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Moths
First published in 1880, Moths addresses such Victorian taboos as adultery, domestic violence, and divorce in vivid and flamboyant prose. The beautiful young heroine, Vere Herbert, suffers at the hands of both her tyrannical mother and her dissipated husband.
Moths was Ouida’s most popular work, and its melodramatic plot, glamorous European settings, and controversial treatment of marriage make it an important, as well as a highly entertaining, example of the nineteenth-century “high society” novel.
Moths was Ouida’s most popular work, and its melodramatic plot, glamorous European settings, and controversial treatment of marriage make it an important, as well as a highly entertaining, example of the nineteenth-century “high society” novel.
627 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1880
5 people are currently reading
315 people want to read
About the author
Ouida
1,059 books56 followersOuida was the pen name of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé (although she preferred to be known as Marie Louise de la Ramée).
During her career, she wrote more than 40 novels, children's books and collections of short stories and essays. She was an animal rights activist and animal rescuer, and at times owned as many as thirty dogs. For many years she lived in London, but about 1874 she went to Italy, where she died.
Ouida's work went through several phases during her career. In her early period, her novels were a hybrid of the sensationalism of the 1860s and the proto-adventure novels dubbed "muscular fiction" that were emerging in part as a romanticization of imperial expansion. Later her work was more along the lines of historical romance, though she never stopped comment on contemporary society. She also wrote several stories for children. One of her most famous novels, Under Two Flags, described the British in Algeria in the most extravagant of terms, while nonetheless also expressing sympathy for the Frenchwith whom Ouida deeply identifiedand, to some extent, the Arabs. This book went on to be staged in plays, and subsequently to be turned into at least three movies, transitioning Ouida in the 20th century.
Jack London cites her novel Signa, which describes an unschooled Italian peasant child who achieves fame as an opera composer, and which he read at age eight, as one of the eight reasons for his literary success.
During her career, she wrote more than 40 novels, children's books and collections of short stories and essays. She was an animal rights activist and animal rescuer, and at times owned as many as thirty dogs. For many years she lived in London, but about 1874 she went to Italy, where she died.
Ouida's work went through several phases during her career. In her early period, her novels were a hybrid of the sensationalism of the 1860s and the proto-adventure novels dubbed "muscular fiction" that were emerging in part as a romanticization of imperial expansion. Later her work was more along the lines of historical romance, though she never stopped comment on contemporary society. She also wrote several stories for children. One of her most famous novels, Under Two Flags, described the British in Algeria in the most extravagant of terms, while nonetheless also expressing sympathy for the Frenchwith whom Ouida deeply identifiedand, to some extent, the Arabs. This book went on to be staged in plays, and subsequently to be turned into at least three movies, transitioning Ouida in the 20th century.
Jack London cites her novel Signa, which describes an unschooled Italian peasant child who achieves fame as an opera composer, and which he read at age eight, as one of the eight reasons for his literary success.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 26, 2015
The title "Moths" is allegorical for Society's women, who either spend their lives munching on ermine and gravitating to flames of corruption, or, as so rarely happens that it's notable when it does, rising to the stars in innocence and purity.
Vere grew up with her grandmother in the wholesome English air. But when she reached the age of 16, she was sent to the Riviera to live with her mother, Lady Dolly, a well liked but ammoral dame of Society. Having Vere under her roof is a thorn in Dolly's side, making her feel old; and Vere's solemn eyes and disapproving demeanor cramp Dolly's spontaneous frivolity. So on the advice of her shallow friends, Lady Dolly decides to get Vere wedded as soon as possible.
She, in effect, sells Vere off in marriage to the highest bidder; a cruel, selfish, loose-living but immensely rich Russian Count. In his depravity, he attempts to singe "The Moth" into becoming like all other society women. Vere stays true to her principles and to her innocence's true love, a famous opera singer by the name of Correze.
This novel is a real indictment on Society and Society's marriages which were often little more than a matching of names and titles but had no love, respect or honor. Both husbands and wives freely embarked in flirtations and "discreet" affairs while whittling away their time, money and usefulness with travel, castle hopping, gambling and more dress changes than a one-man theatre production.
As is usual with Ouida, the writing is impeccable and rich, but very wordy and at times repetitious. She sometimes bends to the weakness of thinking for her readers even when the meaning is indisputable. I found this a bit frustrating. Also, we are made to wait until the last gasping breath for a whiff of a "happy ever after" and for me it was a case of "too little too late".
