Comments on: Dreadful Thoughts Story Club 12: “The Shadow” & “Man-Size in Marble”

By: fústar

fústar — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:31:35 +0000

We did “The Man Who Went too Far” in session 7. Can’t recall ever reading “The Room in the Tower”. Read “Seaton’s Aunt” alright, but ’twas alongish time ago.

Will investigate.

By: A Doubtful Egg

A Doubtful Egg — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:26:23 +0000

Have you done EF Benson yet? ‘The Room in the Tower’ is a pretty strong vampire story. Or ‘Seaton’s Aunt’ by de la Mare?

By: fústar

fústar — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:34:17 +0000

RE: Nesbit’s politics – she was a founder member of the Fabian Society. What influence her socialism had on her writings (and her ideas on class) are debatable, but it’s worth bearing in mind.

RE: Vampire stories. We’ve done Polidori’s “The Vampyre” already – a real point of origin for the modern vampire tale.

http://www.fustar.info/2008/09/29/dreadful-thoughts-story-club-8-the-vampyre/

Happy to do another, though there aren’t that many great short vampire tales I can think of off the top of my head.

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:36:43 +0000

I think the narrator of Mansize is certainly meant to be a Tim Nicebutdim type. It may not matter that she is more aware than he of supernatural creepies, perhaps what’s important is his condescending attitude to her. He insists on his superiority to her to the point of actively acting against her request, ignoring her worries and pleas for protection. The housework comment is indicative of his sheltering, paternal ‘I know what is best for the pretty little thing’ attitude to his wife.

In truth, SHE’s the one who knows what’s going on (albeit intuitively), he’s been TOLD and he still doesn’t get it. And sadly, she her position must be ignored andshe has to die for him to learn anything. Yes, the superstitious element reinforces the rational man/emotional woman idea, but I think it matters more that the story makes him the tragic twit in the end.

Irish maids were psychic barometers of households, I think, there were lots of them in big houses where the ghosts were, I suppose.

I’d love to do some vampire stories. I don’t know any though. The genre is still so popular now, it would be nice to look at its origins.

By: A Doubtful Egg

A Doubtful Egg — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:54:51 +0000

What really comes across in “The Shadow” is the detachment between the author and the narrator, which adds greatly to the pleasure of the story (and in retrospect brings a new dimension to “Man-Size”, although I think “The Shadow” does it much better). I’m just not sure if the narrator in “Man-Size” is ridiculous enough to make it a substantial element of the story. Although he’s pretty bloody ridiculous, calling her “my child, my love” and “my little one”, but I wonder if that kind of syrupy drivel wasn’t less incongruous in Victorian writing. I vaguely recall William Hope Hodgson’s stupendous The Night Land being almost ruined by wittery romantic burble that’d makes the average Mills & Boon look like Blue Velvet.

By: Aishwarya

Aishwarya — Sat, 02 May 2009 17:03:08 +0000

I do read “Man-Size in Marble” as a very ordinary ghost story (though Fústar’s point about it not being a morality tale or a potboiler is true and something I’d failed to appreciate about Nesbit) – but I suspect Nesbit is having far too much fun with this narrator. Considering the little I know of Nesbit’s own politics, I wonder if she’s really enjoying putting lines like “I began to think that a little domestic toil was really good for her” into his mouth.

By: A Doubtful Egg

A Doubtful Egg — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:51:56 +0000

Just a note to say that I just read ‘The Shadow’ and found it absolutely brilliant, streets ahead of ‘Man-Size’ for me. It has a cold, clammy unpleasantness, combined with wonderful psychological acuity, that makes me want to go back and read it again. Which I’ll do later. Damn it, Fustar: my house is falling down with books and you’ve made me want to go out and get the collected ghost stories of E Nesbit!

By: A Doubtful Egg

A Doubtful Egg — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:01:24 +0000

Typo: In the fourth line, “aren’t” should be “isn’t”.

