Paul Ferroll: A Tale (Valancourt Classics)
Why does he shun the friendship of his neighbours, neglect his young daughter, and evince indifference when the villagers die during a cholera outbreak? Is his strange behaviour caused by remembrance of his first wife s untimely death, or does there lie hidden a much darker secret? Hugely popular and influential in its time and recognised as the successor to Jane Eyre and the predecessor of the sensation novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Paul Ferroll has suffered from an unfortunate neglect in the past century. This new edition features an introduction and notes by Adrienne E. Gavin as well as a chronology of Clive s life and career and excerpts from contemporary reviews.
Paperback , pages.
Published October 24th by Valancourt Books first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Paul Ferroll , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Jul 07, Nancy Oakes added it Shelves: According to the introduction, one contemporary reviewer believed that this was the type of book that was "very dangerous for young women of the middle and upper classes to read," since it could "fill the mind with details of imaginary vice and distress and crime.
My kind of book. And all in all, it was pretty good, considering that I actually couldn't stand the titular character. Not that I have to like the characters to enjoy a novel; in this case I think that the author was leaving it According to the introduction, one contemporary reviewer believed that this was the type of book that was "very dangerous for young women of the middle and upper classes to read," since it could "fill the mind with details of imaginary vice and distress and crime. Not that I have to like the characters to enjoy a novel; in this case I think that the author was leaving it to the reader to decide just what sort of person he is because every so often he has his moments of redemption, most especially toward the end of the novel.
What starts out quite peacefully with a picture of the "calm loveliness" falling over the Ferroll country home of the Tower of Mainwarey is interrupted with Ferroll being summoned home with the news that "Your lady has been murdered," and indeed, she'd been found with her throat slit.
By whom was never really discovered, since the gardener, Mr. Franks, who'd been accused of her death was acquitted. He remarries and has a daughter, yet while he is highly respected in his community, he remains completely aloof in terms of friends, social concerns, and his own child.
Why this might be is so is just part of the mystery surrounding Paul Ferroll, and overall the novel tells one of those stories where all I could do is to guess at the motivations behind the main character here, since right up until the last few pages there is absolutely no clue as to why he does what he does. It's frustrating, but in the end, it pays off. Paul Ferroll , as one scholar notes is "further evidence of women writers challenging convention and contributing to the nascent crime and detective genre," and to me, that's the novel's primary importance, and then, of course, the discovery of Caroline Clive and her work.
I don't know that other people get so worked up about finding new old authors to read, but it's something that's quite meaningful to me so it's a big deal. I have more at my reading journal ; I want to say also how pleasantly surprised I was to have found that Valancourt had published this book, bringing yet another largely-forgotten work out of obscurity. Sep 12, Rebecca E rated it really liked it. Suspenseful mystery similar to "Jane Eyre".
Paul Ferroll: A Tale (Valancourt Classics)
Mar 02, Herman Gigglethorpe rated it it was ok Shelves: Really, the only reason to read this is for the 19th century reviews examining the main character's morality, or saying the "Sword of Justice" is too heavy for the author. She has a way of making arsonist butlers and cholera Valancourt Books and 19th century reviewers would have you believe that Paul Ferroll is a melodrama classic comparable to Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, and Lady Audley's Secret. She has a way of making arsonist butlers and cholera outbreaks boring.
Much of the story is taken up by daily Victorian life and a love triangle involving the protagonist's daughter. To resuscitate the plot, Clive has Paul confess to murder because he suddenly has moral qualms about sending the wrong person to jail. This was after he lived happily for 18 years keeping the secret. As Bri Fidelity says, I read terrible books so you don't have to. The second star is for the contemporary reviews. A rather strange Victorian proto-sensation novel, featuring a probably psychopathic but also kind of sympathetic protagonist.
