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Unique and Repeated Situations and Themes in Reade's Fiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Charles Reade had the romancer's fondness for startling and rare, even unparalleled incidents, and heaped up thousands of such incidents in his thoroughly docomented notebooks. Yet throughout his fiction he utilized the same formulas and situations over and over again. Here is an anomaly which demands analysis and explanation.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945
References
1 See my “Charles Reade's Notebooks,” SP, xxvii.
2 A footnote to the Preface of Hard Cash says: “Without sensation there can be no interest.” Cf. also Readiana: The Sham Sample Swindle, where he commends “striking” and “strong” incidents.
3 Hard Cash, chap, xii–xiii; Foul Play, chap. xi.
4 Put Yourself in His Place, chap. v.
5 Ibid., chap. xii.
6 Ibid., chap. xxxii.
7 A Perilous Secret, chap. xx.
8 Good Stories: Rus.
9 The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. xxix.
10 Ibid., chap. xxxviii.
11 A Perilous Secret, chap. xxvii.
12 Griffith Grant, Chap. xiv.
13 Chap. i.
14 Chap. viii.
15 Chap. vi.
16 Chap. iii.
17 Chap. xiii.
18 Chap. ix.
19 Chap. vi.
20 Chap. xlix.
21 Chap. xxxii.
22 Chap. lxvii.
23 Chap. xcvi, footnote.
24 See Hard Cash, chap. xxxvii, xl; Foul Play, chap. xix; Griffith Gaunt, chap. xiv; A Perilous Secret, chap. xxiii; Singleheart, and Doubleface, chap. v.
25 A Woman Hater, chap. vii or ix, according to edition.
26 The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. lxxiv.
27 A Terrible Temptation, chap. xxxix.
28 A Perilous Secret, chap. xxiii.
29 Chap. lxxxii.
30 Chap. xxvii.
31 Chap. xiii, xiv.
32 Chap. xlix (David Dodd).
33 Chap. lxxvi.
34 Chap. xxxviii.
35 Chap. xxx.
36 Chap. lxiv.
37 Chap. xxxviii.
38 Chap. xl.
39 Chap. lxi.
40 Is it proverbial, or improved from Measure for Measure (v, 1, 171): “Neither maid' widow, nor wife”? Jane Eyre (1847) seems to have ushered in this bigamous era. For Miss Bronte's apparent debt to Le Fanu for the plot, see Edna Kenton: “A Forgotten Creator of Ghosts,” Bookman (N. Y.), lxix, 530–531. The Gothic romances are also influential.
41 Act 1, p. 5, in the Harvard Library copy (Lacy).
42 Readiana: The Rights and, the Wrongs of Authors, Fifth Letter.
43 Chap. xc, xcvi.
44 Griffith Gaunt, chap. xlii.
45 Chap. xxv.
46 Chap. xxxix.
47 Chap. xlix.
48 Chap, xx, xxv, etc.
49 Chap. xvi.
50 Chap. xxxviii.
51 Chap. xvii.
52 Chap. xvi.
53 Chap. lxxxvi.
54 Chap. xvii.
55 Chap. xiii.
56 Chap. xlii.
57 Jael Dence throughout; Lady Cicely, chap. xiii.
58 Phoebe Dale.
59 Chap. xiii.
60 Griffith Gaunt, chap. xlv. Other repeated love situations are these: A leading male character falls off a horse near the door of one who first nurses and later marries him in Griffith Gaunt (chap. xxvi) and A Simpleton (chap. iv). An aunt or a nurse lives at a distance from the heroine in Love Me Little, Love Me Long (chap. xiv), A Woman Hater (chap. xxi or xxiii, according to edition), While Lies (chap. xxxvi), A Perilous Secret (chap. x). At her house the heroine meets the villain in A Woman Hater, and the hero in A Perilous Secret and Love Me Little. In While Lies a child is hidden there. There are clandestine marriages or attempts at them in While Lies (chap. xxx), The Cloister and the Hearth (chap. x), and A Perilous Secret (chap. xxv). The heroine's room hides the hero from pursuers in Hard Cash (chap. xlv) and The Cloister and the Hearth (chap. xiv). A lover is outside the heroine's room in the moonlight in Hard Cash (chap. ii), Griffith Gaunt (chap. x), Foul Play (chap. v), A Women Hater (chap. xvii or xix, according to edition). Duels take place or are imminent in Griffith Gaunt (chap. vi) and Christie Johnstone (chap. xv). A coach is stuck in the mud in Art and Peg Woffington (chap. v): in the former story the hero rescues the heroine, in the latter the villain rescues the hero's wife. A father financially embarrassed wishes his daughter to marry a wealthy suitor in Griffith Gaunt (chap. vii), and It is Never too Late to Mend (chap. lxxx). In Put Yourself in His Place (chap. xxvii) and A Simpleton (chap. i) a father opposes a poor suitor. A father advises or insists on a son-in-law's taking out insurance in A Simpleton (chap. v) and in Put Yourself in Eis Place (chap. vii). A woman's initials are woven in hair into a shirt in Griffith Gaunt (chap. xxxii), into a handkerchief in A Woman Eater (chap. ix or x, according to edition). A father watches his daughter through binoculars in A Perilous Secret (chap. v), and a lover watches his beloved through a telescope in White Lies (chap. ii).