By: A Doubtful Egg

A Doubtful Egg — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:59:39 +0000

Point 1: I’m sorry to say that I don’t know enough about Nesbit to know her particular stance on the matter, but one can imagine a lot of Victorians nodding sagely over their milky tea at the line!
Point 2: Yes, I do like the fact that this story aren’t the standard “wronged spirit bringing murderer to justice” type of the time, although it is a standard “man makes light of the supernatural and pays the price” type, but I still found it dull. Perhaps it’s because I read a lot of EF Benson recently; his slug monsters and vampires make Nesbit look a little tame, and I need to approach her work again. I can understand that her style was a reaction against type, but being innovative doesn’t mean that her tales have lasted as well. That’s just a snap judgement though; I’ll need to toddle off and read some more of her stuff (including “The Shadow” (I’m sorry, I’ve been so scattered this week that I really didn’t have time)) to get a more balanced view of her output.
Jo, is the Irish maid in “The Shadow”? I’ll read it this evening. And have a good Bank Holiday, y’all!

By: fústar

fústar — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:46:54 +0000

Doubtful,

With regard to your favourite line from Man-Size – that, surely, is the narrator speaking, not the author! I think you’re doing Nesbit a bit of a disservice by assuming she casually bought into the Victorianism you allude to.

As regards the predictability and dullness of the tale, well, that is of course a matter of taste. But for me the point of her “ghost” stories (and the thing makes them as original as they are) is that they’re presented as “real” tales of weirdness that lack easy explanation or logical coherence. They’re not carefully constrcuted morality tales (of the type that was commonplace in the 19th C), nor are they lurid, blood and lust drenched Gothic potboilers.

Their slow pace, bleakness and domesticity mark them as reactions against established (and expected) generic conventions – rather than contributions to an established canon.

Have you read “The Shadow” yet? I think it, in particular, is remarkable – particularly given that she (like many authors of the time) penned these tales mainly to earn a few bob.

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:36:23 +0000

I don’t know, Doubtful Egg. It was always the Irish maid who got ill first… sensitive to the occult, you know

By: A Doubtful Egg

A Doubtful Egg — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:54:19 +0000

Once again I barge in as the chairs and tables are being stacked on this party, but I’d just like to say that I disliked “Man-Size in Marble” a lot: I thought it was rather dull and predictable, and I wished the story was set in a more contemporary time so we could have a bloody description of that appallingly twee couple (especially the guy) being torn to shreds by some Awful Thing.
I think the thing about the lower classes being more aware of the supernatural is one of those conceits that manages to combine both anti-intellectualism and condescension in one. It says “There’s more to this world than can be explained by your logic, Professor!”, even though, to put it bluntly, there isn’t; while at the same time assuming that it’s the more earthy, credulous working-class type who’ll have a inherent fear of such things (which, as the assumedly educated reader knows, genuinely don’t exist in real life). The same way that a dog will pull his master back from a cliff-edge, I suppose.
My favourite line from “Man-Size”: “Laura was, if possible, brighter and gayer than usual, and I began to think that a little domestic toil was really good for her.” Ah, them Victorians!

By: Jo

Jo — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:15:18 +0000

Well, I think it’s more to do with science and education. The superior, trained mind has no truck with supertition, leaving the upper classes vulnerable to it.

The husband in Mansize really acted like a duffer, and his intellectual superiorities were his downfall. It might be a warning about not dismissing too much. Similarly the narrator is so removed from the life ofher housekeeper that she doesn’t even know if she has a fire in her room, and has never thought to care.

By: Cnuimh

Cnuimh — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:16:27 +0000

Forgive me if I don’t address the previous point right now. I had been thinking about the idea of class as brought up by Aishwarya. In both stories, it is the ‘help’ or the person from the lower classes that, in fact, possesses true knowledge of the world. Miss Eastwich and Mrs. Dorman live completely separate lives to those of the people they work for and yet the knowledge they possess has great implications for those they serve even if it is dismissed out of hand by the same people. Is Nesbit expressing the fear that the yearning for progress has caused us to forget some essential truths? Baby, bathwater…have I gone too far?

By: fústar

fústar — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:39:14 +0000

Wondering what ye make of the last paragraph where, after we’re told that the doctor ruled the cause of death as heart disease, inherited from the mother – the narrator says “But I have sometimes wondered whether she may not have inherited something from her father”.

What’s implied there?