The Complete Goofy Quizzes on Victorian Novels (2008): Villette, Mill on the Floss, The Woman in White, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Dracula

First installment of Elisabeth’s Really Goofy Unauthorized and Unofficial Quiz on Victorian Novels: Villette

(This quiz is cumulative.  No right or wrong answers.)

1. Short answer:

Mrs. Jellyby arranges a field trip to Borrioboola-Gha for the students at Madame Beck’s boarding school. At the last minute, she has a dawning realization of England’s own social problems, and decides to take a number of orphans (including Jo) off the streets of London, and re-settle them in Borrioboola-Gha in hopes of a better life growing coffee.  Mrs. Jellyby and the street urchins arrive at the Rue Fossette to stay overnight before traveling on the next day to Borrioboola-Gha, and Jo wanders into one of M. Paul’s lectures.  M. Paul begins to interrogate Jo on the extent of his learning, first in French, then resorting to the abominable English, but finds that Jo is in utter darkness as to the meaning.  To each question, Jo only replies, “I don’t know nothink.”  He has not the least idea of all that language – he is, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! 

“Est-ce que vous avez l’intention de m’insulter?” demands M. Paul.

Jo only thinks (for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me?

“Je te deteste, mon garcon!” cries M. Paul.

Is this the occasion that M. Paul finally falls down foaming at the mouth and has a coronary over all of this deplorable ignorance?  Does he leap from his estrade in a passion of anger and attack the stove, demanding that Jo move on?  Or does he weep tears of mercy declaring, “Decidedly I am a monster and a ruffian!”, and dedicate the tiny amount of money he is not already giving to charitable causes to Mrs. Jellyby’s Borrioboola-Gha Orphan Project?  Explain.

Choose an answer and very briefly explain why:

2. Which Sexy Victorian Doctor would you marry? A. Mr. Woodcourt or B. Dr. John

Or which Flawless Angel of the House would you marry?  A. Ada or B. Paulina

3. Which narrator would you be best pals with?  A. Esther Summerson or B. Lucy Snowe

4. Your Sexy Victorian Doctor or your Flawless Angel of the House has been cheating on you, and you need to engage the perfect Spy/Investigator to get to the bottom of things. 

do you choose: A. Mr. Bucket or B. Madame Beck?

5. Who does the guilty adulterer/adultress turn out to be? 

• Lady Dedlock

• Ginevra Fanshawe

• Colonel de Hamal

• Sir Launcelot du Lac

• Other

6. Bonus Question for those also in the Middle English class (or anyone else interested):

Dr. John, in league with Morgan Le Fay and the ghostly nun of the Rue Fossette, makes a bet with the Green Knight over who can teach the better moral lesson through a beheading game. Dr. John dyes himself and a horse red, charges into Madame Beck’s fete calling himself the Red Knight, and demands that someone come forth and cut off his head with an ax. At first, no one speaks or moves, and Madame Beck, for the sake of honor and reputation, nearly has to do it.  But then Lucy Snowe steps in with perfect poise and humility, and cuts off the Red Knight’s head.  He retrieves it from where several of the girls have been kicking it around on the dance floor and remounts his horse, carrying the head under his arm. Before riding off, he calmly decrees that Lucy must seek him out a year later to have the blow returned to her own neck. Meanwhile, Sir Gawain sets off on his quest to find his own green-hued challenger.  He stops and dawdles at a castle, partying and flirting with maidens, somehow failing to recognize (despite striking similarities), that his host at the castle is the very same Green Knight he’s seeking.  In Lucy’s quest, she proceeds to take us through several months and hundreds of pages, describing complex personifications of Hope, Love, and Reason, but Unreasonably withholding from us (even though we’ve already figured it out for ourselves a long time ago) that she’s known all along that the Red Knight and Dr. John are the same man.  Who exasperates us more?  Gawain, who acts like a clueless numbskull?  Or Lucy, who knows things but refuses to tell us?  When Lucy arrives for her beheading, does the Red Knight/Dr. John go through with it, or does she learn her lesson and narrate less mysteriously? 

The Really Goofy Quiz in Victorian Novels: Mill on the Floss edition

(This quiz is cumulative.  No right or wrong answers.)

1. God grows weary of Maggie Tulliver’s endless agonizing, and decides to use a deus ex machina to put her out of her misery as rapidly as possible, along with all of England while he’s at it.  Because he is God, his decision cannot be questioned by critics. He resolves on a spectacular apocalypse of seven plagues, but is having trouble deciding the best order. Help God put the plagues in the most pleasing and logical order:

a. Fog.  Fog everywhere.  Fog up the river, fog down the river, fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.  Fog creeping onto the cabooses of collier-brigs, fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats, fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners.

b. Mud.  As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.   

c. Smoke.  Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full grown snow-flakes – gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.

d. Flood. That awful visitation of God’s which Maggie’s father used to talk of – which had made the nightmare of her childish dreams.

e. Spontaneous Combustion of all tipplers across England.  Say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally – inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only – Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.  

f. Storm. Not till the destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work, would he fold the wings whose waft was thunder – the tremor of whose plumes was storm. 

g. A plague of millions of Harold Skimpoles visited simultaneously upon every household in England. They are each a mere child in the world!  All they ask is, to let them live. That isn’t much. Their wants are few. Give them the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and they ask no more. Why should they regret their incapacity for details and worldly affairs, when it leads to such pleasant consequences? 

