A Life of Sensation Read-a-Long: EPOCH FOUR

I'm a little bit late with my check-in this week - three days at Scout Camp doesn't leave a whole lot of time for reading (I love my Scout Kids, but they're exhausting) and in any event I got totally distracting by racing through the first book in the Wheel of Time series.

Anyhow, we're back to Wilkie now. A short read this week, luckily, and I'm thrilled to finally see The Moonstone make an appearance.

Here are the highlights of this week:

• Wilkie has met the second lady of his life, Martha Rudd. It's heavily implied that she was on the curvier side, whilst Caroline was a little more petite. The author refers to her as a 'buxom wench.' The author. Nice.

• 'A feature of mid-Victorian sexuality was that men were often aroused by women in socially inferior positions.'
  
  Yeah, but... really? Are you sure it's not just that those were the women they could abuse because they weren't really able to say no? Because, honestly, I'm pretty sure it's that. 

• Apparently Wilkie was drawing on his own experiences of opium whilst he was writing The Moonstone. You don't say.

• It does note, however, that he treated the Indians in the story with respect, with a fitting and appropriate conclusion, unlike other authors of the time period *cough* Dickens *cough*
  
  I think I said much the same thing when I reviewed it a few weeks ago, passive-aggressive Dickens references aside.

• Dickens and Wilkie are sort of falling out now. My favourite burn ever is 'It is part of the bump in Wilkie's forehead that he will not allow his brother to be very ill.'

• I really want to read Man and Wife, for his take on the injustice of the matrimonial laws. I can't seem to find a decent copy though.

• Caroline went off, married somebody fifteen years younger, decided she didn't like it and came back to live with Wilkie again. So now she's married to someone else whilst living quite comfortably as a mistress.

• Oh, but the biggest WHAT THE FUCK moment in the whole thing is where Wilkie has a second child with Mistress B... and calls it the same name as the child of Mistress A. 

• What!? No. Why would you DO that!? I mean, I know that some names were fairly common in Victorian England, but there were more than two names, you selfish, inconsiderate wazzock. At this point I'm really starting to wonder if these two women were as fiiiiiine with the situation as history makes out. 
  
  
  
  

  Next week, we're finishing the book. Stay tuned!