Introduction to “Herself” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Editorial Team: Joshua Black, Olivia Gulick, Ellis Lucas, Claire Sullivan, Jordan Whitehead
Additional editing by Dr. Heidi L. Pennington
Note: This introduction contains spoilers for some story events in Braddon's "Herself."
“Herself” by Elizabeth Mary Braddon was originally published November 17, 1894, in the Sheffield Weekly Telegraph. It was just ahead of the Christmas season, a popular time for ghost stories. The five-chapter story was crammed into three tight columns in a small type and was accompanied by several illustrations, which we have included in the Gallery for this narrative.
This exhibit will analyze Braddon’s “Herself” through the relationship between its two main characters: Helen and Lota. We will explore their differences in class, fulfillment—or rejection—of gender roles, and homoerotic undertones, and, through these themes, we will analyze how Braddon critiques the rigid class hierarchy and the heteronormative matrix of Victorian society. Helen and Lota reflect one another, highlighting their differences both in status and in their responses to social limitations. This, in turn, exposes the troubling truths of their social positions, explaining why the eventual haunting-through-mirror is so thematically resonant; it reflects, and it exposes truths.
The narrative opens on a three-way conversation concerning a dead man’s estate. The beneficiary is the granddaughter, Lota, a genteel young woman, now very wealthy, with little living family and no husband—yet. Accompanying her is her close friend, Helen, also a respectable young woman, but one with fewer resources. They discuss Lota’s inheritance of a large Italian villa with her grandfather’s lawyer: his position characterizes him as a man who must work for a living—he is not a gentleman—but he is still a professional man in a patriarchal society. Braddon creates a complex, intersectional relationship between the three characters, emphasized by the conflict that emerges in their conversation.
Lota wants to move to Italy and live in her late grandfather’s villa, an idea the lawyer believes is foolish. He watched her grandfather wither and die before his time after going to live in the villa, and he thinks the villa exacerbated—or even caused—that deterioration. Lota asks why he did not comment on her grandfather’s health, and the lawyer says, “My position hardly warranted my questioning Mr. Hammond on a matter so purely personal” (Chapter 1). Which begs the question: why does he feel comfortable questioning Lota about the exact same scenario? Why is Lota seen as “impertinent” and wielding an “impetuous temper” while her “friendly” and “eminently respectable” lawyer talks down to her? Why is she infantilized, treated like a petulant child for refusing to be told she should not make use of her own legal property? The answer to all these questions is the same: because she is a woman. And, worse still, she is a woman without a father or husband to think for her, to make sure she makes the “rational” choice. Lota is forced to battle with everyone around her for agency, to make life choices for herself, all while being treated like she is a willful child for wanting to do so. Perhaps unexpectedly, the character Lota struggles with most for control is not her betrothed, Captain Holbrook (a barely present, blank-slate of a man), but rather her closest friend, Helen.
Helen and Lota share an intensely intimate homosocial bond with romantic and erotic undertones—at times, these implications are subtle; at others, they are flagrant. Helen wants what is best for Lota; or, maybe more accurately, she wants to demand what she believes is best for Lota, and she is not interested in Lota’s opinion in the matter. In their relationship, one might say, Helen seems to desire the role of the patriarch. When she sees Lota making self-destructive choices, she wants to step in and control her, to remove her agency, even if she believes it to be for Lota’s own good. Helen has been socialized in a patriarchal society, so she sees paternalistic interventions as the only way to save Lota, as evinced by her attempts to use Holbrook’s presence to finally persuade Lota to leave the villa once it is clear Lota’s health is indeed suffering. Lota, however, will hear none of it. And despite Helen’s and Lota’s love for one another (be it platonic or otherwise), their relationship will never be seen as important when compared with Lota’s prospective marriage. Holbrook is Lota’s only avenue to full social acceptance, yet she perennially delays the marriage. She knows that the day of her wedding is the day she loses her independence. But to never marry is not an option, either; the constant presence of her spinster aunt—and the dismissive attitude that everyone takes towards her—is a reminder of that. So Lota, her agency under threat, her time running out, under pressures societal and personal, with nowhere left to turn, turns inward. She turns to a mirror. She turns to herself. And Braddon’s haunting narrative reveals the troubling truth that, in the absence of any real agency, Lota is already as good as dead.
