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The illicit, as R.P. Blackmur writes in his extraordinary essay on Madame Bovary, and its identification with the romantic, the beautiful, and the interesting, lies at the very center of the dramatic action in the novel form. “The more lawful the society, as we say the more bourgeois the society, t…

When Jane Carlyle was cleaning and sweeping and keeping the accounts within discreet limits she certainly did not set a price upon her actions. But, of course, there was a hidden price. It was that in exchange for her work, her dedication, her special if somewhat satirical charms, Carlyle would, as…

The real reason for Fitzgerald’s worry about “material” perhaps had to do with the narrow nature of their lives and interests. They had beauty and celebrity and they went everywhere, and yet they were outside history for the most part, seldom making any mention of anything beyond their own feelings…

Zelda was diagnosed abroad by the distinguished Dr. Bleuler as a schizophrenic. She herself thought Dr. Bleuler “a great imbecile,” but we have little reason to imagine other physicians would have been more moderate or hopeful in their predictions. Her mental confusion was sometimes alarming; she s…

Hedda takes every chance to act badly and to hurt others. Sometimes she does so with a languid pettiness and sometimes with malignant determination. By nature all ice and indifference, she accomplishes her delinquencies without a rush of agitation or beating emotion; and that is why it is hard to r…