Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T09:02:14.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“SHREWD WOMEN OF BUSINESS”: MADAME RACHEL, VICTORIAN CONSUMERISM, AND L. T. MEADE'S THE SORCERESS OF THE STRAND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2006

Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

STANLEY FISH RECENTLY IDENTIFIED the intersection between crime and religion as a hot topic, a trend that he gauged by paying attention to a popular television show: “Law and Order…from its beginning…has had its plots follow the headlines. Only if the tension between commitment to the rule of law and commitment to one's ethnic or religious affiliation was, so to speak, in the news would a television writer put it at the heart of a story.” During the same week that Fish published this claim, a Texas woman who drowned her five children had her guilty verdict overturned when it was revealed that an expert witness for the prosecution had made false statements to the court about an episode of the very same show. Commentators on the case said the witness had confused plots from Law and Order with real-life trials. One need not be Oscar Wilde to see a meta-dramatic chiasmus at work here: Law and Order imitates life, but life also imitates Law and Order. The same could be said of popular Victorian crime fiction, which was serialized in eagerly awaited autonomous episodes in a manner not unlike televised crime drama. Victorian authors, moreover, commonly sought inspiration in real-life criminal plots. Like Law and Order, such fictional representations both mirrored and created readers' “reality” outside the text. In this article, I will examine a previously unexplored instance of such fictional recycling and reinvention: L. T. Meade's popular detective series The Sorceress of the Strand, I argue, is an overt rewriting of the strange case of “Madame Rachel,” a notorious female criminal of the 1860s. Before I make my case concerning how, why, and to what end Meade revised Madame Rachel's story, let me briefly summarize the evidence for this connection.

