had married a successful

farmer and they “urged Mary to leave service, as beneath her and themselves, and take

up her abode with them” (p.39). However, Mary rejects the offer of protection by a

male family member, preferring the measure of independence that her life affords. From

the outset, Mary is an outsider figure, but a lynchpin of the plot. She haunts the edges of

the middle classes, is marginalised by the economy of marriage and is inextricably tied

to the supernatural.

It is through the alternative discourse of Mary’s prophetic dreams, that the text further

explores the validity of non-realist narratives. Again, the narrator insists upon the

veracity of Mary’s visionary powers:

Mary Barber was superstitious in the matter of dreams. She did not have

them often, but it must be confessed that two or three times in her life her

dreams had appeared to foreshadow events that afterwards happened.

When young, she had dreamed of the death of her father, and narrated the

dream; a few days after, his death, which was quite unexpected, took

place (p.126).

543

Charles Wood, Memorials, p.27.

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Interestingly, when she dreams of Robert Owen’s misfortune, Mary insists on relating

her prophetic dream to three concerned men, leaders of the village, who are

investigating his disappearance. While these men ridicule the source of her information,

they are nevertheless guided in their inquiries by her dream, and its indication of

Randolph Black’s involvement in Owen’s disappearance. Similarly, Sir Dene also

accepts the testimony of Mary’s dream, and “did not attempt to dispute the dream, or to

ridicule it; he simply asked, when the relation was over, what there was in the dream to

cause her to suspect Black” (p.154). It is significant that here, the men are using Mary’s

dreams – non-realist narratives – in order to detect the truth. These visionary powers

enable Mary to detect the threat posed by Black to the homes of Hurst Leet when other

rationalist methodologies do not. Indeed, Mary becomes a strong advocate of the

supernatural. After the spectre of Robert Owen is revealed as a fake, Sir Dene asserts to

Mary that ghosts “are all nonsense” (p.434). However, an authoritative Mary quickly

disputes his viewpoint:

“That spirits of the dead visit this world sometimes, there’s little doubt

about Sir Dene; but it is not given to everyone to see them. I have seen

them, and so can speak to it. I believe in dreams, too; coming as warnings

of things about to happen.”

“Ay, dreams are quite another thing,” readily acquiesced the old man.

“I’ve had a queer dream or two myself.” (p.434).

Perhaps catering to the more cynical of her readers, Wood allows her characters some

scepticism with regard to the existence of ghosts, but still insists upon the possibility of

supernatural dream warnings.

The shadow in Dene Hollow reflects what E.F. Bleiler refers to as the “ghost as a

symbol of justice in Victorian stories”.544

Indeed, it acts as a form of justice not often

available to women and to members of the working classes through official avenues.

This shadow is, very clearly, a gothic symbol of the price of progress. Dene Hollow is a

flawless new road, but is haunted by the sacrifice of its construction. Indeed two of the

shadow’s victims are Sir Dene and his oppressive bailiff, Drew when, in separate

incidents, their horses are startled on the road. After Drew is severely injured, Mary

Barber characterises Dene Hollow as “cut out of oppression” and “formed out of a poor

544

E. F. Bleiler (ed) “Introduction”, Supernatural Fiction Writers. Fantasy and Horror, (New

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985), p.xiv.

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old woman’s sobs and tears.” As she asserts: “it broke her heart, and took her life before

its time” (p.101). However, these sentiments, also popularly believed throughout the

village, are scorned by Sir Dene, and cautiously negotiated by the narrator:

Sir Dene thought it the most ridiculous notion a sane parish had ever

taken up: and no doubt the reader is thinking the same. The fact, however,

was indisputable – and I am recording nothing but the truth – that horse

after horse had started there in a mysterious manner: mysterious because

there was apparently nothing to startle them (p.206).

The by-now familiar authorial address to the sceptical reader, insists upon the

limitations of rationalism and the need for alternative discourses in order to explain the

mystery. However, despite his earlier scepticism, by the conclusion of the text Sir Dene

echoes the beliefs of Mary Barber:

In this last will and testament of Sir Dene’s, he expressed his regret for

having made the road, Dene Hollow; and gave directions in the strongest

terms that it should forthwith be ploughed up. “For”, ran the words, “it

was made out of a neighbour’s wrongs, and God’s blessing has never

rested on it.” A very pretty cottage, better than the one formerly pulled

down, was left to Mary Barber for life – to her own unbounded

astonishment (p.460).

This registers an implicit acknowledgement that the supernatural Shadow was born of

injustice: the destruction of an innocent home. It also imparts further power to Mary

Barber. Her original plea to Sir Dene – that God’s blessing would be given to him if he

spared her mother’s home – is acknowledged here and wears the aspect of a spoken

curse. At the conclusion of the text, the wrong is redressed and Mary as a forthright,

insightful domestic detective is rewarded with her own home.

Pomeroy Abbey

In Wood’s 1878 text, Pomeroy Abbey, the reader is presented with not merely a

pervasive supernatural milieu, but is confronted with a veritable paranormal pastiche.545

The supernatural becomes the driving force of the narrative, which includes an ancestral

curse, a portentous painting, a haunted tower, a dying man’s warning and a proliferation

545

Pomeroy Abbey was first published in the Argosy from January to December 1878 and is one

of Wood’s final novel-length works of fiction. Again, Rolf Burgauer, p.101, detects the origins

of the novel in New Monthly Magazine in 1859.

190

of apparently spectral encounters. Like the novels I have previously discussed, Wood

employs the supernatural as a device to suggest alternative and often-marginalised ways

of knowing, seeing and interpreting the world. The supernatural encounters of the novel

are inextricably linked to the domestic sphere, troubling the Victorian home of the

Pomeroy family and hence, this focus ensures that the supernatural is, once more,

closely intertwined with the lives of women. Again, supernaturalism becomes an

alternative discourse with which to express feminine desires and fears, which are often

inaccessible (or inexpressible) through masculinised discourses. Interestingly, the

prominent character of Joan Pomeroy in the novel, recalls Janet Godolphin from The

Shadow of Ashlydyat, and the Pomeroy attendants, Bridget and Naomi Rex, bear the

influence of Mary Barber from Dene Hollow. Pomeroy Abbey reflects, in its characters

and its preoccupations, the earlier novels under discussion, but it extends these

depictions to create a network of women engaging with supernatural discourses in order

to manage the dominance of men and the oppression that shadows Victorian

domesticity. I will describe the plot of this lesser-known novel in some detail in order to

clarify its significance.

