Shuffling off

John Sutherland

  • Death Sentences: Styles of Dying in British Fiction by Garrett Stewart
    Harvard, 403 pp, £19.80, December 1984, ISBN 0 674 19428 4
  • Forms of Feeling in Victorian Fiction by Barbara Hardy
    Owen, 215 pp, £12.50, January 1985, ISBN 0 7206 0611 X
  • Language and Class in Victorian England by K.C. Phillipps
    Basil Blackwell in association with Deutsch, 190 pp, £19.50, November 1984, ISBN 0 631 13689 4

The Victorian novelists are commonly supposed to have been soft on the subject of death: ‘one would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell’ is the best-known of literary criticisms. In fact, succeeding generations, while following Wilde’s sneering direction, have generally misread or skipped the protracted death-scenes that multiply in Victorian fiction. If they do not amuse or embarrass, Colonel Newcome’s weepy ‘Adsum,’ the Tullivers’ ‘In death they were not divided,’ Jo’s creaking cart, or Father Time’s ‘Done because we are too menny’ are decently ignored as forgivable lapses.

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