Unlike the male detective figure in the Victorian novel, Phoebe and Mrs. Penn do not act on behalf of justice or the law, and they do not use the same strategies
her goal is to woo Barley, she has been acting on behalf of justice and so is justified in her actions.
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traditionally employed by their male counterparts. Instead, they exploit their findings as a means for achieving their own self-promotion and capitalize upon their position as members of both the private and public spheres. Braddon and Wood‘s companions distribute the private knowledge they uncover publicly, to other characters and to the reader, as a way to break the bonds of both their social and economic positions. Their actions also allow them to achieve a more prominent narrative status. The companions‘
distinctively feminine mode of detection—their participation in and use of the domestic space as well as their manipulations of intimacy and sympathy—enable Phoebe and Mrs.
Penn to emerge as alternative detectives.
In her discussion of Robert Audley as a detective, Anne Cvetkovich writes,
―Because the detection occurs in its midst, the family can no longer serve as a refuge and instead becomes the scene of conflict and anxiety‖ (Cvetkovich 52-3). If Robert is disruptive to the domestic space as a detective figure because he is a member of the Audley family, then Phoebe is even more threatening in her constant attendance on her mistress and her access to Audley Court‘s most private realms. Phoebe has no need for the kind of ―circumstantial‖ or ―inductive evidence‖ on which Robert must rely (Braddon 120, 123). She acquires indisputable evidence in the baby things she discovers as well as by witnessing Lady Audley‘s attempted murder of George Talboys and the arson at Castle Inn with her own eyes. In Lady Audley’s Secret, Phoebe‘s affective mode of detection allows her to emerge as the most successful detective figure in the novel.
Although she shares all of her findings with Barley, Mrs. Penn actually usurps Barley‘s position within the narrative structure of Anne Hereford through her active assumption of the detective role. Barley ―should‖ be the detective figure, but all of his own attempts at
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discovering George‘s whereabouts fail him. He lacks the advantages Mrs. Penn creates for herself as a detective-companion. Barley cannot achieve the domestic access nor the manipulative intimacy Mrs. Penn establishes at Chandos and so becomes nullified by her;
the only role left for him in the novel is the position of Mrs. Penn‘s love interest. His rejection of her at the end of the novel—like Robert Audley‘s refusal to hear Phoebe‘s detection narrated—is a reaction to his own impotence. Although she has not yet achieved her ultimate goal of becoming Barley‘s wife, Charlotte is clearly the one in control of their relationship as she departs the narrative plotting how she might further harass this man she loves.
An abundance of critical work has been done on female detectives in the detective and crime fiction of the late 19th century through the present day, and scholars have acknowledged that the roots of these genres lie in the sensation fiction of the mid-
Victorian period. Braddon and Wood create subtle precursors for the professional female detective, women who use their position within and knowledge about the domestic space to make discoveries to solve crimes. Companions are not professional spies or
detectives, but they are participants in the professional world. It is this double status which allows Phoebe and Charlotte their privileged relationship to the sensation
narratives themselves. Using their placement within the family circle to their advantage, these companions do all the narrative work of the detective figure: they interview other characters, find and collect evidence, and present their cases to others outside the family circle. However, the companion has no need for most of the techniques upon which the male detective characters in the Victorian novel must rely. As intimate observers of and participants in the domestic scene, Phoebe and Charlotte need only manipulate their
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position as companions to attain private knowledge and distribute it publicly, remaining undetected themselves until their work is done. Yet, Braddon and Wood simultaneously betray their anxieties regarding the professional woman and the ways in which her work can represent a significant threat to the sacred privacy and stability of hearth and home.
At the conclusion of these two novels, we may view Phoebe and Charlotte as empowered, liberated women, but we might also view the companions‘ ultimate fates as an ejection from the domestic space—the authors‘ way of ensuring they do no further harm.
In ―Locked Rooms: Detective Fiction, Narrative Theory, and Self-Reflexivity,‖
S.E. Sweeney notes that detective fiction elucidates the relationship between author and reader: ―The genre dramatizes the interdependent relationship between writer and reader at each of the narrative levels. [...] At the same time, the relationship between criminal and detective, mediated by the crime which one commits and the other resolves, suggests the relationship in any fiction between writer and reader, mediated by the text‖ (8).