Bottom line: Not one I would reread any time soon but still a finely crafted novel
CONTENT:
SEX: None shown, frequent talk of mistresses
VIOLENCE: Very mild
PROFANITY: Very mild
MY RATING: PG (for thematic elements)
Vere grew up with her grandmother in the wholesome English air. But when she reached the age of 16, she was sent to the Riviera to live with her mother, Lady Dolly, a well liked but ammoral dame of Society. Having Vere under her roof is a thorn in Dolly's side, making her feel old; and Vere's solemn eyes and disapproving demeanor cramp Dolly's spontaneous frivolity. So on the advice of her shallow friends, Lady Dolly decides to get Vere wedded as soon as possible.
She, in effect, sells Vere off in marriage to the highest bidder; a cruel, selfish, loose-living but immensely rich Russian Count. In his depravity, he attempts to singe "The Moth" into becoming like all other society women. Vere stays true to her principles and to her innocence's true love, a famous opera singer by the name of Correze.
This novel is a real indictment on Society and Society's marriages which were often little more than a matching of names and titles but had no love, respect or honor. Both husbands and wives freely embarked in flirtations and "discreet" affairs while whittling away their time, money and usefulness with travel, castle hopping, gambling and more dress changes than a one-man theatre production.
As is usual with Ouida, the writing is impeccable and rich, but very wordy and at times repetitious. She sometimes bends to the weakness of thinking for her readers even when the meaning is indisputable. I found this a bit frustrating. Also, we are made to wait until the last gasping breath for a whiff of a "happy ever after" and for me it was a case of "too little too late".
Bottom line: Not one I would reread any time soon but still a finely crafted novel
CONTENT:
SEX: None shown, frequent talk of mistresses
VIOLENCE: Very mild
PROFANITY: Very mild
MY RATING: PG (for thematic elements)
October 25, 2017
Apart from Folle-Farine, Moths is definitely my favorite of Ouida’s novels. Really, it is one of my all-time favorite novels written in any language, from any point in the history of literature, period. In this installment of Ouida’s marvelous wordscapes, the author takes us through another journey of the Victorian Era marriage, this time, however, from the vantage point of marriage as prostitution.
In her usual way, Ouida sets up her “angel-woman” (see Schroeder and Holt, 2008, Ouida The Phenomenon) for a grand enough entrance, and, like Etoile in Friendship, and Katherine Massarene in The Massarenes, the angelic qualities of inner-virtue amidst corruption are the more pronounced in this particular instantiation of the sublime. The story, in brief, can be summarized as follows: the clear victim and central character in the story, Vere, or Vera (and this symbolic name interchange varies as the story develops), is maliciously tricked by her mother, Lady Dolly, into a profitable marriage arrangement that turns out to be more profitable to her than to her newly-wedded child. The drama lies in the unfortunate scenario of the virtuous Vere having been persuaded through her mother’s lies to marry a man whom she detests to the most virulent degree. This man is a gentleman brute called Prince Sergius Zouroff. The aristocratic Russian Prince(ss) is another one of Ouida’s archetypes that appears in variants (Wanda, Princess Napraxine, A House Party, etc.), but in Moths, Prince Zouroff is a man who uses a family wealth that could easily buy him into or out of any sin as an advantage in the game of vigorously exercising the magnitudes of pleasure-seeking, in the unceasing effort to bolster his already inflated sense of egomania. Vere, on the other hand, simultaneously must resist the indefatigable cultivation of a love affair with a beautiful young idealistic opera singer who is secretly in love with her, whilst enduring graduated levels of abuse from a husband whose hardhearted and callous disregard for those who dare to exhibit any kind of genuine integrity (i.e. his wife) is overshadowed only by his lust and proclivity for sadism. Meanwhile, Correze, the 19th century rockstar of Vere’s wildest dreams, must stand by and watch the love of his life perpetually disrespected and violated, being almost powerless because of his social status and rank to do anything about the affronts to their mutual dignity. It is a marvelously romantic tale that pours off the page in rich word pictures.