Braddon uses the haunting in two ways, both common to the genre of Victorian ghost stories. The haunting reveals a problem that modernity has no answer for, in this case isolation caused by deeply rooted societal prejudices and rigid hierarchies. It can also draw attention to people who are themselves like ghosts in some ways: People who live on the margins of society, who are forgotten, whose agency in the world is limited, like their physical presence is somehow less than that of a truly valued mortal. These ghostly lives might include people who might live on the imperial periphery, or who are not members of the dominant classes. Sometimes, the haunting might even highlight the ghostliness of being isolated by the possession of inordinate, perhaps unmerited, amounts of power, in a hierarchical society, as it does with Lota’s grandfather. The agent of haunting in this narrative is a Venetian glass, itself a symbol of wealth and power. Lota becomes obsessed with it, obsessed with what it reveals about her deathly life. In this way, one might see that in this narrative world, it is the rigid hierarchies that are killing Lota.
But reader might wonder: could she be saved if she only listened to the warnings of those around her? It is a common trope for the haunted characters in these types of stories to ignore advice from those around them, especially if these advisors are of lower status, and for this refusal to consider a supernatural cause for their troubles to seal their fate. However, the haunted mirror in “Herself” does not seem to manifest any ghostly or supernatural force, but rather to reveal secret truths; if Lota had left the villa and gone on living as a woman in a patriarchal hierarchy, she would have continued to exist only as a kind of living dead. Furthermore—and this is perhaps the hardest truth of all—Lota’s refusal to leave the mirror may have been a willing and intentional choice to enact the final bit of agency she had left to her: the agency to die.
This is one way in which we see the differences, as well as the affective connection, between Helen and Lota emerge. Whereas Helen unsuccessfully attempts to bend the existing power structures to fit her desires, Lota openly resists them to—and through—her death. Helen’s narration stops abruptly at the moment of Lota’s death, as if any further details about Helen’s own life and experiences are superfluous, irrelevant. Without Lota, nothing else matters. The reference to Romeo and Juliet in the final scene of the narrative reinforces the themes of innocent youths, deeply in love, doomed by conventions and circumstances wildly out of their control. Though, unlike the star-crossed lovers, Lota’s death leads to no external resolution of generational injustice—not, at least, in the fictional world.
To more thoroughly explore these dynamics, this exhibit will feature an annotated text of Braddon’s “Herself” that expands on these themes in specific moments, applying external sources and concepts (such as Eve Sedgewick’s triangle of homosociality), providing some of the original illustrations published with Braddon’s narrative (in the “Gallery”), and several creative “re-writes”—scenes newly written by the editors from other characters’ points of view, which we hope will be an enjoyable accompaniment to the text, in addition to providing a plausible alternative perspective that sheds (or reflects?) greater light on the themes of “Herself.”
Select Annotated Bibliography: Further Contextualization
Assessing Lota, Helen, and Holbrook’s relationships in “Herself” through the lens of Sedgwick’s “Triangle of Homosociality”
Source: Sedgwick, Eve. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (Columbia UP: 2015, 2nd Edition). Accessed 5 December 2024.