The title of the novel takes its name from the gothic home of the Pomeroy family. At

the novel’s outset, the current Lord, Hugh Pomeroy, is dying. He has two daughters and

four sons. Guy, the heir and Rupert the second son both live at the abbey. George, the

third son, is a soldier stationed in Ireland who often visits the abbey due to his secret

relationship with the gamekeeper’s pretty daughter, Sybilla, and the youngest son,

Leolin, is working abroad. Isabel, the oldest daughter has married and moved away,

while the younger daughter, Joan, still resides at the abbey. The two eldest sons, Guy

and Rupert are similar in appearance, both tall and attractive, however Guy’s

complexion is paler, his features sterner and he has a harelip. The handsome Rupert, has

been secretly courting the local beauty, Alice Wylde. This romantic attachment has

developed in spite of the machinations of Mrs Wylde to instead marry off her daughter

to the heir, Guy. Although Alice has encouraged Guy, it is with Rupert that her

affections lie and after his father’s death, Guy becomes the new Lord and is determined

to make the reluctant Alice Wylde his wife. When Rupert suddenly leaves the village, at

the same time as Sybilla, the besotted Guy lies to Alice and convinces her that Rupert

has been unfaithful. Unlike the reader, at this point, Guy is fully aware that Sybilla has

been secretly married to their brother, George, and that Rupert is absent to help his

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pregnant sister-in-law travel to Ireland for the birth of her son. During this time, Rupert

is arrested in London over a debt and Guy refuses to extricate him, ensuring he is

detained and that his long absence appears as indifference to Alice. Guy’s endeavours to

marry Alice eventually succeed, but as we learn, his deceptions portend doom for the

family.

Following a disastrous wedding day, Alice learns of an old and mysterious prediction

that a Pomeroy who weds through deceit will bring misery to the family. When she

discovers that Rupert was faithful to her, she knows that Guy deceived her and a quarrel

between the brothers ensues. In a fit of rage, Guy threatens Alice with violence,

imprisonment and the loss of her child if she attempts to leave him, essentially trapping

her at the abbey. As a further consequence of the feud, Rupert is no longer welcome at

the abbey so Alice begins to meet him in secret to discuss their loathing of Guy. At one

covert meeting, in the supposedly haunted west tower of the abbey, Guy discovers Alice

and Rupert talking, produces a pistol and there is a scuffle. Alice flees the scene but

when Guy’s dead (but defaced) body is discovered in the tower and Rupert disappears,

the family is in turmoil. The Lord, Guy, is apparently dead, his successor, Rupert, is a

disgraced criminal and the third son, George, now succeeds as the new Lord of

Pomeroy. Several years go by and George refuses to return and claim his rightful place

as Lord, and eventually dies in battle without ever returning to Pomeroy Abbey. The

youngest Pomeroy son, Leolin, now succeeds to the title, bringing home to the abbey

his new bride, Anna. However, in a surprise twist, Sybilla reappears with George’s son

and heir (also named Rupert) and claims the rights of inheritance on his behalf.

Pomeroy Abbey is now comprised of three households: The widow of Guy, Alice, and

her daughter, Mary; the widow of George, Sybilla, and her son, Rupert; and Leolin and

his new wife Anna. During this time, Leolin becomes focussed upon disinheriting the

young Lord, Rupert. Sybilla’s father, John Gaunt, delivers a caution to Leolin – warning

him that his own children will prosper according to his treatment of Rupert. He ignores

the warning, continually conspiring against Rupert and accordingly, Leolin and Anna’s

children all die mysteriously in their infancy.

At the same time, the household lives in fear that the disgraced fugitive Rupert will be

found and hanged, as various reports of his being seen in England are heard throughout

the village. Meanwhile, frequent sightings of Guy’s ghost have the servants, and his

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superstitious sister, Joan, living in turmoil. The atmosphere at Pomeroy Abbey is one of

fear and unrest. Finally, it transpires that the mysterious spectre is the living Lord, Guy

himself, who had killed his brother, Rupert, all those years ago. At the time of the death,

the corpse’s face was unrecognisable, so Guy switched identities with his brother by

placing his watch and other accessories on the dead body, escaping via a secret,

subterranean passage. George and Sybilla always knew that Guy had survived and this

was why George never assumed his place as Lord. The now-dying Guy tells Leolin that

Sybilla and George’s marriage, though secret, was legitimate, and the young Rupert

becomes the unopposed Lord of Pomeroy. The final part of the novel contains the story

of the now-grown Rupert and while the supernatural elements are muted at the

conclusion, they still haunt the ending.

Although Pomeroy Abbey was written and published in the late-1870s, it draws heavily

upon features of an earlier Gothic tradition. This is reflected most aptly by the first

words of the novel, which are reserved for the detailed description of the Gothic abbey

that recalls the castles of eighteenth-century Gothic tales:

Never was there a more gloomy structure than that of the old Abbey of

Pomeroy, with its grey walls, overgrown in places with lichen and other

mosses, its narrow Gothic casements, and its time-worn towers. It was in

keeping with the scenery around. Situated on a wild part of the coast of

England, it was flanked by bleak and bold rocks on the one side, and a

dark forest on the other.546

It is interesting to compare this description of Pomeroy Abbey with the gothic ideal as

described in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: “massy walls of grey stone, rising amidst

a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beams of the sun playing in beautiful splendour on

its high Gothic windows” (p.117). Although in Austen’s novel the modernised

Northanger Abbey is at variance with the heroine’s fanciful expectations, Catherine’s

imagined abbey resonates strongly with the gothic edifice of Wood’s novel. Moreover,

in Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney’s humorous pastiche of gothic tropes that includes a

haunted wing of the abbey, “sliding panels and tapestry”, a “violent storm” and a hidden

room with “secret subterraneous communication” (pp.115-116) reads almost as a

formula for Wood’s novel. Importantly, and in opposition to the usually foreign locales

of early gothic fiction, the setting of Wood’s novel is England, and hence, Pomeroy

546

Mrs Henry Wood, Pomeroy Abbey (1878; London: Bentley, 1893), p.3. All subsequent

references are to this edition and will appear in the body of the text.