Braddon‘s and Wood‘s companion-detectives not only serve the reader but mirror the reader‘s own work as well. Like Rosa, whose ficelle-like role as an agent of the narrative in David Copperfield assists both Dickens and the reader, the companions in Lady
Audley’s Secret and Anne Hereford are, in some sense, companions to the reader. In his own sensation novels of the 1870s, Wilkie Collins represents the parallels between the mistress-companion and the writer-reader relationships more explicitly. As I will show in the next chapter, Collins saw the mistress-companion dynamic as a means for
exploring the relationship among writer, text, and reader as well as a model for working through his own anxieties regarding the reception of his work.
103 CHAPTER III
WILKIE COLLINS‘S COMPANION NOVELS:
NARRATIVE RANK, READERSYMPATHY, AND THE NOVEL AS COMPANION
In ―Madame Pratolungo presents Herself,‖ the opening chapter of Wilkie
Collins‘s Poor Miss Finch (1872), Pratolungo begins: ―You are here invited to read the story of an Event which occurred in an out-of-the-way corner of England, some years since. The persons principally concerned in the Event are:—a blind girl; two (twin) brothers; a skilled surgeon; and a curious foreign woman. I am the curious foreign woman. And I take it on myself—for reasons which will presently appear—to tell the story‖ (5). With this, Pratolungo establishes herself in a position of power over the narrative itself—including her list of those ―principally concerned‖—and also over the reader. Pratolungo extends a formal invitation to her readers, suggesting that access to her account requires her express permission and emerges out of her generous willingness to communicate it. And why not? The fact that the narrative is set in an ―out-of-the- way‖ time and place, and was sometimes subtitled ―A Domestic Story,‖ indicates it is a private tale—but one that Pratolungo has nevertheless ―take[n]‖ upon herself to share.
―The story‖ is not her own, but that of her mistress Lucilla Finch, the ―blind girl‖ and the
―Poor Miss Finch‖ of the title. Madame Pratolungo is Lucilla‘s companion, and her mistress‘s blindness is, presumably, the most literal among the ―reasons‖ Pratolungo must tell the story herself. But we must not assume that Lucilla wants her story told either in this way or at all. As Collins stated in his November 1872 dedication letter to Mrs. Elliot, he considered Lucilla to be the ―central personage of my story‖ (3). Collins
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could have chosen to structure his novel with Lucilla as narrator, either having her
―verbally‖ relay her experiences directly to the reader or by having her dictate her autobiography to someone like her companion, Pratolungo. Instead, Collins grants the companion, a definitively dependent but ideally sympathetic figure, the authority to narrate her mistress‘s story.
By the early 1870s, when Collins was working on Poor Miss Finch and The New Magdalen, two novels written almost simultaneously and both featuring prominent companion characters, he was the inheritor of decades of authors‘ representations of the companion in literature: from Burney and Austen to Dickens, Thackeray, Braddon, and others. However, unlike his predecessors, who interrogated manipulations of sympathy among their characters, Collins takes the next step. Collins extends the companion‘s sphere of influence beyond the pages of these two novels, allowing his companions to manipulate not only their fellow characters but even the readers themselves.
In Poor Miss Finch and The New Magdalen, Collins analogizes the disruptive status of the companion in society with the figure‘s ability to unsettle the very
expectations of narrative itself. Collins‘s companions use their positions to ensure their well-being within the plots of these novels and also to transcend their narrative status or
―rank.‖ In The One vs. the Many, Alex Woloch argues, ―each individual [character]
portrait has a radically contingent position within the story as a whole; our sense of the human figure (as implied person) is inseparable from the space that he or she occupies within the narrative totality‖ (13). If each character has a ―position‖ within the story, then those positions must vary in order of importance in and to the narrative. For
Woloch, characters exist in various degrees of centrality and minorness, often ―jost[ling]‖
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against one another for the ―limited space‖ in the narrative (13). The hierarchical arrangement of characters, the character ―rank‖ I am formulating here, is also based on how central or peripheral a character is; 1 however, other considerations such as the reader‘s level of investment in a character and the perceived measure of the
author/narrator‘s approval (i.e. protagonist and antagonist) of that character play a role as well. In Poor Miss Finch, Madame Pratolungo‘s assertion of herself as narrator of her mistress‘s story jars with her social position as Lucilla‘s dependent, humble companion.