In order to understand Sedgwick’s Triangle of Homosociality, one must first understand her definition of homosocial desire. According to Sedgwick, “homosocial desire” is an oxymoron since sociality and desire invoke different feelings (pg. 1). The homosocial, according to Sedgwick, is a continuum of connection among people of the same sex. Sedgwick conceptualizes how homosocial bonds operate in patriarchal society, and emphasizes that in the erotic triangle (two rivals competing for a—usually female—beloved) the interconnectedness of the two rivals is a more interesting and stronger bond than is the bond between each lover and the (female) object of their desire (pg. 21). Sedgwick quotes author René Girard, stating that “the bond that links the two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the rivals to the beloved…” (pg. 21). In “Herself,” Helen and Holbrook function, perhaps surprisingly, as rivals for Lota’s affection and compliance. While both of them primarily have a relationship with Lota, they are bonded to each other as the primary figures seeking attention from Lota and looking to provide protection in return. In this way, Helen occupies a position usually reserved for male figures.
Delving into the Homoerotic subtext of Lota and Helen’s relationship in “Herself.”
Source: Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928, University of Chicago Press, 2004. Accessed 9 December 2024.
Vicinus notes how erotic female friendships are often considered to be “second best” when compared to “heterosexual marriage” (pg. xv). This description of historical attitudes about women’s relationships with other women applies to the analysis of Lota’s relationship with her close friend Helen, in juxtaposition to her relationship with her intended Captain Holbrook. Helen cares deeply for Lota and wants to protect her, but both her gender and role as a female friend to Lota give her less power and legal standing to care for Lota. If Lota and Holbrook do marry, then he will be legally entitled to command Lota and all of her assets. In this case, if Lota had married Holbrook, she would have been expected to value her heterosexual marriage with him over her close female friendship with Helen. As Vicinus writes, “intimate relationships often terminated when one woman married, and loyalty to her husband and his wishes become paramount” (pg. xvi). If Lota married Holbrook, she would not only forfeit control of her assets but would also risk losing her closest confidante.
Understanding Helen’s Reliability as a Narrator in “Herself”
Source: Phelan, James. Living to Tell about it: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2005). Accessed 7 December 2024.
As a character narrator, Helen is only able to tell the narrative events from her perspective and can only assume or speculate what other characters are feeling. In a sense, this inhibits Helen’s ability to tell a full narrative. The reader, just like Helen, is left to interpret the thoughts and feelings of the other characters based on what Helen can empirically observe and report. As a character narrator, Helen accomplishes what Phelan calls “narrative functions”—reporting events, interpreting events, and judging the significance of events (pg. 36). Helen’s narration is also influenced by her relation to the narratee and narrative situation (pg. 36). One consideration in thinking about Helen’s narration is to note a permanent gap: we as readers do not know how much time has passed since the events of the narrative, nor what has happened in Helen’s life since Lota’s death. The possible temporal distance from events might mean that Helen could unintentionally be omitting events or dialogue due to forgotten memories.
From Lota’s Perspective: A Creative Reinterpretation of Select Scenes from “Herself”
By Jordan Whitehead
It is one of those lovely mornings where the air feels bright and stale. Like the dust rolling off of a book pulled off a shelf long forgotten. I open my eyes just enough to remember my surroundings, and how dreadful they are becoming! The only thing keeping me in a routine of rising out of bed at all are the charming little rooms at the back of the house that never cease to pique my interest.
Helen seems suspicious of my demeanor, she too can see me deteriorating; this fact seems to be putting her under some sort of spell. She frowned at me when she found me in this room moments before, a sorrowful sort of look where her eyebrows knit upwards from the inside corners. The way she looks at me feels as though I am a delicate petal she needs to keep in the light. I prefer my time in the darkness, where grandfather and the Venetian glass live. Now she knows where I spend the majority of my time.
The surface of the glass is dull and tarnished, its edges browning from gold to rust, but I quite like it. I like that it doesn’t have to be polished or proper to be beautiful. It can just be. I wish I were like that, but there are so many ways in which I must live up to all standards of beauty draped upon me.
While my cupid’s bow droops, the lines of my face grow hollow and cavernous, my hair grows thin, and my color dampens; still, I look for beauty. It is my power; it is my prestige; it goes with all of the status I have been given.
