Introduction

32
Vanessa Mangione
That which causes the tragic end of a woman’s life [i.e. her reputation and
social life], is often but a moment of amusement and folly in the history of
a man. Women, like toys, are sought after, and trifled with, and then
thrown by with every varying caprice. Another, and another still succeed;
but to each thus cast away, the pang has been beyond thought, the stain indelible,
and wound mortal. (278)
Neither contemporaries nor critics could appreciate Glenarvon for its critique on
existing gender roles but the focus lay, as already mentioned, on the assumed insight
into Byronism and Whig society. Even political events such as the Irish uprising
in 1798 were not acknowledged. Critics like Solderholm, regardless of their
recognition of her supposed hysteria and insanity as calumny, still do not recognise
Lamb’s work on its own account, but mainly in relation to Byron. Solderholm
not only denies her any kind of originality, but also argues that her motivation
“can be more generously understood as a spectral pursuit of her own kind of
proto-Byronic, erotic-notoriety: an imitation of her ideal man” (26). Other critics
follow in his steps and see Lamb’s work as an imitation of Byron, as an attempt to
create her own Byronic character in order to be close to him. 23 Furthermore, critics
who write favourably of her work and defend it against its more vehement
opponents, only recognise the merits of her work in the supposed biographical
and social depiction of Byron and Whig society and its confessional character. 24
However, more recent critics do not agree that revenge or confessional outpouring
were the motives behind Lamb’s writing of Glenarvon and have recognised
its critique of restricting conventions for women and hypocritical values in society.
25 Douglass states that Lamb had mixed motives in writing the novel. Although
agreeing that striking back at Byron and those who had humiliated her might have
been one of them, he believes her main motive was that she wanted to “reveal
wrapped values of society that knowingly continued to abide behaviour that was
more criminal than her own” (Introduction xxx). Lamb criticises this condition by
pointing to the corruption of Calantha’s innocence by society, as the following
paragraph shows:
Her reason by degree became convinced by the arguments which she continually
heard; and all that was spoken at random, she treasured up as truth:
even whilst vehemently contending and disputing in defence of her favour-
23 Among others, Barbara Judson discusses how similarities of Byron’s and Lamb’s work have
recently been discovered and discussed but only to demonstrate the” inferiority and derivative
nature of Lamb’s work – her attempt to “play Byron,” to appropriate his myth of personal authority
for herself” (151).
24 John Clubbe suggests that Glenarvon works only when read as a satire (208) and mainly fails as a
novel but could be considered as a self-analytic study oft the writer concerning her relationships
with Byron, her husband William Lamb and Regency society (210).
25 To this critics belong, among others, Gishlane McDayter, Frances Wilson, Barbara Judson,
Ducan Wu and Paul Douglass.