a pure woman
this was thomas hardy’s anticipated retort to anyone who might think that the tragic heroine of tess of the d’urbervilles was damaged by her sexual encounter with the cowardly alec. The current TV adaptation backs up Hardy’s claim by showing us a nasty rape, but the novel itself is much more ambiguous. hardy wants us to think that even if tess gave in to alec, she is (as angel clare cannot see) still pure.
You are reading: Books with subtitles examples
the modern Promethean
Portentous, perhaps, but Mary Shelley’s subtitle for Frankenstein fearlessly declared that its author was creating a modern myth. now that the gods are gone, the humans make their own destroyers. Shelley was handing out an essay title to generations of students.
moeurs of province
flaubert’s quietly sardonic subtitle for madame bovary was calculated to make the book even more provocative to its early readers. the story of adultery, stupidity, and despair was presented as a study in “provincial customs”. It was like saying, “this is what happens in charming Normandy”.
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a gothic story
Horace Walpole’s subtitle to Otranto Castle was the first application of the word “gothic” to a literary work. he was inventing a new genre. he was also doing something delightfully campy. in 1765, when his novel was published, the subtitle meant something like “a barbaric tale,” and it did, with ghosts, tunnels, and a sexually crazed medieval prince. simply exciting!
a story of passion
a smart one, this one. ford madox ford the good soldier is a novel in which the characters behave with elaborate politeness and exercise great wit in not saying anything unpleasant. but they are moved by dark desires and commit everything: adultery, pimping, a couple of suicides. “passion” seems like a generous word for what moves everyone.
a novel without a hero
vanity fair may be set during the napoleonic wars, but vanity fair, thackeray tells us, is where we all live, all the time. it is indeed an unheroic place. the subtitle lets us know in advance that no one will get on a horse to rescue the virtuous or punish the vicious.
feminine difficulties
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when she subtitled the wanderer, it was almost as if fanny burney had foreseen all those academics writing feminist articles about her work. juliet, a mysterious penniless émigré from revolutionary france, tries to make her way in london and encounters all sorts of “difficulties” – but the subtitle indicates that this is one long parable of womanhood.
a simple story
joseph conrad insisted on this scathing subtitle of the secret agent, in which nothing is simple and the cops are almost as sinister as the terrorists. In a grim irony, the unwitting “agent” who delivers the bomb to its destination, and blows it up, is the naïve Stevie.
the misfortunes of virtue
this is the justine of the marquis de sade and it only makes sense if it is combined with his novel juliette, subtitled the benefits of vice. In the two novels, two orphaned sisters make their different paths in the world. the good girl is cheated, exploited and raped; the amoral libertine obtains wealth and happiness. It is also a nasty parody of the subtitle of the most widely read novel of the eighteenth century, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded.
whatever you want
twelfth night is one of only two shakespeare plays to have subtitles (the other is henry viii, or all is true, which, to a bbc tudor viewer, sounds pleasantly sarcastic). Twelfth Night is such an audacious mix of settings, plots, and passions that the playwright has to shrug his shoulders in bewilderment at the subtitle. especially since he has nothing to do with the holiday season.
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