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

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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.

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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

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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.

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Minnie Mackay: a short biography

It is hard to create a clear picture about Marie Corelli’s past as she went a long way to keep it as cloudy as possible. She spent her days creating histories and backgrounds for her fictional characters and somewhere along the road decided that she was to have one of those as well. In a letter to a Mrs Cudlip she wrote ‘My name is not Mackay, nor am I related to the Mackays at all. I was adopted by the late Charles Mackay [...] but my name is

Corelli‘ (quoted from Ransom 2). According to Corelli’s own heritage story she was the daughter of a Venetian but was orphaned at the age of three. Charles Mackay, being a good friend of the family, and his second wife Mary Elizabeth Mills adopted her and tried to provide her with a warm home in which her artistic experiments were encouraged. The truth however is less romantic. Marie Corelli was born as Minnie Mackay on 1 May 1855 and was most likely the illegitimate daughter of Charles Mackay and his servant Mary Elizabeth

Mills. Charles, a married man with four children, would eventually do right by Elizabeth and marry her but only after having mourned one year over the death of his first wife. Teresa

Ransom claims in The Mysterious Miss Marie Corelli: Queen of Victorian Bestsellers that this illegitimacy played a huge influence on her personality and could explain why she was so protective of her private life. ‘Once she had become famous she buried the secret of her birth [...]‘ (Ransom 4). One way of doing this was by giving herself various European pseudonyms. According to Federico in Idol of Suburbia she published three sonnets between

1883 and 1884 as Marie Di Corelli and was announced during her piano recitals as Signorina

Corelli. Her recitals were very well received, this was no surprise according to Corelli as she could supposedly trace her ancestry back to the renaissance musician Arcangelo Corelli, but due to financial trouble her father was unable to afford a proper musical education. Her ultimate fictive heroine Marie Corelli was created when publisher George Bentley asked her

10 about her roots after the publication of her first novel A Romance Of Two Worlds. She was almost thirty when she had sent her first manuscript to Bentley but took ten years off her age ‘[...]in order to appear the young lady in need of guidance[...]’ and gave herself a connection to Venice by inventing deceased parents and claiming an acquaintance with

Queen Margherita1 (Federico 23). After the success of A Romance Of Two Worlds Corelli would go on to write over thirty novels, each of them commercial successes, and see herself established as the most successful English author at the end of the 19th and beginning of the

20th century.

Even though moral question marks can be placed next to her actions, it does proof that Corelli was a go-getter. She knew she had talent, all she needed was a chance. That

George Bentley was willing to give her this opportunity was somewhat of a risk, as all his readers, including Hall Caine, had advised against it. Nevertheless he decided to follow his instincts and published her novel. He wrote to Corelli that ‘it will be considered by some as the production of a visionary’ (Quoted in Federico 6). Bentley was right, the book became a success even though the critics for the most part ignored it. In a biography written on Corelli during her lifetime, Thomas F. G. Coates and R. S. Warren Bell wrote that ‘only four reviews of this romance appeared, each about ten lines long, and none of the four would have helped sell a single copy’ (Coates, Bell 16). After the publication of her first novel, critics would no longer ignore her but come down on rather hard. This continuing battle left deeper marks than she cares to admit as her troublesome relation with critics is a recurring topic in her novels. Critics and fellow authors were cruel to her but it should be said that she was

1 Margherita of Savoy (1851 – 1926) was married to her first cousin King Umberto I and was the Queen consort of the Kingdom of Italy during the latter’s reign (1878–1900).

11 certainly not the only one who was slashed. She had entered a highly competitive and rapidly changing profession where the expression eat or be eaten was held in high regard.

N. Feltes describes the changes in the literary marketplace in Modes of Production of

Victorian Novels. He claims that the period between 1750-1850 ‘[...] marks the transition from the petty-commodity production of books to the capitalist production of texts

[...]‘ (Feltes 4). The literary industry was becoming a lucrative business as more and more people were able to read due to the Forster’s Elementary Education Act of 1870. The working class was encouraged to go to their public libraries in their leisure time and pick up a book so they would create ‘[...] sober and refined reading habits [...]’ (Hallim 2). This changing reading pattern of the general audience also meant a re-evaluation of the literary field and the figures in it.

Feltes mentions the ’rise of the publisher’ at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which marked ‘[...] a significant change in the function and spirit of publishing, a turn towards specialization [...]’ (Feltes 5). He claims that around mid century ‘[...] publishing became a separate and distinct trade from that of bookselling[...]’ (Feltes 21). A firm would now only publish its own authors and push them to the public by means of literary reviews, periodicals and advertisements. This reassessment of the literary market had direct implications for authors as they saw their numbers increase rapidly over the course of the

19th century though only a few were able to make a proper living off their writing.

Due to the rise in competition it did no longer suffice to write a good novel. An author had to be noticed by the audience so they would pick up his book at the bookstall instead of the dozens of others they could choose from. Here the publisher played an important, but not always an honest, role. Often the audience had to be manipulated into buying a certain author’s novel. To illustrate this point, Phillip Waller mentions Writers,

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Readers & Reputations a play in which a publisher announces the launch of the seventh edition of a novel even though the second one had not been sold out yet. 2

Corelli’s publisher George Bentley was averse ‘to associate your name or mine with a system of vulgar exploitation.’ 3 (Quoted in Federico 17). Corelli acknowledged this

‘vulgarization’ of the profession, she uses the word degradation in a letter to Bentley when describing John Strange Winter at a stall at Carnie Hall selling her own books and autograph, but also realized that fame was a fleeting thing (Federico 19). In another letter to Bentley she wrote ‘I am anxious to appear again before the public – they so soon forget one in these

‘fast’ days’ (quoted in Federico 19). Bentley proved to be too slow and the opposite views on advertisement would be one of the reasons for their break-up in 1893. Corelli now associated herself with the younger and more enterprising firm Methuen, who were not afraid to use the advertising system to their advantage.4

It can be seen as somewhat paradoxical that a person who attributed so much importance to the public eye, went a long way to keep her own picture out of the papers. In a letter to Bentley, Corelli remarks ‘Did you ever meet a woman before who could resolutely refuse to have her portrait admirably produced for the edification of the public?’ (Corelli-

Bentley Correspondence, 6 May 1888). When she did give permission to publish or sit for a

2 The manipulation of the market is described in a similar way in Sorrows of Satan.

3 Bentley seemed to have had less problems with exploiting Corelli as according to the numbers found in

Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918, Corelli only received £40 for A Romance of

Two Worlds and £150 for Thelma (Waller 772).

4 Waller mentions the pre-publication publicity made by Methuen for every one of Corelli’s books published in their house and Federico added a copy of a one page advertisement of Sorrows of Satan in The Atheneum announcing Marie Corelli’s New Romance weeks before its publication in order to create a stir. (Waller 773,

Federico 18).

13 photograph she wanted to see the final proofs before giving her consent for printing. Many of the pictures that were displayed to the public were retouched in order to make her look younger and more elegant. Brian Masters explains this aversion of Corelli for her own picture, or rather other people seeing it, by referring to the myth she had created around herself as an attractive, young novelist. He writes ‘[...] Marie Corelli was no longer the beauty she had striven so long to project, and the only way to maintain the fiction was never to be seen at all[...] she was in truth a fearsome looking women.’ (Masters 219-220).

Masters could have a point when addressing Corelli’s vanity. It certainly is the easiest explanation and can also be backed up when reviewing her non-fictional work. In Free

Opinions Freely Expressed (1905) for example, she addresses the essence of beauty in the chapter ‘Palm of Beauty’. Corelli is of opinion that the label is given to easily to those who posses ‘[...] merely the average good looks [...]’ or those who have ‘a single and specific trait’ which is emphasized artificially e.g. by clothing (Free Opinions 208). Women should strive to be more natural. ‘Beauty, real beauty, needs no “creator of costume” to define it, but is, when unadorned, adorned the most’ (Free Opinions 209). It is very paradoxical then that she had most of her pictures willingly and wittingly retouched in order to make her out to be something she was not.

Federico feels that Master’s explanation is ‘far too simplistic’ and ‘[...] is consistent with the patronizing tone of what otherwise is a very lively and detailed biography’ (Federico

32). She explains Corelli’s fear of the camera by referring to her aversion with realism and the camera’s realistic liabilities. ‘Possibly she did not wish to be photographed because she suspected that photographs were counterfeit truths’ (Federico 33). This might be an explanation for Corelli’s case but pictures of Bertha Vyver, her lifelong companion, were altered in a similar way. Perhaps the two ladies did share a mutual detest for the camera’s

14 liabilities but I do think, though it was probably not the main reason, that vanity had something to do with it as well. Or perhaps the explanation is of a more sexual nature.

Federico uses Virginia Woolf as a precedent in another attempt to explain Corelli’s camera aversion. She mentions Louise DeSalvo’s theory that Woolf’s fear of the camera was linked to her ‘sexual victimization’ (Federico 33). Federico thus wonders if perhaps the relationship between Marie and her stepbrother Eric was of an incestuous kind. Rumours of the kind were going around after Eric’s death in 1898 but was most likely nothing more than an attempt to drag her good through the mud. Without success as Corelli and her novels remained ever popular with the general public.

Her success

During Corelli’s reign there was a lot of discussion whether or not her works were of much literary importance and though arguments around literature can drag on for quite a while, one cannot argue with numbers. Janet Galligani Casey wrote that ‘[...] at the height of her fame, in 1906, over 100,000 copies of her books were sold, more than those sold by

Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H. G. Wells combined (Casey 163). Corelli’s fame continued well over the English speaking world as all of her novels were translated into, sometimes over forty, foreign languages. Coates and Bell wrote that

There is no country where her name is unknown, and no European city where, if she

chances to pass through, she is not besieged with visitors and waylaid with offerings

of flowers. Where she to visit Australia or new Zealand she would receive an almost

royal welcome, so great is the enthusiasm in the ‘New World’ for anything that

comes from her pen. (Coates and Bell, 326-327)

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Her popularity had reached such heights that she could afford not sending a copy of Sorrows of Satan to the press as she did not need to be reviewed to be read. She stated that if members of the press wished to obtain a copy, they could do so ‘in the usual way with the rest of the public, i.e. , through the Booksellers and Libraries.’ (Quoted in MacLeod 18).

Sorrows was considered to be the first ever best-seller; it sold more copies upon the initial publication than any previous English novel. The changing mode of publication had something to do with the success as well. Sorrows was the first novel that was published immediately as a single volume novel instead of the traditional three-decker. According to

Feltes the popularity of the three-decker novel was based on the idea ‘[...] that subscribers were accustomed to value for money ’(Feltes 26). The more money you paid for a book the more pages it had to have, regardless of the content. Three-decker novels were therefore seen as a book rather than a text and always had the same structure. ‘[...] a novel was to consist of so many pages, so many lines per page, so many words per line, always in three volumes post octavo’ (Feltes 26). This mode of publication often meant that a story had to be dragged out in order to meet the required number of pages. MacLeod writes that because of the three-volume system, stories had ‘[...] multiple plots, profusion of incidents, and narratives in which the development of the character was paramount’ (MacLeod

Wormwood 25). Near the turn of the century the three-deckers would quite suddenly become extinct and be replaced by cheaper one volume editions.5 Lowering the price of a novel meant that more people were able to buy one, but high sale records are not enough to define a best seller. According to Nickianne Moody

5 For a more detailed view on the disappearance of the three-decker novel see N.N. Feltes Modes of Production of Victorian Novels, chapter 5.

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Best sellers have to be polysemic texts that can be read from many and contrasting

subject positions, accessible and pleasurable to a varied audience differentiated by

class, gender, age, and political or religious perspective. (Moody 191)

That a Corelli novel can be approached from different, sometimes even contradicting, points of view will be discussed later on, as for her audience they certainly were a varied group.

Corelli appealed both to servants hall as to the people they served. James Joyce was enthralled by Corelli’s novels and even Queen Victoria had made it clear that ‘[...] she expected to be sent copies of all Corelli’s books as soon as they appeared[...]’ after having read A Romance of Two Worlds (Rappaport 153). Federico therefore concludes that ‘[...]

Corelli was both trashy and highbrow’ (Federico 9).

As to the question of why Mary Corelli was so popular there is not one particular answer that is considered the right one. Probably it was a number of factors plus a lot of luck.

Coates and Bell claim that ‘It is because, primarily, her chief mission is to exploit, with knowledge, with conviction, and with limitless zeal, the most vital question of this or any age

– man’s religion.’ (Coates, Bell 19). Nickianne Moody places her success not with her religion but with the ability to link it with modern subjects. She is of opinion that

Corelli’s popularity is, in part, derived from her ability to engage with the new

pseudosciences, cultural interest in psychic research, and the technological

application of research from the scientific establishment in her articulation of a belief

in resurrection (Moody 190).

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Benjamin F. Fisher states that ‘[...]Corelli was capitalizing on the strong Gothic impulse during the last quarter of the 19th century’ (Fisher 304). Sharon Crozier-De Rosa finds an explanation in her belief in traditional values and says that for her audience ‘[...] she became the protector of moral and spiritual hope, and of traditional ideals’ (Crozier-De Rosa 423).

Casey on the other hand links her success to the confusion that was brought about due to the rise of modernism.

In what follows I would like to address how Corelli portrays the confusion of the

Victorian fin-the-siècle by focussing on her contradicting views on Decadence and New

Woman literature. Corelli engaged herself fiercely in the debate against these movements but I will try to prove that she was actually more of a modernist than she puts out to be.

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Decadence: A General Overview

When doing research on Decadence the main narrative that keeps on recurring in the literature is the resistance the notion holds towards a clear definition. Everybody seems to have different, often contradicting, ideas towards Decadence. In 1927 G.L. Van Roosbroeck already wrote that ‘[...] the critic seems to understand it as he likes and this still seems to be the case today (quoted in Weir 1). This gives the Decadence subject a rather circular form as there are many ways to approach it without there being a clear beginning and end.

One of the elements that is repeated throughout the discourse on Decadence is the idea of decline and the sense of loss. Decadence could therefore be described as looking back on a previous period with a feeling of nostalgia. This seems to be inherent to all societies. In the first chapter of Decadence in the Making of Modernism (1995) David Weir tries to sum up the various notions concerning decadence. In this chapter he often refers to

Koenraad Wolter Swart and his The Senses of Decadence in Nineteenth Century France

(1964). According to Weir, Swart claims that ‘[...] even in ages customarily regarded as energetically optimistic, a parallel sense of decadence was profoundly felt’ (Weir 2). The

Greeks for example longed for the lost Golden and Silver Age as opposed to their own Iron

Age. Matei Calinescu in Faces of Modernity (1987), says that the first Western philosopher to give voice to the idea of Decadence was Plato. Calinescu states that

The Platonic theory of Ideas clearly implies a metaphysical concept of decadence

when it describes the relationship between those archetypical, [...] real models of all

things and their mere ‘shadows’ [...](Calinescu 152)

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According to Calinescu, Plato summarizes ‘‘[...] the widespread Greek belief that time was nothing but a continuous decline.‘ (Calinescu 152).

When using the term decline in relation to society, there is a direct implication that there was a previous period of growth. Norman Vance expands on this presumption in his article ‘Decadence from Belfast to Byzantium’ in which he states that

[...] the idea of decadence is often implicated in narrative, in a more or less fictive

historical narrative of falling away from a usually problematic and elusive prior

perfection, an alleged peak or plateau of development and achievement. (Vance 563)

He goes on to claim that the most famous example of such a narrative is Edward Gibbon's

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vance says that ‘For Gibbon the high point was in the second century of the common era, in the Rome of the Antonine emperors, [...]’ (Vance

564).

The rise and fall of civilizations has been an often discussed subject among historians.

Neville Morley refers in ‘Decadence as a Theory of History’ to the views of historians like

Giambattista Vico and Oswald Spengler who perceive history to be of a cyclical nature.