61 Chap. xci. Other plot items in Reade's (and usually in many other novelists') stock-in-trade are these: The heroine of Put Yourself in His Place becomes a Protestant nun (chap. xliii), and in A Terrible Temptation a woman disguises herself as a sister of charity (chap. v, vii). The orphan heroine has two guardians in Love Me Little, Love Me Long and A Wandering Heir; and a male and female protector watch over the heroine and fight with each other in Love Me Little and A Woman Hater (chap. ii). The hero deciphers deeds in Clouds and Sunshine (chap. i) and in Love Me Little; in Put Yourself in His Place he also deciphers brasses (chap. xix). A locked door, behind which the hero protects himself, is removed from its hinges in Hard Cash (chap. xlv) and Put Yourself in His Place (chap. xii). In Art and in A Terrible Temptation (chap. iii) a sister accompanies a woman who comes from the country and leads an immoral life in the city. There are sieges in White Lies (chap. xxxix) and The Cloister and the Hearth (chap. xlvii); fox-hunts in A Terrible Temptation (chap. xiv) and Griffith Gaunt (chap. i); university boat races in Hard Cash (chap. i) and A Terrible Temptation (chap. xliv). A bell alarm is set off by an unsuspecting foot in A Terrible Temptation (chap. xl) and It is Never too Late to Mend (chap. lxv); and one is arranged, but not used, in White Lies (chap. vi). Sick witnesses delay a trial in Hard Cash (chap. l) and Foul Play (chap. lxv); and there is a third delayed trial in Til for Tat (chap. v).
62 Chap. xxxviii.
63 Chap. xxx, xxxiii.
64 Chap. iii.
65 Chap. xlix.
66 Chap. xiii or xiv depending on edition.
67 Chap. xxi.
68 Chap. xxxi.
69 Chap. xix.
70 Chap. xiii or xv, according to edition.
71 Chap. xxxiii.
72 Chap. lxiii.
73 Chap. xl.
74 Chap. xxxii.
75 Chap. xxv.
76 Chap. xxxv.
77 Chap. i.
78 Chap. iii.
79 Chap. ix.
80 Chap. xxxvi.
81 Chap. xxvi.
82 Chap. xv.
83 Chap. xxxiv.
84 Chap. xlv.
85 Chap. iii.
86 Chap. li.
87 Chap. xxxvii, xxxviii.
88 Chap. ii, iii.
89 Chap. xvi, xvii.
90 Chap. lxi, lxii, lxiii.
91 Chap. xxv.
92 Chap. xxxi.
93 E.g., The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. lxi; Hard Cash, chap. xvii; Griffith Gaunt, chap. xxiv; Foul Flay, chap. lxix; A Simpleton, chap. xii; A Terrible Temptation, chap. v; A Wandering Heir, chap. viii.
94 Chap. xxiv, etc.
95 Chap. xx. Cf. also Put Yourself in His Place, chap. xliii.
96 Chap. liii.
97 Chap. xv.
98 E.g., The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. lxviii; Hard Cash, chap. xlix; Foul Play, chap. xv, xx, xxi; Put Yourself in His Place, chap. x, xiv, Xliii. Cf. my “Psychological Presentation in Reade's Novels,” SP, xxxviii, 533–536.
99 Chap. xiv.
100 Chap. III.
101 For the frequent use of letters as plot links, see my “Plotting in Reade's Novels,” PMLA, xlvii, 846–848. For frequent adoption in fiction of devices borrowed from the theatre, see my “The Stage in Reade's Novels,” SP, xxvii, 654–688.
102 See Louise E. Rorabacker, Victorian Women in Life and in Fiction (unpubl. Univ. of Illinois diss.).