Exploitation and unfinished business in the life of Marie Corelli

There are some lessons to be learned from the financially successful but personally sad life of the best-selling Victorian novelist Marie Corelli. 

One of these lessons is about taking responsibility where appropriate as opposed to always blaming someone else. It particularly involves learning to be a good judge of character and not being influenced by factors such as self-interest, self-deception and wishful thinking - as opposed to unjustly blaming the other party for not being what we thought they were or wanted them to be.

Blaming people for deceiving us and letting us down seems to be the default. We need to learn to look after our side of things; we need to learn from experience what to look for in people. In particular, we need to learn to recognise warning signals.

This extract from Marie Corelli's book The Silver Domino shows that she knew, in theory at least, that people should take responsibility and blame themselves for their own poor judgement when they feel that they have been deceived by someone:

"...remember that if you do persuade yourselves into thinking that I am a Somebody, and if I turn out after all to be a Nobody, it is not my fault. Don't blame me; blame your own self deception."

This is admirable; it is spot on. However, she talked a better game than she played; she didn't apply her wise words to herself!

The Silver Domino was published in 1892; here is an extract from The Young Diana, which was first published in 1918:

"I 'asked for love' – now I ask for vengeance. I gave all my heart and soul to a man whose only god was Self, and I got nothing back…So I have a long score to settle, and I shall try to have some of my spent joys returned to me – with heavy interest!"

This is Marie Corelli speaking for herself, and from bitter experience. She was raging by proxy at a man she had been infatuated with because she felt that he had deceived her; he was not what she thought he was and wanted him to be. She had become disappointed and disillusioned. The expression 'Hell hath no greater fury than a women scorned' very much applies in her case. 

It all sounds very like the fury expressed by Arthur Conan Doyle's witch Helen Penclosa after her rejection by Austin Gilroy.

Who having known the Diamond...

“Who having known the Diamond will concern himself with glass?”

I like this quotation from Rudyard Kipling's autobiographical work Something of Myself very much.

Kipling's words go straight to the heart. They say to me that people who have encountered the best will not settle for or want to be involved with anything less. I see his words as a very neat and clever way of saying that anyone who has experienced the real thing will not be fooled by a counterfeit or a cheap copy.

I know from experience that this is not always the case. Some people ignore, avoid and reject the diamond and home in on and embrace the glass. I have seen innumerable examples of such twisted values in the past, and often wondered why this should be.

I am not talking about people who have never seen, heard of, read about, experienced or imagined the best, the real deal; some people have low horizons and few opportunities. I am not talking about people who are unable to recognise differences, make comparisons or grade and classify what they encounter; some people have limited understanding and little ability to look at things objectively.

I am not talking either about people whose diamonds may look like glass to other people; sometimes 'diamond' may just mean the most suitable, or the best that someone can envisage, achieve and attain.

Here are a few examples from my own experience.

Popcorn time and popcorn timing

I really liked the expression 'popcorn time' when I heard it for the first time a few years ago. It is a spectator sport alert, a neat and clever way of telling people to get ready because an amusing show is about to start.

I have seen it used a lot recently, and this has reminded me of a popcorn-related incident from the past.

It all started when I took some young children to a shopping centre to see the Christmas attractions. There was a popcorn-making machine there that fascinated my young friends. The popcorn danced on a jet of air; they watched this for a long time.

It was obvious that they wanted me to buy them some popcorn, but a small paper cup cost a small fortune and the popcorn didn't even look very good. As a matter of principle, I won't pay exorbitant prices for low-quality products.

The youngest girl cried and I felt guilty. I remembered getting some really good popcorn from Marks & Spencer a while back, so I promised them that I would bring some with me the next time I came to see them. 

I went to one branch of M & S but couldn't find the popcorn I wanted, which was one big bag with eight small individual bags of Butterkist inside, delicious and ideal for distributing to children. I went to another branch and looked everywhere. I remembered to check the sweet stands near the tills, but the popcorn I wanted wasn't there.

I decided that M & S must have played their usual game of bringing out something edible that people like very much then discontinuing the product. 

Two puritanical regimes: coincidence or not?

I learned a little about life under Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan regime in school history lessons and from historical novels.

Much more recently, I learned something about life in Iran after the 1979 revolution. The monarchy was replaced by an Islamic republic and the country controlled by a fundamentalist clerical regime.

HTwo timelines

King Charles I, called by his opponents a tyrant, was executed in January 1649 and the resolution to abolish the monarchy was passed on February 7th.

The Shah of Iran, known to his oppressed subjects as a tyrant, fled his country into exile in January 1979; the new leader Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile on February 1st.