Morley states that

Societies and cultures are seen as natural objects following the diurnal and seasonal

rhythms of nature, or as higher-order biological entities subject to the same life

courses as individual animals; inevitably, therefore, they pass through twilight as well

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as dawn, autumn as well as spring, and periods of decline and decadence as well as

periods of growth and maturity. (Morley 573)

Morley does not agree with this view however and says that this is oversimplifying the matter as decadence is not necessarily the final state before a cycle repeats itself.

Critiques on this approach on history were already given by Richard Gilman in his book Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet (1979). He claims that ‘[...] there is no evidence [...] that civilizations inexorably follow an organic pattern of robust growth, followed by stagnation, decay, and death.’ The cyclical model according to Gilman, does not take into account the many arbitrary events a society undergoes, varying from weak leaders to natural catastrophes. Gilman also refers to the Romans and how they interpreted the decline of their empire ‘[...] as a story of decadence.’ He argues however that the late

Roman Empire and the art it produced was not inferior but rather different to its predecessors. Change and decadence are thus placed on the same line. ‘Change [...] was interpreted poetically, metaphorically, as degradation and loss.’ (Bernheim 4). Seeing as a society is constantly in flux, the sense of decadence will never be far away.

So far the terms decline and decadence have been used as mutually interchangeable and it could therefore be considered that there should be no room for decadence during a time of progress. Where decadence at first sight implies decline and nostalgia, progress is usually connected to technological and cultural advancement. The 19th century was considered by many to be such a period especially with regards to Western Europe and

North America. In ‘The Modern Degenerate’, Jarkko Jalava cites a dictionary article written in

1875 which gives the following definition of progress is given.

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Humanity is perfectible and it moves incessantly from less good to better, from

ignorance to science, from barbarism to civilization . . . the idea that humanity

becomes day by day better and happier is particularly dear to our century. Faith in

the law of progress is the true faith of our century. (quoted in Jalava 417)

However, professor Roger Williams points out that even in during the 19th century, a time of great improvement for the lives of the average person, it is ‘[…] astonishing to see the number of writers, philosophers, and critics who devoted entire careers to deploring the decadence of their age’ (Quoted in Weir 11). Perhaps Williams positive view on the 19th century can be seen as part of a myth6 or perhaps it means that progress and decadence are more closely related to each other than one might think. Calinescu seems to be of the latter opinion as he regards decadence ‘as looking forward instead of backward’ (Weir 5). He uses

Bernard de Chartres’ simile of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants to see farther, to clarify his conclusion that ‘[...] progress is decadence and [...] decadence is progress.’

(Calinescu 155).

Though this statement may be conceived as paradoxical at first, Calinescu justifies it by saying that over the centuries progress was dislodged from biological and individual development in order to ‘[...] be regarded as a concept having more to do with mechanics

[...].’ (Calinescu 156). Weird seems to agree with Calinescu as he writes that ‘Decadence and progress share a dehumanizing or antinatural tendency [...]’ (Weir 12). It seems that through progress, people become alienated from life as the tree was replaced by the chimney in the

6 Calinescu mentions in Faces of Modernity the myth of Renaissance optimism, which refers to the idea that during the Renaissance there was no sense of crisis because Man was becoming aware of his own capabilities.

God was replaced by Man in the centre o the universe.

22 modern city. The romantic movement reacted to this. They did not say that there was no need for progress but claimed that ‘[...] increasingly large numbers of people experience the results of progress with an anguished sense of loss and alienation’ (Calinescu 156). This may give an answer to Roger Williams’ question as to why writers and philosophers still deplore on decadence when things seemingly have never looked better. In what follows I will take a closer look at the literary style of Decadence and its major themes and aspects, focusing on

Williams beloved 19th century.

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Literary Decadence

Though decadence cannot be placed on a timeline as it is in motu, the literary period of decadence is generally considered to range from the mid-19th century to the fin-de-siècle.

Its roots can be found in the Romantic Movement though there is no consensus whether it was an extension of or a reaction to this movement. Some scholars like Swart see literary decadence as a form of late romanticism.

It was the consciously adopted ideology of Satanism, individualism, and

estheticism that formed the most important legacy of French Romanticism to

the so-called Decadence Movement in literature [...] (quote in Weir 3)

Others put the focus not on the entire movement but on specific aspects of it. Mario Praz7, is of opinion that decadence is not the heir to the Romantic movement but rather ‘[...] an extension of one element [...] the erotic sensibility [...]’ (Weir 3) According to Jerome J.

McGann, Praz ‘[...] complains against the aberrant quality of much Romanic art [...]’ as he ‘[...] constantly records suicidal, sadistic, and otherwise perverted aspects of Romanticism’

(McGann 3). Praz combines the beautiful with the morbid in his introductory chapter,’ The

Beauty of the Medusa’ of his study The Romantic Agony.

7 Mario Praz (1896-1982) was an Italian critic of art and literature best known for his work The Romantic Agony , a work that focussed on the erotic and morbid themes displayed in works between the late 18th and 19th century.

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To such an extent were Beauty and Death looked upon as sisters by the Romantics

that they became fused into a sort of twofaced herm filled with corruption and

melancholy and fatal in its beauty. (quoted in Weir 3)

A.E Carter does not see decadence as an extension of romanticisms but as a reaction to ‘[...] one aspect of it, the cult of the natural’ (Weir 4). As mentioned earlier, progress came with a replacement of the natural for the artificial life and it is therefore only natural, pun not intended, that the decadents reacted to that part of the romanticism. Carter claims that

‘[...] any revolt against romanticism [...] was bound to be a revolt against the primitive and the natural. The cult of decadence is just such a revolt’ (quoted in Weir 4). Carter goes on to say that though the decadents prefer the artificial, they do not perceive this to be better than the natural, they simply choose not to be part of it. The literary decadence shares its fondness of paradox with the historical decadence as it may, according to Weird, ‘[...] very well be an extension of and reaction to romanticism.’ (Weir 14).

France seems to have been the nation that produced most of the decadence banner men. Both Swart and Calinescu see part of the reason for this in the decline of the nation’s power in the 19th century. The revolt in 1848, the lost war of 1870 against the Prussians and the Paris Commune of the following year left deep marks in the French pride. Therefore ‘[...] the idea of decadence [...] provided an occasion for cultural self-identification’ (Calinescu

162). With Études de critique et de moeurs sur les poètes latins de la Décadence Désiré

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Nisard8 was the first critic to ‘[...] devote more sustained attention to literary decadence as a style [...]’ (Calinescu 160). Nisard was not a great supporter of the movement. James M.

Smith writes in ‘Concepts of Decadence in Nineteenth-Century French Literature’ that ‘[...]

Nisard considered erudition as one of the principal elements of decadent literature [...]’

Many likeminded critics perceived decadence as ‘[...] a lack of creative genius [...]’ or even

‘[...] a decline in creative abilities’ (Smith 640- 642). Nisard focuses most of his attention on poetry and discovers, says Calinescu, all the main signs of decadence in the poetry by French romanticist Victor Hugo, which according to him are ‘The profuse use of description, the prominence of detail, and [...] the elevation of the imaginative power, to the detriment of reason’ (Calinescu 161). However, the French poet Charles Baudelaire, whose work served as the foundation for a number of definitions concerning decadence, argued that Hugo was ‘[...] a workman more ingenious than inventive, a craftsman more industrious and correct than creative [...] he is a composer of decadence’ (quoted in Calinescu 165). These two seemingly opposite visions on decadence lead James M. Smith to conclude that

There are thus two basic factors underlying most treatments of decadence in

nineteenth-century French literature: sterile imitation and the pursuit of novelty [...]

(Smith 650)

Smith claims that these two images need not necessarily contradict each other. The decadent writer tried to avoid imitation by exaggeration. By doing this he hoped to succeed in ‘[...] achieving novelty of a sort’ (ibid.).

8 Désiré Nisard (1806 – 1888) was a French critic who supported the claims of classicism against romanticism.

Calinescu spends most attention on hIs work Études d'histoire et de littérature (1859-1864).

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As mentioned above Baudelaire’s work was defining for the decadent movement9 but the influence of the reactions on his writing cannot be underestimated. Calinescu is of opinion that it was Théophile Gautier who in his preface to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, gave ‘The first entirely approbative and widely influential view of decadence as a style [...]’

(Calinescu 164).10 In this preface he wrote

The style inadequately called of decadence is nothing but art arrived at the point of

extreme maturity yielded by the slanting suns of aged civilizations: an ingenious,

complicated style full, of shades and of research, constantly pushing back the

boundaries of speech, borrowing from all technical vocabularies, taking colors from

all palettes and notes from all keyboards, struggling to render what is most

inexpressible in thought, what is vague and most elusive in the outlines of form,

listening to translate the subtle confidences of neurosis, the dying confessions of

passion grown depraved, and the strange hallucinations of the obsession which is

turning to madness. (quoted in Calinescu 164)11

9His work is also linked to romanticism, late romanticism and symbolism but I will only be discussing his influence on the literary decadence movement.

10 It should be noted that both Gautier and Baudelaire did not always appreciate the term or the concept of decadence.

11 Calinescu used the translation found in G.L. Van Roosbroeck. The Legend of the Decadence New York :

Institut des Etudes Française, Columbia University, 1927, 8-9. Print. The original lines read : le style de décadence, et qui n’est autre chose que l’art arrivé à ce point de maturité extrême que déterminent à leurs soleils obliques les civilisations qui vieillissent : style ingénieux, compliqué, savant, plein de nuances et de recherches, reculant toujours les bornes de la langue, empruntant à tous les vocabulaires techniques, prenant des couleurs à toutes les palettes, des notes à tous les claviers, s’efforçant à rendre la pensée dans ce qu’elle a de plus ineffable, et la forme en ses contours les plus vagues et les plus fuyants, écoutant pour les traduire les

27

Smith claims that this passage points to three significant ideas: the ‘organic’ nature of civilizations, ‘the analogy between the Roman and Byzantine periods of decadence and 19th century French civilization’ and ‘the love of artifice with decadence’ (Smith 647). Though these three topics have all been briefly addressed, I would like to expand on the first idea proposed by Smith. Gautier, like Vico and Spengler, sees societies as entities that go through periods of growth, stability, decay and finally death. The critical remarks given by Gilman on this cyclical interpretation of history should be born in mind here as Calinescu also writes that this approach to decadence was ‘influenced by the prevailing scientific fashion of the time.’ When giving this remark Calinescu was not referring to Gautier but to Paul Bourget, who also wrote a series of critical articles on Baudelaire. Henry Dorra writes in Symbolist Art

Theories: A Critical Anthology that ‘In analyzing the pessimism and morbidity in much of

Baudelaire’s poetry [...] Bourget wrote [...] the first manifesto of decadence’ (Dorra 128).

Bourget, like Gautier, talked about organic societies in his article ‘Théorie de la Décadence’.

Bourget mentions that decadent societies show a tendency towards anarchism and seem to focus on the individual both in society and in art. Calinescu agrees with Bourget as the former says that ‘[...] the concept of individualism is central to any definition of decadence[...]’ (Calinescu 170).

The last scholar I would like to discuss in connection to Baudelaire is Friedrich

Nietzsche. In Defining Modernism (2004), Andrea Gogröf-Voorhees investigates this, at first not so obvious, relationship between the two gentlemen and pays a lot of attention to Karl

Pestalozzi’s ground-breaking article ‘Nietzsches Baudelaire-Rezeption’(1978). In this article

confidences subtiles de la névrose, les aveux de la passion vieillissante qui se déprave et les hallucinations bizarres de l’idée fixe tournant à la folie.

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Pestalozzi accounts for two phases in Nietzsche’s perception of Baudelaire. During the first phase, 1883-1885, Nietzsche saw Baudelaire ‘[...] figuring among the great innovators who prepared the way for a new synthesis and who transcended their own nationality.’ (Gogröf-

Voorhees 2-3). Voorhees claims that during this period Nietzsche was influenced by Gautier and Bourget’s interpretations of Baudelaire’s work, which lead him to proclaim Baudelaire as

‘the French master of decadence’. After this period Nietzsche seems to take a more negative stand as Baudelaire now ‘[...] appears as a problematic figure, exemplifying the weakness inherent in decadence’ (Gogröf-Voorhees 3).

According to Pestalozzi and other scholars, part of the reason for Nietzsche’s ambivalent feelings towards one of the masters of decadence can be found in the latter’s close relationship with Wagner. Gogröf-Voorhees calls Baudelaire a ‘[...] Parisian replica of

Wagner: decadent, morbid, a comedian [...]’ and refers to Jacques Le Rider who had already stressed the ambivalence by saying that Nietzsche had ‘a love-hate relationship toward

Wagner, toward Baudelaire, toward oneself [...]’ (quoted in Gogröf-Voorhees 3).

Baudelaire was certainly a great admirer of Wagner as he found his compositions to be truly modern. Especially Wagner’s ‘[...] drive towards a synthesis of art [...]’ was appreciated. Baudelaire had already written that

It is an inevitable result of decadence that every art today reveals a desire to

encroach upon neighboring arts, and the painters introduce musical scales, sculptors

use color, writers use the plastic means, and other artists, those who concern us

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today, display a kind of encyclopaedic philosophy in the plastic arts themselves.12

(quoted in Calinescu 166)

Judging by the emphasize Baudelaire puts on the unity of the arts, Calinescu states that his view of decadence cannot be seen as a negative one. James Smith continuous on this unity and finds ‘transposition of art techniques and synaesthesia’ to be a literary device that was often associated with, and maybe even defining to, the Decadence Movement (Smith 645).

It seems that there literary decadence is a term that covers many loads. It unifies the arts but at the same time breaks with tradition, it is industrious but also relies on the art for art’s sake principle, it is a rejection and extension of the Romantic Movements all in once.

Calinescu summarizes it all by stating that

A style of decadence is simply a style favorable to the unrestricted manifestation of

the aesthetic individualism, a style that has done away with traditional authoritarian

requirements such as unity, hierarchy, objectivity, ect. Decadence thus understood

and modernity coincide in their rejection of the tyranny of tradition (Calinescu 171).

12 This is Calinescu’s translation found in Faces of Modernity, 166. The original lines read ; Est-ce par une fatalité des décadences qu' aujourd'hui chaque art manifeste l'envie d' empiéter sur l'art voisin, et que les peintres introduisent des gammes musicales dans la peinture, les sculpteurs, de la couleur dans la sculpture, les littérateurs, des moyens plastiques dans la littérature, et d'autres artistes, ceux dont nous avons à nous occuper aujourd’hui, une sorte de philosophie encyclopédique dans l'art plastique même?

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Late-Victorian Society and Decadence

Nothing English is good enough for the English things have to be imported from France to please the people [...] all your dishes must bear French titles, otherwise they will not be in good form. (Sorrows 250)

Where food for the stomach was expected to bear names fit for mispronunciation amongst its English consumers, the food for the soul was met with the same criteria. In her introduction to Fictions of British Decadence, Kirsten MacLeod writes that ‘[...] studies of

British Decadence must invariably account for its French origins.’ (MacLeod Fictions 1).

When Decadence came into full swing in Britain around the 1890’s it had already developed itself to an established movement in France. The work of writers like Baudelaire, Gautier and

Bourget, who were seen as the founders of the movement, were now eagerly read in

England and thus influenced a new generation of writers but, just like in France, there is some ambiguity as to the origin of English literary Decadence Movement. Clyde De L. Ryals thinks that it is ‘[...] but a sub-phase of romanticism [...] (Ryals 86). In his article ‘Towards a

Definition of Decadent as Applied to British Literature of the Nineteenth Century’ he states that the decadent artist ‘shared the romantic’s distrust of reason, his concept of beauty, his philosophical idealism but [...] not [...] his ideals.’ (Ryals 90). As for stylistics, Ryals says that the major difference between romanticism and decadence is that in Decadence ‘[...] all sense of proportion is lost’ (Ryals 86). Kirsten MacLeod has a different view on the origin of

English decadence. She claims that English writers acted partly in a revolt against the dominance of Naturalism.

