Sex Scandal, The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction by William A. Cohen, and: Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Puzzles in 19th-century Fiction by John Sutherland, and: Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? More Puzzles in Classic Fiction by John Sutherland (review)

BOOK REVIEWS William A. Cohen. Sex Scandal, The Private Parts ofVictorian Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. 256p. John, Sutherland. Is Heathcliffa Murderer? Puzzles in 19th-century Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 258p. John, Sutherland. CanJane Eyre Be Happy?More Puzzles in Classic Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 232p. Carol A. Martin Boise State University Very different in some ways, these books nonetheless have at least two things in common: they focus on Victorian fiction (and a bit ofthe territory before and after, in Sutherland's second book), and they quickly moved beyond academic circles to receive acclaim, and for Cohen, even notoriety, in the popular press. Although Sex Scandal has provoked righteous indignation from some, less resisting readers will find in Cohen witty and insightful consideration of the unspeakability ofVictorian sex/Victorian texts. He looks particularly at four texts, Great Expectations, The Mill on the Floss, The Eustace Diamonds, and The Portrait ofMr. WH. and at "an archtypal scandal, the case ofErnest Boulton and Frederick Park" (73), who were arrested in 1870 for cross-dressing and then charged with sodomy. In his chapter on Oscar Wilde, Cohen also discusses the prosecution's attempts to use literature as damning evidence in Wilde's criminal trials, and Wilde's defense, including the argument that letters he wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas were literary texts and therefore not susceptible to the determinacy required ofcourtroom evidence. While the comments I've read in the popular press seem excited most by the chapter that discusses masturbation in Dickens, "Manual Conduct in Great Expectations," I was personally more stimulated by those on The Mill on the Floss and TheEustace Diamonds, particularly the former, with its narrative complexities as Eliot condemns the prurient and destructive interest in gossip by the novel's characters and yet appeals to the reader's simultaneous sense of superiority to SPRING 1998 «ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 73 scandal and fascination with it. Eliot sees the St. Ogg's gossipmongers as vulgar, Cohen argues provocatively, borh because ir judges irs vicrim on appearance and because ir speaks on behalf ofwhar ir rhinks orhers wish to hear. Precisely to the extent that she condemns this practice, moreover, Eliot depicts the savory pleasures to be had in humiliating one's neighbor. As much as the narrator evokes scandal's disciplinary function , that is to say, the novelist relishes showing us its titillations. The most earnest of Victorian novelists is thus the one to afford us the fullest account of scandal's flesh-tingling delights. (143) Cohen analyzes the pervasiveness of public opinion in the narrative, from the judgment ofMr. Rappit, the hairdresser, on the child Maggie's self-administered haircut to St. Ogg's condemnation ofthe adult runaway who still fails to anticipate the role, or even read the presence, of public opinion. He also examines the gendered nature ofSt. Ogg's judgments throughout the novel (not merely in the famous section on The World's Wife), and the internal contradictions of Eliot's narrator on the matter of maxims. "Trollope's Trollop," Chapter 5, argues that the narrator in The Eustace Diamonds is, on the other hand, complicit with the scandal-loving public that forms the audience within the novel for Lizzie Eustace's manipulation ofboth the diamonds and her lovers. And, finally, "Indeterminate Wilde," Chapter 6, brings together Cohen's arguments about indeterminacy in literature (and, forWilde, in criticism as well) and Wilde's resistance therefore to the court's attempt to determine his sexual guilt through textual "evidence." Given the scholarly nature ofthe book, there is a particular irony in the way in which this book on scandal has aroused precisely the responses that Cohen says scandal provokes; which only goes to prove the point ofthe "Afterword," that "we still belong within the culture ofscandal." The popularity ofSutherland's best sellers comes from a different but no less delightful human pastime, the pleasure ofsolving puzzles. He discusses not only the Victorian texts referred to in his titles, but some that Cohen analyzes in more detail {GreatExpectations, TheMillon the Floss, The Picture ofDorian Gray), along with Anne Bronte's Tenant ofWildfell Hall, and Fanny Hill, TomJones, Mansfield Park, Emma, PickwickPapers, Oliver...