Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul, by Marie Corelli

9781934555682
Valancourt, 2009
originally published 1897
184 pp

paperback

"In certain men and women spirit leaps to spirit, -- note responds to note -- and if all the world were to interpose its trumpery bulk, nothing could prevent such tumultuous forces rushing together."




Think what you will, but I love Marie Corelli's novels, at least the few I've read so far, with others waiting for my attention on their shelves.  The critics of her day had little nice to say about her work, but her reading public loved her, from "the eccentrics at society's lower end" to Queen Victoria herself.  One Corelli scholar notes that more than half of her novels were "world-wide best sellers," with more than an estimated 100,000 copies selling annually for several years.  Corelli's  1895 The Sorrows of Satan, according to Annette R. Federico in her book Idol of Suburbia: Marie Corelli and Late-Victorian Literary Culture, had an "initial sale greater than any previous English novel," selling twenty-five thousand copies its first week with and fifty thousand over the next seven weeks (2000, University Press of Virginia, 7).  Curt Herr, in his introduction to this Valancourt edition of Ziska, notes that 1897 also saw the publication of Stoker's Dracula and Richard Marsh's The Beetle, and that Corelli  outsold "Stoker and Marsh by the hundreds of thousands" (xi), which sort of begs the question as to why today she is all but forgotten, which is a true pity.



1897 original edition, from WorthPoint

There is no messing around as the story begins; the prologue puts us in the Egyptian desert of long ago, on a night when  "the air was calm and sultry; and not a human foot disturbed the silence."  A "Voice" breaks the stillness towards midnight,  "as it were like a wind in the desert," crying out for
" 'Araxes! Araxes!' and wailing past, sank with a profound echo into the deep recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb. Moonlight and the Hour wove their own mystery; the mystery of a Shadow and a Shape that flitted out like a thin vapour from the very portals of Death's ancient temple, and drifting forward a few paces resolved itself into the visionary fairness of a Woman's form -- a Woman whose dark hair fell about her heavily, like the black remnants of a long--buried corpse's wrappings; a Woman whose eyes flashed with an unholy fire and waved her ghostly arms upon the air."  
Flash forward to contemporary Cairo, where "full season" is in swing, where the "perspiring horde of Cook's 'cheap trippers' " have flocked for their holidays. We are introduced to one such group of British tourists, some of whom are in the lounge of the Gezireh Palace Hotel discussing  the arrival of the famous French painter Armand Gervase while others are preparing for a costume ball.  Expectations are highest, however, over the attendance at the ball of a certain Princess Ziska, of "extra-ordinary" beauty.  As the festivities begin and Gervase and the Princess meet, he is stunned:
"There was something strangely familiar about her; the faint odours that seemed exhaled from her garments, -- the gleam of the jewel-winged scarabei on her breast, -- the weird light of the emerald-studded serpent in her hair; and more, much more familiar than these trifles was the sound of her voice -- dulcet, penetrating, grave and haunting in its tone."
Ziska captivates this small group of tourists with her dazzling beauty and stories of ancient Egypt, but none more so than Gervase, who begins to believe himself in love with her, and  Denzil Murray, whose sister Helen knows that his obsession with the princess will eventually come to no good.  After confiding her woes to keen observer/researcher Dr. Dean of their party,  he notes that they have been caught up in "a whole network of mischief, " and that the
"...spider, my dear, -- the spider who wove the web in the first instance, -- is the Princess Ziska and she is not in love! ... She is not in love with anybody any more than I am. She's got something else on her mind -- I don't know what it is exactly, but it isn't love."
 As Gervase, as the back-cover blurb states, becomes more and more "haunted by strange and distant memories of her" over the short time in which this story occurs, it will become ever clearer exactly what it is that Ziska has on her mind.

The pulp/supernatural/gothic/occult-fiction reader in me of course positively swooned over Ziska, and if story alone was what it had amounted to I would have been happy enough.  Although I knew eventually what was going to happen here, it didn't matter -- the novel makes for an intense, compelling read.   But of course, there's always more that is not-so hidden under the surface with Corelli, whose beliefs often make their way into her work as debate between characters, and this book is no exception.  She begins right away with a look at the cultural imperialism of her day before tackling upper-class society, love, marriage, gender, and  her stock in trade, the undying soul.  Curt Herr has provided an excellent introduction that discusses all of this and more, including brief comparisons to the two other novels published the same year that I mentioned above.

'tis an old book, but a fine one, and I loved every second of it.  I really can't ask for more.