The Naturalist school had, just like decadence, its roots in France with Zola as its main representative. The movement rejected the romantic notion that art had to

31 represent an ideal and opted instead for an objective representation of reality. In her introduction to Wormwood: a Drama of Paris MacLeod claims that Naturalists have

[...] a suspicion of metaphysics and any phenomena that could not be positively

verified by experience and insisted on the importance of scientific observation and

objective representation. (MacLeod Introduction Wormwood 27)

The British Parliament saw this type of fiction, decadence would soon follow, as one of the reasons for the decline of the French nation and they were not about to let the same thing happen to Britain. Hard measurements were taken to minimize the Naturalist, or Realist’s, influence. A popular example is the case of publisher Henry Vizetelly who was fined in 1888 for publishing translations of Zola’s work and sentenced to prison the year after for eight other translations. The attacks on the Realist Movement were led by the National Vigilance

Association which was formed by W.T. Stead in August 1885 ‘for the enforcement and improvement of the laws for the repression of criminal vice and public immorality.’13 The

Association apparently saw the ‘pernicious literature’ produced by Zola and likeminded writers as a threat to ‘British religious, national and social life’ (MacLeod Wormwood 29).

One journalist employed by Sentinel wrote that ‘it would be impossible for any young man who had not learned the Divine secret of self-control to have read [a novel by Zola] without committing some outward form of sin within twenty-four hours after’ (quoted in MacLeod

Fin de Siècle 68). The main concern of the English literary establishment however, was not

13 W.T. Stead had written several articles on prostitution, focusing especially on child prostitution in the Pall

Mall Gazette. With these articles Stead hoped to push for a more strict legislations concerning women and child trafficking, which lead to the founding of the National Vigilance Association. In 1952 the Association would merge with the British National Committee, forming the British Vigilance Association.

32 the negative influence this style had on a nation but the fact that it was ‘inartistic’ and

‘unimaginative’ (MacLeod Fictions 3).

This aggressive attitude towards literary productions that expanded on vice and moral degradation could explain why Decadence as a movement had such a slow development pace in Britain. MacLeod mentions a number of writers, like Moore and

Symons, who first discussed the movement through a series of essays in which they described it as a purely French occurrence. Moore would later go on to write Decadent poetry as ‘ [...] poetry was an easier medium through which to introduce decadence [...]’ but it would not be until Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) ,first published in

Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine and later as a novel, that the movement received the necessary critical attention.(MacLeod Fictions 5) Wilde was for his first and only novel greatly inspired by Huysmans’s A Rebours as the two main characters show a lot of resemblance in their egotistic behaviour, their search for the aesthetic and their eagerness to experience only for the sake of the experience. Ryals is of opinion that Wilde’s play

Salome is another perfect example of decadent art as Wilde ‘[...] did not maintain the proper balance between the simple and the complex.’ (Ryals 86). He goes on to state that some scenes have the tendency to become grotesque as Wilde expands on the horror of certain situations e.g. Salome’s monologue when she is holding Iokaan’s head.

As the movement received more attention at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century, the number of opponents grew as well. Its writers and publishers became the subject of mockery and contempt, Punch magazine leading the way as always, but it was not clear as to who or what a decadent exactly was. According to MacLeod

‘Decadence was used loosely by critics to describe everything from Naturalism and

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Impressionism to Realism and New Woman fiction’ (MacLeod Fictions 6). Publishers who affiliated themselves, or where affiliated with, the movement were accused of being ‘[...] sex-obsessed, lurid, morbid, revolting, nonsensical, cynical, nasty, and self-promoting’

(MacLeod Fictions 6). These attacks would continue to intensify up to 1895 when Oscar

Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labour for gross acts of indecency. As Wilde was their number one representative the movement became linked with homosexuality and effeminacy and its opponents did not spare the gunpowder in order to give the sinking ship its final blow. Many of its previous supporters, like Arthur Symons to mention one of the bigger names, abandoned the movement to go on board with the Symbolist or to reinvent themselves all together.

Even before the Wilde trials, critics had accused the Decadence Movement of being overly effeminate in their writing. Their work focussed too intensely on what the public, which consisted for the largest part of women, wanted to read. The decadents themselves however wanted to be seen as, and certainly perceived themselves to be, the élite of literary society. For this reason, MacLeod claims, female writers were kept out of the movement as much as possible as her male colleagues feared that their presence would compromise the movement in its attempt to become a serious art. Women writers ‘[...] were not taken seriously in a field dominated by art-for-art’s-sake principle.’ Many female authors reacted to this with a counter-Decadent discourse, usually used in fiction which was considered a low genre as opposed to poetry. MacLeod states that a lot of the writing was aimed against

‘[...] the male domination of the literary field [...]’ and that women tried to ‘[...] bring the ethical and the aesthetic into relation’ (MacLeod Fictions 84). This was right up Marie

Corelli’s alley.

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Corelli wrote in Free opinions Freely Expressed in the chapter entitled ‘The Power of the Pen’ , that if she was given the choice

[...] to write something entirely opposed to my own feeling and conscience for a

thousand pounds, or write my honest thoughts for nothing, I would write my honest

thought, and let the thousand pounds go.’ (Free Opinions 328)

Corelli aimed with her novels to express ‘beautiful thoughts in beautiful language’ and opposed to all literature that did not uplift the reader’s moral and spirit14 (Felski 121). The principles upheld by the Naturalist and Decadent Movement could therefore not count on much sympathy. Especially the writings and methods applied by Emile Zola went straight against her own line of thought. Zola wanted to represent things as they are. While doing research for his novel La Bête Humaine (1890) which was based upon a railway between

Paris and Le Havre, he spent time amongst the engine drivers in order to present an accurate picture of life on the track. Corelli on the other hand states that ‘Imagination is the supreme endowment of the poet and romancist [...] the most foolish notion [...] is that an author must personally go and visit the place he intends to describe’ (Free Opinions 334). Corelli had a great faith in the power of the pen as it is ‘[...] the greatest power for good or evil in the world’ (Free opinions 325) She was convinced that Naturalist writing attributed to the latter and countered it through her own writing. In Wormwood: A Drama of Paris Zola is referred to as ‘the literary scavenger of Paris’ (Wormwood 303). Despite her resentment for the style, she too would write a Realist novel, proving yet again that she was capable of more than one style, though as she states in a letter to her publisher Bentley ‘[...] you may

14 I will discuss Corelli’s views on the desired effects of literature in more detail in the section on Corelli and the

New Woman.

35 be sure it will not be their Realism’ (quoted in MacLeod Wormwood 31). Like she said in Free

Opinions, she would never write against her own conscious. Her solution then was to write a novel that painted a realistic picture of society but also ‘[...] served a didactic and moral function [...]’ (MacLeod Wormwood 34).

Apart from Naturalist writers there was another element, according to Corelli, that helped make ‘French literature obscene and French art repulsive’15 namely absinthe. In

Wormwood the green drink plays a central role as it is responsible for the downfall of many a promising person. All those who become addicted go through a stage of decline and degradation, therefore Decadence is another style worth discussing in connection to

Wormwood.

MacLeod claims in Fictions of British Decadence that with her novel Corelli wrote

‘One of the first and most significant engagements with Decadence by a female writer [...]’

(MacLeod Fictions 85). It is not clear however if this is what Corelli had intended to do when she embarked on her absinthe adventure. The general public was just getting acquainted with the Decadence Movement at the time Wormwood was published and judging by the comments made in her letters, Corelli’s arrows seem mainly to have been aimed at Realism.

Nevertheless, MacLeod is of opinion that the discussion of themes like morbidity, suicide and eroticism, ‘[...] render the novel fit for an examination of its relationship to Decadence’

(MacLeod Wormwood 36). In what follows I would like to conduct such an examination and proof that Corelli is more of a decadent than she would care to admit.

15 Corelli – Bentley Correspondence, 8 September 1890 found in Wormwood: A Drama of Paris Appendix B

Letters from Corelli to George Bentley about Wormwood 374.

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Wormwood: A Drama of Paris is a first person narration about the young Parisian

Gaston Beauvais. Gaston is engaged to a beautiful girl of noble birth named Pauline De

Charmilles and manages a successful bank together with his father. His bright future is disturbed when Silvion Guidèl, a priest in training, becomes part of his inner circle. During a stormy night, Pauline confesses that she is madly in love with Silvion and wishes to terminate the engagement. Gaston, though heartbroken, promises to do whatever he can to minimize the disgrace that she will cast upon her family through that action. However, during that same night he meets an old acquaintance André Gessonex, a poor painter, who introduces him to ‘the Green Fairy’. His merciful feelings towards Pauline and Silvion vanish and instead he decides to take revenge. The rest of the novel is a portrayal of Gaston’s downfall into moral depravity. Under the influence of absinth he commits murder, witnesses two suicides, frequents bars, morgues and cemeteries and is haunted by a leopard with green eyes.

When looking at the description of original lay-out of the book I have to agree with

Federico when she writes that ‘Despite Corelli’s [...] ostensible missionary purpose,

Wormwood is completely dependent on decadent tropes’ (Federico 73). Her view on what the cover of the book should look like could have come straight from the mouths of Symons or Wilde themselves.

The cover of the book should be pale green: the colour of Absinth, with the title

running zig-zag across in black letters – an adder or serpent twisted through the big

W. (quoted in Federico 72)

Judging by a reply she wrote, her publisher Bentley was afraid that the critics and especially her ‘sister authors’ might actually perceive the novel as Decadent and Naturalist instead of a

37 counter discourse. Corelli however was not impressed and claimed she did not care for the critics or her sister authors. She even took pride in the accusation made by one critic of having a ‘man’s pen’.16 Such a pen was what she needed if she wanted to write about the

‘masculine’ subjects she addresses in Wormwood. The fact that she sent a copy to Arthur

Symons may prove that, even though she boasted she did not care a ’jot’ for the critics’ opinions, she was still looking to become recognized as part of the literary elite. (Wormwood

375)

That this would happen only on her own terms is made clear by Corelli’s introductory note to her novel. In this note she makes sure her readers do not forget that she is not a decadent or naturalist. Corelli reminds everyone that ‘when an author depicts a character, he is not of necessity that character himself’ (Corelli Introductory Note 62). She also goes a long way to explain that she did rely on own experience when describing the French can-can but was ‘indebted’ to ‘[...] a very respectable-looking English tourist [...]’ (Corelli Introductory

Note 62). On top of that, she dedicated the book ‘To the gentlemen, the absintheurs of Paris, those who brag of their corruption and who are the shame and despair of their country.’

Again Corelli seems to engage in a paradoxical discourse where she wants to stay as true as possible to decadence but at the same time keep a safe distance as not to be affiliated with it.

16 Corelli – Bentley Correspondence, 8 September 1890 found in Wormwood: A Drama of Paris Appendix B

Letters from Corelli to George Bentley about Wormwood 375.

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Decadence in Wormwood

Wormwood was written as a three-volume novel, a mode of publication that would soon make place for the cheaper one volume novels as mentioned in the introduction.

Corelli, being an experienced author, knew how she could use the three volume system to keep the reader’s attention. In Wormwood the developments of the main character and the build-up of the novel can be linked to Vico and Spengler’s view on historical societies and their cyclical nature as addressed by Morley. According to them, societies go through ‘[...] periods of decline and decadence as well as periods of growth and maturity.’ (Morley 573).

Gaston Beauvais goes through a similar process throughout the course of the novel. The first volume could be seen as dealing with the period of growth as Gaston is in the prime of his life. He reaches his Golden Age when he meets and gets engaged with Pauline De Charmilles.

He seems to be headed towards a relative period of stability when external forces, Silvion

Guidel and absinth, disturb everything. The first book ends just when decay is about to set in, after he has had his first glass of absinth. Curiously though Beauvais does not experience this as decay as he says that his meeting with Gessonex ‘[...] had given the Devil time to do good work [...] turn a feeling heart to stone’ (Wormwood 172). Gaston thinks he finally sees things the way they are and therefore links decay to progress or change, which can also be affiliated to decadence as mentioned earlier. The second volume then takes off where the first had stopped. The decay continuous, though it is not perceived by Gaston as something negative. He sees himself as the victim and so justifies all his actions undertaken in order to get revenge which will culminate in the murder of Silvion Guidel. The second volume ends when Gaston starts showing clear signs of insanity as he tries to forget what he did. ‘I was maddened – gloriously maddened! Maddened into a temporary forgetfulness of my crime of

39

Murder!’ (Wormwood 269). In the last volume and the L’Envoi his madness and fall into depravity is completed. Just like Huysmans’ Des Esseintes, Corelli’s main character willingly refuses to be seen in daylight though he does not spend his time reading or experimenting with scents and colours. ‘At night I creep out with the other obscene things in Paris, and by my very presence, add fresh pollution to the moral poison in the air.’ At the end Gaston has changed so much in appearance that he himself has a hard time to identify himself as human.

‘I am a slinking, shuffling beast, half monkey, half man, [...]’ (Wormwood 363).

Apart from Gaston’s physical nature his mental state deprives as well. Again like Des

Esseintes and perhaps even Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Gaston Beauvais flirts with insanity though he takes it to a new level. Encouraged by his absinth fairy, Beauvais drinks not only to forget his heartache but also to see and experience new things. After his first trip he goes home ‘[...] not to sleep but to dream, with eyes wide open.’ During these dreams he sees ‘a field of scarlet poppies [...] between their brilliant clusters lay the dead!’ (Wormwood 173) It does not take long before he is addicted to the sights and the effects of absinth. His Green Fairy or

Witch whose ‘[...] magic lantern of strange pictures was never exhausted’ becomes his mistress (Wormwood 270). ‘She was a blithe brave phantom [...] How I kissed her on the ripe red lips for the appropriateness of her deathful suggestion!’ (Wormwood 206-207). But she proves to be a cruel mistress as she drives him further and further into madness plus she denies him the one thing he truly wants ‘Forgetfulness’ (Wormwood 272).

According to Clyde Ryals the Absinth Fairy can be viewed as a decadent heroine, a

‘Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (Ryals 88). Ryals argues that in decadence literature the fatale woman will come to dominate the former romantic hero, ‘the symbol of masculinity’ (Ryals

88). David Weir discusses a similar point of view in his discussion of Camille Paglia’s Sexual

40

Personae. Weir says that at some point Paglia associates decadence with the ‘[...] chtoninc or daemonic forces that are primarily female.’ (Weir 1). Therefore the feminine can be seen as ‘[...] a symptom of decadence’ (quoted in Weir 2). The Nietzschean décadence then takes it one final step further. Bernheimer claims in his chapter on ‘Nietzsche’s Decadence

Philosophy’ that to Nietzsche ‘Decadence is a woman, repulsive and unthinkable, except at a distance’ (Bernheimer 26). Though Nietzsche was not the biggest admirer of women and this definition is only the eight in a nine point list, it is very applicable to Gaston Beauvais’ case especially when regarding how Nietzsche describes love in The Gay Science. Here he writes that ‘The human being under the skin is for all lovers a horror and unthinkable, a blasphemy against God and love.’ (Gay Science, 122). He wants to restrict the essence of a human being to the soul and form, but of course that cannot be done. Beauvais makes a similar attempt with Pauline. He is blinded by the beauty of his fiancée and his own happiness. ‘No cloud marred my joy; no bitterness nauseated my cup of felicity’ (Wormwood 116). Pauline on the other hand shows clear signs of unhappiness that go unnoticed by her fiancée though not to those who truly know her. Pauline’s mother utters her concern after another one of her daughter’s weeping rages and says that ‘[...] I have had the idea [...] that perhaps the child is secretly unhappy!’ (Wormwood 126). It is only after Pauline’s confession that Gaston’s bubble is violently popped and his fall from heaven begins. In this way then Pauline De

Charmilles can also be seen as a Fatal Woman as she dominates the two male protagonists,

Beauvais and Guidèl, and, though this is putting it too simple, is at the centre of their downfall.

