Victorian Popular Literature

31:3 Book Reviews of ideology." Yet the cumulative effect of Feltes's analyses is to suggest that the individual commodity-text cannot withstand the ideological pressures exerted by economic stractures. Is this more true of the novel than of other literary genres? Such questions fall outside the scope of this perhaps too nanowly focused study. Still, Modes of Production of Victorian Novels is an important, pioneering application of Marxist theory which should at the least alert its readers to the naive assumptions marring most studies of publishing practices, and all too many analyses of literary texts. Patricia Thomas Srebrnik Gettysburg College VICTORIAN POPULAR LITERATURE Beth Kalikoff, Murder and Moral Decay in Victorian Popular Literature. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986. $39.95 "There's the scarlet thread of murder ranning through the colourless skein of life"—Sherlock Holmes's remark reveals a late-century lassitude that can be enlivened only by solving the puzzle that murder presents. Beth Kalikoff s study of Victorian street literature, melodrama and the popular novel identifies three separate stages in the growth of sophistication in attitudes to murder. Before the mid-century, killers in ballads and hack writing are monsters in human form and their crimes are revealed in bloody detail. But like the greedy or social-climbing villains of melodrama, they are punished, usually after an extravagant repentance. Particularly in these forms, Kalikoff argues, there is a fear of women's sexuality, and female victims are often seen as partly to blame for their own deaths. But in Oliver Twist and Mary Barton, murder is rooted in the social environment and is inseparable from it. In the middle period of 1850-70, murder is perceived as more prevalent and more disquieting. Public interest centered on demure or plausible criminals like the poisoners Madeline Smith and Dr. Palmer. The latter totalled at least 12 victims and remarked roguishly on the gallows, "I am innocent of poisoning Cook by strychnia ." As to melodrama, the heroine of Lady Audley's Secret is charming enough to deceive almost everybody and is only caught by chance, while Hawkshaw, the detective of The Ticket-of-Leave Man, is not always infallible. In the great novels of the period, guilt is pervasive, and the reader too is charged in the famous "Dead, men and women, bom with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day." By the later decades of the century, Kalikoff finds that "journalism, melodrama and fiction present a range of murders that show criminality taking shape in middle class homes or minds." Murder has become sometimes a game, sometimes an imperative, and "all roads lead to crime." Basing her conclusions mainly on Conan Doyle, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 383 31:3 Book Reviews Marie and Robert Leighton's Michael Dred, Detective and Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery, Kalikoff sees in late Victorian fiction "a disintegration of faith in human nature and despair at the prospect of curbing crime." From here it is just a step to the nihUism of twentieth century crime literature. Much of what Kalikoff writes is incontrovertible, and it should not much amaze us to discover that Mrs. Gaskell's or Dickens's treatment of murder is more complex than that of the contemporary ballad hacks. It is interesting to come across, in Sweeney Todd or sweet Fanny Adams for instance, names which have passed into the language but whose origin is now generally forgotten. But the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction are not easy to define. Some of the nonfictional accounts of murders and hangings can still scrape a nerve after more than a century, but this is probably where quasi-novelistic skills have been deployed. Kalikoff quotes Henry Mayhew quoting a gallows-journalist on Maria Manning's execution: "Every day I was anxiously looking for a confession from Mrs Manning. AU I wanted was for her to clear her conscience afore she left this here whale of tears (that's what I always calls it in the patter), and when I read in the papers. . . . that her last words on the brink of heternity was 'I've nothing to say to you, Mr...