 2. Here pause: pause at once.  There is enough said.  Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope.  Let if be theirs to conceive of the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread: the seven plagues will not be visited upon England, for God has changed his mind, deciding that Maggie is worthily conscientious after all, and not just a drama queen. Who does he send as his harbinger from Heaven to impart glad tidings of mercy to the British people? 

• Jo, the innocent.

• Richard Carstone, the repentant.

• M. Paul, the true-believing philanthropist.

• Lady Dedlock, the martyr.

• Sir Gawain, the licentious, with a number of fair ladies with him.

• All of the above, in a burst of heavenly light.

3. Forget duty, honor, and internal conflicts. Forget dying in an eternal embrace with your brother. God has pulled back those floodwaters, and you get a second chance. Do you:

• Keep on floatin’ down that river with Stephen Guest, out of passion, enjoying a good sex life as long as it lasts.

• Marry Phillip Wakem, out of friendship and honor, living out your days enjoying mutual understanding and an active intellectual life.

• Form a ménage a trois with Bob Jakin and his wife, enjoying that wacky sense of humor and refreshingly laid back attitude toward life.

• Persuade Sir Galahad to lose his holier-than-thou virginity and give up the Grail Quest.

• All of the above.

  4. Which of these conflicts is most complicated and difficult to comprehend?

• The outbreak of World War I

• Mr. Tulliver’s lawsuit over the mill

• Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce

• The Dodson family quarrels

• The Wars of the Roses

• Lucy Snowe’s relationship with M. Paul

 5. Best comedic couple:

• Mr. and Mrs. Badger (He admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the curious ground - as it seemed to us - of her having had three husbands.)

• Mr. and Mrs. Glegg (“Well!” said Mrs. Glegg, rising from her chair, “I don’t know whether you think it’s a fine thing to sit by and hear me swore at, Mr. Glegg; but I’m not going to stay a minute longer in this house. You can stay behind, and come home with the gig – and I’ll walk home.” “Dear heart, dear heart!” said Mr. Glegg in a melancholy tone, as he followed his wife out of the room.)

• Mr. and Mrs. Pullet (Mrs. Pullet had married a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything else to the highest pitch of respectability.)

• Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet (Old girl, give him my opinion!)

• Ginevra Fanshawe and Alfred de Hamal (During the first year or two, it was only of herself and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background; herself and a certain new comer prevailed; one Alfred Fanshawe de Bassompierre de Hamal began to reign in his father’s stead.)

• Sergeant George and Phil Squod (“How old are you, Phil?” asks the trooper. “I’m something with a eight in it,” says Phil. “It can’t be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It’s betwixt ‘em, somewheres.”)

 6. Middle English bonus question.  Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.  

  Le Morte D’Maggie

Chapter 6: How Sir Launcelot was revealed to be the third lover of Maggie Tulliver, how he acted like a sexist bastard and an annoying twit, and of other matters

As the French book maketh mention, when the corpses of Maggie and Tom Tulliver were fished from the flood, they were put in a fair bed with all their richest clothes laid about them; and they were put within a barget, and the barget covered with black samite over and over; and so Bob Jakin steered the barget unto the Deanes’ house, and there he rowed a great while to and fro or any espied it.

So by fortune Stephen Guest and Lucy Deane were speaking together at a window, and so as they looked into the Floss they espied the black barget, and had marvel what it meant.  Then Stephen Guest called Philip Wakem and showed it him.

“Sir,” said Philip, “wit you well there is some new tidings.”

Then these three departed and came to the barget and went in; and there they found the two fair corpses lying in a rich bed, and poor Bob Jakin sitting in the barget’s end, and no word would he speak. 

“Alas,” said Stephen, “Now is my joy gone.”  And then he fell down and swooned, and long he lay there as he had been dead.  And then, when he arose out of swoon, he cried out sorrowfully, and said, “Alas!”

And then Stephen wept again, and Lucy and Philip also; and so they fell on swooning. And when they were revived, Lucy espied a letter in Maggie’s right hand, and told it to Stephen. 

Then Stephen took it and said, “Now am I sure this letter will tell us what has happened, and why they are come hither.”

So then they went out of the barget and brake the seal.  This was the intent of the letter:       

“Most noble knight, Sir Launcelot, I drowned myself in the flood, for I was your lover, that men called Maggie Tulliver; therefore unto all ladies I make my moan.  A clean maiden I died, I take God to witness, but I am going straight to hell, for I wrapped my arms fast around Tom to take the heartless sadistic pig down with me.”

This was all the substance in the letter.  And when it was read, Stephen, Lucy, and Philip all wept for pity of the doleful complaints.

Then Phillip stood ever still afore the barget, and ever he apelled Maggie of treason for the willful murder of Tom; for the custom was such that time that all manner of shameful death was called treason; and he was a passing heavy man. And Lucy stood still and was sore abashed, that she nist not what to say. And Stephen made sorrow out of measure, and took Philip in his arms, and thrice there they swooned. 

“Jesu mercy,” said Stephen, “Alas that ever I should endure this much swooning and weeping.  I am come to mine end. But would to God that I wish where were that traitor Sir Launcelot, that hath caused all this mischief.” 