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Abbey reflects the influence of Thornfield from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) or

the gothic home of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847). In addition to this

description of the gloomy abbey in its wild landscape, we are told that the uninhabited

west wing has “the reputation of being haunted” (p.4) by a nun. This spectral figure of

the nun resonates both with Charlotte Bronte’s Villette (1853) and Matthew Lewis’

classic gothic novel, The Monk (1796). Indeed, the longer title of Wood’s novel,

Pomeroy Abbey: A Romance, pays homage to a long tradition of gothic romance that

includes the works of Horace Walpole, Matthew Lewis and Ann Radcliffe. Wood

overtly refers to the Radcliffean gothic in a scene when the recently married Alice finds

her wedding gown, which has been stored in a closet, covered in what appears to be

blood. The “ghostly” idea that mysterious bloodstains have appeared on the dress takes

Alice “back to the times of Mrs Radcliffe and all sorts of unearthly thoughts” (p.106).

Indeed, Alice’s fascination with the gothic tales of Pomeroy Abbey highlights her

similarity to Austen’s fanciful heroine, Catherine Morland, from Northanger Abbey

(1818).547

I would argue that this marks out Pomeroy Abbey as a more self-conscious

supernatural tale than the two previous novels under discussion. Indeed, self parody, a

feature of gothic fiction from its inception, is evidently at work in Wood’s writing.

While the narrative mirrors the earlier work, The Shadow of Ashlydyat, in its use of a

family curse and other haunting gothic devices, in Pomeroy Abbey, these features are

centralised. There is an excess of supernatural trappings and the plot indulges in

melodramatic tendencies. In this later novel, supernatural incidents become the focus of

the narrative with the family drama less prominent, arising only as a consequence of the

supernatural milieu.

Joan Pomeroy is given particular importance in the novel, not least by the first chapter,

which bears her name. In this initial chapter, we learn that she is unmarried, twenty-nine

years old and has been named after “Dame Joan de Pomeroy, famous for her beauty in

the reign of King John”. However, in contrast to this medieval beauty, “[p]oor Joan” is

“plain, tall and angular, her hair very dark, and her complexion nearly olive,” though the

narrator acknowledges that “her features were good” (p.7). Joan is marked out, like

Janet Godolphin and Mary Barber before her, as a plain woman, lacking the feminine

attractions of other female characters. Thus, in a similar way to Janet and Mary, Joan

547

Austen’s text contains frequent references to gothic novels, most prominently, Ann

Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which Catherine reads just prior to her visit to

Northanger Abbey.

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operates clearly outside of the marriage market – an economy that provides a firm focus

for Wood’s plots. Pomeroy Abbey is no exception here as the marriages of the Pomeroy

men: Guy to pretty Alice Wylde, George to the beautiful Sybilla Gaunt and Leolin to

the demure Anna Essington, are central events of the novel. As a point of difference to

these female characters who operate within the economy of marriage, Joan emphasises

her position as a single woman to her brother:

I shall not marry, Guy. Yes I know what you would say – that I am still

somewhat young to say that at thirty; but a conviction, that I shall not, lies

within me. I do assure you that I have no wish to marry; I never have had

any, and I believe my best happiness will lie in a single life… (p.53).

Indeed, Joan is afforded the freedom to choose a single life because she “possessed her

fortune, and could live where she liked” (p.56). This is clear throughout the novel as

Joan chooses to live at Pomeroy Abbey only when it suits her. This is in contrast to the

other women who reside there – Alice and Sybilla – who, even when widowed, are to

an extent, trapped at the abbey for the sake of their children, who are heirs of the

Pomeroys.

Like Janet Godolphin in The Shadow of Ashlydyat, who operates among her family as a

domestic detective, Joan also functions as a detective figure in Pomeroy Abbey. At the

outset of the narrative, Joan has returned to the abbey after some months away and is

reacquainting herself with the family gossip. She learns that Guy is forming an

attachment to Alice Wylde, in a conversation with the disingenuous Rupert who fails to

mention his own interest in Alice. When Joan tries to discover more about this new

development, her father characterises her curiosity as unseemly and reproaches her.

Indeed, when she questions Guy directly about Alice, he haughtily deflects the question

and we are told that “[o]nce when Guy had declined to tell her something she wished to

know, and she had teased him to anger, he had struck her.” Consequently, Joan

abandons her inquiries “for now” (p.10) suggesting that she will persist, but that she

will need to employ alternative strategies in detection to circumvent Guy’s brutal

authority. Importantly, although her efforts to discover information are denied by the

authoritative males of her family, she is nevertheless correct to suspect that there is

something amiss, as the reader soon learns that Alice is not in love with Guy, but with

Rupert. When Joan observes that Alice “will never have Guy: she is too beautiful” (p.8)

she is correct. Joan astutely detects a danger to the Pomeroy family in Alice who will

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drive a wedge between the brothers, leading to the tragic death at the centre of the

narrative.

Joan’s detection extends beyond the walls of the abbey, when she confirms the village

gossip of Sybilla’s pregnancy with her “keen gaze” and “stern, searching eyes” (pp.38-

9). In her inquiries, Joan directly asks the local priest to confirm her instincts, asking

him, “do you – do you know that – that anything is wrong with Sybilla Gaunt?” (p.46)

When Father Andrew deflects the question, Joan has a creeping suspicion that he is

“purposely avoiding the subject” (p.47). When she presses him further, he tells her to

leave Sybilla alone. However, Joan decides to disobey her spiritual adviser and

continues to make inquiries. After Sybilla disappears, Joan asks Guy whether he knows

anything about her whereabouts and whether the rumour that she is with Rupert is

correct. Guy responds with, “[p]ut these fancies altogether from your mind, Joan; I

command it. Forget Sybilla Gaunt; never allow the subject to recur to you again” (p.54).

Even this display of dominance from Guy does not deter Joan as she asks Sybilla’s

father, John Gaunt, about his absent daughter. His firm answer, that she is “quite well”,

is all that Joan can elicit. The network of men that surrounds Joan – her brothers, Father

Andrew and John Gaunt all attempt to suppress Joan’s attempts to discover the truth.

Nevertheless, Joan’s continuing efforts in the face of this conspiracy of men serves to

demonstrate that she resists her prescribed role and is determined to gain knowledge,

even if this involves embracing marginalised discourses, like the supernatural.