Type
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 311 - 332
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altick Richard. 1991. The Presence of the Present: Topics of the Day in the Victorian Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP
Bartsky Sandra Lee. 1988. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance. Eds. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby. Boston: Northeastern UP,
Beerbohm Max. “A Defense of Cosmetics.” The Yellow Book 1 (April 1894): 65– 82.
Boase George C. “Madame Rachel.” Notes and Queries 8:7 (27 Oct. 1894): 322– 24.
Bordo Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: U of California P
Bowlby Rachel. 1985. Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing, and Zola. New York: Methuen
Braddon Mary Elizabeth. 1987. Lady Audley's Secret. 1862. Oxford: Oxford UP
Buck-Morss Susan. “The Flaneur, the Sandwichman, and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering.” New German Critique 39 (Fall 1986): 99– 140.
1868. “Central Criminal Court, Sept. 21.” Times. 22 Sept. Pg. 9, col. B.
1868. “Central Criminal Court, Sept. 24.” Times. 25 Sept. Pg. 10, col. E.
Chesney Kellow. 1970. The Victorian Underworld. London: Temple Smith
Collins Wilkie. 1995. Armadale. 1866. London: Penguin
1862. “Court of Exchequer, June 19.” Times. 20 June Pg. 11, col. A.
“Court Of Queen's Bench, Westminster, Nov. 8.” Times. 9 Nov. 1858. Pg. 8, col. F.
Curiosities of Street Literature. London: Reeves and Turner, 1871.
1878. “A Curious Tale of Simplicity.” Times. Editorials. 12 Apr. Pg. 9, col. D.
Doane Mary Ann. 1982 “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” Screen 23: 78– 87.Google Scholar
Doyle Arthur Conan. 1986. “The Final Problem.” Strand Magazine (Dec. 1893). Rpt. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories. Vol. 1. New York: Bantam 642– 59.
Ellis Havelock. 1894. Man and Woman. London: Walter Scott
1868. The Extraordinary Life and Trial of Madame Rachel at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London, On the 22, 23, 24, and 25 September, 1868: The Report Copied Verbatim from the Times. London:
Grand Sarah. “The New Aspect of the Woman Question.” 1894. A New Woman Reader: Fiction, Articles, Drama of the 1890s. Ed. Carolyn Christensen Nelson. Peterborough: Broadview, 2001. 141– 46.
Greene Douglas G. “Introduction.” The Detections of Miss Cusack. 1899–1901. By L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace. Eds. Greene and Jack Adrian. Shelburne, ON: The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 1998. vii– xiii.
Halloran Jennifer A. “The Sorceress of the Strand: Gender, Race, and Criminal Witchcraft.” English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920 45.2 (Spring 2002): 176– 95.
1881. “High Court of Justice.” Times. 23 March Pg. 5, col. B.
1862. “Insolvent Debtors' Court, Jan. 17.” Times. 18 Jan. Pg. 9, col. E.
Knelman Judith. 1998. Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press. Toronto: U of Toronto P
Koven Seth. 2004. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton: Princeton UP
“The Late Madame Rachel.” Times. 18 Oct. 1880. Pg. 11, col. F.
Ledger Sally. 1997. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the fin de siècle. Manchester: Manchester UP
Leps Marie-Christine. 1992. Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Discourse. Durham: Duke UP
London in the Sixties (With a Few Digressions). By “One of the Old Brigade.” London: Everett & Co., 1908.
Madame Rachel. 1863. Beautiful For Ever! London: Madame Rachel, 47A New Bond Street
1865. “Marlborough Street.” Times. 20 Dec. Pg. 11, col. G.
Meade L. T. and Robert Eustace. 1898. The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings. Strand Magazine.
Meade L. T. and Robert Eustace. “The Blood-Red Cross.” The Sorceress of the Strand. Strand Magazine (Nov. 1902): 505– 18.
Meade L. T. and Robert Eustace. “The Bloodstone.” The Sorceress of the Strand. Strand Magazine (Feb. 1903): 198– 212.
Meade L. T. and Robert Eustace. “The Face of the Abbot.” The Sorceress of the Strand. Strand Magazine (Dec. 1902): 644– 57.
Meade L. T. and Robert Eustace. “Madame Sara.” The Sorceress of the Strand. Strand Magazine (Oct. 1902): 387– 401.
Meade L. T. and Robert Eustace. “The Talk of the Town.” The Sorceress of the Strand. Strand Magazine (Jan. 1903): 67– 80.
Meade L. T. and Robert Eustace. “The Teeth of the Wolf.” The Sorceress of the Strand. Strand Magazine (March 1903): 279– 90.
Mitchell Sally. 1995. The New Girl: Girls' Culture in England, 1880–1915. New York: Columbia UP
Mulvey Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16:4 (Autumn 1975): 6– 18.
Parsons Deborah L. 2000. Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City, and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford UP
1863. “Police.” Times. 23 March Pg. 11, col. A.
Pound Reginald. 1966. Mirror of the Century: The Strand Magazine 1891–1950. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes
Rappaport Erika D. 1995. “‘A New Era of Shopping’: The Promotion of Women's Pleasure in London's West End, 1909–1914. Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Ed. Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz. Berkeley: U of California P 130– 55.
Riddle John M. 1997. Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge: Harvard UP
Roughead William. 1940. Rascals Revived. London: Cassell
Showalter Elaine. 1992. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-Siecle. London: Virago
Slung Michele B., ed. and 1975. introduction. Crime on Her Mind: Fifteen Stories of Female Sleuths from the Victorian Era to the Forties. New York: Pantheon
Srebnick Amy Gilman. 1995. The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York. Oxford: Oxford UP
Stocking George. 1987. Victorian Anthropology. New York: Free Press
Walkowitz Judith. 1992. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London. Chicago: U of Chicago P
Walkowitz Judith. 1980. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge UP
Weiner Martin J. 1990. Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge UP
Whitlock Tammy. “A ‘Taint Upon Them’: The Madame Rachel Case, Fraud, and Retail Trade in Nineteenth-Century England.” Victorian Review 24.1 (Summer 1998): 29– 51.
Williams Neville. 1957. Powder and Paint: A History of the Englishwoman's Toilet, Elizabeth I–Elizabeth II. London: Longman
Willis Chris. “The Female Moriarty: The Arch-Villainess in Victorian Popular Fiction.” The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film. Eds. Stacy Gillis and Phillipa Gates. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 2002. 57– 68.
Wyndham Horace. 1928. Blotted Scutcheons: Some Society Causes Célèbres. London: Hutchinson