Corelli offers a counterweight for the Fatal Pauline in the figure of Héloïse St. Cyr, her cousin. According to MacLeod, Héloïse is ‘[...]the moral force in the novel [...]’ and is ‘[...] the true heroine of the novel[...]’ (MacLeod Wormwood 33-34). This does not mean she cannot

41 be perceived as a decadent character. Baudelaire had stated that ‘It is an inevitable result of decadence that every art today reveals a desire to encroach upon neighboring arts[...]’ and this is what Héloïse’s music seems to do. (quoted in Calinescu 166) Beauvais is amazed by the sounds she is able to produce out of her Amati violin.

Grand pleading notes came quivering to us from the sensitive fibre of the fourth

string; delicate harmonies flew over our heads like fine foam-bells, breaking from a

wave of tune; we caught faint whispers of the sweetest spiritual confessions, prayers

and aspirations; we listened to the airy dancing of winged sylphs on golden floors of

melody; we heard the rustle of the nightingale’s brown wings against cool green

leaves [...] (Wormwood 108)

Just like Wagner, Héloïse is able to produce much more than just music. She claims that music teaches her things ‘[...] not only beautiful, but terrible’ (Wormwood108).

Another artist figuring in Wormwood, André Gessonex, is much closer and more obviously related to decadence. Gessonex is a ‘poor wretch of an artist’ who declares himself to be a genius but whose paintings remain unsold because they are very risqué. In his small apartment he has painted his ultimate masterpiece, a dark work portraying a priest in a poorly lit cathedral who, by use of force, has wrenched his lover’s coffin. The inscription underneath it ran ‘O Dieu que j’abjure! Rend-moi cette femme’ (Wormwood 257). The painting reminds of Mario Praz’s interpretation of decadence as an extension of ‘the erotic sensibility’ of Romance (Weir 3). Beauty and Death seem linked close together as Gessonex is able to foreground the erotic nature of the morbid. This idea is repeated in the morgue when Beauvais sees the body of Pauline laying on a table. He imagines her in the water and describes her death in a very sensuous, almost sexual, way.

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The river had fondled her! – had stroked her cheeks and left them pale and pure, -

had kissed her lips and closed them in a childlike happy smile, - had swept all her dark

hair back from the smooth white brow just to show how prettily the blue veins were

pencilled under the soft transparent skin [...] (Wormwood 338)

Even dead he claims, she is still ‘[...] a little marble goddess asleep’ (Wormwood 341).

Corelli seems to be portraying Gessonex in two different ways. One interpretation could be that she expresses sympathy for a struggling artist who is not recognized for his talents. Both the masses and critics want nothing to do with him yet the painter knows that once he is dead, he will become a champion of France. ‘[...] the art-critics knowing that my bones cannot profit by what they say, will storm the world with loud eulogium’ (Wormwood

257). After he shoots himself in front of a newsstand, he is proven right as the people who once scorned him now formed ‘ a hypocritical mourning-train’ to carry the lost genius back to his home (Wormwood 295). Corelli seems to point finger to the critics who will only write positive reviews for friends or the dead.

Another reading of André Gessonex is a more negative one. Federico claims that

Corelli portrays Gessonex as a repulsive person who spends his time frequenting taverns of doubtful reputation in order to lavish his absinth addiction and paint women in obscene poses. ‘For Corelli even aesthetic feelings cannot excuse such a life’ (Federico 74). MacLeod concludes in her section on decadence that by portraying Gessonex as a typical bohemian artist Corelli strengthens the belief that ‘[...] French art and literature is [...] morbid and immoral’ (MacLeod Wormwood 38). Federico could be right about Corelli’s condemnation of her fictional artistic character though it is rather paradoxical then that she turns her back on

43

Gessonex whilst at the same time expressing her admiration for the poetry written by another notorious French absinth addict, Charles Cros.

André Gessonex and Charles Cros seem to function as each other’s double as their life, the one fictional the other actual, show many resemblances. Both were artists, both were absintheurs and both were unrecognized for their genius during their lifetime. In a footnote she added, Corelli writes with great respect about Cros. She calls him a man

‘[...]whose distinctly great abilities were never encouraged or recognized in his lifetime’

(Wormwood 109). She even has the most virtuous character of the story, Héloïse, recite ‘in a voice harmonious as music itself’ Cros’s poem l’Archet.17 (Wormwood 109). It seems strange that she would condemn Gessonex for his addiction while she revered a poet who was enchanted by the Green Fairy in a similar way. It could have been that Corelli was unaware of Cros’s addiction though that seems unlikely as Cros was a follower of Rimbaud and

Verlaine who were both very fond of the passion verte and in the novel there are quotes from ‘Lendemain’, a poem in which he professes his love for absinth.

Federico explains Corelli’s fascination with Cros as part of her susceptibility to ’ [...] the myth of the perished genius’ (Federico 75). She is therefore able to forgive his little flaws though she is still aware of her own responsibility as an author. Seeing as she did not want to encourage vice she may have changed some Cros’s poetry used in Wormwood. From Cros’s poem ‘Conclusion’ she uses the last stanza.

17 The poem tells the tragic story of a young man who loses his lover due to an illness. Her last wish is that he uses her hair to make a bow in order to ‘charm your other ladies fair.’ The music he produces from that bow touches all those who hear it, including the queen who falls in love with him. They decide to run away together but every time he tried to play for the queen, he could only produce a mournful sound. The dead had taken back her pledge and as a result the two lovers died upon the plain.

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Les âmes dont j’aurais besoin

Et les étoiles sont trop loin

Je vais mourir soûl – dans un coin (quoted in Wormwood 142)

However, in Wormwood the last line reads ‘Je vais mourir seul - dans un coin.’ This change has significant impact on the poem as the character now dies alone instead of drunk but it is not known whether or not Corelli made this alteration on purpose.

Degeneration

An important factor in Wormwood is the theory of degeneration. Though the theory does not allow itself, much like decadence, to be clearly defined Jarkko Jalava tries to give a broad outlining in Modern Degenerate. He states that ‘[...]a host of individual and social pathologies in a fine and infinite network of diseases, disorders and moral habits could be explained by a biologically based affliction.’ Basically this means that crime, violence, addiction, insanity and other social abnormalities could be explained as ‘[...] a defect within the individual.’ (Jalava 418). The theory of degeneration is therefore closely connected to

Darwin’s theory of evolution but can be seen as a its negative. Human beings no longer evolve but return to a more primal state.

In his book L’Uomo Delinquente (1876) Cesare Lombrosso, an Italian criminologist and founder of the School of Positivist Criminology, used the theory of degeneration to explain criminal behaviour. He claimed that

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[...] roughly one-third of all offenders were of a ‘born-criminal type’, characterized as

atavistic, biologically determined life forms whose mental and physiological

characteristics resembled those of children, apes and primitive people. (quoted in

Jalava 419)

In Criminal man according to the classification of Cesare Lombroso (1911) his daughter, Gina

Lombrosso-Ferrero, goes on to say that people who have ‘[...]insane, criminal or diseased progenitors[...]’ or who frequently use substances that can destroy the nerve system, such as drugs and alcohol, show risk of returning to a more primitive state (Lombrosso-Ferrero 136).

What is important to note here is that degeneration was viewed as something which could be inherited. Jalava puts forward two theories of inheritance. The first is direct, if your parents were alcoholics, you would turn out to be an alcoholic as well. The second theory is indirect, the degeneration takes place more gradually and over several generations.18

Gaston Beauvais’ case is not one of hereditary degeneration. His father, Charles

Beauvais is described as a noble man both in character as appearance. Gaston’s degeneration is solely due to a careful diet of absinth and more absinth. He is seen by others as a primal creature, one officers yelled ‘Get up beast!’ when he was found sleeping against a tree, and by himself ‘I am a slinking shuffling beast, half monkey, half man, [...]’

18 According to Morley’s indirect theory of degeneration for example this occurs as followed

First Generation: Nervous temperament; moral depravity; excesses.

Second Generation: Tendency to apoplexy and severe neuroses; alcoholism.

Third Generation: Mental derangements; suicide; intellectual incapacity.

Fourth Generation: Hereditary imbecility; deformities; arrested development; With this last generation the race comes to an end by sterility. (quoted in Jalava 418-419)

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(Wormwood 277-363). As Lombrosso states, atavism is not just restricted to the physical appearance but to the mental state as well.

William Hirsch provided a description of the degenerate’s character in Genius and

Degeneration (1896). In it he writes that

The moral sense, sympathy, pity, love, etc., are conditions utterly strange to such

people. [...] Selfishness and heartlessness mark all their acts. [...] are even cold and

indifferent to their nearest family, belong to this category of mental degeneration.

(Hirsch 130)

Even though Wormwood was published six years prior to Hirsch’s findings, Corelli seemed to have had a profound knowledge regarding the mental state of the degenerate as her main character easily fits the description.19 When Gaston bumps into his father after a night of heavy drinking, he felt ‘a kind of grim amusement’ by the latter’s expression of shock at his appearance (Wormwood 279). Charles Beauvais tries to persuade himself that his son is ill or playing a jest while Gaston laughs in his face at those suggestions. When his father turns the conversation to ‘the poor child Pauline’ and her ‘unhappy lover Silvion Guidèl’ Gaston’s egotism is put to full display (Wormwood 285). ‘I - I and I struck my breast angrily – I was and am the principal sufferer [...] I am disowned – I am cast out and spurned at, [...]’

(Wormwood 286) Gaston does not see what the readers and his father have long ago spotted, that he is making a fool of himself over ‘[...] a mere love-disappointment in youth[...]‘ (Wormwood 286) Instead of moving on Gaston puts his life on hold in order to make all those around him suffer for his egotism.

19 Hirsch does mention accumulation of wealth as one of the characteristics as well, something Gaston Beauvais was not interested in.

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Another example of an atavistic creature is found in the bête André Gessonex keeps in his apartment. Gessonex claims he is ‘[...] a production of Absinth’ and describes the degeneration in the boy’s family over three generations. (Wormwood 253) The great grandfather was a genius scientist whose was driven to suicide and madness because of his loneliness. MacLeod sees his degeneracy as linked to atheism and positivism. The scientist’s son inherited this degeneracy and became addicted to Absinth. His ending was, just like his father, untimely as he took his own life while being detained in a lunatic asylum. His son then is ‘ A type of the Age of Stone’, a creature which would be found on a lower rung on the ladder of evolution (Wormwood 253). When asked about the purpose of life, the ‘boy’ would answer ‘J’ai faim’ which according to Gessonex is really all that matters. As the creature is more animal than human it is only fitting that he returns to nature after his master shot himself. Gaston advises him to look for the painter ‘among the green trees - where there are running brooks and flowers [...]’ (Wormwood 298). Though Corelli does not say where the creature ultimately runs off to or what becomes of him, it is highly likely that this beast-like person will turn his back on civilization and return to his true home.

One final link to degeneration is not found in a character of the novel but in the idea that decadent French culture had a negative influence on the English society. In yet another article by MacLeod on Corelli, ‘Marie Corelli and Fin-de-Siècle Francophobia: The Absinthe

Trail of French Art’, she claims that there was a general fear of becoming French ‘[...] a position that was clearly seen as a degeneration from the higher state of Englishness’

(MacLeod Fin-de-Siècle 67). Beauvais makes several comments on the difference between the English and French culture and always seems to take side with the former. Even the

English women are infinitely better than their French colleagues.

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I saw an English woman [...] she had that exquisite composure, that serene quietude

and grace – that fine untouchable delicacy about her air and manner which our

women of France have little or nothing of [...] (Wormwood 291)

The sight of this fair English maiden made even him, the absintheur, slink back as it reminded him of the dignity of life. Corelli fears that this fine delicacy that English women possessed might soon be replaced by ‘[...] a national taste for vice and indecent vulgarity’ as displayed by the French. Putting a stop to the French infiltration would prove very difficult as

‘[...] French habits, French fashion, French books, French pictures are particularly favoured by the English [...]‘ MacLeod therefore claims that Wormwood was not only a warning against the dangers of absinth but against anything French. She states that ‘It is “Frenchness” in all its forms – from absinthe-mania to French fashion and literature – that poses the threat of degeneration’ (MacLeod Fin de Siècle 71).

It seems that Corelli links Decadence in Wormwood for the most part with decline and degeneration as the main character returns to a more primal state at the end of the novel and will probably keep debasing himself until his death. A very different view on the theme can be found in Sorrows of Satan , where the emphasize is put on progress and climbing the social ladder bit where elements of Decadence can be found none the less.

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Decadence and The Sorrows of Satan

The Sorrows of Satan is narrated by Geoffrey Tempest, a self-proclaimed genius, who spends his days either in search for a job as a critic or for a publisher for his first novel, both without success. When returning to his very humble abode after another fruitless day he suddenly finds himself in the possession of 5 million pounds left to him by his uncle and in company of the charming prince Lucio Rimânez, whom becomes his close friend. With the combination of his enormous wealth and Lucio’s influence, Tempest hopes to finally be recognized for the genius that he is and puts everything into work to ‘boom’ his first novel.

Though it receives a lot of press attention and, be it bought, critical acclaim, sales remain low.

Tempest finds himself famous not for his work but for his millions. Lucio, who can be seen as a sort of puppet master, arranges a meeting between the beautiful but distant Lady Sibyl

Elton and Geoffrey Tempest, knowing full well that the latter would fall in ‘love’ with her instantly. In order to impress Sibyl, and because Lucio advises it, Geoffrey buys Willowsmere in Warwickshire. As his neighbour he gets the successful female author Mavis Clare whom is scolded by the critics but loved by the people. Even though Tempest succeeds in claiming

Sibyl’s hand in marriage, it is not a happy one and the couple seems to be drifting more apart every page. In one of the more melodramatic chapters Sibyl throws herself at

Rimânez’s feet and proclaims that she loves him more than she loves her husband. Rimânez coldly refuses her which drives her to suicide by use of poison. To recover from this event

Tempest agrees to join Rimânez on his yacht ‘The Flame’ to Egypt. On the return Lucio reveals his true identity in one of the wildest chapters and forces Tempest to choose between him and God. Tempest chooses God though he has always denied his existence and finds himself adrift in the mid-Atlantic. He is picked up by a ship sailing under English

50 flag and hears, after revealing his identity, that he has lost his millions to his lawyers.

Tempest refuses to press charges against them as he knows the money is cursed. By refusing to take action he loses all his ‘friends’ and finds himself without money, homeless, as he had given away Willowsmere to Sibyl’s father after her death, and slashed by a critic who had dug up his novel from Mudie’s underground cellar20. The effect however is that the public now finds his book worth buying and do so by the thousands. At the end of the novel

Tempest hopes that one day he might be fortunate enough to proclaim his love to Mavis and hear it answered, until then he will use her image and letter to hold off the devil, whom he sees walking arm in arm outside parliament with a well-known cabinet minister.

Corelli based The Sorrows of Satan on the immoral behaviour by many players in the literary field. According to Federico the novel is ‘especially successful at conjuring decadence while condemning decadent tendencies’ (Federico 75-76). Corelli provides the reader with two types of writers, one being the embodiment of the stereotypical male critic, who uses the corrupt system to boom his name, the other a virtuous young woman, scolded by critics but revered by her audience. The first of the two, Geoffrey Tempest, is at first full of good intentions but due to the cruel treatment he receives by his peers, he is soon filled with anger. He considers the poverty to which he is condemned as a curse. ‘Poverty [...] robs you of your self-respect, and causes you to slink along the street vaguely abashed, instead of

20 This is a reference to Mudie’s Select Library founded by Charles Edward Mudie in 1842 when he started lending books at his shop in Bloomsbury. Mudie would become the most important library in Britain, with W.H.