The first mention of the mysterious prediction in the novel, occurs through the character

of Naomi Rex. The Rex family are, and have always been, “close and staunch adherents

of the Lords of Pomeroy,” employed in personal service to the family (p.70). The oldest

of the family, Naomi Rex, lives near the abbey in a cottage in the forest. Her niece,

Bridget, is a favourite servant of the Pomeroys and the abbey housekeeper is also from

the Rex family. It is significant that the male line of Rexes have died out, leaving this

small group of women in roles of significant power, as we are told: “[t]hese Rexes knew

as much about the traditions of the Pomeroys, and about themselves too, as long-

retained servants in a family generally do know” (p.71). When Naomi first speaks of the

prediction, she tells Mrs Wylde of a verse that warns of ill-fortune derived from the

marriage of a Pomeroy Lord that is “entered into with deceit and craft” (p.73). Mrs

Wylde characterises this prophecy as “nonsense” as she has “little reverence for such

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superstitions” (p.73). The loyal Naomi also dismisses the likelihood that the prediction

would apply to the current generation of Pomeroys as she believes that they are

“honourable and disdain a lie” (p.73). However, unlike the disbelieving Mrs Wylde and

faithful Naomi, the reader is positioned to see that Guy Pomeroy has won Alice Wylde

through falsehood and this signals that the conditions of the prophecy have already been

fulfilled.

In typical Gothic fashion, the wedding day of Guy and Alice is filled with discussions

of ill-luck and bad omens:

In the morning, when they rose, the sky was of a dark leaden colour,

gloomy and threatening clouds overspread the earth like a pall, and a

sighing wind swept along in mournful wails, now dropping into a low

dirge, now meeting, as it seemed, from all quarters and battling in fury

[…] if ever the elements were gathering for warfare they were that

morning. And in this threatening weather the bride and her train went

forth to the chapel at mid-day (pp.78-9).

Several of the villagers note the ominous atmosphere, including Naomi Rex who

expresses that the “dead, ghostly look of things” (p.81) portends ill for the Lord and

new Lady of Pomeroy. It is largely the women who express their fears in these terms,

whereas Tom Whittaker, at whose house Naomi is visiting, is amused by the women’s

talk of portents, laughing at their conversation as, “[h]e did not believe in omens”

(p.82). After the wedding carriage is overturned in the storm, these beliefs of ill-luck

extend to the new Lady of Pomeroy, Alice. When Alice questions Joan about her

feelings regarding the wedding, we are told that Joan “had been deducing evil augury to

her brother and his wife from the strange day and the accident it had led to; but she had

kept the feeling in her own breast” (p.93). Joan also has misgivings about the union,

detecting through non-realist signs that there is something amiss. Alice acknowledges

these signs and their gendered difference when she confronts her husband: “You are a

man, Guy, and therefore will pretend to despise these fears; perhaps you do despise

them: but, rely upon it, that strange day was sent to portend ill to us, if ever ill was

portended yet” (pp.95-6). Indeed, at this point in the narrative, although Alice does not

yet know that Guy deceived her, she is strongly convinced that their marriage should be

annulled. However, Guy expresses his disbelief and overrules her wishes:

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If Fate, human or hobgoblin, owed us a grudge, and set herself to scowl

upon our marriage, she should not have been quite so dilatory. The

interposition should have come before you quitted your mother’s house

and your mother’s name (p.96).

Here, Guy appeals to the rationalism of law to defend his wishes. They have been

legally wed, Alice has taken his name and come to his house, which takes precedence

over what he derides as “Fate, human or hobgoblin”. So in Pomeroy Abbey, we can seen

that belief in non-realist frameworks and unconventional beliefs, falls largely along

gendered lines in a similar manner to the other novels.

Just as her aunt, Naomi, tells Mrs Wylde of the prediction, Bridget Rex later tells Alice

Wylde, now Alice Pomeroy, the full version of the curse in the ominously titled chapter

“The Prediction”. Alice’s curiosity about the supposedly haunted west wing is piqued

after living in the abbey for a year and she disobeys her husband’s command to stay

away from this area of their home.548

When Alice appeals to the old custodian, Jerome,

he first attempts to defer her visit to the tower (just as her husband Guy has been doing)

but when she insists, he accompanies her.549

However, he avows that he cannot unlock

the ‘haunted room’ so leaves, ostensibly to find a key. Meanwhile, Alice herself

examines his keys, which are labelled according to their respective rooms. One is

labelled mysteriously as “The Key” (p.114) and when tried, easily unlocks the

forbidden room in the west tower.550

The centrality of this room to the abbey and to the

narrative as a whole is suggested by this label of The Key, not least because the reader

is about to learn of the prediction that underlies the fateful events of the novel. ‘The

Key’ also indicates this room’s status as a solution to several mysteries in the story. The

wrongdoings of the Pomeroy men all originate in this room – from the mistreatment of

the nun who lived and died there to its secret passage that allows the male Pomeroys to

548

The influence of Elizabeth Gaskell’s, “The Old Nurse’s Story” is discernible here. This story

was originally published in Household Words in 1852, and depicts old Furnivall Manor, which

contains a forbidden east wing that hides a dark family secret. Wood echoes Gaskell’s

moralistic approach to supernatural tales in the novels under discussion here (Mrs Gaskell’s

Tales of Mystery and Horror, ed. Michael Ashley (London: Victor Gollancz, 1978), pp.19 –

38). 549

The choice of the name Jerome may be an allusion to the character of the same name from

Horace Walpole’s gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764). 550

Here, the similarity to Catherine Morland’s entry to the locked wing of Northanger Abbey is

marked. In Austen’s novel, the heroine is prevented by the patriarch of the family from

exploring a mysteriously locked section of the house. Hence in Northanger Abbey, the mystery

derives only from Catherine’s vivid imaginings, whereas in Pomeroy Abbey, a shameful family

secret is being concealed from Alice.

