The Netherworld: Living In

1
The Netherworld Living In Out of
Representation

• I. Living in RepresentationII. A Million
  Little PiecesIII. Living out of Representation

2
I. Living in Representation

• Why does the novel make continued references and
  allusions to other media?
• Why does Gissing continue to remind us that we
  live in representation?

3
I. Living in RepresentationThe Police Report

• 'On Friday, Margaret Barnes, nineteen, a
  single woman, was indicted for stealing six
  jackets, value 5l., the property of Mary Oaks,
  her mistress. The prisoner, who cried bitterly
  during the proceedings, pleaded guilty. The
  prosecutrix is a single woman, and gets her
  living by mantle-making, She engaged the prisoner
  to do what is termed "finishing off," that is,
  making the button-holes and sewing on the
  buttons. The prisoner was also employed to fetch
  the work from the warehouse, and deliver it when
  finished. On September 7th her mistress sent her
  with the six jackets, and she never returned.
  Sergeant Smith, a detective, who apprehended the
  prisoner, said he had made inquiries in the case,
  and found that up to this time the prisoner had
  borne a good character as an honest, hard-working
  girl. She had quitted her former lodgings, which
  had no furniture but a small table and a few rags
  in a corner, and he discovered her in a room
  which was perfectly bare. Miss Oaks was examined,
  and said the prisoner was employed from nine in
  the morning to eight at night. The Judge How
  much did you pay her per week? Miss Oaks Four
  shillings. The Judge Did you give her her food?
  Miss Oaks No I only get one shilling each for
  the jackets myself when completed. I have to use
  two sewing-machines, find my own cotton and
  needles, and I can, by working hard, make two in
  a day. The Judge said it was a sad state of
  things. (54-55)

4
I. Living in RepresentationLetters

• 'I don't begin with no deering, because it's a
  plaid out thing, and because I'm riting to too
  people at onse, both mother and Clem, and it's so
  long since I've had a pen in my hand I've harf
  forgot how to use it. If you think I'm making my
  pile, you think rong, so you've got no need to
  ask me when I'm going to send money home, like
  you did in the last letter. (Clems Brother
  147).
• 'DEAR MOTHER,--The old feller has gawn of it
  apened at jest after six e'clock if you want to
  now I shall come and sea you at ten 'clock
  to-morow moning and I beleve hes got the will but
  hes a beest and theers a game up you may take
  your hothe so I remain C. S.' (Clem 326)

5
I. Living in RepresentationDickens
PreRaphaelites

• Gissing on DickensLondon as a place of squalid
  mystery and terror, of the grimly grotesque, of
  labyrinthine obscurity and lurid fascination, is
  Dickenss own he taught people a certain way of
  regarding the huge city, and to this day how
  common it is to see London with Dickenss eyes.

6
I. Living in RepresentationDickens
PreRaphaelites

• Clem
• A cloth was already spread across one end of the
  deal table, with such other preparations for a
  meal as Clem deemed adequate. The sausages--five
  in number--she had emptied from the frying-pan
  directly on to her plate, and with them all the
  black rich juice that had exuded in the process
  of cooking--particularly rich, owing to its
  having several times caught fire and blazed
  triumphantly (Gissing, 6). In a frying-pan,
  which was on the fire, and which was secured to
  the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were
  cooking and standing over them, with a
  toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old
  shrivelled Jew, whose villanous-looking and
  repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of
  matted red hair (Dickens, Oliver Twist).

7
I. Living in RepresentationDickens
PreRaphaelites

• Clem
• There was no denying that Clem was handsomeat
  sixteen she had all her charms in apparent
  maturity, and they were of the coarsely
  magnificent order. Her forehead was low and of
  great width her nose was well shapen, and had
  large sensual apertures her cruel lips may be
  seen on certain fine antique busts the neck that
  supported her heavy head was splendidly rounded.
  In laughing, she became a model for an artist, an
  embodiment of fierce life independent of
  morality. Her health was probably less sound than
  it seemed to be one would have compared her, not
  to some piece of exuberant normal vegetation, but
  rather to a rank, evilly-fostered growth. The
  putrid soil of that nether world yields other
  forms besides the obviously blighted and sapless.
  (8)

8
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1874.
9
I. Living in RepresentationPortraits Books

• Clara'I wish I could neither read nor write! I
  wish I had never been told that there is anything
  better than to work with one's hands and earn
  daily bread!' (82)
• In passing a shop-window where photographs were
  exposed, she looked for those of actresses, and
  gazed at them with terrible intensity. 'I am as
  good-looking as she is. Why shouldn't _my_
  portrait be seen some day in the windows?' And
  then her heart throbbed, smitten with passionate
  desire. (82)
• It was a novel (with a picture on the cover
  which seemed designed to repel any person not
  wholly without taste), and might perhaps serve
  the end of averting her thoughts from their one
  subject. . . . The story was better than its
  illustration it took a hold upon her she read
  all day long. But when she returned to herself,
  it was to find that she had been exasperating her
  heart's malady. The book dealt with people of
  wealth and refinement, with the world to which
  she had all her life been aspiring, and to which
  she might have attained. (276)

10
I. Living in RepresentationMaps

• Look at a map of greater London, a map on which
  the town proper shows as a dark, irregularly
  rounded patch against the whiteness of suburban
  districts, and just on the northern limit of the
  vast network of streets you will distinguish the
  name of Crouch End. Another decade, and the dark
  patch will have spread greatly further for the
  present, Crouch End is still able to remind one
  that it was in the country a very short time ago.
  The streets have a smell of newness, of dampness
  the bricks retain their complexion, the stucco
  has not rotted more than one expects in a year or
  two poverty tries to hide itself with venetian
  blinds, until the time when an advanced guard of
  houses shall justify the existence of the slum
  (364).

11
I.Living in RepresentationThe Documentary
Tradition
Henry Mayhew, The Coster Girl, 1861
The Work Girl
Gustave Dore, The Flower Girl, 1872
12
II. A Million Little Pieces
James Frey and Oprah WinfreyOprah I left the
impression that the truth doesnt matter.
13
III. Living out of Representation

• Do You Agree or Disagree?
• If in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde there is an
  interesting tension between old and new in its
  production of the urban gothic, this novel seems
  to suggest that the old has its grip on
  everything, including the people too dirty and
  downtrodden to exist in representation. In
  the Netherworld, there is a general blight of
  representation a distrust of pleasure, light,
  colour in favour of mud and dirt.
• Pg. 104ff--The wedding party
• Pg. 164--Getting out of East London
• Pg. 129Shooters Gardens