 Then was Sir Launcelot sent for, for he was lodging nearby on way to a tournament; and when he was come Stephen made the letter to be read to him.  And when Launcelot heard it word by word, he said,

“My lord Stephen Guest, wit ye well I am right heavy of the death of this fair damosel. God knoweth I was never causer of her death by my willing, and that would I report me to her own brother, were he not lying here dead as well. She was both fair and good, and much I was beholden unto her, but she loved me out of measure.”

“Ye might have showed her,” said Lucy, “some bounty and gentleness that might have preserved her life.”  

And when Sir Launcelot had heard this answer, then the tears ran down by his cheeks.  “Wit you well my heart was never so heavy as it is now, but much more I am sorrier for the loss of Tom Tulliver than for the loss of this maiden; for maidens I might have enow, but such a noble Dodson shall never be again;” and ever among these complaints, Sir Launcelot wept and swooned. 

And Stephen answered him: “Good knight, thou speakest truly. As for our most noble Tom Tulliver, I love him and honour him as well as ye do, and as for Maggie I love her not anymore, for she is a destroyer of good gentlemen.” 

Then Philip looked upon the corpse of Tom Tulliver and the tears brast out of his eyen, thinking on the great courtesy that was in Tom more than in any other man; and therewith he turned away, and might no longer behold him, and said, “Alas, that ever this novel began.”

What event immediately follows this passage?

a. They all kiss together, and weep as people out of their minds. 

b. Stephen and Philip go with Launcelot on a quest to Rome to have Tom Tulliver   

    formally canonized as a saint. 

c. Lucy falls for Launcelot and lays herself down with the corpses in the barget to pine    

    away and die.

d. Launcelot goes to London to share some wine with Mr. Tulkinghorn and trade 

    misogynist complaints.

e. In lieu of visiting Maggie’s tomb, Stephen and Philip go barefoot in their shirts   

   founding convents every ten miles to sing and read day and night for Tom Tulliver’s       

   sake.      

f. All of the above.

g. None of the above.

The Really Goofy Quiz in Victorian Novels: Woman in White edition

(This quiz is cumulative as always.  No right or wrong answers.)

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

It is the grand misfortune of Frederick Fairlie’s life that nobody will let him alone. There he is, reclining, with his art-treasures about him, and wanting a quiet evening. Because he wants a quiet evening, of course Louis comes in. It is perfectly natural that Fairlie should inquire what the deuce Louis means by making his appearance, when he has not rung his bell. Louis replies, with a devilish grin, that he has had enough of Fairlie’s damned complaints, and has taken the liberty of inviting thirty or so party guests to his study for the evening. Fairlie seldom swears – it is such an ungentlemanlike habit – but when Louis grins, Fairlie thinks it is perfectly natural that he should damn him for grinning. At any rate, he does. Louis is so obliging as to leave off grinning, and informs him that the guests are outside, waiting to see him. He adds that their names (in Fairlie’s opinion remarkably vulgar ones) are Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed, Mr. Gilmore, King Arthur with his companion Sir Lucan (wounded in a recent battle), and Alfred de Hamal, who thought it was a costume party and has come dressed as a nun.  As if that isn’t enough for Fairlie’s nerves, also in attendance are Lords Coodle, Doodle, Foodle, Goodle, Hoodle, Joodle, Koodle, Loodle, Moodle, Noodle, Poodle, Quoodle, Cuffy, Duffy, Fuffy, Guffy, Huffy, Juffy, Kuffy, Luffy, Muffy, and Puffy.

Fairlie is obliged to ask Louis if their shoes creak.  Creaking shoes invariably upset him for the day. He is resigned to see the Party Goers, but he is not resigned to let the Party Goers’ shoes upset him. Louis affirms distinctly that their shoes are to be depended upon. Fairlie waves his hand. The Party Goers enter. Their shoes do not creak.  But many of them shut their mouths and breathe through their noses, and they all perspire at the hands.  And why have they all got fat noses and hard cheeks? 

Before Fairlie can object, Mr. Gilmore approaches his chair and speaks. “I have come here not for a party,” he announces, “but at great personal inconvenience to inform you that for your niece’s sake you shall take the whole responsibility of this discreditable settlement of Miss Fairlie’s twenty thousand pounds—“

Mrs. Smallweed begins to shake her head, and screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, “Twenty pound five and fivepence! Twenty thousand bags of money! Twenty hundred thousand million of parcels of bank notes!”

“Will somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her?” exclaims Mr. Smallweed, looking helplessly about him, and finding no missile within his reach. “You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!” Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws what appears to be a nun (but is actually Alfred de Hamal) at Mrs. Smallweed in default of anything else.

“Pray excuse me,” begs Fairlie, “But could you contrive to speak in a lower key? In the wretched state of my nerves, both sound and movement of any kind are exquisitely painful to me. You will pardon an invalid?” 