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come and go from the family home at will. It will later become the site of betrayal,

murder and mistaken identity. Fearful to enter the room alone, Alice summons Bridget

who guides her mistress through the room, its history and its tragic former inhabitant –

the nun who became a Pomeroy bride. It is important here, that a young servant woman

narrates to the new Lady of Pomeroy, the experience of a former Pomeroy bride. In her

narrative, Bridget places the history in “the reign of one of the Georges – the first or

second, I think” (p.116) which locates the tale in the eighteenth century, and the story is

later said to refer to the current Lord’s great-grandfather. So unlike the ancient curse of

the Godolphins in The Shadow of Ashlydyat, the Pomeroy curse is only three

generations removed from the present family. This chronological closeness ensures that

it remains as a haunting family indiscretion, closer to reality and echoing the “ghosts of

family transgression and guilty concealment” that Botting identifies as typical of

nineteenth-century Gothic.551

In the novel, a portrait signals the ambiguous and ghostly position of the Victorian

woman. Bridget first reveals to Alice the painting of the nun that hangs concealed

behind a curtain in the room. As Bridget narrates, this seventeen-year-old nun fell in

love with the Lord of Pomeroy, violated her vows and secretly married him. He brought

her to the west wing and she inhabited the tower room. When she discovered that she

had been deceived into committing bigamy, the nun, in Bridget’s words, “went crazed,

poor thing” (p.116) and committed suicide from the tower window. 552

For years

afterwards she was said to haunt the room. The concealed portrait and this hidden

narrative of the nun indicates her ghostly presence in the home and history of the

Pomeroys and suggests the vulnerability of women that is a feature of the female gothic.

However, as Bridget continues with the history, it is apparent that, in Pomeroy Abbey,

Wood also continues her strategy of depicting women who access supernatural

discourses in more productive ways.

At the centre of Wood’s gothic romance, Pomeroy Abbey, she embeds the strange

narrative of a mysterious curse. The supernatural prediction that lies at the heart of the

551

Botting, p.123. 552

Although the term ‘bigamy’ is not explicitly used, the union is clearly bigamous and the

mark of shame on the family makes this very clear. It is interesting that here, Wood engages

with bigamy – a key trope of the sensation novel – when she often shies away from it in her

writing. This novel and A Life’s Secret (1867) are examples of only a few instances in which

Wood depicts the crime.

199

story is, according to Bridget, “the strangest part of the history” (p.117). According to

the story, after the violent death of his bride, the Lord found a mysterious verse written

on the painting in her room:

When the heir of Pomeroy goes forth a wife to win,

And the heir of Pomeroy goes forth in vain;

When the Lord of Pomeroy by a lie doth gain,

Then woe to the de Pomeroys, twain and twain! (p.119)

Bridget tells Alice that because this prediction was not written in the familiar hand of

the nun, it hence “came to be regarded as having been done by supernatural agency”

(p.117). This verse contains ominous meanings for readers who know that Guy has

fulfilled the conditions of the prediction. It is significant then, that despite the

machinations of her husband, Guy, and the custodian, Jerome, who is ever faithful to

the Lords of Pomeroy (this is made evident later as he harbours and protects Guy),

Alice is helped to understand her position in the family, and in history and fate, through

the gossip of the female servant, Bridget. In this, and other ways, the uncanny narrative

is marked out as a female history. Wood depicts a network of women investing in, and

attempting to make meaning of these supernatural events. While I am not suggesting

that this access to the family lore gives Bridget and Naomi equality with the Pomeroy

women, it does give them significant power to negotiate their social positions.

Storytelling becomes a powerful tool in the novel. Indeed, Bridget Rex is promoted

within the ranks of the household, based on her knowledge of the legend and of past

Pomeroy gossip. After the birth of Alice and Guy’s daughter, we are told that:

She had been promoted to the office of nurse to the child, simply because

Mrs Pomeroy had become fascinated with her tales and her legends of the

dead-and-gone as themselves. Bridget would recount to her mistress

marvellous legends of the Pomeroys’ grandeur and chivalry, varied with

whispers of the Pomeroys’ less laudatory exploits. Mrs Pomeroy took

quite a liking to the woman, and she assigned her the place of nurse to the

child (p.123).

The child referred to here is Mary, another female family member, who is later also

educated by Naomi Rex about the “tales of the Pomeroys” (p.220). Later in the novel,

Leolin’s bride, Anna who has “a love for the marvellous” is said to be intrigued by his

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discussion of the Pomeroy history and is “deeply interested in all she heard: especially

in the tale of the nun’s picture and the prediction” (p.217). Wood’s depiction of female

storytellers and their wrapt female audience reflects the gendered authorship and

readership of the female gothic. It is significant that the tale of the nun is circulated by,

and of deep interest to, the women of the Pomeroy family and their female attendants.

For women, these gothic narratives contain truths that resonate with female experience.

The males of the family, although ostensibly superstitious, seem to regard the history

with a sense of shame, closing up the west wing and forbidding its occupation whereas

the women feel a necessity to uncover this cloistered female history.

The key incident of the novel occurs in the rather routinely titled chapter: “The

Climax”. Although the murder is a crime of passion that arises from a commonplace

lovers’ triangle, the setting of this climactic scene is deliberate. As the narrator notes,

the moonlit scene of “the haunted room, with all its ghostly associations” (p.162)

intensifies Alice and Rupert’s dread of discovery. Much is made of the supernatural

aspect of the scene in the moments leading up to their discovery, where Alice recoils

from the “horror of the room” and its “ghastliness” in the moonlight (pp.154-5). This

use of spatial imagery is a common gothic trope. This space, the haunted room, abounds

with associations of transgression and irrationality. When Rupert and Alice are caught

in their “clandestine interview” Guy is depicted as a stock gothic villain with “his eyes

glaring, his white features terribly livid in the moonlight” (p.161). Gothic tropes are

used to great effect here. And, indeed, the incident plays out of the supernatural

prediction, something reinforced by Joan, who afterwards “in her superstitious heart,

said that this had been the working out of the prediction. Or, perhaps but its

commencement! Who knew?” (p.172). However, what Joan and the women of the

household do not realise is that the haunted room also has a secret passage. This hidden

passage is also unknown to the reader at this point in the text and it is revealed later that

it is traditionally known only by the Lord of Pomeroy (however Jerome, as custodian, is

also aware of its existence). It is significant then that Rupert has obtained knowledge of

this passage and uses it to gain entrance to Guy’s home to conspire with his wife. In the

tower room, the tunnel’s entrance is covered by the nun’s portrait, adding another

dimension to the legend of her demise. This heretofore undetected, secret entrance has

allowed the male Pomeroy line to enter and leave the home at will, without the

knowledge of their wives and sisters.