Admittedly, this book is not the most aesthetic of Ouida’s works; however, one can firmly assert that it is one of her most beautifully crafted. The scenes and characters really come to life in this novel, bearing with them all the vivid colors of opulence-infused sentiment that we’ve come to know and love in Ouida. Lady Dolly, for example, the “wicked mother” of the narrative, is a character that is hard for us not to adore. We feel ashamed for sympathizing with her, but, on at least some levels, we feel compelled to sympathize with her nonetheless. One finds her to be a shallow, yet paradoxically multi-dimensional character. She is at once one of Ouida’s more tragic characters and, by long shot, one of the most, if not the most, comedic (aside from, perhaps, “Mouse” Kenilworth from The Massarenes). She is a tragic character for her inability to see any character flaw in herself whatsoever (she dreads the notion!), and yet, this distillation of vanity in a character gives this villain a charisma that is irresistible in every scene in which we are graced by her presence. Witness, for example, how Ouida uses Lady Dolly’s comic relief to open up a novel that holds, at its core, such highly controversial themes as patriarchal injustice and domestic abuse, almost trivializing them from the onset:
“Lady Dolly ought to have been perfectly happy. She had everything that can constitute the joys of a woman of her epoch. She was at Trouville. She had won heaps of money at play. She had made a correct book on the races. She had seen her chief rival looking bilious in an unbecoming gown. She had had a letter from her husband to say he was going away to Java or Jupiter or somewhere indefinitely. She wore a costume which had cost a great tailor twenty hours of anxious and continuous reflection…”
Although this kind of ironically humorous overtone is maintained throughout the work, the story becomes deadly serious at points, as Ouida attempts to tackle difficult ideas. Again, themes include the idea of marriage as more of an economic farce than any kind of moral institution, and more so, the difficulty of staying to true to oneself when surrounded by an environment of moral toxicity whose social virtue is wholly exterior and about as trustworthy as a "terms of agreement checkbox."
Through all the laughter and pain, however, the story has some of Ouida’s more charming love scenes. Ouida, for example, loved flowers in life, and she achieved incredible feats in the myriad of ways that she was able to integrate flowers into her novel’s themes and settings. You can observe in the following passage how the author has used flowers to move the romance between Vere and Correze forward:
“Princess,” said Correze, “You have walked several miles by this, and that stick parasol of yours is no alpenstock to help you much. Look at those hills through the trees; one sees here, if nowhere else, what the poets’ ‘blue air’ means. Soon the sun will set, and the sapphire blue will be cold grey. But rest a few moments, and I will gather you some of that yellow gentian. You keep your old love of flowers, I am sure?"
Then, she can’t resist couching in a political jab as the dialogue continues, adding substance to the style with:
Vere smiled a little sadly. [“Indeed, yes; but it is with flowers as with everything else, I think, in the world; one cannot enjoy them for the profusion and the waste of them everywhere. When one thinks of the millions that die at one ball! — and no one hardly looks at them. The most you hear anyone say is, ‘the rooms look very well to-night.’ And the flowers die for that.”
There are many more beautiful literary flowers like the passage above to seduce both the first time and the returning reader of Ouida’s Moths (or virtually any of her other works for that matter).
To close the review, I’ll confess that even today, some might find her rich descriptions to be wordy, her ability to penetrate the human heart, melodramatic, and her concomitant depiction of both the sublime and the sordid, cognitively jarring when compared with the works of her contemporaries as well as ours. Those readers, however, that truly get Ouida, truly get her; she is OUIDA! and that pretty much says it all. Whether you’re a newcomer to her novels, or a longtime fan, Moths will not disappoint. There’s a reason it flew off the shelves when it first came off the press in 1880 and sold well for decades after. It has only been a generation or two since it has disappeared from sight, and I can only but rejoice that I have lived to see its recent resurgence into contemporary readership.
JRE
In her usual way, Ouida sets up her “angel-woman” (see Schroeder and Holt, 2008, Ouida The Phenomenon) for a grand enough entrance, and, like Etoile in Friendship, and Katherine Massarene in The Massarenes, the angelic qualities of inner-virtue amidst corruption are the more pronounced in this particular instantiation of the sublime. The story, in brief, can be summarized as follows: the clear victim and central character in the story, Vere, or Vera (and this symbolic name interchange varies as the story develops), is maliciously tricked by her mother, Lady Dolly, into a profitable marriage arrangement that turns out to be more profitable to her than to her newly-wedded child. The drama lies in the unfortunate scenario of the virtuous Vere having been persuaded through her mother’s lies to marry a man whom she detests to the most virulent degree. This man is a gentleman brute called Prince Sergius Zouroff. The aristocratic Russian Prince(ss) is another one of Ouida’s archetypes that appears in variants (Wanda, Princess Napraxine, A House Party, etc.), but in Moths, Prince Zouroff is a man who uses a family wealth that could easily buy him into or out of any sin as an advantage in the game of vigorously exercising the magnitudes of pleasure-seeking, in the unceasing effort to bolster his already inflated sense of egomania. Vere, on the other hand, simultaneously must resist the indefatigable cultivation of a love affair with a beautiful young idealistic opera singer who is secretly in love with her, whilst enduring graduated levels of abuse from a husband whose hardhearted and callous disregard for those who dare to exhibit any kind of genuine integrity (i.e. his wife) is overshadowed only by his lust and proclivity for sadism. Meanwhile, Correze, the 19th century rockstar of Vere’s wildest dreams, must stand by and watch the love of his life perpetually disrespected and violated, being almost powerless because of his social status and rank to do anything about the affronts to their mutual dignity. It is a marvelously romantic tale that pours off the page in rich word pictures.