Lord Coodle begins admiring the portfolios on the shelves near Fairlie’s chair, and Fairlie sees an opportunity for bringing out his art-treasures for the general admiration.  He surmises he can have the red and green portfolios brought over by Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle –supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach with Hoodle.  Then, giving the task of holding the coins to Joodle, the adjustment of the reading easel to Koodle, touching the bell to Loodle, and balancing the portfolio to Moodle, what is he to do with Noodle?  He can’t offer him the fetching of the tablettes; that is reserved for Poodle.  You can’t put him to work holding the magnifying glass; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows?

But while Fairlie is contemplating this, Gilmore approaches his chair again.

“Mr. Fairlie, I must insist. As to the matter of the twenty thousand pounds—“

Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head, and pipes up, “Twenty thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a moneybox, twenty guineas, twenty million twenty percent, twenty—“

Grandfather Smallweed throws a cushion at Mrs. Smallweed.  “You brimstone chatterer!  You’re a scorpion!  You’re a sweltering toad.  You’re a chattering clattering broomstick witch, that ought to be burnt!”

But the effect of this act of jaculaton is twofold.  It not only doubles up Mrs. Smallweed so that her bosom falls against Mr. Fairlie’s face (what has he to do with her bosom?), but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr. Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into Arthur’s wounded companion, Sir Lucan, like a broken puppet. Sir Lucan falls in a swoon, that the part of his guts fall out of his body, and therewith the noble knight’s heart bursts.  And when King Arthur looks over, he beholds Sir Lucan, how he lays foaming at the mouth, and part of his guts lay at his feet. 

“Alas,” says the king, “this is to me a full heavy sight, to see this noble duke so die.  Alas, he would not complain him, his heart was so set to attend this party with me: now Jesu have mercy upon his soul.”  And the tears brast out of the king’s eyen. Also overcome with weeping over the fate of Sir Lucan are Lords Coodle, Doodle, Foodle, Goodle, Hoodle, Joodle, Koodle, Loodle, Moodle, Noodle, Poodle, Quoodle, Cuffy, Duffy, Fuffy, Guffy, Huffy, Juffy, Kuffy, Luffy, Muffy, and Puffy. The tears brast from their eyen, and there is much, much swooning.

All of their faces have become sadly unfinished, thinks Fairlie, especially about the corners of the eyelids. In fact, he thinks they have begun to cry.  He certainly sees something moist about King Arthur’s eyes. Tears or perspiration? He checks with Louis. Louis is inclined to think, tears.  Let us say, tears. Fairlie distinctly objects to tears. Tears are scientifically described as a Secretion. Fairlie can understand that a secretion may be healthy or unhealthy, but he cannot see the interest of a secretion from a sentimental point of view.  He closes his eyes, and says to Louis,

“Endeavour to ascertain what they mean.”

Louis endeavours and King Arthur endeavours.  They succeed in confusing each other to such an extent that Fairlie is bound in common gratitude to say, they really amuse him. He thinks he shall send for them again, when he is in low spirits.

But we will not try to repeat King Arthur’s Middle English explanation of his tears interpreted in the English of Fairlie’s Swiss valet.  The thing is manifestly impossible. 

1. What is Frederick Fairlie’s next reaction?

• To throw out the Party Goers. Then tepid water strengthened with aromatic vinegar for himself and copious fumigation for his study were the obvious precautions to take; and of course he adopts them.

• He remarks to Louis that something outside or inside Sir Lucan suddenly creaked.

Louis says Sir Lucan creaked when he collapsed. Curious.  Was it his shoes that creaked, his bones, or his guts falling out of his body?   Louis thinks it was his guts.  Most extraordinary!

• He enjoys his customary siesta, and awakes moist and cool.

• To wonder: was Sir Lucan very yellow, when he came in? or had he turned very yellow, in the last minute or two?

• He declares that he is not answerable for this deplorable calamity with Sir Lucan, which it was quite impossible to foresee. He is shattered by it; he has suffered under it, as nobody else has suffered. He wishes to mention, in justice to himself, that it was not his fault, and that he is quite exhausted and heartbroken. Need he say more?

2. Help Wilkie Collins complete his novel!

In Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Miss Flite’s birds are called Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. (Twenty-five names, count ‘em!)  In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess’s eight cows are named Dumpling, Fancy, Lofty, Mist, Old Pretty, Young Pretty, Tidy, and Loud. But good old Wilkie Collins was just in too much of a hurry to bother naming Count Fosco’s cockatoo, two canaries and five white mice. Drat the deadlines of those pesky serial novels and the pressures of writing-as-you-go!  Help Wilkie Collins complete his most famous work by naming Fosco’s pets!  (Note: the youngest mouse is possibly named Benjamin, but Fosco might also just be speaking figuratively).

The pets are called:

• Mick, Keith, Sonny, Cher, John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

• Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Dopey, and Snow White.

• Charles, Wilkie, Thomas, George, Bram, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne.

• Benjamin, Cenjamin, Denjamin, Fenjamin, Genjamin, Henjamin, Jenjamin, and Lenjamin.

Or fill in your own creative names!

The cockatoo is named…?

The two canaries are called…?

The five white mice are called…?

3. You open your big fat mouth and tell Anne Catherick about the old taboo of not wearing white after Labor Day.  She kills herself, and Mrs. Clements accuses you of murder.  Who do you hire as your lawyer to defend your case?

