From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Anna Lombard
Anna Lombard
Anna Lombard is a New Woman novel by Annie Sophie Co- himself enjoined. [...] Fearlessly, and with the Gospel of
ry writing as Victoria Cross. First published in 1901, it is Christ in my hand, I offer this example of his teaching to
based on the idea that it takes a New Man as well to form the great Christian public for its verdict, confident that I
a perfect union of the sexes. shall be justified by it."
Anna Lombard ultimately sold more than six million
Plot summary copies and went through more than 40 editions. It re-
ceived favourable (William Thomas Stead, who praised
Set exclusively in the British Indian Empire (mainly In- the idea of gender role reversal) and less favourable re-
dia, but also Burma) in the final years of the 19th century, views; the authors of the latter group, which included
the story is told by Gerald Ethridge, a young, high-rank- Christian critics, dismissed the novel as a piece of trans-
ing member of the Indian Civil Service. Anna Lombard, gressional fiction violating law—advocating or at least
the 21-year-old daughter of a general, has just arrived justifying infanticide—, convention, and contemporary
from England to join her father when she is introduced sensibility by constructing an image of British female
to Ethridge at a ball. Attracted to each other from the sexuality that had rarely been conceived in any detail
very first moment, they are not given a chance to actual- outside of pornographic texts, for example the notion
ly express their feelings when Ethridge is suddenly trans- that a sexually experienced woman is an asset to a mar-
ferred from India to Burma. riage.
On his return a year later he is shocked to learn that As such a sensation novel, Anna Lombard is mentioned
Anna is having a secret affair with one of her Pathan ser- in Katherine Mansfield’s 1908 short story, "The Tiredness
vants—although she asserts that they got officially mar- of Rosabel," [1] where a young working-class woman
ried in some secret Muslim ceremony. Ethridge, howev- reading a "cheap, paper-covered edition" on the bus is
er, does not desert her when she declares her inability to completely absorbed in the book.
leave her lover. Rather, while abstaining from any sexu-
al relations himself, he tries to help Anna overcome her
passion, and even nurses the servant in his own house
See also
when he becomes one of the many victims of a cholera • List of literary works with eponymous heroines
epidemic.
Anna’s lover does not survive the illness, but before
she and Ethridge can get married Anna finds out that she
References
is pregnant. Again, this does not deter Ethridge from lov- • Melisa Brittain: "Dangerous Crossings: Victorian
ing her. They get married nevertheless but Ethridge in- Feminism, Imperialist Discourse, and Victoria Cross’s
sists on not consummating the marriage until after the ’New Woman’ in Indigenous Space", M.A. thesis
birth of her child. When her son is born, Anna’s maternal (University of Guelph, 1999), particularly Chapter 3:
instinct overwhelms her and she is no longer willing to "The ’Fall’ and ’Rise’ of the Transgressive New
give her son away, as the couple planned during her Woman: Representing the Unrepresentable in Anna
pregnancy. However, seeing her beloved husband’s suf- Lombard".
fering prolonged ad infinitum, she suffocates her baby, to • William L. Alden: "London Literary Letter", The New
emerge, after a year of repentance and making her peace York Times (June 1, 1901) BR15. (Comparing the novel
with God, as the perfect partner in marriage for Ethridge. to Zola’s La Terre, Alden calls Anna Lombard "a
nauseating book [...] which no man should read
immediately before dinner unless he wishes to lose
Literary significance and criti- his appetite.")
cism • W .T. Stead: "Anna Lombard: A Novel of the Ethics of
Sex", Review of Reviews No. 23 (1901) 595-597.
In the Preface to her novel, Victoria Cross claims that
she "endeavoured to draw in Gerald Ethridge a character
whose actions should be in accordance with the prin- External links
ciples laid down by Christ, one that would display, not • Anna Lombard online at the Internet Archive
in words but in his actual life, that gentleness, humility,
patience, charity, and self-sacrifice that our Redeemer
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Anna Lombard
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anna_Lombard&oldid=442482566"
Categories:
• 1901 novels
• British novels
• Novels set in India
• Novels set in Burma
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