Admittedly, this book is not the most aesthetic of Ouida’s works; however, one can firmly assert that it is one of her most beautifully crafted. The scenes and characters really come to life in this novel, bearing with them all the vivid colors of opulence-infused sentiment that we’ve come to know and love in Ouida. Lady Dolly, for example, the “wicked mother” of the narrative, is a character that is hard for us not to adore. We feel ashamed for sympathizing with her, but, on at least some levels, we feel compelled to sympathize with her nonetheless. One finds her to be a shallow, yet paradoxically multi-dimensional character. She is at once one of Ouida’s more tragic characters and, by long shot, one of the most, if not the most, comedic (aside from, perhaps, “Mouse” Kenilworth from The Massarenes). She is a tragic character for her inability to see any character flaw in herself whatsoever (she dreads the notion!), and yet, this distillation of vanity in a character gives this villain a charisma that is irresistible in every scene in which we are graced by her presence. Witness, for example, how Ouida uses Lady Dolly’s comic relief to open up a novel that holds, at its core, such highly controversial themes as patriarchal injustice and domestic abuse, almost trivializing them from the onset:
“Lady Dolly ought to have been perfectly happy. She had everything that can constitute the joys of a woman of her epoch. She was at Trouville. She had won heaps of money at play. She had made a correct book on the races. She had seen her chief rival looking bilious in an unbecoming gown. She had had a letter from her husband to say he was going away to Java or Jupiter or somewhere indefinitely. She wore a costume which had cost a great tailor twenty hours of anxious and continuous reflection…”
Although this kind of ironically humorous overtone is maintained throughout the work, the story becomes deadly serious at points, as Ouida attempts to tackle difficult ideas. Again, themes include the idea of marriage as more of an economic farce than any kind of moral institution, and more so, the difficulty of staying to true to oneself when surrounded by an environment of moral toxicity whose social virtue is wholly exterior and about as trustworthy as a "terms of agreement checkbox."
Through all the laughter and pain, however, the story has some of Ouida’s more charming love scenes. Ouida, for example, loved flowers in life, and she achieved incredible feats in the myriad of ways that she was able to integrate flowers into her novel’s themes and settings. You can observe in the following passage how the author has used flowers to move the romance between Vere and Correze forward:
“Princess,” said Correze, “You have walked several miles by this, and that stick parasol of yours is no alpenstock to help you much. Look at those hills through the trees; one sees here, if nowhere else, what the poets’ ‘blue air’ means. Soon the sun will set, and the sapphire blue will be cold grey. But rest a few moments, and I will gather you some of that yellow gentian. You keep your old love of flowers, I am sure?"
Then, she can’t resist couching in a political jab as the dialogue continues, adding substance to the style with:
Vere smiled a little sadly. [“Indeed, yes; but it is with flowers as with everything else, I think, in the world; one cannot enjoy them for the profusion and the waste of them everywhere. When one thinks of the millions that die at one ball! — and no one hardly looks at them. The most you hear anyone say is, ‘the rooms look very well to-night.’ And the flowers die for that.”
There are many more beautiful literary flowers like the passage above to seduce both the first time and the returning reader of Ouida’s Moths (or virtually any of her other works for that matter).
To close the review, I’ll confess that even today, some might find her rich descriptions to be wordy, her ability to penetrate the human heart, melodramatic, and her concomitant depiction of both the sublime and the sordid, cognitively jarring when compared with the works of her contemporaries as well as ours. Those readers, however, that truly get Ouida, truly get her; she is OUIDA! and that pretty much says it all. Whether you’re a newcomer to her novels, or a longtime fan, Moths will not disappoint. There’s a reason it flew off the shelves when it first came off the press in 1880 and sold well for decades after. It has only been a generation or two since it has disappeared from sight, and I can only but rejoice that I have lived to see its recent resurgence into contemporary readership.