• Mr. Tulkinghorn

• Mr. Vholes

• Mr. Wakem

• Mr. Gilmore

• Mr. Kyrle

• The Pearl Maiden, with her incisive mind (if it’s capable of the subtleties of Middle English theology it can certainly handle 19th century law) and intuitive understanding of the color white.

• A defense team made up of all six.

4. Prove that you are a better detective than Walter Hartright.  What is the real cause of the mysterious vestry fire that kills Sir Percival? 

• Sir Percival was known to drink heavily, and God chose that moment to begin his Plague of Spontaneous Combustion of all tipplers to punish England for the dramatics of Maggie Tulliver.

• God spontaneously combusted Sir Percival for reasons unconnected with Maggie Tulliver.

• Sir Percival spontaneously combusted of natural causes, with no supernatural intervention.

• Lucy Snowe was in the church praying at the time and spontaneously combusted – an inward fire of shame so quenchless, and so devouring, that it soon licked up the very life in her veins.

• Actually, Walter Hartright is correct – Sir Percival had an accident with his matches or his light coming into contact with the quantity of combustible objects in the vestry.

• Walter Hartright has vastly overrated Sir Percival’s intelligence, and the laughable nincompoop lit the fire on purpose to destroy the register, then managed to get himself stuck in the vestry.

5. You are a Victorian gentleman. Help!  Fire!!  Fire! is repeated, re-echoed, yelled forth: and then, and faster than pen can set it down, comes panic, rushing, crushing – a blind, selfish, cruel chaos. It is your expected duty to at least pretend to be competent and do something about it. Do you:

• Realize spontaneous combustion has occurred and think “O Horror!” while running away, striking out the light, overturning people in the streets, and shrieking, Help, help, help! Come into this house for Heaven’s sake!

• Adopt a look of comely courage and cordial calm, and thrust back the panicking mob, saving a girl you coincidentally knew as a five-year-old back in England and who is fated to become your wife.

• Try to save your villainous archrival out of good Christian decency by organizing a crowd to knock down the door of the burning building with a beam.

• Help along the demise of your villainous archrival by “accidentally” breaking a window of the burning building, “forgetting” that this will accelerate the flames.

• Throw Laura Fairlie onto the fire for good measure, and marry Marian Halcombe.

6. You are a Victorian lady.  The Indian summer closes and the equinoctial storms begin; they rage on for nine dark and wet days, of which the hours rush on all turbulent, deaf, disheveled. Strong and horizontal thunders the current of the wind from north-west to south-east; it brings rain like spray, and sometimes, a sharp hail-like shot; it is cold and pierces you to the vitals.

In other words, it rains and you get a little wet.  Do you:

• Catch fever and confess your sins to a Catholic priest even though you’re a vehement Protestant, then swoon and wake up in the home of your unrequited love.

• Catch fever, swoon, and get carried around a smelly old house in your bed while an obese Count is busy ruining the life of your wimpy dolt of a sister.

• Get swept away in a flood in an eternal embrace with your brother before you have time to catch fever or swoon.

• Catch fever, swoon, then lift up your skirts and do a tap dance to “Singin’ in the Rain,” swinging around a gas lamp pole.

• Catch fever, swoon, then ride laughing on the handlebars of a Victorian gentleman’s bicycle to the tune of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head.”

• Catch fever, swoon, and run to a shelter, discovering that you are the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock.

• Skip the fever and swooning and go fight a fire with a Victorian gentleman.

 The Really Goofy Quiz in Victorian Novels: Tess of the D’Urbervilles edition

 (This quiz is cumulative as always.  No right or wrong answers.)

 1. Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

Tess was milking Old Pretty, and the sun chancing to be on the milking-side, it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form and her white curtain-bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo cut from the dun background of the cow.  Soon the sound of Old Pretty’s milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge, and then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner also. Tess did not know that Clare had followed round and that he sat under his cow, watching. 

An influence passed into Clare like an excitation from the sky and did not die down.  Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a defeated battalion.  He jumped up from his seat, leaving his pail to be kicked over if his milcher had such a mind.  Tess saw him now and advanced forward to meet him, but Clare stepped aside so that Tess fell to the ground, and went quickly towards the desire of his eyes. Kneeling down beside Old Pretty, he clasped her in his arms.

Tess was taken completely by surprise as Old Pretty yielded to Clare’s embrace with unreflecting inevitableness. Having seen that it was really her lover who had advanced, and no one else, Old Pretty’s lips parted, and she sank upon Clare in her momentary joy with something very like an ecstatic moo as he struggled to support her. 

He had been on the point of kissing that too-tempting mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience’s sake.  

“Forgive me, Tess dear!” he whispered.  “I ought to have asked.  I—did not know what I was doing.   I do not mean it as a liberty.” 

Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled, and seeing two people crouching under her where by immemorial custom there should have been only Clare, lifted her hind leg crossly.

“She is angry—she’ll kick over the milk!” exclaimed Tess, her eyes concerned with the quadruped’s actions, her heart more deeply concerned with the relationship between the quadruped and Clare. 

Tess got up from the ground and they stood together, Clare’s arm still encircling Old Pretty. Tess’s eyes, fixed on distance, began to fill.

“Why do you cry, my darling?” he asked.

“Oh—I think you know!” she murmured.

As she saw and felt more clearly the position she was in she became agitated and tried to withdraw.

“Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at last,” said Clare, with a curious sigh of desperation, signifying unconsciously that his heart had outrun his judgement.  “That I – love Old Pretty dearly and truly I need not say.  But I – it shall go no further now – it distresses you—I am as surprised as you are.  You will not think I have presumed upon her defenselessness –been too quick and unreflecting – will you?”

“Oh, I won’t tell anyone,” Tess sighed in exasperation.

Clare had allowed Old Pretty to free herself, and in a minute or two the milking of both Tess and Clare was resumed. Nobody had beheld the gravitation of Angel and Old Pretty into one, and when the dairyman came round by that screened nook a few minutes later, there was not a sign to reveal that the markedly sundered pair were more to each other than mere acquaintance. Yet in the interval since Crick’s last view of them something had occurred which changed the pivot of the universe for their two natures; something which, had he known its quality, the dairyman would have despised; yet which was based upon a more stubborn and resistless tendency than a whole heap of so-called practicalities.  A veil had been whisked aside; the tract of each one’s outlook was to have a new horizon thenceforward—for a short time or for a long. 

END OF PHASE THE THIRD

What event immediately follows this passage? 

• The Reverend and Mrs. Clare recognize that though Old Pretty is of a humble background, her basic nature is good and simple, and they approve of Angel’s relationship with her.

• Clare elopes with Old Pretty but then discovers she has been with a bull and has born a calf that died; Old Pretty, broken-hearted and rejected by Clare, returns to live out her days with Dumpling, Fancy, Lofty, Mist, Young Pretty, Tidy, and Loud.

• The young Tom Tulliver comes along on a serial animal-torturing spree and drives Old Pretty to madness; she drowns herself in the river.

• Tess slaughters Old Pretty with a knife in a ritualized sacrifice scene at Stonehenge.

 2. Help Thomas Hardy edit his novel! 

Just like all the characters in his novel, Thomas Hardy got a little carried away in his zeal for Tess, and added too many colors to describe her eyes in the following sentence: “At first she would not look straight up at [Angel], but her eyes soon lifted, and his plumbed the deepness of the ever-varying pupils, with their radiating fibrils of blue, and black, and grey, and violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her second waking might have regarded Adam.”

Help Hardy edit his most famous novel by choosing no more than two evocative colors for Tess’s eyes! 

Choose from: Blue, black, grey, violet.

Or mix and match as many colors as you want from the following list and help Hardy by writing an even more colorful sentence!

List of colors to choose from: Asparagus, burnt orange, caput mortuum, carnation pink, chartreuse, cosmic latte, cyan, coral red, deep magenta, electric indigo, eggplant, firebrick, harlequin, Hollywood cerise, mauve, ochre, peach-yellow, puce, raw umber, rich carmine, ruby, salmon, shocking pink, sepia, teal, ultramarine, viridian, yellow, zinnwaldite.

 Ex. “At first she would not look straight up at him, but her eyes soon lifted, and his plumbed the deepness of the ever-varying pupils, with their radiating fibrils of shocking pink, and harlequin, and Hollywood cerise, and zinnwaldite, and electric indigo, while she regarded him as Eve at her second waking might have regarded Adam.”

 3. One day as Angel Clare studied the curves of Tess’s lips, they sent an aura over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which well nigh produced a qualm, and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze. God witnesses this curious phenomenon and is inspired to add an extra plague to punish the world for Maggie Tulliver; he sends a pandemic whereby everyone all over England goes into an allergic sneezing fit any time he or she studies the curves of an attractive person’s lips.

In order to please God and safeguard yourself against lip fetishes and everlasting sneezes, you decide to strengthen your faith and your soul.  Who do you choose as your personal adviser for your spiritual training?

• Lucy the Protestant

• M. Paul the Catholic

• The whole Clare gang: Reverend and Mrs. Clare, Reverends Cuthbert and Felix, and Miss Mercy Chant

• The Pearl Maiden and Sir Galahad the chaste

• Mr. Chadband, the oleaginous

• Angel, the failed free-thinker

 4. Clare persistently woos Tess in undertones like that of the purling milk, as no milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man. Which of these suggestive pastoral activities would you choose as the best atmosphere for wooing your own love?

• The milking

• The skimming

• Among broody poultry (translation: they’re sitting on their eggs)

• Among farrowing pigs (translation: they’re giving birth)

• The cheesemaking, where you can kiss your love’s arm and tell him or her, “Your arm is as cold and damp to my mouth as a new gathered mushroom, and tastes of whey.”

• All of the above, like Clare.

 5. That dastardly trickster Alec D’Urberville is at it again with his ghastly comicality, putting on yet another disguise and jumping out of nowhere as he emits a long, low laugh to scare the daylights out of Tess!  He has already dressed up as a preacher and affected the classic Halloween costumes of a devil (with a real fire for special effects) and a ghost (with an authentic tomb).  What other classic costumes and pranks does Alec use to chill Tess?

• A clown costume with a squirting flower on his lapel and a rubber chicken.

• A skeleton with wind-up chattery teeth.

• Richard Nixon with a hand buzzer.

• A zombie with fake vomit.

• No costume this time; he just places a whoopee cushion on her seat.

• All of the above.