I have noticed some similarities in the rules and restrictions that were imposed on the people after the regime changes. A few examples follow.

HDress codes were enforced

Cromwell believed that women and girls should dress in a proper manner. Make-up was banned. Puritan leaders and soldiers would roam the streets of towns and scrub off any make-up found on unsuspecting women. Too colourful dresses were banned. A Puritan lady wore a long black dress that covered her almost from neck to toes. She wore a white apron and her hair was bunched up behind a white head-dress. Puritan men wore black clothes and short hair.

In Iran, an Islamic dress code was imposed. Women's hair must be covered and dress must be modest. Women who wore make-up in public risked at best having their faces scrubbed clean and at worst being treated as criminals and punished. Many women wore long black robes over their clothes, robes that concealed everything except their face and hands. Ties for men were declared to be un-Islamic and beards Islamic.

King Charles II and synchronicity

I have been doing some research into the English Civil War, the Commonwealth and the Restoration.

I was looking for examples of the swing of the pendulum from one extreme to the other and the way that some people reject one way of life only to adopt one that is equally bad and damaging.

Reading about the Restoration reminded me of a time when I read a lot of historical novels, many of which featured the Merry Monarch King Charles II. He seemed very glamorous to me and much more interesting than most of England's kings. I was impressed by his involvement with the Royal Society and his patronage of Sir Christopher Wren.

I decided to refresh my memory about his life and reign when I got the chance, in the light of all the things I had learned since I read about him when I was just a schoolgirl.

I took some time out to go and meet a former colleague. She put a book into my hands; she said that when she told her husband she would be seeing me, he took a book from his bookcase and said, “Give her this.” 

The book was about the life and times of King Charles II!

No one knew that Charles II was very much on my mind. I have only met her husband once, a few years ago, yet somehow he sensed what I was thinking about.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but the universe often ensures that I get the books I want. I just wish that this would work for other things...

This is the book in question:

Unfinished business: three paths people take

I have noticed that some people get away with a lot. They behave badly but suffer no apparent consequences, internal or external. Perhaps the universe sees and treats them the way adults see and behave towards young children. Very small children cannot be expected to have much understanding or take responsibility for their lives, so some of their bad behaviour is excused.

Other people are not so lucky when it comes to dealing with unfinished business. Perhaps the consequences are age- appropriate punishments from the universe.

Failure to express feelings, failure to assert oneself, permitting exploitation of oneself and failure to think, speak and act appropriately according to the occasion are examples of unfinished business, as are ignoring problems in the hope that they will go away, habitually running away from difficult situations, going through life leaving messes, failed relationships and unhappy people behind, being out of touch with reality and not respecting the truth.

Many people find that unfinished business and ignored and unresolved problems and issues make themselves felt, very inconveniently and painfully, over and over again. Perhaps the universe treats selected people like under-performing schoolchildren who must retake the same examinations until the lessons are learned. The difficulty of the lessons and the severity of the consequences and the amount of pain felt when they are not learned may be proportional to the universe's estimate of the capabilities and potential of the student.

Carrying around a load of unfinished business is similar to living with a lot of debt.

Unfinished business can handicap us and sabotage or even ruin our lives.

Mantra: Of Course They Do

There is an expression that has always grated on me: 

"Not I, but God in me” - or paraphrases thereof.

There is another expression that I find very amusing:

“The Devil Made Me Do It”!

I see these slogans as the two sides of the same bad coin; both promote avoidance of personal responsibility.

The first expression seems to me like false humility and the abdication of personal credit, but some people find it helpful and inspiring. Being reminded of it recently gave me the idea of finding some helpful and inspiring mantras for myself.

I thought of one very quickly:

“Of course they do” - with variations and permutations of he/she and does/did.

This expression can be used to explain some people's behaviour in terms of unseen influences and subterranean sabotage. Here are some examples of what I mean.

Stella Gibbons's father's legacy

The father of the novelist Stella Gibbons was a violent alcoholic. He wasted much of his money and spent a lot on drink. However, when he died he left £2,000; this was a decent amount of money in the mid 1920s.

He could have split his estate between Stella and her two younger brothers; he could have left it all to Stella, who was very responsible and would have put it towards her journalism studies; he could have left it to the middle boy, who wanted to be a doctor; he actually left the lot to the youngest boy, the one least likely to make good use of it. He was rather unstable - “the years of fear and insecurity had wounded him deeply” - and he squandered the money in less than a year with nothing to show for it. The other boy was forced to leave school and take a mundane job.