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

in which the angel in the house becomes delightfully devilish: The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs, by Florence Marryat

9781241582876
British Library Historical Print Editions, 2011
originally published 1896
339 pp

paperback



"It isn't all jam to have a medium in the house..."



H.G. Wells evidently didn't care for this book, saying that it was  "absurd," and that rather than "transfiguring Spiritualism," as was its intention,  it made Spiritualism to seem a "highly dangerous and idiotic pastime."   
Another reviewer from The Academy (1896) also criticized it, commenting that if "this volume was intended to commend spiritualism to unbelievers," it would more likely, in his opinion, "confirm them in their scepticism."

I settled on this book as an October read because I was looking for a novel with a séance, so when I found this one, I was a happy camper.   I'm a fangirl of Florence Marryat's novels and this book is one of hers that I hadn't yet read. 

Author and scholar Michael Sadleir, as quoted in Sutherland's  The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Pearson, 2nd ed, 2009) said about Marryat's  work that it was  "dangerously inflammatory fiction, unsuitable for reading by young ladies..." which was my original invitation to read her works, and I have to say that in this case he was probably correct.  (416)  This is one of the most lurid supernatural Victorian novels I've encountered up to now, and unlike the two contemporary reviewers quoted above who seemed to have missed the point,  I quite liked it.  The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs ticks more than just a few of my reader boxes:  it is the story of a vengeful ghost, has the feel of a sensation novel cloaked in spiritualist garb but turned completely on its head, and it simultaneously engages topics and themes of fin-de-siècle New Woman literature.   It's also fun -- what more can I ask?

The story is centered around a natural spirit medium,  young Hannah Stubbs.   It seems that around Hannah, the furniture "dances,"  "shadders" appear, and "woices" haunt her at night.  Her mediumistic powers are so strong that they completely disrupt life in the family  home in Shropshire, providing the reason for "many a beating." They've also come between her and her young man  Joe Brushwood, to whom she had promised that she would try to stop "raising them sperrits." It's a promise she is unable to keep, however, and things get so bad that her mother feels she has no alternative but to find her a position in service with a family friend in London, a Mrs. Battleby.    Poor Hannah wishes for a normal life so she can go back to the country and to Joe,  but she is unable to stop all of the phenomena, no matter how much she wants to.

Enter Mrs. Battleby's lodger, Professor Ricardo, formerly the Marquis of Sorrento before exile and the relinquishment of his title.  While Mrs. Battleby  is constantly on the verge of turning Hannah out because of the disruptions in her home,  the Professor is fascinated.  As it happens, the death of his wife Leonora has left him wishing he could speak to her again (for reasons I won't mention here), and he has turned to an intense study of "the Art of Magic" to make it happen.  He  has also constructed a "séance room" in a part of his lodgings, and it is there that he shuts himself in to "burn the differing incenses recommended in the books of Magic," waiting to commune with spirits.  After he witnesses firsthand the phenomena that follows Hannah, he tells Mrs.  Battleby that Hannah is a "victim to what we call hysteria," and that if Hannah agrees, he will "undertake to cure her."   Eventually he also convinces Hannah that under his guidance, and that of his friend Dr. Steinberg,  she would be "quite cured of the annoyance she objected to."   Thus begins a series of "experiments," designed to heighten Hannah's powers while she sleeps (shades of Trilby!) to take them even further, with the aim of bringing forth the spirit of Leonora at his beck and call.  However,  a misunderstanding on the landlady's part gets both Hannah and the Professor tossed out of Mrs. Battleby's home; neither her mother nor Joe will have her back, so Ricardo decides that it would be beneficial to both if he and Hannah marry.




original title page (obviously I took this, as it's blurry)

At this point is where this story really begins, and we follow Hannah as she is molded and shaped by both men to suit and to exploit their own needs and desires.   What neither men realize, however, is that once they've opened the door, there is no going back; they will be left to  deal with the "transfiguration" fallout and neither are prepared for what comes next.  As both will discover, "it isn't all jam to have a medium in the house."

I think I might agree that on the face of it the plot, as Wells so eloquently put it, may seem "absurd," but there is method to Marryat's madness here, as there is in many of her later novels.  There is so much at work here under the surface that I could never  cover it in a short post; suffice it to say that this could easily be included in a study of Victorian women's  fin-de-siècle literature.  The novel is delightfully subversive,  it makes for fun supernatural reading, and I can't help it -- I am a huge fangirl  of  novels in which there are séances.  I got way,way more than I bargained for here.

Recommended, certainly, especially for aficionados of more obscure Victorian supernatural tales. 




October again




...my favorite part of the reading year. 












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