\u201cCount 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.\u201d (180)<\/p>\n
This quote is from the section of Mr. Gilmore\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201chad sufficient income\u201d and \u201cheld an excellent position in [English] society.\u201d (Collins, 180)<\/p>\n
Mr. Gilmore goes on to detail why this mixed-nationality marriage led to Aunt Eleanor\u2019s fall from grace and attributes it to the xenophobic nature of the current Mr. Fairlie who Mr. Gilmore says \u201chated a foreigner, simply and solely because he was a foreigner.\u201d (Collins, 180) This close-minded outlook towards the \u201cforeign,\u201d or \u201cother,\u201d was not uncommon in English society, as explained in the reading we have done previously from Norton\u2019s Anthology\u2019s \u201cThe Victorian Age. Norton\u2019s 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\u2019s xenophobia as stemming from his status as an \u201cEnglishman of the old-school\u201d which effectually highlights the more outdated nature of his rationale and attitude towards the foreign.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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cCount 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 … Continue reading Get With The Times Mr. Fairlie<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[135986,111386,135985],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts","tag-mr-fairlie-is-fairly-awful","tag-the-woman-in-white","tag-xenophobia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","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\/4751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}