{"id":1660,"date":"2021-09-17T15:54:33","date_gmt":"2021-09-17T15:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=1660"},"modified":"2021-09-17T15:54:33","modified_gmt":"2021-09-17T15:54:33","slug":"it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night-kind-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2021\/09\/17\/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night-kind-of\/","title":{"rendered":"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…Kind of"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the time that Mr. Gilmore comes back to Limmeridge to meet with Mr. Fairlie to write up the marriage settlement, the weather helps to indicate the tone of the scene. This is quite typical, as weather is the easiest element of a scene to put a reader \u2018in the mood,\u2019 but it was particularly interesting the way that the weather and tone of this scene played out. During the night of Mr. Gilmore\u2019s arrival, \u201cThe house was oppressively empty and dull\u2026The wind howled dismally all night, and strange cracking and groaning noises sounded here, there, and everywhere in the empty house\u201d (Collins 156-7). However, what was both interesting and revealing was that the servants and other workers of the house matched the tone of the weather. They \u201cwere so surprised at seeing [Mr. Gilmore] that they hurried and bustled absurdly and made all sorts of annoying mistakes. Even the butler, who was old enough to have known better, brought [him] a bottle of port that was chilled\u201d (Collins 156-7). Without a doubt, this section of writing set the tone for the rest of Mr. Gilmore\u2019s narrative\u2014he goes on to write away all of Miss Fairlie\u2019s money and property in her marriage settlement, leaving a dark cloud over both Miss Fairlie and Miss Halcombe. However, this small piece of writing also marked a turning point in the entire novel. It created the feeling that nothing will ever be the same as it was before. Mr. Hartright is gone, Miss Fairlie\u2019s money is about to be taken away from her (and given to Sir Percival Glyde, of all people), and a potential relationship between two budding young lovers has been lost. The servants, unable to perform their duties, represent Mr. Gilmore\u2014who is about to be unable to perform his own for the young women\u2014and the weather, hanging over the house threateningly, represents Sir Percival, who seems like he is about to come in and tear through the family when they least expect it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the time that Mr. Gilmore comes back to Limmeridge to meet with Mr. Fairlie to write up the marriage settlement, the weather helps to indicate the tone of the scene. This is quite typical, as weather is the easiest element of a scene to put a reader \u2018in the mood,\u2019 but it was particularly … Continue reading It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…Kind of<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2021"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}