JRE
December 16, 2021
This was so bleak but so exquisitely written. I felt so many emotions while reading it and just wanted to hug Vere.
November 7, 2018
I've been reading this book for over four months so that tells you something about what a slog it is. But then again I never stopped reading it, despite the complete lack of progress throughout 80% of the novel because I was waiting desperately for the resolution of the problem set up in the first 10% and which comes to an end in the final ten pages of a 400 page novel.
So why read it? Sometimes Ouida's sentences are just gorgeous--overwrought like the story--but stunning. And her pictures of high society Victorians, while also over-the-top, and laced with the contempt she felt for them, address an entirely different segment of Victorian society than Dickens or Gaskell do. (See sample below) Did Ouida herself know what this life was like? Or was she simply imagining a world she could never enter? Still I get to enjoy parties in Trouville and mansions in Paris and villas on the coast of the Mediterranean along with them. She was a best-selling novelist in her time. I call her the Victorian Jackie Collins.
In this book, an innocent young girl is sold into marriage by her immoral, narcissistic mother to a brutal, vulgar Russian prince who has a string of mistresses and simply desires the girl as a trophy wife. He treats her badly and she tries to be obedient to him as she has been brought up (by her grandmother, not her mother) with high standards but she is in love with an opera singer, the rock star of her time. For 80% of the novel, her husband treats her badly and she suffers, refusing to run off with the opera singer who wants to rescue her. That's the plot, set against a backdrop of yachts and Parisian parties and Polish castles and Swiss inns and Mediterranean villas.
Sample sentences and descriptions I highlighted:
• It ruined her morning. It clouded the sunshine. It spoiled her cigarette. It made the waltzes sound like dirges. It made her chief rival look almost good-looking to her. It made a gown combined of parrots’ breasts and passion-flowers that she was going to wear in the afternoon feel green, and yellow, and bilious in her anticipation of it, though it was quite new and a wonder. It made her remember her debts. It made her feel that she had not digested those écrevissses at supper. It made her fancy that her husband might not really go to Java or Jupiter. It was so sudden, so appalling, so bewildering, so endless a question; and Lady Dolly only asked questions, she never answered them or waited for their answers.
• They put up gorgeous sunshades and out-spread huge fans: they were all twitter, laughter, colour, mirth.
• This dear friend was her dear Adine, otherwise Lady Stoat of Stitchley, who had just won the honour of the past years season by marrying her daughter (a beauty) to a young marquis, who, with the small exceptions of being a drunkard, a fool, and a brute, was everything that a mothers soul could desire; and all the mothers’ souls in the world had accordingly burned for him passionately, and Lady Stoat had won him.
• She had young men about her as naturally as a ratcatcher has ferrets and terriers; but she meant to take her time before choosing one of them for good and all.
• They were in a long gallery away from the ball-room; the windows opened on the lamplit garden; the walls were tapestried; figures of archers and pages and ladies worked in all the bright fair colours of the Gobelin looms; there was a gilded estrade that opened on to a marble terrace, that in its turn led to lawns, cedar-circled, and with little fountains springing up in the light and shadow.
• So, from New Year to Midsummer she was in the house in Chesham Place, which she made quite charming with all sorts of old Italian things and the sombre and stately Cinque Cento, effectively, if barbarously, mixed up with all the extravagancies of modern upholstery. Lady Dolly’s house, under the combination of millinery and mediævalism, was too perfect, everybody said; and she had a new friend in her Sicilian attached to the Italian Legation, who helped her a great deal with his good taste, and sent her things over from his grim old castles in the Taormina; and it was a new toy and amused her; and her fancy-dress frisks, and her musical breakfasts, were great successes; and, on the whole, Lady Dolly had grown very popular. As for Mr. Vanderdecken, he was always stingy and a bear, but he knew how to behave. He represented a remote and peaceful borough, which he had bought as his wife bought a poodle or a piece of pâte tendre; he snored decorously on the benches of St. Stephens, and went to ministerial dinners, and did other duties of a rich man’s life; and, for the rest of his time, was absorbed in those foreign speculations and gigantic loans which constituted his business, and took him to Java, or Japan, or Jupiter so often. He was large, ugly, solemn, but he did extremely well in his place, which was an unobtrusive one, like the great Japanese bonze who sat cross-legged in the hall. What he thought no one knew; he was as mute on the subject of his opinions as the bonze was. In the new order of fashionable marriage a silence that must never be broken is the part allotted to the husband; and the only part he is expected to take.
