When Mr Hartright first meets Miss Halcombe, he begins his description without even having viewed her face. He describes her as “…tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat” (34). This is yet another instance where Hartright is unable to place the person he is describing into a category. It all comes to a head when Miss Halcombe turns around and discovers, much to his horror, that “the lady is ugly!” (34). He feels betrayed by Miss Halcombe’s figure causing him to expect a beautiful young woman. He states that the adage “nature cannot err” has never been “more flatly contradicted” by his discovery (34). Even though he says that after Miss Halcombe turns around, contradiction permeates throughout his description of her before her face is revealed to him. This contradiction though takes on a Goldie Locks like effect when he describes her body. She is the perfect height and the perfect weight. Her movement was elegant and caused him to grow excited seeing her face. Her face, on the other hand, brought Mr. Hartright back down to earth and he was disgusted by it. Her face contradicts her body. Her body was perfect in every way, but her face was dark to the point where it seemed she may have even had a mustache. This duality of Miss Halcombe, her womanly body and her manly face, puts Mr. Hartright on edge. He is easily able to move past her facial features that he deems ugly and is able to become good friends with Miss Halcombe, but he never views her in a romantic light again. I believe this scene, though, sets up the reader, and Mr. Hartright, to be prepared to be deceived by how a character may seem when they first appear, just as Hartright feels that he was deceived by Miss. Halcombe’s body in thinking that she was a beautiful woman.
Category: 2025 Posts
Get With The Times Mr. Fairlie
“Count Fosco, though not a rich man, was not a penniless adventurer either. He had a small, but sufficient income of his own; he had lived many years in England; and he held an excellent position in society. These recom- mendations, however, availed nothing with Mr. Fairlie. In many of his opinions he was an Englishman of the oldschool; and he hated a foreigner, simply and solely because he was a foreigner.” (180)
This quote is from the section of Mr. Gilmore’s narrative in which he lays out the marital laws and policies regarding the inheritance of the Fairlie estate that will, in part, go to Miss Fairlie upon her coming of age on her twenty first birthday. This particular topic is being raised with the question of her impending marriage to Sir Percival Glyde who stands to benefit from her inheritance once they are joined in matrimony. This specific selection is actually discussing the disgraceful marriage of Miss Fairlie’s Aunt Eleanor who was, at one point in time, disinherited entirely as a result of her decision to marry the Italian Count Fosco rather than a man of standing in English society. Mr. Glimore explains that the marriage was not disliked because of a distinct class difference like the one emphasized between Miss Fairlie and her drawing instructor, Mr. Cartright, earlier in the text. He even defends the Count saying that he “had sufficient income” and “held an excellent position in [English] society.” (Collins, 180)
Mr. Gilmore goes on to detail why this mixed-nationality marriage led to Aunt Eleanor’s fall from grace and attributes it to the xenophobic nature of the current Mr. Fairlie who Mr. Gilmore says “hated a foreigner, simply and solely because he was a foreigner.” (Collins, 180) This close-minded outlook towards the “foreign,” or “other,” was not uncommon in English society, as explained in the reading we have done previously from Norton’s Anthology’s “The Victorian Age. Norton’s Anthology points to the shared anxieties that the Victorian societies experienced as the world they had come to know expanded. A mindset that Mr. Gilmore acknowledges when he explains Mr. Fairlie’s xenophobia as stemming from his status as an “Englishman of the old-school” which effectually highlights the more outdated nature of his rationale and attitude towards the foreign. (Collins, 180) Throughout this text Collins is critiquing the more conservative xenophobic mindset of some of his fellow Victorians.