The Really Goofy Quiz in Victorian Novels: Dracula edition

(This quiz is cumulative as always.  No right or wrong answers.)

 1. Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

Dr. Seward’s Diary – 18 September

As I was going out of the room, Quincey Morris said, “When you come back, Jack, may I have two words with you all to ourselves?” I nodded in reply and went up to Lucy’s room to check on her.  She was still sleeping, and the Professor seemingly had not moved from his seat at her side.  So I went back down to Quincey and took him into the breakfast-room.  When we were alone, he said to me:

“Jack Seward, I don’t want to shove myself in anywhere where I’ve no right to be; but this is no ordinary case.  You know I loved that girl and wanted to marry her; but although that’s all past and gone, I can’t help feeling anxious about her all the same.  What is it that’s wrong with her?  The Dutchman—and a fine old fellow he is; I can see that—said, that time you two came into the room, that you must have another transfusion of blood, and that both you and he were exhausted.  Now this is no common matter, and, whatever it is, I have done my part.  Is not that so?”

“That’s so,” I said, and he went on:

“I take it that both you and Van Helsing had done already what I did today.  Is not that so?”

“That’s so.”

“And I guess Art was in on it too.”

“That’s right.”

“And probably Tom Tulliver.”

“You guess correctly.”

“And Inspector Bucket?”

“That’s so.”

“What about Walter Hartright?”

“Yes.” 

“And Alec D’Urberville?”

“He was in on it.”

“Stephen Guest?”

“That’s so.” 

“What about Mr. Tulkinghorn? Has he been in on it?”

“Of course.” 

“And Henry Irving, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Sir Percival and Sir John Durbeyfield?”

“No. We rejected spurious sirs.”

“What about Sir Gawain?”

“Naturally.”

“Count Fosco?”

“Si, Signore.” 

“John Jarndyce and Lawrence Boythorn?”

“Right.”

“And Angel Clare? Has he been in on it?”

“That’s so.”

“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?”

“Certainly.” 

“Lords Coodle, Doodle, Foodle, Goodle, Hoodle, Joodle, Koodle, Loodle, Moodle, Noodle, Poodle and Quoodle?”

“That’s so.”

“And Cuffy, Duffy, Fuffy, Guffy, Huffy, Juffy, Kuffy, Luffy, Muffy, and Puffy?”

“Yes, except for Juffy.”

“And how long has this been going on?”

“About eleven years.”

“Eleven years!  Then I guess, Jack Seward, that that poor pretty creature that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood of 1,144 strong men.  Man alive, her whole body wouldn’t hold it.”  Then, coming close to me, he spoke in a fierce half-whisper; “What took it out?”

I shook my head.  “That,” I said, “is the crux.  Van Helsing is simply frantic about it, and I am at my wits’ end.  I can’t even hazard a guess. There has been a series of little circumstances over the years which have thrown out all our calculations as to Lucy being properly watched.” 

What event immediately follows this passage?

a. They resort to Mr. Guppy, Mr. Vholes and Conversation Kenge as a source of blood. 

b. They have “bad luck” for another eleven years with missed telegrams, the removal of garlic from Lucy’s room and other assorted calamities. Surely there is some horrible doom hanging over them that every possible accident should thwart them in all they try to do. 

c. They realize that Harold Skimpole and Grandfather Smallweed are the bloodsuckers responsible, and they drive a stake through each of their hearts. 

d. They give Lucy a transfusion of Mr. Krook’s blood, and she goes up in flames. 

e. Van Helsing promises that later, give or take a few hundred pages, he will explain all, but for now he has sown his corn, and Nature has her work to do in making it sprout; if it sprouts at all, there’s some promise, and he waits till the ear begins to swell.

f. During one of Van Helsing’s particularly long and winding metaphor-filled speeches, Lucy is finally sucked dry down to the last sip, and expires, ending the Eleven-Year Blood Brotherhood. 

2. Come on, turn to the dark side.  You know you want to.  Overlook the weight problems and the blood sucking issues and choose a Count as your lifetime partner in crime:

a. Count Fosco: maybe not conventionally sexy in body, but his mind is a knockout

b. Count Dracula: tall, dark, handsome bisexual older man – and growing younger by the day

c. The Count on Sesame Street: the man – er, muppet – taught us everything we know about our numbers

d. The Count of Monte Cristo: rich, smart, good with his sword

e. Count Olaf: an over-the-top performance of eccentric villainy, and a chance to pick on the Baudelaire children

f. Count Chocula: an unlimited lifetime supply of chocolate – who can resist?

g. Count Dooku: actually, never mind on that one – Star Wars Ep. II is a lousy film.  Let’s pretend instead that Darth Vader circa The Empire Strikes Back is a count…not so hard to do if we’re going to think of Van Helsing as Yoda.

3. Most exciting scene with a speeding carriage or cart:

a. Alec D’Urberville’s attempt to seduce Tess on the way to Trantridge with his sexy, fast dog-cart driving, the wheels humming like a top and the flinty sparks from the horse’s hoofs outshining the daylight.

b. The hunt for Lady Dedlock.

c. The cart racing for the sunset carrying Dracula’s chest, with the vampire hunters pursuing on horseback, the wolves converging, and Mina and Van Helsing brandishing their revolvers.

d. Speeding carriages and carts are not very exciting now that we have cars.