201

Joan’s detection continues after her brother’s death as she attempts to discover the

mystery of the events in the tower room. In a style reminiscent of a witness

interrogation, Joan tells Jerome “I want to put a few questions to you which I have

hitherto shrunk from. Things are not clear to me, Jerome; not clear. Give me your own

version of what happened on that fatal night” (p.173). However, Joan’s forthright

attempt to detect the truth of the event is thwarted by Jerome’s obfuscations. Joan

characterises the central “puzzle” (p.174) as the means by which Rupert was able to

enter the west tower unseen on the night of the murder. This is the same question that

Alice had asked of the evasive Rupert at the time, given that he was barred from the

abbey. In response to Joan’s questioning, Jerome looks “ill at ease,” labelling Rupert’s

method of entry as “a mystery” and deliberately concealing his knowledge of the

subterranean passage (p.173). So, at this point in the text, Joan’s attempts to locate this

secret passage are again, subverted by a network of males.

Gender politics continue to intersect with the supernatural events of the novel. In the

years following the violent death in the tower, the incident continues to haunt the

residents of Pomeroy Abbey. Amidst a discussion of various domestic matters, the

narrator interrupts with:

Nothing has hitherto been said of a very unpleasant matter that for some

time past had been disturbing the equanimity of Pomeroy. But the reader

must now hear of it, unwilling though he may be to give ear to a tale of

superstition. The Pomeroy household believed that their ill-fated master,

Guy, did not rest in his grave (p.260).

This address to the reader lacks the force of similar narratorial appeals in other Wood

novels, where the reader is asked to suspend disbelief. This is because the ‘superstition’

in question – Guy’s spectre – is not ultimately a supernatural manifestation.

Interestingly, in Pomeroy Abbey, the actual supernatural aspects of the text are not

remarked upon, they are left as self-evident and unexplained. The sightings of Guy’s

ghost are largely reported by villagers and retainers to the household, including Bridget

Rex. Of these sightings, the family are less well-acquainted: “to Leolin no one dared

speak; he would have visited any nonsense of the sort severely; but Joan knew of it, and

was as implicit a believer in it as Bridget herself” (p.262). Joan attempts to confront

Leolin with the supernatural occurrences, arguing that “there are things in earth that we

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cannot explain or account for; the solution of which we may not dream of in our

philosophy” (p.351) as she paraphrases Hamlet and echoes the narratorial appeals of

Wood’s earlier novels. Joan also reproaches Leolin for his ongoing scheming with the

Roman Catholic church to annul George and Sybilla’s marriage, so that he can take the

place of Lord in place of his young nephew, Rupert.553

Joan reminds Leolin of the

death-bed warning he received: As you deal by this child, so may you prosper in your

own children!” Joan states, “we both do know that these death-bed admonitions are

sometimes strangely worked out; we both know that Gaunt’s warning to you has so

been” (p.351). She refers to the fact that two of his own children have mysteriously

fallen ill and died, while the last is also ailing. When Joan challenges her brother and

states that Leolin’s misfortunes are part of the prediction’s fulfilment he responds with:

“Joan, you were born a few centuries too late; you should have lived when astrologers

and witches flourished” (p.352). Joan’s beliefs are marked as mere superstitions, despite

her use of these supernatural beliefs to explain and understand the events occurring in

her family. When she recites the verse of the prediction and uses it as evidence to

account for the death, exile and trouble that has plagued her brothers, Leolin states “I

cannot see what good it does to recall these things – or to discuss them” (p.352). This is

a similar response to the one he gives his wife, Anna, when she connects his attempts to

dispossess Rupert with their own children’s deaths. Leolin’s refusal to acknowledge the

supernatural framework within which Joan and Anna are working ensures that he

dismisses Joan’s ideas as “dreaming” (p.351), Anna’s fears as “ridiculous” and Gaunt’s

warning as “the prejudiced ravings of a dying man” (p.351).

Although the final part of the narrative shifts to the new generation of Pomeroys, the

gothic associations of the former generation remain. Once Guy has finally been buried,

the narrative moves to the stories of his daughter, Mary Pomeroy and the new Lord,

Rupert. Pomeroy Abbey has been modernised – the west wing has been restored and

decorated and, most importantly, the subterranean passage has been “blocked up at

either end with bricks and mortar” (p.390). This suggests a more hopeful outlook for the

family line, echoing Guy’s final words: “The future Lords of Pomeroy will have less

cause for secrets, maybe, than some of the past have had” (p.372). Despite all the

transformations Joan asks to retain the portrait of the nun in her own bedchamber as,

553

The anti-Catholicism of Wood’s early writings is here, evident as a strategy to evoke a

backdrop of superstition.

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“she liked to recall the past stories and to retain their mementos” (p.391). So, by

preserving the painting, Joan becomes the new custodian of this female history. Joan

Pomeroy, like Janet Godolphin and Mary Barber, remains unmarried at the end of the

narrative. Nina Auerbach has detected Wood’s willingness to assert the “heroic

capacities” of the spinster figure in her novels and these three female characters are no

exception.554

Additionally, at this late stage in the novel, Joan’s role as a domestic

detective is confirmed by the description of her as “a reader of countenances” (p.385).

With this gift, that recalls the talents of Johnny Ludlow, she detects the inherent

goodness of Annaline Hetley who will become Rupert’s bride, despite some malicious

gossip that has falsely labelled her as a “crafty, deceitful, designing” girl (p.385). Thus,

Joan still uses her skills to protect her family, even as she herself avoids the marriage

market. She finds that Annaline, as the future Lady of Pomeroy, will be a respectable

mistress of the newly modernised household.

In all three narratives under discussion the characters of Janet, Mary and Joan, operate

outside the economy of marriage, and their strange powers to read, interpret and

understand the world seem to pertain to their unmarried status. This deviates from the

early example of the pretty Barbara Hare from East Lynne, who combined her role as a

detective with those of wife and mother. While Barbara’s domestic detection was

motivated by the singular incident of her family’s involvement with a murder, a more

ongoing role is suggested for the women of these supernatural narratives. Berglund

argues that, in later narratives, the spinster as sleuth, “is so completely harmless and

endearing, and so essentially feminine in her ways and manners, that she can get away

with murder – or at least the detection of murder – without threatening male

authority”.555

In this way, characters such as Janet in The Shadow of Ashlydyat or Joan

in Pomeroy Abbey can talk to their erring brothers in ways that other women cannot.