Smith and Sons as its only rival. For more information view Guinevere L. Griest. “A Victorian Leviathan: Mudie's

Select Library.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 20.2 (1965): 103-126. Print. Or Feltes, Norman. Modes of Production of Victorian Novels. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. Print.

51 walking erect [...] (Sorrows 1). Good times are around the corner however when he inherits a fortunes and meets the man who has the connections to lift him to literary fame. The circumstances in which the two gentlemen meet are rather peculiar. When Lucio enters the building where Tempest resides, the latter’s lamp ‘gave a dismal crack’ and died, causing the room to become pitch dark (Sorrows 16). It is in this ‘unsociable darkness’ that Tempest and

Rimânez make their acquaintance (Sorrows 18). Fisher writes that this beginning is used to

‘[...]establish patterns of symbolism that oppose darkness (indicative of evil, passion, bestiality) to light (indicative of spirituality, reason, humaneness, freedom) [...] (Fisher 306).

The symbolic meeting could also be read in terms of improvement. Tempest’s dark, impoverished state will soon be replaced by light in the form of a large bank account. The decadence in this novel then can be seen as of a very different kind as to that in Wormwood.

In the previous section I have linked the decadence in relation to Wormwood with decay and degeneration, though this was not always perceived as such by the protagonist, here however Tempest goes from a seemingly miserable to a happy state. This is made clear by his actions after he finds out about his inheritance. ‘[...] there is no reason why I should not leave this wretched hole at once , and go to one of the best hotels and swagger it!’ (Sorrows

14). Decadence is thus linked to progress, or at least what Tempest feels to be progress, having more money.

The symbolism of dark and light can also be interpreted in another way. Fisher links darkness with evil but it is in the light that Geoffrey becomes enthralled by Rimânez and decides to put his faith into the latter’s hands. The darkness and poverty that surrounded

Geoffrey at the beginning of the novel can therefore also be seen as something good as he will later on admit that ‘[...] the time would come when I should look back to the time spent in that small mean room as the best period of my life [...]’ (Sorrows 27).

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The Sorrows of Satan is in a large part about free will and the responsibility that comes with it. There are many occasions in the novel where Tempest has the opportunity to end his friendship with Rimânez but he chooses not to do this, sometimes against his better judgment. According to Nietzsche this too is a form of Decadence.

‘Rationality at any cost, life clear, cold, circumspect, conscious, without instinct, in

opposition to instincts. [...] To have to fight the instincts - this is the formula for

decadence.’ (Quoted in Silk 594)

In Nietzsche, Decadence, and the Greek, Michael Silk; professor at King’s College London, summarizes this quote as ‘a victory over instincts’, which becomes a second nature to

Tempest. From the moment he inherits his five million pounds sterling, alarm bells go off in

Tempest’s mind ‘[...]the news I had just received struck me as the wildest, most ridiculous incongruity I had ever heard of or imagined [...]’ but he effectively ignores them and continues to do so before and many times after he meets the Prince (Sorrows 13). When the lamp cracks whilst the Prince is making his way upstairs he even exclaims ‘The devil is in it!’ not knowing that this is indeed the case (Sorrows 17).

During their first meeting Prince Lucio Rimânez makes Tempest an offer he cannot refuse, the one condition being that he should immediately break off their friendship if he should feel any doubt or dislike towards him as ‘I swear to you in all sober earnest that I am not what I seem’ (Sorrows 38). It is in this scene that Tempest displays what a decadent character, according to the definition by Nietzche , he is. Tempest admits that he had felt ‘ a passing shadow of distrust and repulsion for this fascinating yet cynical man [...]’ but decides to act against his better judgment ‘[...] whatever you are [...] I find you most sympathetic to my disposition, and consider myself most fortunate in knowing you’ (Sorrows 38). Even after

53 his wife, Sibyl Elton, declares her love for Rimânez he sticks by his side ‘I will not part with you [...] better the companionship of a true friend than that of a false wife!’ (Sorrows 378).

The cracked light at the beginning of the novel may have been replaced by a new one,

Tempest remains in the dark. Mavis Clare, the symbol of light and virtue, is not afraid to follow her initial feelings regarding Rimânez . When he makes her the same offer Geoffrey was so eager to accept, she refuses him as ‘[...] something in me stronger than myself warns me against you’ (Sorrows 348). When she confronts Tempest about her feelings towards the

Prince, she tries to shed her light in his darkened mind, ‘I do not know from whence he came

– but I take God to witness my belief that he is a worker of evil!’ Tempest, being the decadent that he is, does not believe her ‘The Prince Rimânez is my best friend – no man ever had a better [...]’ (Sorrows 432-433). Geoffrey stays true to his friend until the latter finally reveals himself for what he truly is.

Apart from fighting his instincts, Geoffrey Tempest can be perceived as the decadent character of the novel in another way. In One-Dimensional Man, Studies in the Ideology of

Advanced Industrial Society Herbert Marcuse states that the decadence of the eighties and nineties was linked to a ‘crisis mentality’. The values that were displayed by the society were not in accordance with some of the marginal group which lead them to feel that what was going on was ‘the dissolution of a civilization’ and they did not know what to do about it.

(Winthrop 513). There is however another group of decadents for Marcuse, which he called

‘the decadence of the squares’.

It is a decadence that consists in being socially trapped, so that one always behaves

in conformity with the socioeconomic expectations of either one's capitalist or one's

communist society. (Winthrop 513)

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In a way, decadence as described above can be seen as giving up one’s individuality and even free will in order to fit in. Tempest does this when he accepts the Prince as a companion. At the first Lucio only gives advice concerning business investments, which

Geoffrey eagerly follows, but it is not long before Tempest completely surrenders himself to the Prince and the society he wants to impress. Lucio for example entered the horse

‘Phosphor’ under Tempest’s name in the Derby. The latter did not care whether the horse would win or lose as a victory would not bring him any lasting, intellectual triumph but

‘because it was fashionable to be interested in this particular mode of wasting time and money I followed the general ‘lead’, for the sake of being talked about, and nothing more’

(Sorrows 249). In another instance, he lists a number of small good deeds he had done for his community but admits it was nothing more than a drop of water on a hot plate. He knew what it was to be poor but with the inheritance of his fortune his sense of empathy had gone.

Tempest , realizing that he should do more, simply condones his actions by emphasizing that

‘[...]I only imitated the example of my compeers’ (Sorrows 247).

Even though Tempest copies the behaviour of the swagger set in order to get accepted into society, his revulsion for that society grows stronger by the chapter. When people sent him wedding gifts for his betrothal to Sibyl Elton, he is introduced to an ‘[...] undemonstrated phase of vulgarity and hypocrisy of fashionable society’ (Sorrows 243). He laments about the insincerity of the whole thing as the gifts can be seen as bribes more than anything else ‘The donors wished to be invited to the wedding [...] and foresaw invitations to our dinners and house-parties[...]’ (Sorrows 243). Again the only reason why he gives such a lavish feast for his so-called friends is that he wants to be accepted as part of the social set so that he in his turn will be invited to other main events of the season.

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One final element of decadence linked to Geoffrey Tempest is one that can also be found in Huysmans’ Des Esseintes and Corelli’s Gaston Beauvais, the retreat from reality. R.

K. R. Thornton writes in ‘Decadence in Later nineteenth – Century England’ that there is ‘[...] a superficial retreat from reality in the lack of intensity in [the] grasp on life, the effete casualness, the languid withdrawal [...]’ (Thornton 26). Tempest seems to go through such a withdrawal, first in a figurative and later in the literal way. I have already pointed out that

Tempest gives up part of his free will by putting his faith in the hands of Lucio Rimânez . For the engagement party for example the groom had very willingly consented to leave all the arrangements to Lucio , making him somewhat of spectator rather than an active participant during his own party. He does not know what will happen or when, just stands at the side- line enjoying the spectacle with the other guests. When his future wife expresses her gratitude for all the small attentions given to her, Tempest must necessarily pass on her praise. ‘[...] the poet in question is Prince Rimânez , - he is the master and ruler of to-day’s revels’ (Sorrows 264). The engagement party is therefore symbolic for Tempest’s life as here as well it is Lucio who calls all the shots.

The literal retreat from reality comes after he hears Sibyl’s declaration of love to

Rimânez. Geoffrey no longer wants to live with a woman who was, in his eyes, unfaithful to him and therefore decides to ‘[...] travel for a few years’ (Sorrows 384) In order to avoid scandal Prince Rimânez suggests a trip to Egypt and Tempest, not breaking good habits, willingly agrees. Due to Sibyl’s suicide the reasons for the trip change. He now no longer has to run from scandal but from image of his deceased wife, which proves to be impossible.

When Lucio opens a sarcophagus and uncovers the face of a dancer at the court of Queen

Amenartes, Tempest is terrified by the sight. ‘[...] when the whole countenance was exposed to view I could almost have shrieked aloud the name of Sibyl! (Sorrows 451). The mummy

56 does not only resemble Sibyl in appearance, even the scent of the wrappings remind him of his late wife. ‘Irresistibly I was reminded of the subtle French perfume exhaled from Sibyl’s garments when I found her dead [...]’ (Sorrows 451).

Like in Wormwood the past is something which cannot be forgotten or fled from.

Geoffrey is haunted by images of Sibyl Elton who visits him in his nightmares. Only when he finally renounces Satan and chooses God’s side is he released from his curse, bringing him back to a life of happy poverty.

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Late- Victorian society and the New Woman

The term New Woman was first used by the author Sarah Grand21 in her essay ‘The

New Aspect of the Woman Question’ (1894) and was, according to Sharon Crozier-De Rosa generally used ‘[...]to signify the extent of the shifts that turn-of-the-century society was experiencing regarding notions of femininity’ (Crozier-De Rosa 419). The extent to which the

New Woman was a true novelty22 and furthermore a social reality was ‘fiercely debated in the periodical press’ (Richardson 226).Mrs Morgan-Dockrell for example questioned her actual existence in her article ‘Is the New Woman a Myth’ (1896) and in The New Woman

(1997) Sally Ledger claims the New Woman was primarily a journalistic phenomenon (Ledger

9). Even though some may have doubted the reality of the New Woman, nobody could deny that she made huge impact in the world of literature. In her article about Sarah Grand,

Angelique Richardson refers to the statements by journalist and editor W.T. Stead that

[...] the novel of the Modern Woman is one of the most notable and significant

features of the fiction of the day. The Modern [New] Woman novel is not merely a

novel written about women, but it is a novel written by a woman about women from

the standpoint of woman. (Quoted in Richardson 226)

Though literature for women by women could be perceived as aiding the feminist cause, Ann Ardis believes that there are downsides to this general label. She claimed that the ‘naming of the New Woman in the periodical press was something of a disaster for the

21 Sarah Grand was the pseudonym of Frances Elizabeth Belleuden Clarke, author of The Heavenly Twins. The article entitled ‘The New Aspect of the Woman Question’ was first published in the North American Review.

22 Crozier- De Rosa claims that throughout the nineteenth century there had been more of the so-called ‘new’ women (Crozier-De Rosa 419).

58 late nineteenth – century women’s movement’ as critics used it in order to ‘narrow the parameters of the debate on the Women’s Question, so that the New Woman novel and not the ‘real’ New Woman became the centre of controversy’ (Ledger 9). The New Woman could not be defined on the basis of certain characteristics as she was not a homogenous group but rather ‘[...]typically represented by a collage of ideas — all with at least one thing in common — the desire for greater female emancipation than her present society granted her’

(Crozier-De Rosa 419).

The late-Victorian mainstream press however, did not see it that way and continued to put forward a generally negative image of the New Woman in order to put a stigma on all feminists. With effect as Ella Dixon23 wrote at the beginning of her article ‘Why Women are

Ceasing to Marry.’

It has been seriously argued [...] that women, nowadays, are disposed, from selfish

reasons, to shirk the high privileges and duties of maternity and domestic life, to wish

to compete with men, and undersell the market from motives of pure vanity, and to

have so far unsexed themselves as to have lost the primordial instinct for conjugal life

altogether. (Dixon, 83)

This negative slander and the equating of a New Woman with terms as masculine and unsexed could have delivered a hard and possibly fatal blow to the feminist cause.

Still, Wilde’s epigraph ‘It’s better being talked about then not being talked about’ seems to apply in this situation as well. In her novel The New Woman, Fiction and Feminism at the fin de siècle, Sally Ledger agrees with Ardis by saying that ‘[...]discourse on the New

23 This article, published in 1899, was one of the many response articles to Mona Caird’s ‘Marriage’ published in 1888. 59

Woman [was] undoubtedly promoted in order to ridicule and control renegade women.’

(Ledger 9) but also admits that

[...]the hostile dominant discourse on New Woman made possible ‘the formation of a

“reverse” discourse’: the New Woman began to speak on her own behalf. (Ledger 10)

The mockery the New Woman was faced with did not silence her voice, on the contrary, the discussion on the female role in society had never been so loud. Janet Galligani Casey claims that

Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, public debate on the issues of marriage, divorce,

and the general character of the female raged in England both publicly and privately,

in newspapers and periodicals as well as in forums such as "The Men and Women's

Club," which met from 1885-1889 to "discuss relationships between the sexes.”

(Casey, 164)

The New Woman wanted to discuss former taboo topics, and in Victorian society she had her pick. The domain she seemed most eager to reform was the one she was most familiar with, i.e. marriage. Mona Caird, author of New Woman’s novels, stated that hot topics like politics and religion could be regarded with ‘wide minded tolerance’ but alarm bells went off as soon as someone had the nerve to touch on the sacred institution of marriage. Caird could not agree with often stated arguments that ‘without conventional marriage and domestic arrangements, the social fabric upon which Victorian society was based would begin to crumble.’ Walter Besant even went as far to write that ‘the preservation of the family is at the very foundation of our society’ (quoted in Ledger 12). It was for the good of the realm that the woman remains in the state she is in, ‘[...] submissive

60 to the husband, an industrious housekeeper and a judicious mistress’ because the mastery of the British man in his own household was often used as a symbol for British mastery of her colonies (Cunningham 8).

As nineteenth century Britain viewed woman's subordination to man and child's to

adult as ‘a natural fact,’ then ‘the family’ was as useful image to summon when

referring to other ‘natural’ hierarchies — ‘the ‘national family,’ the global ‘family of

nations,’ the colony as a ‘family of black children ruled over by a white father’

(McClintock 91)

Social and political agitation by women on the domestic front threatened this ‘mastery’ at home and on the peripheries. (Crosier –De Rosa 417).

Caird does not agree with this natural hierarchy. She goes on to question it by trying to establish the historical roots of modern marriage in her article ‘Marriage’ (1888). In this article she argues that it can be traced back ‘as far as the age of Luther’24. In other words, the modern idea of marriage had only been around for about three centuries and not ‘from time immemorial’ (Caird 77). According to Caird women were better off in the days of so called ‘chivalry’ when there was

[...] extreme license on all sides, and although the standard of morality was far

severer for the woman than for the man, still she had more or less liberty to give

herself as passion dictated [...] (Caird 77)

24 Caird is referring to Martin Luther (1483-1546) a German monk and professor of theology was excommunicated for, among other things, having written the Ninety-Five Theses (1517) against the selling of indulgence. He was considered to be an important member of the Protestant Reformation.

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It was only when Luther started the Reformation that women were forced into the state they still knew to that day, a role of ‘ [...] duty and of service; she figured as the legal property of the man, the safeguard against sin, and the victim of that vampire ‘respectability’

[...]’ (Caird 78). She blames Victorian society for encouraging mercenary weddings and not offering an alternative for those who cannot or will not bow their head for the pressure of the public’s opinion. Though Mona Caird portrayed the more extreme voice of feminism it should be noted that she in particular and the New Woman in general were not anti- marriage. As Ledger writes, ‘[...] the New Woman sought not to undermine the institution of marriage but rather to reform it’ (Ledger 22). For Caird ‘free love’, not to be mistaken with the 1960’s notion, was the most important notion in a relationship between two people.