4. Favorite colorful and eccentric foreigner (as in not British):

a. Count Fosco

b. Count Dracula

c. Professor Van Helsing

d. Hortense

e. M. Paul

f. Madame Beck

5. Which fictional woman would you rather strangle in a jealous rage: Tess Durbeyfield, whose face (and other attributes) makes her so irresistible that she’s forced to try to make herself look ugly to keep the men away; or Lucy Westenra who receives three different proposals in a single day from dashing, well-to-do vampire hunters, and later gets to mingle her bodily fluids with all three of them plus a vampire and a professor. Explain.

6. Bonus Middle English question

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

Dr. Seward’s Diary – 22 September

All the time of Lucy’s burial Van Helsing was, I could see, putting some terrible restraint on himself.  When it was all over, we were standing beside Arthur, who, poor fellow, was speaking of his part in the operation where his blood had been transfused to his Lucy’s veins; I could see Van Helsing’s face grow white and purple by turns.  Arthur was saying that he felt since then as if they two had been really married and that she was his wife in the sight of God.  None of us said a word of the other 1143 operations, and none of us ever shall.  Arthur and Quincey went away together to the station, and Van Helsing and I came on here. We were joined in the carriage by Frederick Fairlie, his servant Louis, Sir Launcelot, and Arthur – not Arthur Godalming, but Arthur, King of the Britons – who had all attended Lucy’s funeral with us.  But the moment we were in the carriage, Van Helsing gave way to a regular fit of hysterics.  He laughed till he cried, and then he cried till he laughed again; and laughed and cried together, just as a woman does.  I tried to be stern with him, but Arthur and Launcelot joined Van Helsing and weeped as men out of their minds. In their words, the tears “brasten” from their eyes to see such noble manhood, and then they actually swooned on the floor of the carriage.  I was going to attend to them and try to revive them, but then Van Helsing went again into a laughing stage of his fit, and I had to draw down the blinds lest any one should see us and misjudge.  Mr. Fairlie also began to laugh with him and said that he was bound in common gratitude to say that Van Helsing really amused him, and he thought he should send for him any time when he was in low spirits. But when Van Helsing laughed so hard that the tears burst from his eyes again, Mr. Fairlie asked Louis if it were tears or perspiration. When Louis said he thought it was tears, Mr. Fairlie said that he could not understand the interest of a secretion from a sentimental point of view, and I was inclined to agree with him. 

“For the life of me, Professor,” I said, “I can’t see anything to laugh at in all this.  Why, poor Art’s heart was simply breaking back there at the funeral.” 

“Just so.  Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to Lucy’s veins had made her truly his bride?”

“Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him.”

“Quite so.  But there was a difficulty, friend John.  If so that, then what about the 1143 others?  Ho, ho!”

“I don’t see where the joke comes in there either!” I said; and I did not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things.   

“Ah, you don’t comprehend, friend John. You see, King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ till the blood come dance back and bring some of the sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek.” 

By this time, Launcelot and Arthur had recovered from their swoon and were listening intently to Van Helsing.

“Sir Professor,” said King Arthur to Van Helsing, “I require you tell me where to find this heathen King Laugh that we may do battle with him.” 

“No, friend Arthur,” said Van Helsing, “You misapprehend. When King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play.  And believe me that he is good to come, and kind.”

“So God me help,” said Sir Launcelot, “either King Laugh shall slay me or I him, but that he shall be christened or ever we depart in sunder.”  

“King Laugh, he is not something to fight or christen,” Van Helsing said. “But he come like the sunshine and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be.  Ah, now King Laugh have pack up his crown, and all that is to him – for he go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time.”  

“If King Laugh flee from us we shall slay him, and he shall never the sooner be quit,” said Arthur. “Now we must depart, so pray we Our Lord that we may meet together in short time.”  And he and Launcelot took off their helms and kissed together, and Van Helsing laughed until he cried at their departing while Mr. Fairlie asked Louis to translate. 

What event immediately follows this passage?

a. It is manifestly an impossible thing to repeat on his phonograph Arthur and Launcelot’s Middle English and Van Helsing’s Dutch English interpreted in the English of Fairlie’s Swiss valet, so Dr. Seward does not try.

b. Arthur and Launcelot find King Laugh and convert him to Christianity; he joins the vampire hunters, is martyred with Quincey Morris in the effort to kill Dracula, and both are canonized as saints seventy years later. 

c. King Laugh steps into the carriage and becomes acquainted for the first time with Dr. Seward, whose diary entries are never the same again; their soberness and reliability destroyed, no one believes the account, Dracula’s reign of terror goes unstopped, and the whole world is converted to vampirism.  

d. Arthur and Launcelot succeed in converting King Laugh to Christianity, and Mina falls in love with him and leaves Jonathan; the vampire hunters’ faith in the wonderful Madam Mina, and thus all of womanhood, is destroyed, and they cease pursuing Dracula; his reign of terror goes unstopped, and the whole world is converted to vampirism. 

e. Arthur, Launcelot, and King Laugh are all disappointed that they did not get a chance to take part in the Blood Brotherhood, so Van Helsing and Dr. Seward use Mina as a replacement for Lucy; with a little help from Dracula they go on another eleven-year transfusion spree.