So why read it? Sometimes Ouida's sentences are just gorgeous--overwrought like the story--but stunning. And her pictures of high society Victorians, while also over-the-top, and laced with the contempt she felt for them, address an entirely different segment of Victorian society than Dickens or Gaskell do. (See sample below) Did Ouida herself know what this life was like? Or was she simply imagining a world she could never enter? Still I get to enjoy parties in Trouville and mansions in Paris and villas on the coast of the Mediterranean along with them. She was a best-selling novelist in her time. I call her the Victorian Jackie Collins.
In this book, an innocent young girl is sold into marriage by her immoral, narcissistic mother to a brutal, vulgar Russian prince who has a string of mistresses and simply desires the girl as a trophy wife. He treats her badly and she tries to be obedient to him as she has been brought up (by her grandmother, not her mother) with high standards but she is in love with an opera singer, the rock star of her time. For 80% of the novel, her husband treats her badly and she suffers, refusing to run off with the opera singer who wants to rescue her. That's the plot, set against a backdrop of yachts and Parisian parties and Polish castles and Swiss inns and Mediterranean villas.
Sample sentences and descriptions I highlighted:
• It ruined her morning. It clouded the sunshine. It spoiled her cigarette. It made the waltzes sound like dirges. It made her chief rival look almost good-looking to her. It made a gown combined of parrots’ breasts and passion-flowers that she was going to wear in the afternoon feel green, and yellow, and bilious in her anticipation of it, though it was quite new and a wonder. It made her remember her debts. It made her feel that she had not digested those écrevissses at supper. It made her fancy that her husband might not really go to Java or Jupiter. It was so sudden, so appalling, so bewildering, so endless a question; and Lady Dolly only asked questions, she never answered them or waited for their answers.
• They put up gorgeous sunshades and out-spread huge fans: they were all twitter, laughter, colour, mirth.
• This dear friend was her dear Adine, otherwise Lady Stoat of Stitchley, who had just won the honour of the past years season by marrying her daughter (a beauty) to a young marquis, who, with the small exceptions of being a drunkard, a fool, and a brute, was everything that a mothers soul could desire; and all the mothers’ souls in the world had accordingly burned for him passionately, and Lady Stoat had won him.
• She had young men about her as naturally as a ratcatcher has ferrets and terriers; but she meant to take her time before choosing one of them for good and all.
• They were in a long gallery away from the ball-room; the windows opened on the lamplit garden; the walls were tapestried; figures of archers and pages and ladies worked in all the bright fair colours of the Gobelin looms; there was a gilded estrade that opened on to a marble terrace, that in its turn led to lawns, cedar-circled, and with little fountains springing up in the light and shadow.
• So, from New Year to Midsummer she was in the house in Chesham Place, which she made quite charming with all sorts of old Italian things and the sombre and stately Cinque Cento, effectively, if barbarously, mixed up with all the extravagancies of modern upholstery. Lady Dolly’s house, under the combination of millinery and mediævalism, was too perfect, everybody said; and she had a new friend in her Sicilian attached to the Italian Legation, who helped her a great deal with his good taste, and sent her things over from his grim old castles in the Taormina; and it was a new toy and amused her; and her fancy-dress frisks, and her musical breakfasts, were great successes; and, on the whole, Lady Dolly had grown very popular. As for Mr. Vanderdecken, he was always stingy and a bear, but he knew how to behave. He represented a remote and peaceful borough, which he had bought as his wife bought a poodle or a piece of pâte tendre; he snored decorously on the benches of St. Stephens, and went to ministerial dinners, and did other duties of a rich man’s life; and, for the rest of his time, was absorbed in those foreign speculations and gigantic loans which constituted his business, and took him to Java, or Japan, or Jupiter so often. He was large, ugly, solemn, but he did extremely well in his place, which was an unobtrusive one, like the great Japanese bonze who sat cross-legged in the hall. What he thought no one knew; he was as mute on the subject of his opinions as the bonze was. In the new order of fashionable marriage a silence that must never be broken is the part allotted to the husband; and the only part he is expected to take.
