Product Description

Readers of Victorian fiction must often have tripped up on seeming anomalies, enigmas, and mysteries in their favourite novels. Does Becky kill Jos at the end of Vanity Fair? Why does no one notice that Hetty is pregnant in Adam Bede? How, exactly, does Victor Frankenstein make his monster? Why does Dracula come to England rather than himself an invisible suit? Why does Sherlock Holmes, of all people, get the name of his client wrong? In Is Heathcliff a Murderer? (well, is he?) John Sutherland investigates 34 conundrums of nineteenth-century fiction. Applying these `real world' questions to fiction is not in any sense intended to catch out the novelists who are invariably cleverer than their most detectively-inclined readers. Typically, one finds a reason for the seeming anomaly. Not blunders, that is, but unexpected felicities and ingenious justifications. In Is Heathcliff a Murderer? John Sutherland, recently described by Tony Tanner as `a sort of Sherlock Holmes of literature', pays homage to the most rewarding of critical activities, close reading and the pleasures of good-natured pedantry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #247821 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College, London. He is the editor of a number World's Classics, including works by Anthony Trollope, Jack London, and Thackeray.

Customer Reviews

fun for readers of Victorian fiction
There are a lot of us about. And the literary establishment doesn't approve of us at all. I mean the sort of people who ask the achetypal questions of a work of literature you're not supposed to ask - Where did Heathcliff go for 3 years? How many children has Lady Macbeth? What did Billy Joe throw off the Talahassie Bridge? Professor Sutherland is, remarkably, one of us, and his book attempts to answer some of these niggling questions. The text is lively and readable, interesting even if you've never read the original book. This is high praise for a book of literary criticism, which are becoming more and more impenetrable to the uninitiated with every year (have you tried reading Tony Tanner on Wuthering Heights for example?) John Sutherland is extremely good value for money.

Detailed textual errors
It could be true that John Sutherland has read all the books under review in this short book. But it's clear to me that he has not read Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," or if he has, that he has remembered very little of it.

Lord Henry Wotton is, according to Sutherland, an "evil angel," whatever that is. Lord Henry was many things, but he was neither of these. Sutherland says Dorian Gray was a brilliant conversationalist, but there is no evidence in the text to support this claim. It was Lord Henry, not Dorian, who kept all dinner goers spellbound with his ironic wit. "Dorian comes across a work of literature which will change his life," claims Sutherland. Not so. The book was a gift to him from Lord Henry. Sutherland says Dorian's would-be assassin was Tom Vane. Really? There is no character named Tom in the novel. Of course he means James Vane, the distraught, avenging brother of Sibyl Vane who has died from Dorian's callous neglect of her broken heart.

Close readings of other chapters reveal similar detailed textual errors. However, my purpose in writing now is not to belittle Sutherland's enthusiasm and intellect. In fact I love the concept of what he has undertaken here and in series via Oxford. I merely wish to urge him to be more judicious and careful in his future critical rambles through our great literature.