Christine: Or Woman's Trials and Triumphs

Notes

379 Notes 1. The references are all to popular romantic or gothic novels: Julia de Roubigne (1777) by Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831); Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) by Jane Porter (1776–1850); Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Anne Radcliffe (1764– 1823). This is the first of many references comparing Christie to Miguel de Cervantes’s hero in Don Quixote (1605). 2. Ps. 17:15. 3. Pizarro is a tragic melodrama by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816). 4. Town in Aroostook County, Maine. 5. The quotation is commonly attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754–1838), a French statesman known for his witticisms. 6. Cars: train cars. 7. In the Arabian Nights, Sinbad is carried from a shipwreck to safety by a roc, a giant mythological bird. 8. Founded in the mid-1840s, Woodland Vale was a fashionable suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, near Boston. 9. Stomacher: a vestlike lady’s garment worn over the chest and stomach. 10. In Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Mariana” (1830), the young maiden is “aweary ” and wishes for death as she waits for her lover, who has forsaken her. The Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais painted “Mariana in the Moated Grange” in 1851. 11. In Greek mythology, Argus was a monster with one hundred eyes ordered by Hera to guard the maiden Io from Zeus. 12. Charles-Paul de Kock (1793–1871), a French writer whose popular novels 380 Notes to pages 72–160 of Parisian life were generally considered inappropriate reading for young women of the period. 13. Isa. 42:3; Matt. 12:20. 14. Matt. 6:34. 15. A berthe is a collar, usually of lace, attached to the top of a low-necked dress, and running all round the shoulders. 16. Jer. 6:13–14. 17. From parables in Matt. 5:15, Mark 4:21, and Luke 11:33. 18. Eccles. 1:2. 19. In Greek mythology, Eris, the goddess of discord, threw a golden apple on the wedding table of Peleus and Thetis, stating that the apple belonged to whomever was the fairest. Zeus asked Paris to name the fairest, and Paris selected Aphrodite, who had bribed him with the promise of the most beautiful woman alive, Helen, wife of the king of Sparta. Paris took Helen from Sparta, sparking the Trojan War. 20. Luke 15:7. 21. John 8:1–11; Isa. 65:5. 22. Luke 7:19–22. 23. Ps. 121:1. 24. Job 19:25. 25. The nineteenth-century movement that argued for greater rights for women was known as “woman’s rights.” Woman’s rights advocates usually argued for women’s education, careers, suffrage, and an end to sexual double standards. 26. Matt. 5:11. 27. Matt. 13:38. 28. In the Old Testament, Miriam is a prophetess, the sister of Moses and Aaron, who helped to lead the Israelites from Egypt into the Promised Land. 29. Naiads are water nymphs in Greek mythology. 30. In the Old Testament, Uzzah was struck dead when he reached out to steady the Ark of the Covenant and in doing so touched the Ark, in violation of God’s law. 31. Essays of Elia (1823), written by Charles Lamb under the pseudonym Elia, covered a range of serious and humorous topics. 32. 1 Sam. 3:18. 33. Greek mathematician. 34. A reference to the last line of John Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness.” 35. Matt. 1:3. 381 Notes to pages 166–247 36. Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774), “The Deserted Village” (1770). 37. Matt. 10:37. 38. In biblical tradition, Anak had three sons who were the descendants of a race of giants. 39. Matt. 10:19; Luke 12:11–12; Ps. 81:10. 40. Gen. 3:16. 41. 1 Tim. 2:12; 1 Cor. 14:34–35. 42. Prov. 31:10–31. 43. Gal. 3:28. 44. 1 Cor. 11:5–6. 45. Acts 8:23. 46. Prov. 19:1. 47. Jenny Lind (1820–1887), known as the “Swedish Nightingale,” was an internationally famous soprano. 48. Fanny Kemble (1809–1893) was a famous British actress and an abolitionist. 49. Henriette Sontag (1806–1854) was a famous German opera and concert soprano. 50. Sappho, seventh-century Greek lyric poet and teacher; Demosthenes, fourth-century Greek orator; Alexander the Great, fourth-century king of Macedonia who conquered Persia. 51. Luke 9:62. 52. In the book of Esther, the king’s traitorous counselor, Haman, is incensed when he sees...