October 9, 2020
I love this book so hard. What I love most in descending order of importance:
Vere (her strength and conviction, her iron will, her goodness, and that she ends up happy and loved)
All the glorious, glorious pining
Nadine (unable to escape what society has made her but a true friend to Vere)
Fuschia (so gauche and good hearted underneath)
Jeanne (such a villain who gets away with it all!)
I am so happy that I have maintained my deep and abiding love for Ouida's writing through an MA and a Ph.D. I know too many people whose love for their subject has been destroyed by graduate school, but mine has just continued to grow over time.
Vere (her strength and conviction, her iron will, her goodness, and that she ends up happy and loved)
All the glorious, glorious pining
Nadine (unable to escape what society has made her but a true friend to Vere)
Fuschia (so gauche and good hearted underneath)
Jeanne (such a villain who gets away with it all!)
I am so happy that I have maintained my deep and abiding love for Ouida's writing through an MA and a Ph.D. I know too many people whose love for their subject has been destroyed by graduate school, but mine has just continued to grow over time.
October 10, 2025
It has been a long time since I read Ouida, I was a little worried that from the description of depravity that I would not find this uplifting but I was so pleasantly surprised. I did not want something that brought all good to the depths of soulless darkness. Though this had a prominent religious theme that comes short in the sin of pride and inability to forgive, the saintly woman falls short in this and compared to the throngs who wallow in the mire, disliking something bright and clean. Vere the bright star or ermine is tarnished by the moths that don’t understand her and want her brought down.
Story in short- A young innocent girl comes to live with her mother’s society and self-centered life. The mother who wants the spotlight all to herself must force a marriage that is not wanted but mostly detrimental to her daughter’s happiness.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
I loved the characters of Vere, Correze, Nadine, Lord Jura (though flawed saw merit and a treasure in Vere, though he cannot change himself to be different, he saw that Dolly was false and selfish pretty woman and also Fushia who saw Vere as good.
I didn’t like Zouroff but I found his mistress Jeanne far worse for she looked to really hurt pretending not to be that evil. Zouroff had a few soft spots but he let evil control him.
Dolly, Vere’s mother was the worst for she only thought of herself thinking she never did wrong but really knowing her daughter would lead a miserable life with the man she sold her daughter to, and a surface veener of good when the inside is evil that has a delusion of being very good.
Vere- asked her sister in law if God would let her leave her husband but told it is impossible. Biblical divorce for extramarital affair. Vere was very pure but her sin of pride and inability to forgive.
Dolly lies and sells her daughter to Zouroff.
Correze cannot remain happy without Vere.
Zouroff who is supposedly strong cannot think what to do without Jeanne. Who is controlling and vindictive looking to ruin Correze and Vere, seeks revenge.
Vere Herbert who has lived with her austere but loving grandmother comes to a worldly mother whose life is superficial and self indulgent justifying all to make her never at fault. Dolly who had remarried and kept her daughter in Bulmer with her dead father’s mother, had at first married for love to a preacher but soon after found that life dull, as soon as her husband died, she left for her life for caprice. When her daughter, 16 outshined her she looked to marry her right away but her daughter’s austere ways and lack of dowry, she worried about any takers. Vere was innocent and when she first met the singer, Correze with the angelic voice, after having saved her from the high tide and bringing her back but not before a sympathetical understanding of these two simple natures. Dolly saw trouble and did not want a son in law that was a singer could not be, she ordered him not to see his daughter. Correze gives Vere some flowers and tells her to keep free from impurities, having to go abroad but when he hears about the engagement to Zouroff, he writes to Dolly about the bad character and that he offers to marry Vere. Dolly tears it up, Zouroff desires to marry Vere but when she never lies to him and tells him she despises his bad ways. Vere is stubborn and refuses him but Dolly reassures him and finally breaks her daughter in thinking for her family’s honor, she must marry Zouroff because of gambling debts. He thinks she is marrying for position and money, not till later he finds out from Vere that the lies her mother told so she would marry. Dolly thinks her daughter should be happy with the money snd all he offered. He finally sees how pure his wife is but with Jeanne, own of his strongest mistress who tells him how to act, he supposed so great not so masculine. Vere has a necklace for a wedding present of a moth with a diamond, it was anonymously given but she knew it was Correze. She did not know his love until later and knowing her husband refused Correze to see his wife which she obeyed even when he had many mistresses. She refused to see Correze and knowing they loved but she refused to be base like his husband’s mistresses. She knew he bought her and was happy to be away but her illness made Correze see her but was so rebuked. Correze tried to get Zouroff to bring his wife back to Paris for her health, Zouroff laughs at his sister who told him, and hates Correze more. When Correze sees Zouroff with one of his mistresses, so he hits Zouroff with his glove three times & the duel at Correze’s place. Correze shoots up in the air whereas Zouroff shoots Correze in the throat, almost dying and no longer able to sing. Vere had not known about this and life in Paris, until he wrote a note about this and gleefully. Vere leaves without anyone knowing and comes to his beside, telling him she is there. Zouroff gets an annulment and will marry Jeanne.
