The Abstruse Syntax of Law in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady
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Michela Marroni
Michela Marroni Michela Marroni is Associate Professor of English at the University of Tuscia at Viterbo (Italy). Her main fields of research are history of translation, the eighteenth-century novel, Victorian literature and visual arts. Recent publications include
Come leggere “Robinson Crusoe” (Chieti, 2016) andDialoghi traduttologici (Chieti, 2018). She has also edited a translation of two short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell, respectivelyI fratellastri (Rome, 2016) andLe confessioni di Mr Harrison (Rome, 2018). She sits on the editorial board ofRSV.Rivista di Studi Vittoriani andTraduttologia . She is also a member of CUSVE (Centre for Victorian and Edwardian Studies, Chieti).
Abstract
From the point of view of the British juridical system, The Law and the Lady can be interpreted as a sensation novel whose crucial albeit indirect message must be read in the context of Collins’s legal reformism. As well as challenging the Scottish verdict of Not Proven, the heroine of the novel, Valeria Brinton, presents herself as a woman detective who is anxious to prove her husband’s innocence before both the court and public opinion. Underlining the peculiarity of her mission is a destabilising tension which, in its social implication, is aimed to challenge the conformism and love of orthodoxy typical of the Victorian ethos. In this sense, Valeria’s gendered autobiographical writing, while giving full evidence to her resourceful womanhood, dramatises the blurring of the confine between masculinity and femininity and, at the same time, offers a representation of the old-fashioned and abstruse protocols of British law.
About the author
Michela Marroni
Michela Marroni is Associate Professor of English at the University of Tuscia at Viterbo (Italy). Her main fields of research are history of translation, the eighteenth-century novel, Victorian literature and visual arts. Recent publications include Come leggere “Robinson Crusoe” (Chieti, 2016) and Dialoghi traduttologici (Chieti, 2018). She has also edited a translation of two short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell, respectively I fratellastri (Rome, 2016) and Le confessioni di Mr Harrison (Rome, 2018). She sits on the editorial board of RSV.Rivista di Studi Vittoriani and Traduttologia. She is also a member of CUSVE (Centre for Victorian and Edwardian Studies, Chieti).
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Charles Dickens and the Rhetoric of Law in David Copperfield
- Gentlemanliness, Status and Law in Anthony Trollope’s Lady Anna
- Infanticide in Adam Bede: Hetty Sorrel and the Language of Justice
- The Abstruse Syntax of Law in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady
- Late-Victorian Experiences with Italian Legislation: Stories of Sex, Madness and Social Commitment
- “Undesirable Immigrants”: The Language of Law and Literature in Joseph Conrad’s “Amy Foster”
- Research
- Robotics and Work: Between Fiction and Reality
- Praising the World “by Geometrical Terms”: Legal Metrics, Science and Indicators in Swift’s Voyage to Laputa
- The Voice of the People in Homer
- Elizabeth the Rhetorician. An Analysis of the Greatest Speeches by the Virgin Queen
- Book Review
- Pier Giuseppe Monateri: Dominus Mundi. Political Sublime and the World Order
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Charles Dickens and the Rhetoric of Law in David Copperfield
- Gentlemanliness, Status and Law in Anthony Trollope’s Lady Anna
- Infanticide in Adam Bede: Hetty Sorrel and the Language of Justice
- The Abstruse Syntax of Law in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady
- Late-Victorian Experiences with Italian Legislation: Stories of Sex, Madness and Social Commitment
- “Undesirable Immigrants”: The Language of Law and Literature in Joseph Conrad’s “Amy Foster”
- Research
- Robotics and Work: Between Fiction and Reality
- Praising the World “by Geometrical Terms”: Legal Metrics, Science and Indicators in Swift’s Voyage to Laputa
- The Voice of the People in Homer
- Elizabeth the Rhetorician. An Analysis of the Greatest Speeches by the Virgin Queen
- Book Review
- Pier Giuseppe Monateri: Dominus Mundi. Political Sublime and the World Order
