DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Title

Review of Dorothea's Daughter and Other Nineteenth-Century Postscripts

Authors

Barbara Hardy

Date of this Version

2012

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 43 (2012)

Comments

Published by The George Eliot Review Online https://GeorgeEliotReview.org

Abstract

This book is the fruit of many years of thought about nine great novels. Barbara Hardy does not present us with a series of sequels, though we do learn of things that happened after the action of the novels ended. Rather, she offers a set of conversations in which two (or, in some cases, three) characters from each novel reflect on the past. This formula allows her to focus on aspects of the stories that intrigue her, or that frustrate her wish to have a full understanding of fictional people who, it is clear, move and interest her as much as real human beings. Some of the conversations crackle with tension. Emma calls on Jane Fairfax (or, rather, Mrs Knightley calls on Mrs Churchill). Jane's aunt Miss Bates has died, and Emma's shame about the Box Hill insult resurfaces. She is anxious to offer Jane hospitality, and to end the chill between them ('do not call me Mrs Knightley, let us be Emma and Jane'). But Jane remains unthawed. Without trying to ape Austen's style, Hardy makes us feel that these are the characters we have known, only older and wiser.

Another dramatic encounter is between Mr Dombey and his second wife, Edith. He is asking to be forgiven, and when she forgives, and calls him 'Paul', it is extraordinarily moving. At the same time, the repentant Dombey is such a latecomer in the novel, and so unlike the Dombey who has amused and appalled us for most of the book, that it is hard to believe we are listening, here, to a Dickensian character. Hardy was inspired to write it by the (often forgotten) scene in the novel where Edith speaks to Dombey about her dead son and offers him the possibility of reconciliation - a scene, she feels, more like Henry James than Dickens.

The most tempestuous exchange is between Mr. Rochester, now minus one hand and only gradually regaining sight in his remaining eye, and Jane, now his wife, and mother of their baby son James. The cause of the friction is Adele Varens, daughter of Rochester's 'opera mistress'. She has been sent away to school, but Rochester cannot bear having her in the house, even for a brief holiday. It torments him when she plays with baby James. He hates the thought that he may be her father. Jane remains firm and sensible throughout his tirades, insisting that the two children must be brought up together. It is an ominous, uncomfortable episode, and endorses the feeling, conveyed by the novel, that neither we nor Jane really understands Rochester.