Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman presents methods of grieving in several conflicting ways and through the personal and public lenses of many of its characters. Death, the unwelcome stranger, repeatedly appears in the novel, lingering in the setting of its first seven chapters and stealing several characters additionally. The main character, Mary Erle, experiences the deaths of her father and closest friend over the course of the narrative, as well as the losses of several opportunities and a longed-for relationship. As such, the reader is frequently exposed to grieving as focalized through Mary, and will notice a contradiction between her somber inner self and the external world around her. Among her peers she seems to be
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He mourns in a socially proper way, but, as we learn, that is not always a genuine one. Dixon’s novel introduces the reader to mourning and grief in a society in transition: it is moving out of the Victorian age of spectacle and sensibility, and into one where there are not yet rules dictating how to deal with death. Mary represents this in her complex and indeterminate modes of grieving. Her grief then, is what marks her as a truly modern woman. Victorian culture placed great emphasis on death and dying and developed strict customs as to how personal losses should be mourned. As such, there was often a tension between grieving in the public and private spheres, and in the old or current styles— one which is visibly articulated throughout Story of a Modern Woman. Mary remarks before her father’s funeral that “all the stock phrases of condolence, all the mental trappings of woe, seemed to be ready-made for the ‘sad occasion,’ like the crape skirts and cloaks which had been forwarded immediately from the mourning establishment in Regent Street” (Dixon 43). To her, there is something unfeeling about an industry built on solely death. Such an enterprise is not unique to the Victorian era though it
He mourns in a socially proper way, but, as we learn, that is not always a genuine one. Dixon’s novel introduces the reader to mourning and grief in a society in transition: it is moving out of the Victorian age of spectacle and sensibility, and into one where there are not yet rules dictating how to deal with death. Mary represents this in her complex and indeterminate modes of grieving. Her grief then, is what marks her as a truly modern woman. Victorian culture placed great emphasis on death and dying and developed strict customs as to how personal losses should be mourned. As such, there was often a tension between grieving in the public and private spheres, and in the old or current styles— one which is visibly articulated throughout Story of a Modern Woman. Mary remarks before her father’s funeral that “all the stock phrases of condolence, all the mental trappings of woe, seemed to be ready-made for the ‘sad occasion,’ like the crape skirts and cloaks which had been forwarded immediately from the mourning establishment in Regent Street” (Dixon 43). To her, there is something unfeeling about an industry built on solely death. Such an enterprise is not unique to the Victorian era though it