People who love each other do not need the approval of the state or church and when their love should cease to exist they can simply go their own separate ways instead of being forced to live together against all natural feelings. Modern marriage was therefore a

‘vexatious failure’ in which both man and woman suffer instead of it being the foundation a society should be built upon.

According to critics like Lady Jeune or Lynn Linton, free love could only mean sex outside of wedlock. There is a case to be made for this assumption as knowledge about contraceptives was increasing, so sex could be practiced regardless of reproduction. In

London Society (1892) Lady Jeune laments about the liberties young girls of that day dare to take.

The young lady of to-day reads the newspapers, what books she chooses, and

discusses with equal frankness the last scandal and the latest French mode ; she rides

in the park unattended by a groom, but always with a cavalier; she drives unattended

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in hansoms; she dances with partners who do not care to be presented to her mother,

and she leaves her chaperon not to dance, with the real enjoyment of girlhood, but

to retire to some leafy corner of the ball-room, where she can, to use the modern

phrase, " sit out," instead of dancing. (Lady Jeune 608)

A girl and a boy together in a room without chaperone could apparently only lead to one thing. A similar depiction of the woman as man-hunter is given by Eliza Lynn Linton in a series of essay entitled ‘The Girl of the Period’ (1868).

[...] loud and rampant modernisation, with her false red hair and painted skin, talking

slang as glibly as a man, and by preference leading the conversation to doubtful

subjects. [...] though men laugh with her they do not respect her, though they flirt

with her they do not marry her [...] (Linton 3)

Both descriptions seem to suggest that the New Woman, or ‘Wild Woman’ as Linton mockingly calls her, has more in common with a prostitute than with the ‘Angel In The House’ which they take a woman should be. Mrs. Linton seems to take particular interest in the way the New Woman presents herself and she was not the only one. Cunningham wrote that

‘Early workers for women’s rights were sometimes worth passing a sneer, particularly as their appearance was assumed to be as unattractive as their opinions’ (Cunningham 36).

Especially the many masculine attributes with which the New Woman accessorises herself extract the necessary criticism “[...] dresses in knickerboxes or a boy shirt, who trails about in tigerskins, [...]” (quoted Ledger 17). In a satirical article ‘Character Note: The New Woman’

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(1894)25 a similar reading is offered of Novissima, a stereotypical Wild Woman, of who it is said that ‘One cannot make her blush. It is the other way around.’ (Character note 81).

Always close-fitting – always manly and wholly simple. Very little jewellery, and close

fitting hair.[...] Her attitudes strong and independent, indicative of a self-reliant spirit.

(Character Note 80).

These contradicting images of the woman as a prostitute in one case and as a man in another seem to suggest once more that it did not matter how the New Woman was ridiculed as long as she was ridiculed.

Although the sensationalist depiction of a tomboy who went about spreading the message of free love was probably good for sales, it was far from an accurate one. Ledger writes that activists like Millicent Garrett Fawcett ‘[...] had their sights set on constitutional, civic and economic rights rather than the sexual liberation of women.’ (Ledger 15) Women had to break a pattern they had been forced into by standing up for their most basic of rights.

John Stuart Mill addressed this very topic in his article The Subjection of the Women (1869).

Mill went a long way to defend women’s emancipation. In her book New Woman and the

Victorian Novel (1978) Gail Cunningham calls his work the ‘Bible of the feminists’ and goes as far as to say that the Suffrage Movement was dealt a ‘crippling blow’ with his death in 1873

(Cunningham 7 and 5). In his article Mill talks about the psychological pressure put on women to walk the same path as their foremothers had done.

All women are brought up from the earliest years in the belief that their ideal

of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government

by self- control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others. All the

25 The article was written for Cornhill magazine by an unknown author. 64

moralities tell them that it is the duty of women, and all current

sentimentalities that it is their nature, to live for others; to make complete

abnegations of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections. (Mill

132)

Mill attacks stereotypical notion of a woman’s nature and place in society. He claims that what many perceive to be their natural state, one of submission, is actually a result of nurture. The only thing women need to do to reclaim their real natural state is forget about everything they have been told from childhood on and reinvent themselves. Cunningham calls this ‘Spontaneous development’ (Cunningham 8).

For Caird this spontaneous development basically meant: go out and get a job. Many women may have found the idea of free love that she professes appealing but would still opt for a matrimonial life because of the social and economic implications. ‘A woman who rejected the marriage-tie had to run the risk of [a] fate as a poverty-stricken unmarried mother and social outcast’ (Ledger 16). This was one of the arguments often put forward by the defenders of marriage who did not see it as a limitation for women’s rights but a protection.

Without regulations founded on the principle of permanent and life-long unions, the

woman in a large number of cases would be deserted at the moment she became

unattractive to her husband, and after she had spent her beauty and her youth in the

bearing and bringing up of his children. (Quoted in Ledger 16)

Although it might seem strange now that a man would trade in his wife for a younger model, the idea was not so farfetched at the time. Economic independence was therefore a

65 condition sine qua non for the success of the New Woman movement. The struggle for more economic rights was not solely a phenomenon of the Fin de Siècle but was ‘the result of a natural development of the more modest advanced or modern women who [...] had been pressing for reforms throughout the century’(Cunningham 4). Women had gradually gained more and more rights with regards to their marriage and their financial position therein.

Among these reforms were the important and controversial Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 which enabled women to file for divorce without a special act of Parliament; the First

Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, which allowed women to gain right of the wages they earned after marriage; and The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882, which allowed them to keep possession of their property earned or acquitted before or after the marriage.

In order to get a proper job, education became more important as well. During the second half of the 19th century many new secondary schools for girls were founded, all committed to high academic standards, examinations and trained teachers. It was also possible for women to continue their education after secondary school in one of the nine women’s colleges.26 Enemies of the educated woman often called her the ‘Girton Girl’27 and claimed her to be a ‘desexualized half man’ (Ledger 17). Even though the vanguard of women’s rights did achieve some small successes in the educational and professional field in

19th century, these victories were only very slowly won as they had to fight many prejudices with regards to what a woman was capable of. In ‘An Appeal Against Female Suffrage’ which appeared in the June 1889 issue of The Nineteenth Century, Mrs Humphry Ward wishes to make a clear distinction with regards to the professions suited for women.

26 There were already nine colleges by 1897 though It should be noted that only women from the top layers of society were able to attend college.

27 A reference to Girton College, the first college for women, founded in 1869 by Emily Davies.

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To men belong the struggle of debate and legislation in parliament; the hard and

exhausting labour implied in the administration of the national resources and powers;

the conduct of England’s relations towards the external world; the working of the

army and the navy; all the heavy, laborious fundamental industries of the State; such

as those of mines, metals, and railways; the lease and supervision of English

commerce, the management of our vast English finance, the service of that merchant

fleet on which our food supply depends. (Ward 92)

Seeing as women do not posses either the sound judgement inherent to men or their physical strength, they cannot be expected to manage any of the important functions in politics or labour but this does not mean they should be excluded from all professional fields.

The care of the sick and insane; the treatment of the poor; the education of the

children; in all these matters, and others besides, [women] have made good their

claim to larger and more extended power. (Ward 93)

Ward seems to suggest that seeing as women had been taking care of members of their households all their lives they might as well crank it up a notch and do the same for those who have no daughter, wife or mother to fall back on. A noble cause perhaps but surely not one that feminists had in mind and on top of that one that was outdated. Women had always played an important role in domestic service and health care but they were also put at work in factories doing a man’s job throughout the nineteenth century. Furthermore,

Ward seems to be blind to the rapid changing technical innovations that helped create the modern metropolitan city. The rolling pin would soon make place for the typewriter and the new department stores needed saleswomen to serve the customer. Gradually new

67 opportunities were or would be arising but with them came new questions as how the New

Woman would combine her career with that other important function she had as a mother.

In The New Woman and the Victorian Novel Cunningham addresses the issue of motherhood by referring to a series of six articles entitled ‘Dies Dominae’ signed by a

‘Woman of the Day’28, which defended the ideals of the New Woman and places them against the opinions of Lady Jeune, who was given the right of rejoinder. Even though both parties are on opposite sides of the spectrum they do find some common ground to start on, namely that there seems to be a decrease in childbirth, but their explanation as to why is very different. The feminist supporters claimed that women had enough of the physical strain put on their bodies in the course of carrying and giving birth to a child.

The New Woman has seen enough to make her recoil with horror from the heedless

motherhood which was accounted for the glory of the instinctive woman. (quoted in

Cunningham 13)

The time had come for a mother to focus her attention on a smaller amount of children instead of giving birth to one after another, they no longer want to be regarded ‘[...] as a mere breeding machine [...]’(Cunningham 13). This was possible because, as mentioned above, knowledge about contraceptives was on the increase while the taboo surrounding it was steadily losing power. Dr George Drysdale was a pioneer in the plea for an open discussion about sexual matters. He devoted his book The Elements of Social Power or

Physical, Sexual and Natural Religion (1854) to the subject. In it he states that sex can be the cure for several diseases and it is thus for the sake of her health that a woman should have regular access to intercourse even outside of wedlock. Seeing as it might not be desirable to

28 These articles were printed in the Saturday Review in 1895. 68 get rid of one disease only to be ‘stuck’ with a child next, he pleads for the use of contraceptives, not only by those suffering an illness but also those who cannot afford to feed another mouth or women whose body could not handle the assault of yet another pregnancy.

Lady Jeune questions this sense of responsibility which the New Woman and her followers want to attribute to their cause and accuses them of egotism ‘The real fact is, that women do not have children because it is irksome and interferes with their amusements’

(Cunningham 13). Children would be a burden on women’s social lives and when they do happen to have children ‘They find but a stepmother's cold welcome from her [...]’ (Girl of the Period 2). Some critics like Charles Harper and Henry Maudsley before him, saw it

‘proven’ that intellectual exercise by women affects the reproduction organs and hence will have a negative effect on the future generations. Harper even claims it could lead to the

‘ultimate extinction of the race.’ (quoted in Cunningham 18). This was of course a gross overstatement and not the feminist’s goal who mainly wanted to strike the right balance between personal freedom and bearing a certain amount of children.

Despite these efforts to unsettle the Victorian readers about the ideas put forth by the New Woman, fact remains that by 1890 a good deal of progress had been made by the modern woman. She could receive an education, earn and spend her own money and could make her own choice about having children, either with or without the authority of a marriage licence, with a man of her own choosing. A lot of meaning is confined in the verb could at the beginning of the sentence for indeed in theory she could do all these things but the reality was slightly different. First of all the New Woman was a personage that was mainly found in novels and who was closely related to the Victorian upper class. Working

69 class women did not need to worry about being married to some old count or facing the bore of yet another stroll in the park with mother. They had problems of a very different kind , often shared by the working class man. Though even for the women of the upper class the New Woman remained more of an ideal than anything else.

The New Woman was held up as a symbolic figurehead for a type of social rebellion

which many women might concede to be generally desirable but personally

unattainable; yet since the New Woman rebelled essentially against personal

circumstances, the most effective way of portraying her was not in journalistic

summaries of her principle but in novels. (Cunningham 16)

Novelists who were fighting for the New Woman’s cause could counter the grossly overstated arguments and cartoonlike depictions by providing the reader with a more agreeable heroine, who still embedded the feminist values but in a less direct and offensive way. This creation of a new type of heroine was a liberating act for the novelist as well as he or she could now ‘[...] entail a franker approach to sexuality, and would open vast new areas of female psychology and behaviour [...]’ (Cunningham 17).

In what follows I will examine what stand Marie Corelli took with regards to the New

Woman and her ideals. By discussing some of her fictional and non-fictional work it will become clear that she places New Woman’s literature and its effects it had on the readers on the same line as Realism and Decadence. However, just like in the previous discussion

Corelli’s views will prove to be often ambiguous and contradictory as some of her characters and even Corelli herself share a lot of resemblance with the typical New Woman’s heroine.

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Corelli and the New Woman

To define is to limit.

[Lord Henry – Picture of Dorian Gray]

Marie Corelli seems to have kept this epigraph in mind at the beginning of her literary career as she wrote to her publisher that ‘I wish to prove I am capable of more than one style’ the audience will not know what to expect of me ‘[...] not two books of mine shall be in the least alike [...]’ (Corelli – Bentley correspondence 1 January 1887). Corelli kept word and went on to write hybrids of supernatural romances, revenge melodramas, gothic tales about reincarnation, science-fiction stories, and many more. When regarding her work, both fiction and non-fiction, it might be said that a similar claim could be made concerning her ideas on feminism and the New Woman. Here too, not two views seem to be similar and they often contradict each other.

There can be no doubt that Corelli held the capabilities of women in high regard. In her fictional work, many of her leading characters are progressive minded women who make a social commentary about gender or the role of the female in Victorian society. She had much respect for women who tried to find their own way in life especially when they occupied a professional position that was commonly gendered as masculine. In ‘Advance of

Women’ she seems to agree with Mrs Humphry Ward that women are best suited for teaching and inspecting of schools, but she also makes a case for female lawyers ‘- Portia’s with quick brains-’ and doctors (Free Opinions 199). Corelli is of opinion that ‘[...] there is hardly any vocation in which she [the woman] cannot, [...] distinguish herself just as easily and successfully as he [the man] can [...]’ (Free Opinions 190). She not only preached the gospel but put theory into practice. An often mentioned example is the fact that she insisted on being treated by the female surgeon Dr. Mary Scharlieb when she needed a hysterectomy

71 even though women doctors were not held in high regard (MacLeod Wormwood 19). Corelli herself was of course also a living example of how a woman could fight her way into a man’s world. The use of the verb fight is definitely in order here as she faced adversity and scorn on every step of the way. In the previous chapter about the New Woman I have already explained how critics of the New Woman would define her as being ‘unsexed’ in order to damage her cause, but the same was true for the female authors associated with the movement. Often the writer’s physical unattractiveness or sexual abnormality was more discussed than her work itself (Federico 22). Corelli similarly recognized the dangers of ‘[...] the unattractive, unsexed, and half-educated authoress and earnestly worked to contradict it.’ (Federico 22-23). In her battle against this negative imagery she used the weapons so familiar to her, the paper and the pen. Not only did she comment on many of the false accusations made by critics, Federico claims she acquired a reputations for her emotional responses as large as for her novels, but many of her novels star a female author who has to fight the prejudice of her male colleagues even though she possesses a far greater genius than they do. I will go into detail about several of these female characters later on during the discussion about Sorrows of Satan and Wormwood.

Judging by the actions and statements described in the previous section it might be suggested that Corelli could be labelled an ardent feminist were it not that she supported many conservative ideas in her written work as well. In ‘Woman’s Vote’ for example, she wrote that ‘Equality of the sexes is one of the advanced feminine war cries when everyone with a grain of common sense knows there is and can be no such equality’ (Quoted in

Federico 100). In ‘Advance of Woman’ she states that she should ‘detest’ to see women in

Parliament as they should not take part in ‘scenes’ (Free Opinions 201). She goes on to consolidate her opinion about women and politics by going against the woman’s right to

72 vote. In her article ‘Marie Corelli and Fin de Siècle Feminism’ Janet Galligani Casey pays special attention to the essay ‘Man’s War Against Woman’ (1907) in which Corelli claims that women do not need to vote as they already are the ‘head and front of government’

(quoted in Casey 172). The woman holds a great power over man as she is the one who brings him into the world. It is up to the woman to educate the man and teach him the right morals so that in his later life he will do good by her. If he should ‘chose’ to oppress her instead then this is nobody’s fault but her own.29 Casey points out the obvious contradiction in these statements and accuses her ‘not to have understood the feminist movement of her time at all.’

