Wives and Daughters (109 page)

2
,. (p. 44)
the fable of the lap-dog and the donkey
: In this fable from Aesop, a donkey, who is envious of the petting the lap-dog receives, tries to get similar attention but is beaten instead. Osborne is more like the lap-dog, delicate and much petted, while Roger, though neither beaten nor neglected, is more like the donkey in being larger and less doted on by his mother. The sons are metaphorical opposites: Osborne is associated with culture and refinement, Roger with nature and a constitutional hardiness.

3
(p. 47)
the pomfret cakes, and the conserve of hips, and on Sundays he shall have a taste of tamarinds:
Mr. Gibson is somewhat making fun of his old acquaintance, who had asked Mr. Gibson to give his son preferential treatment. The father is unhappy that his son’s apprenticeship would include the making of pills (medicine often was manufactured and sold by doctors), but this is an essential task for a young apprentice. Mr. Gibson’s assurance that he will be given pomfret cakes, conserve of hips, and tamarinds is a sardonic one. It sounds as if he is promising that he will have many pleasures—cake, conserves, and tamarind, which was often made into a candy—but the three entities are also related to medicine: Pomfret cakes are licorice lozenges, conserve of hips is not a jam but a pill-manufacturing substance, and tamarind, besides being used in some candies, was also prized in the nineteenth century as a laxative.

1
(p. 75)
time of Queen
Anne: Queen Anne reigned from 1702 to 1714; because she had no heirs, Parliament created the Act of Settlement, which made her successors the Hanoverian descendants of King James I of England, events that are understood as the beginning of the modern British state. By asking where the Cumnors were in the time of Queen Anne, Squire Hamley is implying that their status as members of the peerage, or aristocracy, is a new one, in contrast to his own ancient if untitled family. This is an early but important reference to the way in which the Hamleys represent ancient English traditionalism and the Cumnors represent progress and newness.

1
(p. 160)
withes of green
flaxe: A biblical allusion (to Judges 16) that Molly does not understand. Samson had allowed Delilah to bind him, but he broke through the bonds easily. Here Lady Harriet is suggesting that Molly will be able to thwart her stepmother’s strictures if she wants to do so. The allusion directly contradicts what Lady Harriet then says out of prudence: “Be a good girl, and suffer yourself to be led.”

1
(p. 191)
he has been spending ever so much money in reclaiming that
land...
and is very hard pressed himself:
Mrs. Hamley is here referring to the improvements that Squire Hamley is making to his estate, a process of land reclamation that includes draining land to make it farmable (and thus able to be rented out). This capital improvement will double the value of the estate, but the expenditure required to implement it is threatened by the debt that Osborne has run up. The work is referred to below as “the draining-works.”

2
(p. 199)
like Major Dugald Dalgetty
: Mr. Gibson is referring to a character in a novel by Walter Scott,
A Legend of Montrose
(1819). Major Dugald Dalgetty is a soldier who claims that a soldier should eat whenever the opportunity arises, as he never knows when he will be able to dine again. Gibson’s reference is an indirect criticism of Mrs. Gibson’s running of the household, which he had hoped would be regularized for his comfort when he married.

1
(p. 259)
Catholic emancipation had begun to be talked about by some politicians:
Osborne’s wife, Aimee, would be considered an unsuitable wife for Osborne for a number of reasons, including her class status, her national origin, and particularly her religion. Here the narrator is alluding to the fact that when the novel is set (in the late 1820s) the question of “catholic emancipation” was under discussion but had yet to be settled. After the Reformation in England all non-Anglicans were discriminated against in not having the right to vote or hold public office; since 80 percent of Ireland was Catholic, the discrimination against Catholics was deeply felt there. The “Catholic Emancipation Bill” of 1829 encountered wide public disapproval, an opinion that Osborne understands would have been shared by his father. After 1829 Catholics could become members of Parliament and were eligible for most but not all public offices; however, one of the concessions made in the process of enacting the bill was that the land requirement for the right to vote in Ireland was increased, which drastically decreased the electorate in Ireland.

1
(p. 265)
comparative osteology
: Osteology is a discipline that studies the structure and arrangement of bones. Comparative osteology—a branch of study central to the evolutionary debates that circulated in the decades prior to Charles Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species
(1859)-was concerned with the likenesses and dissimilarities among various species (especially apes and humans).

1
(p. 290)
Could it be the duchess?
: The people at the ball had been anticipating all evening the arrival of the family from “the Towers” and their guest, a duchess. In particular, as is repeatedly mentioned, they had hoped to catch sight of her “diamonds” and “coronet.” The duchess, who arrives with flowers rather than jewels adorning her person, not only disappoints but offends the ball-goers. In the hierarchy of the nobility, dukes and duchesses ranked the highest; a duchess would wear a small crown to signify that identity. This small crown, and expensive jewels, is what is absent from the duchess’s person, and this, in combination with a choice of dress that seems inappropriately informal, is what leads to the feeling of having been insulted—as if they are not adequate audience for the display of her “diamonds.” Lady Harriet is cunning enough to understand that their guests’ lateness of arrival, and the absence of the distinguishing diamonds, is an affront to an established code of behavior.

1
(p. 300)
meet the author of the paper which had already attracted the attention of the French comparative anatomists
: Roger is working at the cutting edge of the emerging field of evolutionary theory The French comparative anatomists the text refers to are central scientific figures of the early nineteenth century They include the aforementioned Georges Cuvier and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (see footnotes on the preceding pages), as well as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck (1744-1829) was an unrecognized forerunner of evolutionary theory, and Darwin was later to cite Saint-Hilaire’s realizations about homologies among species as important to understanding evolutionary relationships. Cuvier, on the other hand, resisted evolutionary arguments even as he acknowledged that the earth was older than the biblical narrative suggested. His explanation for evidence of change in species (which he took from the fossil record) was “catastrophist”—that is, he believed the difference in species in the rock record indicated that in each age life had been wiped out, to be created anew again.

