Armadale (Collins, 1866)

• Allan's dream (vision?): Allan falls asleep and dreams of a drowning man, followed by three other visions: the shadow of a woman by a pool at sunset; the shadow of a man with a broken statue; and a man and woman passing him a glass, after which he faints.
• 155-169 "Lurking Mischief" chapter uses the technology of the penny post (from 1839 according to sutherland) to keep the plotting between Lydia and Mrs Oldershaw moving fast
• 169-70 description of Thorpe-Ambrose as specifically unromantic and not at all gothic (modern, in fact) - AA thinks it will calm Midwinter's nerves
• 169 he mentions midwinter writing to Brock - the narrative interplay between fragments (letters) and diegesis
• 178 Maj Milroy talks about the risks of advertising for a governess -- the other end of the problem of Jane Eyre (1848) advertising
• 183 the respectable middle class library: Waverly, Maria Edgeworth, Felicia Hemans
• 190 the town's sniffiness about Armadale's arrival is at least in part one between time scheme's: Allen's busy penny post modernity vs the formal slowness of town life welcoming the squire as of old
• 200-1 Allen exposes a nice vein of country petit bourgeois snobbery
• 206-8 Letters between the Milroys indicating that Lydia is inbound as governess and from Brock spying on Gwilt and Oldershaw
• fill in
• 235 Bashwood's son is Oldershaw's private investigator
• 239 midwinter's pocketbook of papers a textual model of the narrative
• fill in
• 284-5 "I have been proved not to be myself"
  • then Lydia's caustic anti-bourgeois description of Allan and Eleanor, but also playing the role of dutiful daughter better than the latterj
• 302-3 Midwinter's indecision about leaving a good example of collins' focus on characterization here -- we get much less inferiority in Marian Halcombe
• 305 Allan thinks he's seeing the fulfillment of the second part of the vision as Midwinter departs
• 312 "the age we live in is an age which finds no human creature inexcusable" (abt Mrs milroy) -- unclear if this form of Victorian modernity is more or less sympathetic
• 318 an actual scene of an envelope being steamed open as Mrs milroy arms herself to take down Lydia
• 331 "I am a great sufferer" -- Mrs milroy quite a different type of invalid than Frederick Fairlie in Woman in White, more cunning, "unscrupulous ingenuity"
• 333 interesting form -- Allan talking to himself while writing a letter, the writing in prentheses
• 345 it would appear that the house where Lydia's reference was sent from is a brothel
• 348 Pedgift suggests going to the Great exhibition with Allan (and talks about dabbling in Latin "from a crib" book)
• 350 "the interval day passed": narrative time is structured by post time
  • interesting to think of the vision of the intervening period being filled by the fantasia of a letter traveling in Framley Parsonage (Anthony Trollope, 1861)
• 378 seeing Lydia through Bashwood's eyes, an irresistible "mixture of the voluptuous and the modest"
  • formal and informal espionage -- Pedgift's man watching Lydia, Bashwood watching Allan
• 383 Midwinter observing her "sexual sorcery" (!)
• 385 Lydia's bald manipulation of Midwinter, the contrast between talk and thought -- compare to Lady Audley's relative decency -- no wonder reviewed found it scandalous
• 398-9 the second vision comes true as Lydia comes between Allan and Midwinter
• 410 Oldershaw quotes Midsummer Night's dream incorrectly in a letter to Lydia
• Ch X - Lydia Gwilt's diary - seems to be the dark heart of the novel (424-53)
• 424 Midwinter has revealed his identity to Lydia, and here she processed it in her diary
• 430 Lydia believes Allan has permanently rejected her
• 432 LG has a nice little swipe at "the nauseous domestic sentimentalists of the day" like Trollope or Gaskell
• 435 LG quite acidly satirical of high toned old Christian women visiting her and talking about her relationship with Allan
• 438 Midwinter has prospect of being a correspondent for a new newspaper in London, one of the many founded in the 1850s after the Taxes on Knowledge were repealed -- cf Altick 1952
• 441 LG realizes she could marry Midwinter and still be Mrs Allan Armadale (she notices her writing goes strange when she does)
• 442 she wonders what Lady Macbeth would have done in her situation
• 445 her final plot falls into place: she will marry Midwinter and kill AA so she might be then the widow of Allan Armadale
• 453 interesting fragmentation within the fragmented letter/diary structure: to conclude the chapter (part?) she returns to the end of the letter that she was concluding on 423 in order to tell off Mrs Oldershaw
• 454-5 Neelie is nervous about eloping with allan based on the plot of a novel she read -- he returns to pore over Blacstone's Commentaries with her