The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland by Eliza Lynn Linton

Rosicrucianism, mesmerism, ghosts, and the like, and reading and Wordsworth, and Carlyle, after which he enters “a ‘mysterious’Īnd ‘weird’ period of deep interest in alchemy, astrology, Pointing out that The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland “gives an unparalleled view of radical social, political, and intellectual circles in the forties and fifties” (379), Wolff provides a summary of the novel's plot, beginning with the main character's unhappy childhood in the Lake Country, where he ( i.e, she) suffers from the brutalities of both his elder siblings and his widowed clergyman father - a “High and Dry” Anglican who hates both Low Church Evangelicals and High Church Tractarians.Ī clergyman in a neighboring parish, who scorns his father's old-fashioned views, leads to the his reading Coleridge, Of Eliza Lynn, but in her novel she inverted the inversion. Ning and I had to be man and woman both.' This was indeed true Roles,' writes Christopher Kirkland, 'were inverted from the begin. Married Linton 'with more sense of duty than of attraction.' 'Our

Linton's wife did bequeath her children to Eliza Lynn, who Historically true if one changes the sex of all three adults concerned. Their hopelessly impractical radical feminist lecturing 'mother,' is 'father' bequeathing them to 'Christopher,' who then marries 'Lambert' children whom 'Christopher' loves, and of their dying The account of the beautiful and neglected Linton (theįrederick Dennis of Hale White's Clara Hopgood) with his sex changed to female, as Christopher Kirkland is Eliza Lynn herself with her sex changed to male. Dalrymple, the mystical inspiration of Kirkland's late adolescence, or Althea Cartwright, the heartless vamp of his youth, or even Cordelia Gilchrist, the woman whom he cannot marry despite their love because she is a Catholic, may perhaps in real life have beenĮither women or men, although one is inclined to think that theyīut 'Esther Lambert,' the woman Christopher marries, is justĪs surely a portrait of Eliza Lynn's husband, W.

To have them loved by a man? It is not always possible to answer,Īnd in some instances it may not be very important: Mrs. Original sex could be preserved in the novel since it was appropriate Lesbian tendencies-were they really women all along, whose Were the various women, for example, whomĬhristopher Kirkland is represented as loving, actually men whomĮliza Lynn had loved? Or-since she had a masculine character and Obert Lee Wolff, who sees many thematic parallels between Linton's The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (1885) and William hale White's Clara Hopgood (1896), explains that her novel is actually an autobiography in which “she switched the sex of the protagonist” (378), which can confuse readers, who wonder

The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland by Eliza Lynn Linton