In Praise of Spiders: Wilkie Collins’s Name Games
Caleb Crain, 11 September 2008
To slip the leash in the 19th century, it was usually enough to move without leaving a forwarding address, and that was how some in the working class shook off inconvenient debts and marriages. Most in the bourgeoisie lacked the option, however, because they valued their social identity too highly to sacrifice it, not to mention the property associated with it. Their fantasies of release had...