Jan 03, wychwood rated it it was ok. Ferroll was significantly more monstrous to me as a reader than I think Clive intended him to be Riko rated it really liked it Nov 01, Victor rated it really liked it Jun 15, Charlotte Mansfield rated it really liked it Feb 13, Dani rated it really liked it Apr 04, Sarada rated it liked it Jul 23, Rob Same rated it really liked it May 22, Sharon rated it it was amazing Jan 24, Catherine Pope rated it it was amazing Jun 16, Lewis Cook rated it really liked it Feb 18, Joanne Parsons rated it it was amazing Jan 23, Lewis Cook rated it it was ok Jul 15, Steve rated it liked it Jan 31, If this be true, Miss Bronte [sic] will leave a successor not altogether unworthy of her Both, however, led comparatively secluded early lives: Both grew up reading Romantic literature and idolizing the Duke of Wellington, and each received discouraging early responses to their poetry from male writers they approached for advice.
Physically plain, small, and having experienced unrequited love, they both expected not to marry, yet eventually found happiness in marriage to men of the church. We had made up our mind, from internal evidence, that Paul Ferroll was the work of a woman. Information to be depended upon confirms us in our surmise.
We trust that the authoress will divert her rare power into some more salutary channel, and cease wrongfully to enlist our sympathies and our best feelings on the side of selfishness sublimated into crime Among works by woman writers, he states:. Two, however, there are who have done more good than harm. Both preserve unity of interest, and are written with the hands of masters. The absence of clear moral messages in Jane Eyre and Paul Ferroll more usually marked them as distinctly unconventional and unfeminine. Such amorality shocked readers: For the Victorian reader accustomed to didactic fiction, transparent moral messages, and novels in which good characters ultimately triumph and the bad are punished or learn the error of their ways, reading Paul Ferroll was an extremely unsettling experience She also interestingly observes: Critics argued over whether a madwoman could be concealed in an attic or supernatural calls between lovers were possible as in Jane Eyre and over the realism of a gentleman enjoying a second marriage without a qualm after murdering his first wife in Paul Ferroll.
Improbability was seen as a moral issue, as Rigby writes of Jane Eyre: The reader may trace gross inconsistencies and improbabilities, the chief and foremost that highest moral offence a novel writer can commit, that of making an unworthy character interesting in the eyes of the reader.
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Rochester is a man who deliberately and secretly seeks to violate the laws of both God and man, and yet we will be bound half our lady readers are enchanted with him for a model of generosity and honour. We would have thought that such a hero had no chance, in the purer taste of the present day; but the popularity of Jane Eyre is a proof how deeply the love for illegitimate romance is implanted in our nature Without stickling for the exact proprieties in all respects, there are broad limits between good and evil that should never be confounded.
Nor can any author fall into a more grievous mistake, a mistake more injurious both to author and readers, than to mix up detestable actions with motives that have an air of generosity and nobleness about them In its stead there is a love for exploring what would be better left in obscurity; for portraying the wildness of passion and the harrowing miseries of mental conflict; for dark pictures of sin and remorse and punishment; for the discussion of questions which it is painful and revolting to think of They alarmed some critics, however, as books that would.
It is really frightful to think of the interest which we have ourselves heard such readers express in criminals like Paul Ferroll, and in sensual ruffians like Mr Rochester […].
We do not believe that any good end is to be effected by fictions which fill the mind with details of imaginary vice and distress and crime […]. Rather we believe that the effect of such fictions must be to render those who fall under their influence unfit for practical exertion; while they most assuredly do grievous harm in many cases, by intruding on minds which ought to be guarded from impurity [and] the unnecessary knowledge of evil In part, this was due to a tendency critically to corral women writers or pseudonymous writers who might be suspected female under the same head.
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Despite obvious differences in protagonists, narrative voice, and structure, some resonances in plot and characterisation can be discerned. Outwardly the bastions of English tradition and social values, these houses harbour dark secrets Rochester and Ferroll have both been inveigled into marriage to a first wife they seek to be rid of and with whom they have no offspring. Both first wives are described as violent and disliked by servants.
