Miss Gwilt and the Gorgons, by G. H. Thomas

Miss Gwilt and the Gorgons

George Housman Thomas, 1824-1868

Engraved by William Luson Thomas (Thomas's brother)

1866

From Wilkie Collins's novel Armadale, Vol. II, facing p.130

Source: the 1866 Smith, Elder edition, uploaded to the Internet Archive by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Two ugly and obviously disapproving older women have come to call on Miss Gwilt in her new lodgings, not stopping long enough to take off their bonnets and shawls. This might not seem like an important encounter, but it is; G. H. Thomas has illustrated it for a reason. [continued below]

Caption and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print document]

Commentary

Thanks to Mrs Milroy's unreasonable jealousy, doubt has now been cast on Miss Gwilt's background. The latter has cleverly taken the initiative herself, leaving her post as governess to Eleanor Milroy, but remaining in the neighbourhood. Her strategy, of not acting like the guilty party, worked well at first. Local people sympathised with her, especially as Mrs Milroy had managed to involve Allan Armadale in the affair. Allan had never fitted the community's image of a proper country gentleman. But now Miss Gwilt has tried to ingratiate herself with Allan again, and the tide of feeling about her has changed. The two "Gorgons" consider that she has acted inappropriately by visiting him. She writes in her diary,

Seeing they were bent on provoking me, I kept my temper, and answered them in my smoothest, sweetest, and most ladylike manner. I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day. On this hint, as the man says in the play, I spoke. "'What have I done that is wrong?' I asked, innocently. 'Mr. Armadale has injured me ; and I have been to his house and forgiven him the injury. Surely there must be some mistake, ladies? You can't have really come here to remonstrate with me in a Christian spirit for performing an act of Christianity?"

While Miss Gwilt remains perfectly composed, and inclines her head elegantly towards them, the "Gorgons" are utterly outraged: "'Temper we were prepared for, Miss Gwilt,' they said, 'but not Profanity. We wish you good evening.' (524-25),

Despite or because of his evangelical upbringing, Wilkie Collins himself was not a church-goer. He had little time for self-righteous zealots who, as Miss Gwilt observes herself, "open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and shut them up again at one o'clock." His own spiritual life was both less orthodox and less circumscribed. In the events of this novel, divine providence works through human love, so that the sins of the Armadale fathers are not visited on their sons, and even Lydia Gwilt, who has led such a morally reprehensible life, eventually makes some atonement for it. She will seek forgiveness from God before taking her life, and setting her young husband (Midwinter) free. If not exactly martyrdom (see Oulton's discussion), this is nobly motivated — the kind of deed of which such narrow-minded smug "Gorgons" would never be capable.

"Authenticism and Post-Authenticism: The Case of Wilkie Collins's Armadale and Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night: A Confession"

References

Collins, Wilkie. Armadale Ed. Catherine Peters. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2008.

Oulton, Carolyn. "Wilkie Collins — An Interpretation of Christian Belief." The Wilkie Collins Journal. Web. 9 November 2011.

Last modified 9 November 2011