I grab grandfather’s journal and wander down the hall away from Helen, running my fingers along dusty windowsills. I pull back the drapery covering a window to look out at the afternoon light. Most of it is blocked and only comes in softly through muted tones, but it is enough to make out my surroundings. I lean against the window frame and reflect back on my life.
It seems as though I only finally settled into all that I have, only for it to be taken away again. My time with this power only lasts as long as I am engaged to Holbrook. Once we are wed I don’t see a way he would let me reside at Orange Grove, which is the only place where I feel seen. I will instead be tied to his life, tasked as his lover instead of him as mine.
“How could I leave this place?” I whisper to nobody and nothing.
Perhaps I am talking to the walls of the only place that ever showed me any care. The governess seemed indifferent, my aunt burdened. My grandfather’s money was a blessing, a way out of stagnation.
Only Helen really sees me, and sometimes even then I feel she is trying so hard to take care of me that she forgets to just spend time with me. I see a bird out the window in the distance. It sits on a low hanging limb of a tree.
“Do you ever miss somebody even as they are standing straight in front of you?” I wonder at the bird. It flies away just as footsteps sound to my left. I can feel her looking at me the way I know she must be looking at me. I take a couple steps back and sit down on the sofa opposite the window.
“"Well, what do you think of my den?" I ask, hoping she reserves most of her judgment.
"I think you could not have chosen a worse," she says. My heart falls.
"And yet my grandfather liked these rooms better than all the rest of the house. He almost lived in them. His old servant told me so," I retort, picking my chest up higher despite the pain that shoots through my body.
"An elderly fancy, which no doubt injured his health." Why can’t she see my health is not what I care about?
"People choose to say so, because he died sooner than they expected. His death would have come at the appointed time. The day and hour were written in the Book of Fate before he came here. The house had nothing to do with it—only in this quiet old room he had time to think of what was coming." I say this as a matter-of-fact, hoping my conviction will be enough for her to drop the subject and just be with me again. Without the filters or duties or responsibility.
"He was old, and had lived his life; you are young, and life is all before you."
"All!" I laugh, surprised by how she can so easily ignore my current state. This is no life worth living. Can’t she see that? I was dying long before I came to Orange Grove. It seems that even my Helen cannot see through to my pain.
She urges me to abandon this section of the house, dusty rooms to echo my decrepit attitude. She isn’t this harsh, perhaps, but every word to leave her tongue is a striking blow.
"You are talking nonsense, Helen. You know that I am doomed to die before the summer is over, and I know that you know it."
The rest of the conversation fades until I no longer hear the words leaving her lips. Those beautiful lips that once told me of so many dreams. Promises of beautiful futures and adventures together. Once it seemed that we were on the same page, destined to walk the path of life together in tandem with matching footsteps and grand desires. It turns out that the older we got, the faster she kept walking, me in the opposite direction with no footstep trail to follow. I feel as though I am a ghost walking. It’s only right that I’ll be dead soon to match.
I thought Orange Grove would be enough—and it was, for a while. Oh how I enjoyed decorating each and every room with furniture and wallpaper and knick knacks and spirit, a project to fill my unfulfilled desires. I kept decorating until I ran out of rooms, until my purpose ended. And then I found more. But these rooms, they didn’t need me. They walked on their own. And their crown jewel, the Venetian Glass, stood up like a placard of all my shortcomings and all my hopes that would never come to fruition. It was a beautiful kind of sadness to me, the woman in the mirror losing her beauty day by day and still smiling. She seemed happy. There was a kind of manic twinkle in her eye, and only once I realized she was me did I search for that twinkle in everything. It never appeared in any of the other mirrors in the house. So I come to this one. I don’t care what it affords me or takes from me, because at least I have that twinkle—some semblance of joy and fulfillment. And I will continue to have it, no matter what Holbrook or Helen or anyone else says. Until my final breath.
