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Dear World,

Why didn't you tell me that Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote novels for adults? Or, for that matter, that she had a scandalous affair and was divorced twice?

This novel was published in 1896. THE HEROINE HAS PREMARITAL SEX AND THEN KILLS HER SEDUCER ACCIDENTALLY WITH A LEAD-WEIGHTED RIDING CROP AND WALLS UP HIS BODY IN HER CELLAR. And she marries the man she loves and lives happily ever after as the perfect wife with six kids.

I don't care how much it talks about Christ, this is revolutionary, I tell you, revolutionary. Damn you, Trollope! Damn you, Barren Ground!

[Same game.]

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...

I don't think I'll ever be able to look at my beloved copy of "The Secret Garden" the same way again.

Clorinda reaches new levels of childhood terribleness, I must say. She whips her father and swears at him like a stableboy at the tender age of six, winning his drunkard's heart.

This sounds like a typical mid- to late-19th C novel for women, actually. They're a cross between bodice rippers and soap operas. Before moving here (and thus losing my access to them....) I spent about a year and a half reading every novel by E.D.E.N. Southworth that I could get my hands on. Given how often the same plot devices are reused (if a husband/fiance has gotten shipwrecked, he's not dead. He'll be back by the end of the book, or by the end of the sequel, if the story is a two-parter), it's amazing how different each of the books are, and how gripping they can indeed be, in between the long descriptions of clothes, jewels, and hair styles. They're a hoot!

Really? I mean, I've read my share of trashy 19th-century fiction, and I'm used to the assumption that anyone between the hero or heroine and a fortune will die over the course of the novel, but I'm used to assuming that lack of virtue has a stiff penalty.

Southworth was really quite good at having human characters - she, as the author, never really condoned any losses of virtue (which, albeit, weren't many, but were present, and sometimes they were willing) but also never preached against it, either overtly in the writing or by visiting bad consequences upon them. Definitely not at all like, for example, Moll Flanders, which was preaching all the way.

I read another book last summer which treated with the subject of infidelity in a very touching and rather modern fashion, East Lynne by Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood. It was one of those books which as you read you think, wow, this would make a fantastic "Pride & Prejudice" style movie. The publisher's summary of it is:

"This book looks at the anxieties of the Victorian middle classes who feared a breakdown of the social order as divorce became more readily available and promiscuity threatened the sanctity of the family. In this novel the simple act of hiring a governess raises the spectres of murder, disguise, and adultery". Definitely recommended.

Heh, I remember Moll Flanders as scandalous rather than preachy, but then it's an eighteenth-century novel with that eighteenth-century penchant for accidental incest as plot device.

Oh, that's me. Unless there are two of us like that? Seems unlikely.

I'm totally going to read that book!

Hee!

Yes, it is you.

I warn you, this book is not actually any good, except for the bits where it is brilliant.

Hey. I've read this--it was one of the novels linked via the UPenn Online Books Page that improved downtime at work ten years ago.

(Is this

cija? Probably I will find that someone's already ID'd the style in the comments--haven't looked.)

Did they have any of Hodgson's other adult novels? I read the UW's archival photocopy, but I did pick this one via online plot summary, and ILL should net me others.

(You are quite right.)

I think so (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Burnett%2c%20Frances%20Hodgson%2c%201849%2d1924)--a couple of those look likely.

Damn. I clearly need to read this book.

It does go on rather about throbbing breasts and whether there is marriage in Heaven . . . But I've definitely derived enough glee to make up for the slow parts.

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