Both husbands are initially highly restrained in reacting to their wives. Following these actions both men spend long, implicitly sexually active periods in Europe; Rochester with a series of mistresses and Ferroll enjoying the bliss of early marriage to his second wife Elinor. Both men, however, plan to marry these second wives in ways that are selfish, immoral, and criminal. Rochester, were he to succeed in marrying Jane on his first attempt, would be a bigamist, as he himself admits: Although for Rochester and Jane, as for Ferroll and Elinor, love is mutual and marriage is desired by both parties, in each case the would-be husband has immorally concealed evidence from his intended, whose innocence he also proclaims.
When these secrets do emerge the impact is devastating. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me: The questions both men really want answered are: Tellingly, both express a dislike of children. Rochester reveals to Jane soon after they meet: Ferroll similarly marginalizes his daughter Janet in her infancy, insisting that even her mother pay her little attention:.
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The whole tenderness of Mr. Hitherto they had been taught to look on the hero of a novel as necessarily a noble and virtuous being, endowed with heroic, not to say angelic qualities; but this conviction was now to be reversed. The change was undoubtedly startling. Archer Clive were destined to break down Like Rochester, he is a Byronic hero: His character is unimpeachable, I suppose. Ferroll, in particular, will not subject himself to the slings and arrows of any kind of fortune, instead ensuring that it is always he who holds the bow.
No description of the human heart has been attempted. The picture of the violent, revengeful, strongly passionate nature of the man is forcible enough, but it is displayed by action and not by introspection The key difference in delineation between Rochester and Ferroll is correctly identified by Sergeant when she writes: Losing one eye, becoming blind in the other eye, and having a hand amputated sends him an almost biblical message:. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: His power has lessened while her inheritance has raised her up.
In Victorian terms their marriage is a relationship of reciprocity and equality grounded in real love. He never expresses regret, repentance, guilt, or apology for his crimes and, significantly for a Victorian novel, does not pray to God for forgiveness. His grief over the loss of Elinor is not profound; his need to have someone totally devoted to him is now simply fulfilled by the daughter he neglected in her youth.
Ferroll does not suffer for his behaviour nor is he punished. He dies, but he dies unvanquished. The point about passion is revealing. Passion lies at the heart of Jane Eyre and Jane Eyre in ways which do not have their equivalents in either Paul Ferroll or its protagonist. At the heart of Jane Eyre is a powerfully emotional and passionate love story in which both lovers suffer before they are finally united in happiness. Ferroll does not suffer for his love nor is he brought down in the end.
Paul Ferroll: a tale by Caroline Clive
We cannot imagine Rochester, for example, laughing as Ferroll does while he observes death and suffering during a cholera epidemic. Ferroll tried his very best to look grave also, and to compose his sensations to a due harmony with the nerves of Lady Lucy […] but he was like a man slightly intoxicated […]. The excitement had roused up every power of life; and his wit, his knowledge, his force of character, were all in activity.
He enjoyed life, and no nervousness about himself, or sensibility to the sufferings of another, disturbed him Paul Ferroll , The narrative presents him as a strangely attractive yet repellent specimen for observation, but readers do not feel with him as an erring being who ultimately seeks redemption. Jane, and Rochester elicit reader empathy and it seems right that after torment and anguish they are ultimately together as equals. Obsessive and possessive, his feelings for her often border on a death wish.
Returning from visiting a cholera-hit area he records in his diary: This is not the case with Jane who from the outset stands her ground with Rochester, demanding that he see her as a person in her own right. Spirited and independent by nature, they do both have firm codes of honour and insist on being accepted on their own terms. In some respects anti-heroes, they are both isolated by circumstance, yearn for activity, and observe from the margins. The words Rigby uses in her review to denounce Jane seem more applicable to Ferroll than to Jane herself:. Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit, the more dangerous [for a book] to exhibit from that prestige of principle and self-control which is liable to dazzle the eye too much for it to observe the inefficient and unsound foundation on which it rests […] No Christian grace is perceptible upon her.
She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature—the sin of pride. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: By contrast, any sense of religion is absent in Ferroll. He seeks instead to be the object of idolatry.