On one hand, she attempts to validate women by pointing out the empowering

aspects of their role; on the other hand, she degrades women by insisting that they

initiate their own victimization. (Casey 173)

Though Corelli might claim there is no such thing as equality between men and women, it does not mean that she takes women to be inferior. Federico tries to explain

Corelli’s notion of equality by saying that she is talking about different aspects of equality.

On the one hand she ‘[...]sympathize[s] with every step that women take towards culture, freedom, advancement, and the moral and intellectual mastery of themselves,’ but on the other hand these steps cannot entail copying the ‘masculine attitude’ that, to her, was so frequently seen in the New Woman and her writers (Man’s War 550).

29 After the WWI Corelli will review her ideas and become a supporter of the women’ right to vote. In ‘ Is All

Well In England? A Question’ (1919) she writes “By every law of justice they should have the vote – and I who, as a woman, was one against it, now must ardently support the cause.” (quoted in Moody 201)

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Let her imitate him in nothing but independence and individuality. [...] a woman who

wears mannish clothes, smokes cigars, rattles out slang, gambles at cards, and drinks

brandy and soda on the slightest provocation, is lost altogether [...] and becomes

sexless’ (Free opinions 203).

Federico believes that Corelli agreed with the New Woman’s politics but ‘[...] she views New Woman’s apparent betrayal of the feminine culture as a misguided allegiance with men [...] (Federico 103). A similar hypothesis is put forward by Casey who says that her objections are ‘[...] emotional rather than intellectual, based on a personal distaste for militant methods rather than a rational opposition to suffragist goals’ (Casey 173).

Women should not imitate men because they will only adore her when she is different to him. ‘When men are drunk, let women be sober[...] when men are turf-hunters and card-players, let women absent themselves from both the race-course and the gambling table[...]’ (Free opinions 204). When women are simply women, elegant and virtuous, they will not only be men’s equal but even raise above him. This very romantic and ambitious notion of womanhood is in stark contrast with the methods applied by the suffragettes, who walked the streets shouting their slogans, who had to be dragged away by the police to be put in jail and who, when they would refuse to eat in order to be set free, were force-fed via the nose. Corelli was abhorred by this ‘unwomanly’ behaviour, she proposed that women could only gain real power and influence through art and literature instead of flinging themselves under horses.

As to what the nature of this influence should be, there can be only one answer according to Federico, the moral kind (Federico 101). Corelli claimed that female writers had the duty to beautify life and morally uplift their readers. About Ardath she wrote to Bently ‘I

74 hope my last chapter may help to induce women to become as much as they can like Angels!’

(quoted in Federico 109). Corelli wanted to redefine the feminine by evoking women’s physical beauty and spiritual and intellectual independence’ (Federico 94) and therefore objected strongly to the themes and heroines put forward by the group that was dubbed the

‘New Woman novelists’ (Cunningham 3). This group of authors, who counted Hardy,

Meredith and Gissing in their ranks, depicted a naturalistic view on life which she considered to be ‘degrading’ and ‘debasing’ (quoted in Federico 101).30

It seems that Corelli had enemies to choose from. On the one hand there were the male competitors and critics whom she accused of taking every opportunity to ‘come down’ on her simply because she was a woman and on the other hand there was the New Woman novelist whom she accuses of ‘sexual decadence and spiritual decay’ instead of emphasizing the virtue in women (Crozier-De Rosa 421). Both adversaries got a full bashing in Sorrows of

Satan.

30 Corelli did not mention any of the New Woman’s authors by name and is thus not attacking Hardy, Meredith, or Gissing personally though she will not have approved of their style.

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The Sorrows of Satan and the New Woman

The Sorrows of Satan is a signature work of Corelli according to the description given by Rita Felski in Gender of Modernity. She claims that

The structure of a Corelli novel typically relies upon a chain of dramatic

confrontations, rapid changes of fortune, implausible coincidences and exotic

tableaux, concluding in a suspense-filled denouement. Figures are often allegorical

and emblematic, embodying quintessential aspects of the human nature rather than

psychologically individuated characters. (Felski 122)

The characters in Sorrows do seem to meet the description given by Felski. The protagonist, Geoffrey Tempest, for example can be seen as the embodiment of the stereotypical Victorian reviewer who defines a female author with success as ‘unsexed’ while in reality envying her for her genius. In Sorrows, Tempest’s literary adversary goes by the name of Mavis Clare and, as many male writers, he is convinced that her success is undeserved. When people try to persuade him of the contrary he simply dismisses the subject on the basis of her looks by saying ‘I suppose she must be extremely plain then’

(Sorrows 143).

Mavis Clare is however anything but plain. Corelli describes her as an unmarried, successful and attractive young woman, who is constantly slashed by the critics but revered by her audience. The first time Tempest sees her, he cannot believe she is the much acclaimed authoress who he secretly admires. ‘The novelist must be very different in appearance to that frivolous young person in white, whose dress is distinctly Parisian [...]’

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(Sorrows 223).31 In many ways Mavis Clare can be seen as Corelli’s literary double and the perfect example of what Corelli found a woman should be like in thought and action. As an author Mavis has ‘[...] clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction [...] united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skills [...] (Sorrows 173) and her novels were a

‘[...] haven of rest’ for those who read them. (Sorrows 412) The theories put forward in her novels are, according to Sibyl Elton, ‘strange poetic, ideal and beautiful’. The effect Mavis’s novels have on her readers are in the same line as what Corelli aimed to achieve with her own books as she wanted ‘to express “beautiful thoughts in beautiful language”’ (Felski 121).

The beautiful thoughts that Clare manages to provoke are placed in direct contrast with the English New Woman’s authors and French Realists whose influence was ‘[...] both cause and symptom of a wide-ranged moral malaise afflicting contemporary society’ (Felksi

121). Corelli portrays the dangers linked with the reading of New Woman’s fiction in the figure of Sibyl Elton. Crozier – De Rosa writes that Sibyl is

Both a New Woman and a victim of the New Woman in that she gains all her

unwomanly knowledge, sexual knowledge that leads her to her death, from New

Woman novels. (Crozier-De Rosa 427)

31 Corelli described a similar event in her own life with Edmund Yates who presumably told her on their first acquaintance.

You are not the least like what I fancied you might be [...] You don’t look a bit literary [...] You’ve taken

us all in! We expected a massive strong-minded female with her hair divided flat on each side [...] I’m

glad you are not that sort of person. I’m afraid I should never get on with a real ‘bluestocking’ (Corelli,

Last Day)

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Sibyl is very much aware of the effect this literature has on her but seems to accept it as a part of herself.

I have read all these books, - and what can you expect of me? Not innocence, surely! I

despise men, - I despise my own sex, - I loathe myself for being a woman! (Sorrows

202)

She sees herself as a cold-hearted creature yet it would perhaps be more accurate to see her as a highly sensitive person as she is unable to read a book without being affected by it. One might even say that ‘infected’ would be a better word to use here as Corelli often compares the influence of new literature to that of a disease. Sibyl herself says she is ‘[...] a contaminated creature, trained to the perfection in the lax morals and prurient literature of my day’ (Sorrows 202). The contamination by ‘modern’ ideas put forward by new writers, is aggressive, as the modern theories ‘filtered into my mind and stayed there’ (Sorrows 405).

Especially the poem ‘Before a Crucifix’ produced by Algernon Swinburne32 was ‘deadlier than the deadliest poison’ (Sorrows 406).

Apart from attacking the bad influence of the New Woman and Realist fiction, Corelli also points finger at the critics who encourage the taking of this poison as they ‘fall into raptures over [...] the originality of the ‘sexual’ theme [...]’ (Sorrows 306). When Sibyl’s husband, Geoffrey Tempest, makes a feeble attempt to cure her by throwing a ‘dirty’ book

32 Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was an English author, poet, critic and playwright. He was considered to be a decadent poet though he did not practiced what he preached. Oscar Wilde called him ‘a braggart in matters of vice, who had done everything he could to convince his fellow citizens of his homosexuality and bestiality without being in the slightest degree a homosexual or a bestializer.’ Everett,

Glenn. The Victorian Web: Literature, History & Culture in the Age of Victoria. 2000. Web. 1 May 2013.

78 she was reading into the sea, Sibyl very sympathetically expresses her hopes that it will not poison the fish, but he is unable, or unwilling, to do more. If she had any chance left to save her soul it was lost when she proclaims her love for Lucio Rimânez , Satan, and literally falls to her knees to worship him. Lucio of course rejects her and Sibyl decides to take her own life. Seeing as she kills her mind by reading literary poison it is only fitting that she kills her body by willingly swallowing the deadly content of a flask originally intended for her mother.

In the article ‘Moral Uncertainty and the Afterlife: Explaining the Popularity of Marie

Corelli’s Early Novels’ Nickianne Moody writes that Corelli was ‘unique amongst her peers’ in her visualisation of death. She calls her death scenes ‘[...] harrowing, drawn out, and very rarely sentimental’ and states that ‘Corelli retains an absolute conviction in life [...] beyond death’ (Moody 192). The chapter containing Sibyl’s suicide note can therefore be seen as a

‘typical’ Corelli as it has all the elements mentioned by Moody. In this note she not only tragically describes the events and people responsible for her death but also the visions of her deceased mother, implying that there might be an afterlife despite the fact that she has never believed in one. This realization drives her into a state of madness as she exclaims that

‘[...] I could have found Him had I chosen [...] ‘ (Sorrows 423). Instead of finding God however she finds the man whom she had chosen as her lover while she was still alive.

Even though Corelli makes quite clear throughout the novel that the influence of New

Woman literature is responsible for Sibyl’s downfall, it can be argued that there are other matters to be considered as well. For even though Sibyl seems at times to be depicted as a deviant person, she never is anything other than herself. After having married her, Geoffrey

Tempest laments that she ‘ [...] was a thing viler and more shameless in character than the veriest poor drab of the street[...]’ but the fact remains that Sibyl had warned him about her

79 inability to love from the very start of their relationship. (Sorrows 301). Right after they exchange their first kiss she says

Do you know what I felt? [...] Nothing! [...] I assure you, absolutely nothing! I cannot

feel. I am one of your modern women, - I can only think – and analyse. (Sorrows 200)

Tempest dismisses this notion easily enough for no matter how hard Sibyl tries to open his eyes, he remains blinded by her beauty and the prospect of being the envy among men.

After he regretfully discovers the content of the fair package he purchased, he does nothing but lament his own misfortune for having such a ‘shameless’ wife instead of helping her become pure again. Moody seems to pick up on this and writes that ‘There is a suggestion that it is the patriarchal lack of moral guidance from her father and husband that further contribute to her damnation.’ (Moody 199). I have to agree with Moody here especially when taking into account that Sibyl herself says that ‘[...] he has given me not one touch of sympathy [...]’ (Sorrows 400). Geoffrey can therefore not expect to get any in return. Sibyl treats her parents with a similar coldness and by doing so Corelli seems to take side with

Lady Jeune who mentioned in her article that ‘The respect for parents, the self-denial and self-abnegation, the modest reserve which used to be the characteristic of the “English miss” have disappeared [...]’ (Lady Jeune 608). However, like in the case of her husband the idiom

‘reap what you sow’ should be taken in account as she did not receive the most nurturing of upbringings.

Her mother Lady Elton had been, just like Sibyl, a leading beauty during her day. She left the care of her daughter to nurses and servants while she busied herself entertaining her many lovers. Lucio describes her as ‘rapid’ doing everything that could be done ‘by [a] woman at her worst and wildest’ (Sorrows 162). Helena, Countess of Elton seems to be the

80 embodiment of the sexual Wild Woman so dreaded by Lynn Linton but she is never condemned for her moral laxity. On the contrary, her husband turns a blind eye as the lovers often help pay off his debts and Corelli seems to suggest that this was not only common behaviour amongst the ‘upper ten’33 but expected as well. This is also pointed out by Sibyl in her suicide note. She is able to pin point her loss of childlike innocence when her parents took her to town in order to ‘[...] know something of the ways and manners of society’

(Sorrows 402). These manners were not to be called a lesson in morality as she goes on to describe several leading ladies who were openly affectionate with their lovers in front of her while the public took them ‘[...] to be the very patterns of virtue and austerity.’ (Sorrows

409). The slanting of the ‘upper ten’ is a recurring element in the novel, especially by two of its most notorious members, Lucio Rimânez and Geoffrey Tempest. After having climbed his way out of the gutter, or rather after having been giving a good push, Geoffrey Tempest often laments the hypocrisy that seems to be rooted in the aristocracy which he so desperately wants to be part of, as examined in the decadence section. During a moment of fleeting depression Tempest even longs for his days of poverty, when he could have aspired to true genius but because of his current position in society ‘[...] the necessity to hard work had been killed in me’ (Sorrows 246). Corelli suggests through Rimânez that money and genius are not compatible ‘[...] genius is the Up, money is the down’ (Sorrows 33). Again this could be perceived as a strange statement as Corelli was able to make more than a handsome living off her writing but the mistake must not be made as to look for Corelli’s voice in all of the comments made by Rimânez. In this case, Corelli is acting out against the

33 The ‘upper ten’ is an abbreviation for the Upper Ten Thousand, a phrase coined in 1852 by American poet

Nathaniel Parker Willis to describe the upper circles of New York, and hence of other major cities.

81 laziness of the wealthy who are only concerned for their own wellbeing while ignoring the wishes and needs of the lower classes.

According to one of Corelli’s biographers, Brian Masters, this moral superiority of the lower over the upper class should be seen in the green light of envy. ‘All her books vibrate with the pain of the underprivileged’ (quoted in Felski, 124). Felski agrees with Masters though she does not care for the condescending tone he displays towards his subject. Felski is of the opinion that readers were attracted to Corelli’s writing because she enabled them to get a glimpse of the glamorous life filled with lies and intrigues that was denied to them.

She writes that

[...] Corelli’s novels served a complicated array of psychological and social functions

for their working-class and lower-middle class readers. On the one hand, by reading

such novels they could indulge vicariously in those sumptuous commodities,

glamorous environments, and aristocratic lifestyles which otherwise remained

beyond their reach, partaking in an imaginary experience of luxury and pleasure. On

the other hand, the framing of such depictions by a rhetoric of moral condemnation

sanctioned their own positions, allowing them to gain comfort from the affirmation

of their modest way of life as ethically superior to that of the idle and the rich. (Felski

124)

In other words, let the bourgeoisie spend all the money they want on their immoral pleasures as long as they get the bill presented to them at the end of their lives. For both

Helena and Sibyl the corruption of their inner beauty becomes, much like in The Picture of

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Doran Gray, visible in that which they valued so highly, their outward beauty. To put it in

Lucio’s words after a visit to the Elton’s

Beauty combined with wantonness frequently ends in the drawn twitch, fixed eyes

and helpless limbs of life-in-death. It is nature’s revenge on the outraged body [...]

Eternity’s revenge on the impure Soul [...] (Sorrows 163)

Where a warm motherly embrace was denied, a strong fatherly hand was needed but this too Sibyl had to do without. Her father seems only interested in her as far as she can help him take care of his financial problems. The only way to do this is to have her marry a rich gentlemen. Sibyl’s reaction to this ‘Love, I suppose, is not to be considered in the matter?’ can be considered as somewhat naive and innocent, two qualities she would soon lose as the realization of being ‘for sale’ strikes her rather hard (Sorrows 404). She starts talking about marriage as if it were a commodity and according to Corelli this is exactly what it was, especially for upper class men and women.

In her article ‘The Modern Marriage Market’34 Corelli complains about the fact that all romantic notions seemed to have been taken out of marriage. Where it was once necessary to rescue a fair maiden from the claws of a vicious dragon in order to attain her father’s agreement to a wedding, it was now simply a matter of putting down the right amount of cash. ‘Nowadays we are married, both men and women alike, for what we have and not for what we are.’ Especially the role of the woman in marriage is contested by

Corelli. She portrays her as being nothing more than a slave ‘ [...] to be sold as any unhappy

Armenian girl that ever shuddered at the lewd gaze of a Turkish tyrant.’ (Marriage Market 3).

