Marie Corelli: Science, Society and the Best Seller
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MARIE CORELLI: SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND THE BEST SELLER by Robyn Hallim A thesis presented in satisfaction of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Sydney May 2002 CONTENTS Acknowledgements i Abstract ii A Note on the Text iii PART I: SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND MARIE CORELLI Chapter 1: Science, Literature and Popular Culture 2 Chapter 2: The Lives of Marie Corelli 15 Chapter 3: The Novels of Marie Corelli 37 Chapter 4: A Critical View 52 PART II: CORELLI, SCIENCE AND RELIGION Chapter 5: Science and Religion: Spiritualism 75 Chapter 6: A Romance of Two Worlds 92 Chapter 7: Science and Religion: Progressive Evolution 128 Chapter 8: The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance 138 PART III: CORELLI, SCIENCE AND FEMINISM Chapter 9: The Woman Question 164 Chapter 10: My Wonderful Wife: A Study in Smoke 186 Chapter 11: A Question of Feminism 208 Chapter 12: The Secret Power 234 CONCLUSION 254 BIBLIOGRAPHY 258 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With gratitude to my mother who taught me to read Victorian literature, and to my father who had always hoped I would complete a university degree. My thanks to Judith Barbour, who introduced me to the significance of the interaction between late nineteenth-century science and literature, and to Rob Jackson, who helped me to identify the work of Marie Corelli as an example the uses of science in popular literature. A special thanks to the staff of Fisher Library at the University of Sydney, particularly those in the Inter-Library Loans Section, without whose assistance this thesis would never have been completed. I owe much to Sandra Tweedie, my mentor throughout my studies, who bravely undertook the tedious task of reading my draft thesis and making valuable suggestions. To my supervisor, Will Christie, my heartfelt thanks for his patient and expert guidance, and for being my psycho-analyst and friend for the past three years. I also thank my partner, Leslie Bastock, for his unfailing support and encouragement and for making all this possible - and me a kept woman. ii ABSTRACT Issues which faced Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries include the effects of new scientific theories on traditional religious belief, the impact of technological innovation, the implications of mass literacy and the changing role of women. This thesis records how such issues are reflected in contemporary literature, focusing on the emergence of popular culture and the best seller, a term which conflates author and novel. The first English best seller was Marie Corelli and, by way of introduction, Part I offers a summary of her life and her novels and a critical overview of her work. Part II of the thesis examines how the theory of evolution undermined traditional religious belief and prompted the search for a new creed able to defy materialism and reconcile science and religion. Contemporary literature mirrors the consequent interest in spiritualism during the 1890s and the period immediately following the Great War, and critical readings of Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds and The Life Everlasting demonstrate that these novels − which form the nucleus of her personal theology, the Electric Creed − are based on selections from the New Testament, occultism and, in particular, science and spiritualism. Part III of the thesis looks at the emergence of ‘the woman question’, the corresponding backlash by conservatives and the ways in which these conflicting views are explored in the popular literature of the time. A critical examination of the novella, My Wonderful Wife, reveals how Corelli uses social Darwinism in an ambivalent critique of the New Woman. Several of Corelli’s essays are discussed, showing that her views about the role of women were complex. A critical analysis of The Secret Power engages with Corelli’s peculiar kind of feminism, which would deny women the vote but envisages female scientists inventing and operating airships in order to secure the future of the human race. Interest in Marie Corelli has re-emerged recently, particularly in occult and feminist circles. Corelli’s immense popularity also makes her an important figure in cultural studies. This thesis adds to the body of knowledge about Corelli in that it consciously endeavours to avoid spiritualist or feminist ideological frameworks, instead using contemporary science as a context for examining her work. iii A NOTE ON THE TEXT Parts of this thesis contain close literary criticism of a number of Marie Corelli’s works. To assist the reader, references to these works are inserted directly into the text of the thesis. The following abbreviations are used for the works discussed in detail: FOFE: Free Opinions Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct. Constable, London, 1905 LE The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance. Methuen, London, 1911 ‘Little Bit’: My ‘Little Bit’. Collins, London, 1919 MMM: ‘The Modern Marriage Market’ in Marie Corelli et. al., The Modern Marriage Market. Hutchinson, London, 1898 MWW: My Wonderful Wife! A Study In Smoke, 1889. Rpt: with Vendetta! The Story of One Forgotten. International Book Company, New York, N. D Romance: A Romance of Two Worlds, 1886. New edition, Bentley, London, 1887 SP: The Secret Power. Methuen, London, 1921 SS: The Sorrows of Satan, Or, The Strange Experience of One, Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire, 1895. Rpt: Peter Keating, ed. Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford, 1998 Suffragette?: Woman, or− Suffragette: A Question of National Choice. C. Arthur Pearson, London, 1907 PART I: SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND MARIE CORELLI As a writer, she stood quite apart from the rank and file of modern fictionists . The public responded to her voice and clamoured for her work . Whatsoever munificent and glittering ‘terms’ are dreamed of by authors in their wildest conceptions of a literary El Dorado, were hers to command; and yet she was neither vain nor greedy. She was, strange to say, though an author and a ‘celebrity,’ still an unspoilt, womanly woman. Marie Corelli, The Murder of Delicia, Hutchinson, London, 1896, pp. 3-4. CHAPTER ONE: SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE 2 I: THE RISE OF POPULAR CULTURE It is always hazardous to attempt to categorise retrospectively any period of time, regardless of the criteria selected. The issues facing the late Victorians and the Edwardians − issues like the effects of new scientific theories and discoveries on traditional religious belief, the impact of massive technological innovation, the need for social reform, recognition of women’s changing role and the implications of mass literacy − are easy enough to identify. Yet the earliest conflicts between science and religion had erupted, long before Darwin, with Copernicus in the 1500s, and the origins of the social upheavals of the late Victorian era are to be found in the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Moreover, just as the seeds of the Great War of 1914-8 lay within the technology displayed at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London, in 1851 and the industrial capitalism it celebrated, so the Great War itself gave rise to the social and technological changes which characterised the twentieth century. Nevertheless, significant change had been taking place from the middle of the Victorian era. Education was made compulsory by Forster’s Elementary Education Act of 1870 and made free by the Education Act of 1902. Middle class women were demanding access to higher education, with the result that Queen’s College for Women was founded in London in 1848 and Girton and Newnham Colleges in Cambridge in 1869 and 1871.1 Public libraries, intended to encourage working people to develop sober and refined reading habits, were enabled under legislation and opened in the big industrial centres and in London in the 1850s.2 The Scottish/American industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, created a trust which contributed significantly toward the establishment of public libraries in every British county. The railway ‘mania’ of 1846-48 saw hundreds of miles of railway tracks laid every month, engendering unprecedented workforce mobility.3 The popularity of travel as an educational and recreational activity during the second 1 The chronology appended to J. A. V. Chapple’s Science and Literature in the Nineteenth Century, Macmillan, Houndmills, 1986, pp. 163-181, is the source of the dates given in the preceding sentences. 2 Alistair Black, A New History of the English Public Library: Social and Intellectual Contexts, 1850-1914, Leicester University Press, London, 1996, pp. 39 and 21. 3 Kathleen Tillotson, Novels of the Eighteen-Forties, Clarendon, Oxford, 1954, p. 107. 3 half of the century and the simultaneous evolution of the commuter (the first underground railway was opened in 18904) not only extended the social opportunities available to individuals but also had economic repercussions. An educated, affluent and mobile public which had leisure time on its hands demanded more reading material and there was an explosion in the numbers and variety of newspapers, magazines, journals and novels published in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century.5 The periodicals had huge readerships; Cornhill Magazine, for example, sold about 100,000 copies each month.6 Many of them derived their success from publishing novels in serial form, the best known examples being those by Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell in Dickens’s own weekly periodicals Household Words and, later, All the Year Round. The increased demand for reading material was recognised by W. H. Smith who, after opening the first railway bookstall at Euston station in London in 1848, went on to capitalise on the railway boom by opening bookstalls all over the country. Smith added lending sections to his bookstalls, but his success was soon eclipsed by that of Charles Mudie, the most influential operator in the circulating library business.