1
(p. 350)
“Never mind! You shall be married
again
in
England”: Roger’s close inquiry into the details of Osborne’s marriage to Aimée reflects the complicated status of legal marriage in England in the early nineteenth century. Roger’s questions point to his understanding of the law behind the estate’s entail (the contract that binds the estate) and of contemporary marriage law; the Hamley estate will pass only to “heirs-male born in lawful wedlock,” which means the entail requires that Osborne’s marriage be legally binding. The clandestine nature of the marriage that had taken place on the Continent may have been questioned, as Roger is quick to intuit. The Marriage Act of 1836, which followed up on the Clandestine Marriage Act of 1753, had both limited the circumstances under which a valid marriage could occur and extended the sites where a legal marriage could take place. The 1836 law required that a legal marriage take place within a parish church or, barring that, be performed by a licensed member of the Church of England. Provisions were made for non-Anglicans by allowing civil registrars to perform legal marriage, as well as registrars within non-Anglican buildings (including synagogues, dissenting churches, etc.). Roger’s insistence that Osborne and Aimée be married again prior to the child’s birth both in the Roman Catholic chapel where she worships and “at the church of the parish in which she lives as well” tells of his desire to take care of the issue of inheritance; by having Osborne remarry according to the strictest letter of the law Roger ensures that Osborne’s son (should he have one) will be heir to Hamley, whether or not the marriage remains a secret to the Squire. Roger presciently notes below, “The law makes one have foresight in such affairs.”

1
(p. 365)
he had never known
any one
with
an
equal capacity for mental labour:
This is another reference to the belief system known as “muscular Christianity;” see note 1 to chapter 3.

1
(p. 371)
she was being carried on in earth’s diurnal course, with rocks, and stones and trees
: Gaskell here is indirectly citing a poem by Romantic poet William Wordsworth entitled “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” written in 1800 and included in
Lyrical Ballads.
This is the poem that Gaskell incorporates into the prose describing Molly’s feelings upon discovering that Roger loves Cynthia:

1
(p. 411)
“0 my Lord! give her the living child, and in no wise slay it”
: Molly’s prayer is that of the true mother in the biblical story in which two women claim to be the mother of a child (1 Kings 3:16-28).When King Solomon proposes to cut the baby in two to resolve the dispute, the true mother gives up her claim—and hence proves she truly loves and is the mother of the child. Molly’s prayer indicates that she thinks of herself as the more righteous claimant to Roger’s affection, but that she would willingly sacrifice her love if it would mean ensuring his safe return from Africa.

1
(p. 415)
Robespierre and Bonyparte
: Maximilien-Francois-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre was at the center of the “Terror” (1793-1794), the most bloody years of the French Revolution. “Bonyparte” refers to Napoleon Bonaparte, the bellicose emperor of France from 1804 to 1815.

1
(p. 423)
M. de
la Palisse ... Il était
en vie
: Mr. Palisse is dead / in losing his life / A quarter of an hour before his death / he was alive.

2
(p. 426)
“gar
auld claes
look
amaist as weel’s
the new”:
The words are Scottish dialect for “make old clothes look almost as well as new ones.” It is a quotation from a poem entitled “The Cottar’s Saturday Night” (1786), by Scottish poet Robert Burns.

1
(p. 447)
Geographical Society
: The Royal Geographical Society was a learned society in London founded in 1830; its stated purpose was the “advancement of geographical science” and the “improvement and diffusion of geographical knowledge.” The history of the society is bound up especially with British nineteenth-century exploration and discovery and its famous figures, including David Livingstone, Richard Burton, and John Hanning Speke; in the later Victorian era, it supported British expansion into Africa. The society’s particular association with Africa stems from having absorbed in 1831 the African Association, a society founded in 1788 by Sir Joseph Banks to promote travel in Africa.

1
(p. 487)
the long vacation
: The reference is to the period of time each year in which law business would be suspended, traditionally from July to October.

1
(p. 523) I’ll
go to church and forbid the banns:
The “banns” refers to the public announcement at Sunday church services of a couple’s intention to marry; these notices of intention to marry were read for three consecutive Sundays, in order to publicize the intention of the couple and to give anyone who may have an objection—especially a legal one-the opportunity to voice it. The traditional Anglican marriage service includes the phrase “If anyone can show just cause why these two shall not be married, speak now, or forever hold your peace”—a public query, like the banns, on the legal suitable-ness of the couple for marriage. Here Lady Harriet’s assertion that she would go to church to “forbid the banns” must be taken as somewhat “tongue in cheek”; she would presumably have had no legal reason to propose to stop the marriage. That she does use such strong language, even if half in jest, suggests her partiality toward Molly as well as a strong feeling against Mr. Preston. Her reason for disliking Mr. Preston is voiced in chapter 14 but never fully explicated ; she tells Molly, “But, at any rate, you are not to go out walking with that man. I’ve an instinctive aversion to him; not entirely instinctive either; it has some foundation in fact; and I desire you don’t allow him ever to get intimate with you” (p. 163). Before the issue is resolved more clearly (see p. 528), the reader might surmise that when she was younger Lady Harriet was involved in a clandestine flirtation with Preston.

1
(p. 532)
my dividends
: Mrs. Gibson’s former brother-in-law manages the money from the inheritance left by Mr. Kirkpatrick, Mrs. Gibson’s first husband. The money he sends her would be interest on a small property; we know it was not enough to make her independent, as she accepted Mr. Gibson so that she might give up teaching.