Narratively, if this is Lucilla‘s story, we could expect Madame Pratolungo to be a
somewhat minor, constrained character, similar to Rosa Dartle. However, by granting his companion the mantle of narrator, Collins allows Pratolungo to circumvent her low social status and her would-be minor narrative status simultaneously. Madame Pratolungo is invested not only with the agency to tell the story, but also with the authority required to manipulate the reader‘s sympathies for other characters—her mistress in particular—and for herself.
In The New Magdalen, Collins experiments with a more subtle, yet more thorough representation of the companion‘s transgressive ascension through the social system of the plot as well as the narrative hierarchy. When Mercy Merrick, a former prostitute, steals the genteel, orphaned Grace Roseberry‘s identity and goes on to fulfill Grace‘s
1Woloch‘s series of questions are useful as a way of determining a character‘s minorness, but also his or her importance in the narrative‘s hierarchy along the lines I am suggesting:
―What is the purpose or significance of a […] character? How much access are we given to a certain character‘s thoughts, and how does the partial enactment of this perspective or point of view fit into the narrative as a whole? […] How often, at what point, and for what duration does a character appear in the text? […] How are her appearances
positioned in relation to other characters and to the thematic and structural totality of the narrative? Why does a particular character suddenly disappear from the narrative or abruptly begin to gain more narrative attention?‖ (14).
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rightful position as Lady Janet Roy‘s companion, she takes more than Grace‘s job.
Through Collins‘s representation of Mercy as both poignantly worthy of sympathy and also particularly adept at enacting genuine sympathy herself, Mercy is characterized as the ideal companion—an exemplar of sympathetic power. Because of this, Mercy not only appropriates Grace‘s identity and position as companion, she also usurps Grace‘s narrative status as heroine of the novel. This forces Grace into Mercy‘s own ―character- space‖ as antagonist, a narrative role which, ultimately, Grace has no choice but to accept and eventually fulfills with gusto, proving herself the anti-companion in her definitive incapacity for sympathy. Throughout the novel, Collins uses an amalgamation of his third person omniscient narrator‘s perspective, the two women‘s actions and dialogue, and his other characters‘ responses to each woman to assert for the reader a ―correct,‖
albeit unconventional and unexpected, sympathetic response to both Mercy and Grace.
Collins shapes his narrative to manipulate the reader into sympathizing with the fallen woman who does horrible things in stealing another‘s identity. At the same time, however, he wants us to despise the ingénue who is, at least initially, innocent of any immoral deeds. In The New Magdalen, the companion position—as a role culturally coded with expectations of ideal sympathy—becomes the measure against which the two potential heroines‘ are judged: the character who can best fulfill that position becomes the rightful heroine. Collins privileges the characters‘ capacity for sympathy above all other considerations; those who are most capable of sympathy themselves should be sympathized with. By reversing both the reader‘s social and narrative expectations for Mercy and Grace, Collins achieves a narrative which proposes to test not only its characters‘ sympathetic powers but its readers‘ as well.
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Thus, in what we may term his ―companion novels‖ (in both senses of the word) of 1872 and 1873, Collins employs his companions to explore the possibilities for the manipulation of reader sympathy.2 As narrator, Madame Pratolungo acts as an arbiter of sympathy, prescribing and directing the reader‘s engagement with the array of characters in Poor Miss Finch, while in The New Magdalen, Mercy—through her characterization as the superior companion—comes to serve as a touchstone for gauging the reader‘s own sympathetic prowess. Collins‘s choice of the companion as a means for achieving this work further demonstrates the cultural and literary significance of the figure as a vexed site of sympathy. As this project shows, Victorians viewed the mistress-companion relationship as one defined in large part by sympathy, whether genuine and/or
manipulative, and thus representations of her could, and did, allow authors to explore sympathy as a mode of relating in interpersonal relationships—or even relationships between text and reader. In fact, what emerges in Collins‘s work is an analogous relationship between mistress and companion, text and reader.
Authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were invested in eliciting emotional responses such as sympathy in their readership; in turn, contemporary
2Poor Miss Finch and The New Magdalen are among Collins‘s lesser known novels.
Collins scholars have repeatedly castigated the later novels, interrogating why they were unpopular both critically and with the public. Some continue to see a degeneration late in his career, while others attempt to rehabilitate the later novels. Jenny Bourne Taylor articulates the several potential reasons for the perceived decline in Collins‘s work: ―The loss of the steadying hand of Charles Dickens in 1870 has been one explanation of his decline alongside the continuing influence of Charles Reade, whose minutely researched polemical novels and plays addressed topical issues such as prison reform. Collins‘s failing health, his growing dependence on laudanum and a host of other medications to relieve the agonizing pain of ocular gout and rheumatic illness, together with the
demands of two families and his theatrical activities have added to this picture, as literary influence, bodily and mental fragility, a complicated personal and professional life, and a more explicit ideological stance have blended into an overarching narrative that has dominated readings of his later work‖ (79).
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audiences came to texts with a set of expectations similar to those that characterized the mistress-companion relationship. Readers expected to be entertained, to lose themselves for awhile in the company of a good story with an engaging cast of characters, and to be emotionally invested in and moved by the text. Even the definitive economic component of the mistress-companion model is at work here: to attain these ―services,‖ rendered by writer and text, the reader had to purchase them in the form of book volume or periodical issue. On the other hand, the companion‘s ambiguous social status, her ability to trouble boundaries of power and mastery in her relationship with her mistress, could also provide authors with a structure through which to work through their own anxieties regarding their ambivalent relationship to their readers. Collins‘s companion novels reveal yet another narrative function for the companion as well as provide insight into the writer/reader relationship in the Victorian period.
I. “Sweet companionship”: The Victorian Reader, the Novel, and Sympathy In The Woman Reader: 1837-1914, Kate Flint quotes an 1847 passage in Fraser’s Magazine in which the author describes a reader‘s potential attachment to books:
Book-love is a home-feeling—a sweet bond of family union—and a never-failing source of domestic enjoyment. It sheds a charm on the quiet fireside, unlocks the hidden sympathies of human hearts, beguiles the weary hours of sickness or solitude, and unites kindred spirits in a sweet companionship of sentiment and idea. It sheds a gentle and humanizing influence over its votaries, and woos even sorrow itself into a temporary forgetfulness. (11)
The relationship R.A. Willmott describes here is one inextricably tied to the domestic as well as to all the idyllic associations the Victorians invested in the private space of the
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home. In addition, a book relieves boredom or pain, provides company, and exercises the sentiments—in short, it provides the same ―sweet companionship‖ that a friend (or hired companion) would supply. Flint asserts that a reader finds a species of companionship not only in the text itself, but in other readers of that same text that form ―a broader community‖ and adds that ―Such a community may stretch far beyond the reader‘s immediate social world to incorporate other readers whom she may never meet in person, but with whom she shares horizons of expectations which have to a significant extent been built up through their common reading material‖ (42). Writers of the period no doubt recognized the service their art was providing as they witnessed the ever- burgeoning popularity, and profitability, of print culture.
Richard Altick, in his groundbreaking work on the ―common reader‖ in
nineteenth century, writes that, ―Never before in English history had so many people read so much. In the middle class, the reading circle was the most familiar and beloved of domestic institutions; and as cheap printed matter became more accessible, hardly a family in Britain was without its little shelf of books and its sheaf of current periodicals‖
(5). As historians and literary critics have established, the nineteenth-century provided authors with a larger readership than ever before as well as new ways to reach that ever- expanding audience: ―Industrialization, the growth of the lending library, popular reading clubs in Britain and America, as well as utilitarianism and opportunities for self- improvement promoted the spread of literacy, print culture, and secular literature‖
(Golden 18). These same conditions which facilitated the spread of literacy also led to readers‘ growing dependency on books, especially for members of the working classes:
―The long hours and the monotony of work in factory and shop, the dismal surroundings