Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy Contrast of Emotions Makes a Wreck of Your Ideals Decadence and the New Woman in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood and The Sorrows of Satan Supervisor: Paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements Dr. Koenraad Claes for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels” by May 2013 Thomas Hoebeke 2 3 Acknowledgment First of all I would like to thank Dr. Claes for introducing me to Marie Corelli and her novels. He was a great help throughout the year and gave me the necessary support to complete this thesis. I am also indebted to my mother for taking the time out of her busy life in order to proofread this thesis. Finally I would like to thank Marie Corelli for the lovely time we spent together throughout the year. She was an interesting woman to get to know and I think our relationship will continue after the completion of this work. 4 Table of Content Acknowledgement ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 Table of Content ……………………………….……………………………………………..................…… 5 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6 Minnie Mackay: a Short Biography ………………………………………………………………………. 10 Her Success ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 15 Decadence: a General Overview ………………………………………………………………………….. 19 Literary Decadence ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 24 Late Victorian Society and Decadence …………………………………………………………………. 31 Decadence in Wormwood ……………………………………………………………………………………. 39 Degeneration ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 44 Decadence and The Sorrows of Satan ………………………………………………………………….. 50 Late Victorian Society and the New Woman ………………….…………………………………….. 58 Corelli and the New Woman ………………………………………………………………………………… 71 The Sorrows of Satan and the New Woman …………………………………………………………. 76 Wormwood and the New Woman ……………………………………………………………………….. 88 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 92 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 95 5 Introduction So we may safely leave her place in the Temple of Fame to be chosen by the votes of posterity, for there is one critic who is ever just, who goeth on his “everlasting journey” with gentle but continuous step; who condemns most books, with their writers, to oblivion, but who saves a certain few. And his name is Time. (Coates and Bell 12) If Thomas Coates and Warren Bell were alive today, they would no doubt have been amazed at the harsh treatment their subject of speaking, Marie Corelli, received by the true critic named Time as her name hardly ever rings a bell anymore. At the time they published their biography Marie Corelli: The Writer And The Woman (1903), nothing seemed to suggest that Corelli’s literary star would ever fade. She was by far the most popular writer of the last decade of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century. An often mentioned example to illustrate this, is the fact that her novels sold more copies than the combined sale of her competitors including popular authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, E.F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling and H.G. Wells. In Now Barabbas Was A Rotter: The Extraordinary Life of Marie Corelli, the author Brian Masters writes how during a public appearances in Leeds ‘[...]women fought with each other to get near her and tried to kiss the hem of her dress.’ which reminds of the treatment rock stars get today (quoted in Casey 163). This popularity had a downside however, as many fellow authors envied her success and described her literature as low brow because it appealed to the masses. One critic wrote after her death in 1924 that ‘Even the most lenient critic cannot regard Miss Corelli’s works as of much literary importance’ (Quoted in Casey 163). Perhaps there is some truth to this, 6 as the true critic mentioned earlier did favour the authors she so easily outsold but denied her lasting fame. Previous scholars ignored Corelli’s work and ideas during discussions on Victorian society as the ideas she put forward in both fictional and non-fictional work were often contradicting. It seems however that, especially amongst scholars, interest in Corelli is on the up rise again. Jennifer Stevens argues that ‘Recent critics have made a case for an open, non-judgemental reading of Corelli’s work, free, as far as possible, from twenty-first century values and attitudes’ (Stevens 131). Janet Galligani Casey finds the explanation for this renewed interest in Corelli in the reason why she was previously ignored, her contradicting theories. She calls Corelli a ‘transitional figure among literary feminists – a curious link between George Eliot and Virginia Woolf’ (Casey 164). Annette Federico seems to be of the same opinion as she calls Corelli in Idols of Suburbia: Marie Corelli and Late-Victorian Literary Culture ‘[...] a barometer of Victorian taste [...]’ who, despite her dislike for realism and New Woman fiction ‘[...] does not preclude her use of independent female geniuses as heroines [...]’ (Federico 2). In this thesis I would like to examine the dichotomy between Corelli’s own ideas and the novels she wrote and investigate how this made her a transitional figure as mentioned by Casey. I will begin by giving a brief introduction on Corelli’s personal life, focussing more intently on how the figure Marie Corelli was established in the literary world and how she was received by the critics. I purposely do not expand on the rumours concerning herself and best friend Bertha Vyver. The latter was ever present in Corelli’s life as they shared the same house for the biggest part of their lives which lead some to call their relationship ‘romantic’(Federico 8). I am not interested however in Corelli’s sexual orientation or how this reflected itself in her work. My reading of Victorian society in general and Corelli in 7 particular will be focussed on the Decadence Movement and the New Woman as the debate involving them was in full swing during the last decade of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is not my intention to put Corelli in a camp either for or against a movement but show how she, like many of her peers, was searching to strike the right balance between Late-Victorian conservative principles and the new modern influences. Corelli may have stated that she objected to both movements but this did not keep her from experimenting with elements of both schools. Federico puts it best when she says that Corelli ‘[...] exploits many recognizable features of decadence while ostensibly condemning the immorality of unhealthy New Women’ (Federico 12). Her own heroines will however have much in common with the unhealthy New Woman she so abhorred. I start the discussion on the Decadence Movement by giving a general overview, focussing more intently on the literary Decadence as this is a domain that lends itself more towards a definition, though this is debatable. I will first try to establish the roots of literary Decadence and what it stood for by discussing some of the works of the more prominent members linked to the movement. After that I will investigate the distinction, if there was any, between French and English Decadence and how English critics reacted to it. I especially focus of course on Corelli’s attitude towards Decadence and the various attitudes she adopted towards the movement as she seemed at the same time to be repelled but also attracted by it. The two novels used for this discussion are Wormwood: A Drama of Paris (1894) and Sorrows of Satan or The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire (1895). I aim to provide detailed analysis and close reading as I believe, like Federico stated before me, that we can only understand her work and way of thought by giving it the literary significance it deserves. The first novel is of interest because Corelli aimed to prove to her audience that she was capable of writing a novel in a realistic manner, a style she despised 8 but that was very popular at the time, whilst still staying true to her own principles. She seemed to have enjoyed incorporating certain elements of Decadence whilst she abhorred its themes. This paradoxical attitude is typical for Corelli and will also recur in the discussion of New Woman’s fiction. It is also interesting to see how she links the theory of degeneration to decadence, with the description of the symptoms years before Cesare Lombrosso wrote his groundbreaking book on the theme, which affirmed everything Corelli had written. The second novel, Sorrows, can be seen as something of a turning point in Corelli’s career as it was considered to be the first ever best-seller, published with her new publisher, Methuen, and was the first of the Corelli novels that was immediately put to the public as single volume novel. The main themes found in the novel, corrupt critics, immorality of the New Woman, genius and beauty, are closely related to Corelli’ s own life and the prejudice she faced as a female author and are thus interesting to investigate. The discussion of the New Woman fiction has a similar outlining. I start by giving a general overview of the concept of New Woman in late Victorian society and how she was perceived by the critics. It is important to stress immediately that the New Woman was, for the most part, a literary figure who remained in the world of fiction rather than becoming an actual reality despite the fact that many feminists supported her view on life. Corelli will prove not to be one of her supporters though she is definitely not the ardent opponent she would like to be. Again I aim to investigate Corelli’s contradicting views on women as she wanted on the one hand to redefine the female position in Victorian society but on the other was also afraid of the immoral behaviour the modern woman displayed. The novels used for close reading are again Wormwood and Sorrows of Satan. Finally in the last section of this thesis I will give a brief conclusion of my findings on the woman who dominated the literary field for over three decades.