Story in short- A young innocent girl comes to live with her mother’s society and self-centered life. The mother who wants the spotlight all to herself must force a marriage that is not wanted but mostly detrimental to her daughter’s happiness.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
I loved the characters of Vere, Correze, Nadine, Lord Jura (though flawed saw merit and a treasure in Vere, though he cannot change himself to be different, he saw that Dolly was false and selfish pretty woman and also Fushia who saw Vere as good.
I didn’t like Zouroff but I found his mistress Jeanne far worse for she looked to really hurt pretending not to be that evil. Zouroff had a few soft spots but he let evil control him.
Dolly, Vere’s mother was the worst for she only thought of herself thinking she never did wrong but really knowing her daughter would lead a miserable life with the man she sold her daughter to, and a surface veener of good when the inside is evil that has a delusion of being very good.
Vere- asked her sister in law if God would let her leave her husband but told it is impossible. Biblical divorce for extramarital affair. Vere was very pure but her sin of pride and inability to forgive.
Dolly lies and sells her daughter to Zouroff.
Correze cannot remain happy without Vere.
Zouroff who is supposedly strong cannot think what to do without Jeanne. Who is controlling and vindictive looking to ruin Correze and Vere, seeks revenge.
Vere Herbert who has lived with her austere but loving grandmother comes to a worldly mother whose life is superficial and self indulgent justifying all to make her never at fault. Dolly who had remarried and kept her daughter in Bulmer with her dead father’s mother, had at first married for love to a preacher but soon after found that life dull, as soon as her husband died, she left for her life for caprice. When her daughter, 16 outshined her she looked to marry her right away but her daughter’s austere ways and lack of dowry, she worried about any takers. Vere was innocent and when she first met the singer, Correze with the angelic voice, after having saved her from the high tide and bringing her back but not before a sympathetical understanding of these two simple natures. Dolly saw trouble and did not want a son in law that was a singer could not be, she ordered him not to see his daughter. Correze gives Vere some flowers and tells her to keep free from impurities, having to go abroad but when he hears about the engagement to Zouroff, he writes to Dolly about the bad character and that he offers to marry Vere. Dolly tears it up, Zouroff desires to marry Vere but when she never lies to him and tells him she despises his bad ways. Vere is stubborn and refuses him but Dolly reassures him and finally breaks her daughter in thinking for her family’s honor, she must marry Zouroff because of gambling debts. He thinks she is marrying for position and money, not till later he finds out from Vere that the lies her mother told so she would marry. Dolly thinks her daughter should be happy with the money snd all he offered. He finally sees how pure his wife is but with Jeanne, own of his strongest mistress who tells him how to act, he supposed so great not so masculine. Vere has a necklace for a wedding present of a moth with a diamond, it was anonymously given but she knew it was Correze. She did not know his love until later and knowing her husband refused Correze to see his wife which she obeyed even when he had many mistresses. She refused to see Correze and knowing they loved but she refused to be base like his husband’s mistresses. She knew he bought her and was happy to be away but her illness made Correze see her but was so rebuked. Correze tried to get Zouroff to bring his wife back to Paris for her health, Zouroff laughs at his sister who told him, and hates Correze more. When Correze sees Zouroff with one of his mistresses, so he hits Zouroff with his glove three times & the duel at Correze’s place. Correze shoots up in the air whereas Zouroff shoots Correze in the throat, almost dying and no longer able to sing. Vere had not known about this and life in Paris, until he wrote a note about this and gleefully. Vere leaves without anyone knowing and comes to his beside, telling him she is there. Zouroff gets an annulment and will marry Jeanne.
March 28, 2023
Listened to a dramatisation by BBC Sounds.
September 23, 2016
A long fairy tale, with a not-very-satisfying ending.
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