Their use of supernatural strategies to investigate mysteries also ensures that these

women are seen by male characters as naïve or deluded, a perception that the narratives

of each text show to be shortsighted. Additionally, while the unmarried woman or

spinster is often a marginalised role, Wood positions these women as powerful allies to

the Victorian home. The conclusion to Pomeroy Abbey sees Joan’s example, as an

unmarried woman, endorsed by Mrs Wylde who earlier ambitiously urged her

554

Auerbach, p. 132. 555

Berglund, p.145.

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daughter’s marriage to Guy. Mrs Wylde now counsels her granddaughter, Mary

Pomeroy, to give up her hopes of marrying the new Lord, Rupert, arguing that, “those

women are the happiest who keep from marriage” (p.429). Indeed, she points directly to

Joan as a good example of those “women who are in the world, but not of it, who are

not ensnared by its deceits … Joan had many offers; I can tell you that, Mary; but she

chose the safer path” (p.429). Mary ultimately decides to join the convent and is

described as having “a thoughtful sadness in her deep grey eyes” (p.433) that suggests

the haunting stories of the Pomeroy women will not be forgotten.

The intersection of detection with the supernatural in Wood’s works reveals the

complexities of the class and gender politics of the texts. The ghosts, visions, curses and

shadows that circulate among the homes and families in The Shadow of Ashlydyat, Dene

Hollow and Pomeroy Abbey operate to investigate and redefine the domestic. Wood’s

supernaturalism illuminates the contradictory roles for women while also

simultaneously asserting a feminine spiritualism as an avenue for power and

understanding. In all three texts, supernatural shadows symbolise the oppression of

vulnerable women: Mrs Barber, the ancient Godolphin bride and the suicided nun.

Hence, the female gothic is emphasised in each text, with the threat of the incarcerated

feminine underlying the domestic spaces of the novel. However, the texts reveal a more

complex strategy, depicting female characters for whom the supernatural is a productive

realm. Janet Godolphin, Mary Barber, and the network of women including Joan, Alice

and Anna Pomeroy and Naomi and Bridget Rex are female figures with higher powers

of insight through their access to supernatural beliefs and visions. In this way, while

Mary’s uncanny dream narratives, Janet’s beliefs in the shadow curse, and Joan and

Naomi’s investment in the supernatural prediction are marginalised and de-legitimised

in the novel by their intersection with discourses of rationality espoused by certain

characters, there is a perceptible counter-argument that this knowledge is both powerful

and legitimate, dominated by narratorial assertions of truth and a refusal to dismiss the

uncanny as impossible. Indeed, these female figures are able to use supernatural

discourses to detect certain truths about their worlds that are unavailable to, or ignored

by, other characters. The narrative events of each novel ultimately support the validity

of these supernatural strategies, as they depict an alternative, feminised discourse that

dramatises the limitations of Victorian rationalism.

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Conclusion

The year 1887 marks a significant turning point in the history of Victorian literary

detection. In this year, we witness the birth of the iconic fictional detective, Sherlock

Holmes, and the death of Ellen Wood. Although Wood’s son continued to publish her

works, especially remaining “Johnny Ludlow” stories, in the years after her death,

Langbauer points to the inevitable truth that “the series at some point stops, even if only

because its author dies”.556

While domestic detection was a prominent discourse in Ellen Wood’s writing between

the 1850s and the 1880s, Conan Doyle’s masterful detective figure would imprint

himself upon literary detection as a new model of the detached, scientific investigator.

This urban, bachelor detective responded to late-Victorian social concerns and anxieties.

After Holmes, the fictional detective is transformed into an intellectual hero, often a

solitary figure, working to uncover criminal plots. Professional and private detectives

supersede the embedded networks of everyday, domestic detectives evident in Wood’s

writings. Despite this, Wood’s communities of domestic detectives remain as

representatives of their cultural moment, and, I would suggest, remain as important

influences for Conan Doyle’s detective.

When Holmes first appeared in the pages of A Study in Scarlet, late-Victorian readers

were presented with a peculiar and intriguing character. In his own struggle to

understand this mysterious figure, Watson writes a list of Holmes’ limitations and

aptitudes. He observes that Holmes is profoundly uninterested in, and ignorant of, fields

such as literature, philosophy and politics. Indeed, his knowledge is confined to those

specific tasks that we learn are necessary to his detection of crime in the modern city.

This includes a working knowledge of the law, of chemistry and poisons, and of

geology, insofar as it assists him to identify the dirt that adorns the shoes and trousers of

suspects. Interestingly, another area of expertise that Watson identifies is Holmes’

knowledge of “sensational literature”, which he lists as “Immense”. As Watson

remarks, “He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the

556

Langbauer, Novels of Everyday Life, p.12. In Memorials, pp.310-311, Wood’s deathbed

confession to her son was that her unrealised goal as a writer was to write another a mystery

series, like the “Johnny Ludlow” stories, but instead narrated by a young governess. One would

imagine that this series would have produced a proto-Nancy Drew figure.

206

century.”557

This observation is rather suggestive, constructing Holmes as representative

of the Victorian era’s voracious consumers of crime literature who were fascinated by

crime in fiction and in the popular press. More importantly, it also hints at the debt

owed by late-Victorian crime fiction such as the Holmes stories, to earlier-nineteenth-

century sensational narratives produced by writers such as Ellen Wood.

Although the late-Victorian milieu produced new modes of detection, those developed

by Wood from mid-century remain important. Wood’s positioning of her detectives

within the everyday context allows for complex negotiations with dominant discourses.

The attraction of the everyday, for Wood, might be illuminated by Langbauer’s

argument that “the everyday seems to refuse ideal solutions” and that:

It insists that there is no utopia outside of ideology’s confines. An

emphasis on the everyday may provide instead a way of inhabiting

those confines, working within them, without simply overlooking

them or accepting them as natural.558

The everyday, domestic spaces of Wood’s narratives are not naturalised and the

confines of domestic ideology are never overlooked or simply accepted. Wood’s

representations of domestic detection allow her characters, especially women, to inhabit

and work within the limitations of their Victorian world in strategic and productive

ways.

