Economy – With a Dash of Love, by Wilkie Collins

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Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week for her board and services. Selina, being my wife, couldn’t charge for her board, and would have to give me her services for nothing. That was the point of view I looked at it from. Economy — with a dash of love. I put it to my mistress, as in duty bound, just as I had put it to myself.

“I have been turning Selina Goby over in my mind,” I said, “and I think, my lady, it will be cheaper to marry her than to keep her.”

My lady burst out laughing, and said she didn’t know which to be most shocked at — my language or my principles. Some joke tickled her, I suppose, of the sort that you can’t take unless you are a person of quality. Understanding nothing myself but that I was free to put it next to Selina, I went and put it accordingly. And what did Selina say? Lord! how little you must know of women, if you ask that. Of course she said, Yes.

by Wilkie Collins 1824-1889

From ‘The Moonstone’ (1868, 1905) by Wilkie Collins (1824-1889). Additional information from ‘Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life’ (1830) by William Cobbett (1763-1835).

Précis

Selina Goby, said Betteredge, made the ideal wife for him because she was his live-in housemaid, and he reckoned that if she were his wife she would do the same work without demanding wages. He asked Lady Verinder’s advice; and taking her peals of laughter as a blessing, proposed at once to Selina, who accepted.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

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