"To Ugly Women"

In the “Humors of the Day” section of this serialized publication of Harper’s Weekly, there is placed an excerpt titled “To Ugly Women”. This excerpt re-emphasizes the idea that physical difference is a denigrating quality in a woman; almost satirically displaying how such difference in physicality may only be remedied in the eyes of a man when she has a fortune behind her. This “Humor” notes that “peculiar affluence (say $100,000)” (Harper’s 347) remedies “disadvantages of personal appearance” (Harper’s 347). The placement of this excerpt near Collins’ serialized novel, can again change the way that Lucy Yolland’s physical difference can be read

            Limping Lucy is not only defined by her difference, her unconformity to physical feminine norms and standards, but is also “a fisherman’s daughter” (Collins 299) who lives in a “fisherman’s cottage” (Collins 299). Her fiscal lowliness makes her even more undesirable in they eyes of the predominantly male protagonists, which further underscores and emphasizes Lucy Yolland’s difference as something to be treated un-sympathetically, to be actively displayed and scorned.

Works Cited: 

Collins, Wilkie. “Third Narrative” The Moonstone. Ed. John Sutherland. New York: OUP, 2008. 292-307. Print.