Corelli wants to break the pattern and, like any New Woman would have done, asks if there

34 This article was published in The Lady’s Realm in 1897. 83 are no better alternatives for marriage. ‘Is it too much to ask of them that they should refuse to be stripped to the bosom and exposed for sale in a modern drawing- room of the

“seasons”?‘ (Marriage Market 8). Sibyl Elton proves unable to withstand the pressure put on her by her father and peers. According to Moody ‘Sibyl conforms to patriarchal society, marries for money, and so is destroyed [...]’ (Moody 199). Sibyl willingly follows in her mother’s footsteps and can therefore, though she boasts the New Woman’s sexual knowledge, be seen as an Old Woman more than anything else. So when the question is raised as to who is the true New Woman in this novel, the answer may somewhat surprisingly be the person who would be least suspected, the talented author Mavis Clare.

According to Felski, Corelli offers the ‘hero’ Geoffrey Tempest two possible ways of life in the figure of two women.

On the one side is the glamorous Sibyl Elton, representing the decadence and

corruption of high society; on the other, the innocent and unspoiled writer Mavis

Clare : “the one sensual, the other spiritual, - the one base and vicious in desire, the

other pure-souled and aspiring to the noblest ends.” (Felski 128)

There has been some argument about the connection between Mavis Clare and

Marie Corelli. Phillip Waller writes in Writers, Readers & Reputations ‘That Clare was a narcissistic self-portrait was guessed by many critics’ (Waller 809). One of those critics, W.T.

Stead, attacked Corelli’s cameo appearance rather hard in his twelve page review in Review of Reviews

A leading figure in ‘The Sorrows of Satan’ is none other than the authoress herself,

Marie Corelli, who, like Lucifer, the son of the Morning, also appears under a disguise.

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But it is a disguise so transparent that the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not fail

in identifying it. (Quoted in Coats and Bell 175 -176)

The evidence for this claim is found in the identical initials, their profession and the fact that they both have dogs. Corelli herself always denied that she was her own inspiration for the successful writer in Sorrows and dismisses the similarities as coincidences. In their biography

Coats and Bell join sides with Corelli in the debate and state that ‘[...] the similarity of the initials was purely accidental.’ They go on to give a reasonable explanation as to the why of the initials.

The name [...] appeared in the proofs as ‘Mavis Dare’ and not Mavis Clare. [...] the

second name was suddenly altered, because it was pointed out to Miss Corelli that

the name was so very like the ‘Avice Dare’ of another writer. When these facts were

brought to Mr. Stead’s notice he did Miss Corelli the justice to apologize for the

statement which had been made in the Review of Reviews. (Coates and Bell 176 - 177)

I find it strange that Waller did not mention this in his section ‘The Demonic Dreamer’, dedicated to Corelli as he makes references to the book written by Coates and Bell on Corelli.

Even though their biography is very subjective and only aims to defend Corelli against her opponents, is it is peculiar that most authors who wrote an article or book on Corelli and

Sorrows leave out this bit of information.

In the same review W.T. Stead wrote ‘Mavis Clare represents Marie Corelli’s ideal of what she would like to be, but isn’t; what in her more exalted moments she imagines herself to be.’ (quoted in Coates and Bell 176). Judging by this quote, the identifying of Corelli as

Clare was not the only wrong interpretation made by Stead as I feel he completely missed

85 the point of the Mavis Clare character. Corelli was using Mavis, not to portray what she imagined herself to be, but as the perfect example of what an author and his/her books should be like. As already quoted earlier Mavis has ‘[...] clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction [...] united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skills [...] and her novels were a ‘[...] haven of rest’ for those who read them. (Sorrows 173 and 412).

Mavis Clare is seemingly portrayed as the antidote for the feminist and realist literature that goes about destroying young girl’s minds and lives but, even though their style and themes differ, Mavis does, much like Corelli, seem to have a lot in common with the New Woman characters. She is even met with the same kind of hostility so many feminists were treated with when they tried to trespass on men’s terrain.

Geoffrey Tempest for example, envies Clare for her talent and success. Where he has to buy advertising space and bribe critics in order to be proclaimed the ‘find’ of the season, all of this adding nothing to his sale records, she can simply write a novel, be slashed by the same critics and still sell over a hundred thousand copies without breaking a sweat. During a discussion with Rimânez he asks ‘Why should they [the public] choose Mavis Clare?’

(Sorrows 175). A question none of them have an answer too. Tempest therefore concludes that her success is undeserved.

Apart from being a successful author Mavis is also a great entrepreneur. As one of the guest during a dinner party at the Elton’s remarks ‘I hear she is a splendid business woman, and more than a match for the publishers all round.’ (Sorrows 142). She manages all of her affairs without the help of a man or husband as she is unmarried. Moody writes that

‘Mavis Clare’s non-conformity is permissible as she is presented as calm, financially independent, and autonomous.’ (Moody 199). The answer as to why she is not married can be found in an article by Corelli in which she states that ‘ I want you to give yourselves, [...]

86 without a price or any condition whatsoever, to the men you truly love, [...]’ (quoted in Coats and Bell 304). Mavis is still waiting, in a very romantic fashion, for her One and Only, and does not want to marry just anybody in order to be in fashion with the rest of Victorian society. This may sound old fashioned but as stated in the first part of this thesis, most New

Woman fiction did not seek to undermine the institution of marriage but rather to reform it.

The reformation in this case is that Mavis Clare refuses to marry out of necessity rather than love.

According to Felski ‘Female characters frequently engage in passionate tirades against male power and tyranny of marriage rather than placidly accepting their natural feminine roles’ (Felski 129). Though Mavis is not the one to hold passionate tirades against those who scold her, she has a more subtle and amusing way to avenge herself. She names the pigeons and owls in her backyard after the papers who take pleasure in abusing her books. She needs only to clap her hands and they come flying , circling around her head and landing at her feet anxiously awaiting the peas and corn she will give to them. Geoffrey cleverly remarks ‘In the way of the doves, you feed your reviewers’ (Sorrows 234).

Mavis Clare is the proof that there is such a thing as ‘feminine individuality’. Corelli calls this ‘a quality as plain and patent as ‘masculine individuality’ and though men will deny its existence, she encourages her readers to be and act like Mavis, to assert intellectual equality with men and even rise above him (Free Opinions 203). By doing so she urges them to act like the heroine she loves to hate, the New Woman.

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Wormwood and the New Woman

The figure of the New Woman is also present in Corelli’s Wormwood though here the references are made in a more subtle way than in Sorrows. Like in Sorrows we get the image of the innocent girl opposed to the impure witch, though the two seem to bear some resemblances as well.

Gaston Beauvais is, just like Geoffrey Tempest, a writer of novels though for him this is more a pastime then an actual profession. He has written two novels ‘[...] one a critical study of Alfred de Musset35, the other [a] high-flown sentimental novel [...]’ (Wormwood 82).

Though Gaston does not mention the exact content of his novels, it is clear from the small description that he is a follower of the Romantic Movement and not of the new school of

France. One other aspect he has in common with Geoffrey Tempest is his inability to see a woman a creature that can posses a certain genius. When Heloise St. Claire, a woman of superior intellect, tells him after having read his book that he does not understand women,

Gaston is deeply insulted. He labels her as a ‘femme savante’ a learned woman, which was a character he detested greatly and treats her as ‘a vastly inferior type of humanity’

(Wormwood 86). Again beauty is seen as superior to intellect. Gaston, resembling the general man of his day, amusingly ponders over the question of marriage and beauty.

Who marries a woman of intellect by choice? A stupid beauty is the most

comfortable sort of housekeeper [...] But a woman of genius [...] she is the person to

be avoided if you would have peace [...] (Wormwood 83)

Gaston prefers a pretty face over a pretty mind and falls head over heel with the beautiful

Pauline de Charmilles.

35 One of the first French romantic writers who wrote poetry novels and dramas (1810-1857). 88

Pauline is, just like Sibyl Elton, the ‘belle of the season’ who just returned to Paris from her school at Lausanne in Switzerland. Though she may have the physical appearance of a woman, in mind she is still a girl. Even Gaston Beauvais, who is very attracted to her admits that she is ‘[...]a mere babe in thought[...]’ (ibid.) She likes to read melodramatic love- stories, busies herself with society gossip, visits relatives and worships the marron glace.36

Thoughts of immorality or sin do not seem to occur to her mind as she keeps away from all

New Woman’s literature. She could therefore be seen as a symbol of innocence but she is corrupted none the less.

Where modern literature had thought Sibyl in Sorrows something about the world,

Pauline lacks this knowledge. Some parental guidance may have helped her to see distinction between feelings of friendship and love but it is ‘[...] by mutual parental head- nodding’ that she ‘is thrown into the society of young Beauvais [...]’ (Coates and Bell 113).

Beauvais himself also complains about the obviousness of the situation ‘Old fool! Why did he throw us together? Why did he not place obstacles in the way of our intercourse?’ The reason of course is simple and plain ‘He knew that my father was rich, and that I was his only heir, and he laid his plans accordingly.’ (Wormwood 80). Again love, to the parents, is of secondary importance and Pauline willingly accepts his proposal.

When she meets Silvion Guidèl, a priest in training, she recognizes her mistake but is powerless to do anything about it. She tells her family she goes to morning mass but secretly meets up with Guidèl in the forest where they go for long walks. Though Corelli does not specify what happened during these walks, her innocence is corrupted none the less as from

36 Sugar-coated chestnuts. 89 a religious point of view she committed sin with Silvion.37 Because of this sexual looseness, though we would no longer perceive it as such, Pauline can be, just like Sibyl, seen as a New

Woman even though she lacks the immoral influence of bad literature.

It could also be argued however that Pauline is not even a real, let alone new, woman.

Corelli wrote in Free opinions that ‘Accursed Eve has only to offer Coward Adam the apple, and he will eat it.’ (173) This metaphor is used to explain that women have a great power over man, up to the point that they can manipulate them into acting against their better judgement. Corelli condemns women who are not able to do this.

And I will not believe that there is any woman so feeble, so stupid, so lost to the

power and charm of her own individuality, as not to be able to influence quite half a

dozen men. (Free Opinions 173)

Pauline holds a great power over two men but is still too young to understand how she can use it to her advantage. Instead of a queen, she becomes a pawn in Beauvais’ game of revenge and in the end does not even break off the engagement in order to save face.

Pauline was willing to say ‘I do’ and accept Gaston as her husband in front of God, knowing full well she did not love him. For Corelli this is a great sin. In ‘The Modern Marriage Market’, written three years after the publication of Wormwood, she asked and answered the question of what marriage is.

37 Whether or not Pauline actually cheated on Geoffrey is not important according to Matt 5:28-29

‘But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ‘ In this case of course the lustful gaze is aimed at a man..

90

It is taking a solemn vow before the Throne of the Eternal [...] Nothing can make

marriage an absolutely sacred thing except the great love, combined with the pure

and faithful intention, of the human pair involved. (Marriage Market 3-4)

The human pair in this case had no intentions of upholding the duties and responsibilities that comes with marriage. Pauline’s thoughts were with Silvion while walking down the aisle towards Gaston, who was only thinking about revenge. By thus mocking the sacred sacrament both figures had to be condemned to a life of misery and in Pauline’s case suicide.

Perhaps if she had known more about the ways of the world, by picking up a modern novel for instance, she would have been able to manipulate her men into doing her bidding.

One woman who is able to keep her men under the thumb is the Absinth Fairy.

Though she is not a woman of flesh and blood, the influence she has on men is more powerful than any real woman could have. ‘Her whispers buzzed continually in my brain and

I never failed to listen [...] she clung to me, and I made no effort as I had no desire to shake her off’ (Wormwood 207). For Gaston she is more than a part of himself, she is ‘[...] my fairy with the green eyes, my love, my soul, my heart’s core the very centre [...] of my being!’

(Wormwood 334). The effects absinth has on Gaston’s mental state and morals reminds of the effect New Woman’s literature had on Sibyl as she said that the ideas ‘filtered into my mind and stayed there’ (Sorrows 405). Yet it seems, judging by what she wrote in about the influence women have on men, that Corelli terms this Fairy to be more of a woman than the innocent Pauline.

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Conclusion

Corelli had one objective at the beginning of her career, to proof that she was capable of more than one style and personally I think that she reached her goal. Just like

Shakespeare, whom she greatly admired, her novels can be read from various angles and even though scholars have judged her for her contradicting views on almost every literary school, I agree with Casey when she says that this is what makes Corelli such a fascinating author. She had the ability to give voice to feelings of fear and nostalgia of the lower, middle and upper-class Victorian. When analyzing her views on feminism Casey claims that

‘[...]she reflects the confusion of an entire generation of women, a generation

confronted at once with the suffragette movement and the decline of the feminine

ideal as perceived in the Victorian age.’ (Casey 164)

After reading Corelli in terms of feminism, this is the only conclusion that can be made. She may not have supported progressive visions as displayed by Caird but she sought to strike the right balance between her own romantic and the new, modern notions of the ideal woman. Waller states that ‘There is no one-size-fits-all definition of feminism within which an independent woman such as Corelli snugly settles’ (Waller 809). I would argue that this description was applicable to most Victorian women and that Corelli’s heroines, who were strong but god-fearing females, were characters they could relate to.

The same argument can be made for her attitude towards other literary movements, like Realism and Decadence, she attacked. During the 19th Century there was a general fear amongst the Victorians for the negative French influence on British society. That the English government took this treat seriously is shown in through the measurements taken against the translations of French literature and its English publishers. Yet at the same time the

92

English felt ‘[...]a fascination with the exotic, "depraved" aspects of [their] neighbours’

(MacLeod Fin-de-Siècle 67). Corelli displayed a similar contradicting attitude towards French literature. On the one hand she condemned the schools of Realism and Decadence for their immoral content and the negative influence it had on its readers but on the other hand she was attracted to it as she appealed to some of the movement’s representatives in order to obtain a review and even introduced the English public to the poetry of a notorious Absinth addict. Some of her novels, like Wormwood and Sorrows, could have competed with Wilde’s as far as decadent tropes are concerned.

Apart from going after those whose literature did not uplift the morals of the reader she also went for the critics, who slashed her because she was a woman with genius. Corelli may have overstated her role as a victim on certain occasions. She wrote in a very dramatic sense to Bentley ‘Now, my dear friend, has the “Press” ever lost an opportunity to ‘”come down” on me [...]’ (MacLeod Wormwood 374). Corelli was however not an isolated figure in the literary world and seemed even to take pride in the occasional bashing she received from the press. About Punch, with who she was on hostile terms, she wrote ‘I want to be jeered at by Punch! I want Punch to [...] give me the benefit of his inimitable squeak and gibber’ (Quoted in Waller 805). It is impossible to believe that she meant what she said, as her novels, are filled with frustration towards the literary society. Especially in The Sorrows of Satan she lashes out via protagonist Geoffrey Tempest who is at the same time a victim and perpetrator of a corrupt system. It may sound somewhat condescending but above all

Corelli desperately wanted to be recognised as part of the literary elite. She condemned

93

Oscar Wilde for his lifestyle but was flattered when he said ‘You certainly tell of marvellous things in a marvellous way’38 (Hartley 117-118).

Corelli wrote to Bentley in March 1887 ‘I must be myself [...] and if I write at all, I must be allowed to handle a subject my own way’ (Quoted in Federico 6-7). Being herself meant taking various stands on virtually every subject she wrote about while not acknowledging the obvious contradictions in her writings. The public adored her way for over three decades and took delight in the images she painted. She introduced them to new themes, that not just entertained but educated them as well. Corelli guided her audience into the 20th century and in her own way helped them embrace modernism, though it may not have been her modernism.

38 Oscar Wilde will later drastically change his opinion. During his imprisonment when asked about his opinion on Corelli’s writings he supposedly answered ‘from the way she writes she ought to be here’ (Stevens 139).

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