A final comparison might be made to the twentieth century English novelist and ‘Queen

of Crime’, Agatha Christie. Christie, like Wood, was a prolific author of popular novels

who has been simplistically labelled as conservative and trivial.559

However, Stephen

Knight includes Christie in his discussion of “Radical Thrillers” suggesting that while

she “is often stigmatised as the arch-Tory because of her perfection of the country-

house murder … Christie’s pattern contains a subversive and perhaps fugitive victory

557

Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, p.16. 558

Langbauer, Novels of Everyday Life, p.58. 559

Alison Light, p.64, describes Christie’s reputation in the academy in the early 1990s, as “the

producer of harmless drivel, an unsuitable case for a critic”. Light’s defence of Christie’s critical

worth is remarkably similar to those of early Wood scholars: “It is an extraordinary fact, given

the centrality of her work to British cultural life, that no self-respecting British critic has ever

written at decent length about her, or felt impelled to look more closely at what the work might

speak to” (p.64).

207

for a kind of female (if not feminist) populism”.560

With her most famous detectives,

Hercule Poirot, who first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) and Miss

Marple, who debuted in The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), Christie resurrected, in a

new century, forms of domestic detection that are similar to those that I have been

discussing in relation to Wood’s novels.

Miss Marple is a keen-eyed spinster detective with deep insight into human behaviour.

As Reddy notes, “a lifetime of nosiness – which might also be called close observation

– constitutes her special power as a detective” and Knight points to Marple’s use of

“stereotypically female knowledge” to solve mysteries.561

In a similar manner, the

effeminate Poirot also utilises domestic knowledge and employs careful observation to

uncover criminal plots. Both detectives have attributes that Wood bestowed upon her

Victorian domestic detectives. Christie’s domestic focus suggests for Knight that:

The world of objects and knowledge about household order and

management, the nuances of human interaction, such fragments of the

material, interactive world known and scrutinised by the anxious

bourgeois personality will provide both the data and the methods for

interpreting the source of disorder.562

So, for the middle-class readers of her mystery narratives, Christie, like Wood, staged

and investigated the domestic world. Both reassured their readership that careful

scrutiny of one’s domestic world was sufficient to maintain order and harmony.

Moreover, Light describes Christie’s distinctive voice in which she was able to

“cultivate the ordinary and the informal and to mount an unsnobbish defence of its

pleasures” in a way that recalls Wood’s bourgeois celebration of the everyday.563

For

readers of popular fiction, then, domestic detection was destined to continue.

560

Stephen Knight, “Radical Thrillers,” Watching the Detectives: Essays on Crime Fiction, ed.

Ian A. Bell and Graham Daldry (London: Macmillan, 1990), p.177. 561

Reddy, p.193; Knight, “Radical Thrillers,” p.177. 562

Knight, Form and Ideology, p.119. 563

Light, p.78.

208

209

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225

Ellen Wood

(i) Works

---. Anne Hereford. 1868. London: Macmillan, 1902.

---. The Channings. 1862. London: Bentley, 1895.

---. Dene Hollow. 1871. London: Macmillan, 1911.

---. East Lynne. 1861. Ed. Andrew Maunder. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press,

2000.

---. East Lynne. 1861. Ed. Elisabeth Jay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

---. George Canterbury’s Will. 1870. London: Macmillan, 1911.

---. Johnny Ludlow. First Series. 1874. London: Bentley, 1895.

---. Johnny Ludlow. Second Series. 1880. London: Macmillan, 1880.

---. Johnny Ludlow. Third Series. 1885. London: Macmillan, 1899.

---. Johnny Ludlow. Fourth Series. 1890. London: Macmillan, 1899.

---. Johnny Ludlow. Fifth Series. 1890. London: Macmillan, 1899.

---. Johnny Ludlow. Sixth Series. 1895. London: Macmillan, 1899.

---. The Master of Greylands, (1873; London: Macmillan, 1900.

---. Mrs Halliburton's Troubles. 1862. London: Bentley, 1897.

---. Pomeroy Abbey. 1878. London: Bentley, 1893.

---. “Preface”. Johnny Ludlow. First Series. 1874. London: Bentley, 1883.

---. Roland Yorke. 1869. London: Bentley, 1892.

---. The Shadow of Ashlydyat. 1863. London: Bentley, 1888.

---. Verner’s Pride. 1862. London: Macmillan, 1901.

---. Within the Maze. 1872. London: Macmillan, 1900.

(ii) Anonymous articles

---. “An Event in the Life of Lord Byron.” New Monthly Magazine 99 (October 1853):

138-150.

226

---. “French and English Female Dress.” Bentley’s Miscellany 46 (1859): 504-507.

---. “Gina Montani.” 1851. Adam Grainger and Other Stories. London: Macmillan,

1899. 185- 247.

---. [Thomas Pepper]. “More Stray Letters from the East.” New Monthly Magazine 102

(September 1854): 41-52.

---. “A Record of the Gold-Fever.” New Monthly Magazine 100 (January 1854): 58-72.

---. “The Sequel to ‘A Word to England.’” New Monthly Magazine 97 (March 1853):

335-342.

---. “Seven Years in the Wedded Life of a Roman Catholic.” New Monthly Magazine 91

(1851): 245-255.

---. [Ludlow, Johnny]. “Shaving the Ponies Tails.” Argosy 5 (January 1868): 111-123.

---. [Ensign Thomas Pepper]. “Stray Letters from the East.” New Monthly Magazine 101

(July 1854): 344-354.

---. [Thomas Pepper]. “Tom Pepper’s Letters from the Crimea.” New Monthly Magazine

103 (February 1855): 153-166.

---. “A Word to England.” New Monthly Magazine 97 (February 1853): 182-192.

(iii) Letters

---. Letter to Elizabeth Gaskell. 5 May 1864. The John Rylands University Library, The

University of Manchester. English MS 731/108. Reproduced by courtesy of the

University Librarian and Director.

---. Letter to Fanny Kortright. 3 Dec. 1868. Ellen Wood Papers. Wolff Collection. Harry

Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. 7290b.

---. Letter to Messrs. Dalziel. 19 Sept. 1862. Ellen Wood Papers. Wolff Collection.

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. 7266a.

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Fiction. New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Wynne, Deborah. ““See What A Big Wide Bed it is!” Mrs Henry Wood and the

Philistine Imagination.” Feminist Readings of Victorian Popular Texts: Divergent

Femininities. Ed. Emma Liggins and Daniel Duffy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. 89-107.

---. The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine. Basingstoke: Palgrave,

2001.