Jack London

The Little Lady of the Big House (1916) NOVEL By. Jack London

Clarice Stasz comments: Little Lady upset readers in London's day for its gushing sexual imagery... [and] its close portrayal of the tempting pull of adultery. Modern critics, on the other hand, deride its Victorian coyness and sentimentality, its unrealistic characters. Both were correct-it was too sexy for readers in 1915, when it appeared, and not sexy enough for readers beyond the sexually free twenties.[1] Kevin Starr, in a brutally negative assessment, says the novel provides a sort of last will and testament to California possibilities. His ranch life had begun in earnest in 1909 as a moratorium against chaos. Its last literary expression stank of madness and decay. Art and ranching converged in London's last effort, neither sustaining the other. The novel ends with Paula wounding herself mortally with a rifle-the reader is not told explicitly whether it is suicide, as her lover Graham believes, or an accident, as she tells her husband-and convincing a doctor to inject her with an overdose of morphine. As she drifts off, she says goodbye to both of her lovers: "Two bonnie, bonnie men. Good-by, bonnie men. Good-by, Red Cloud.... Stretch the skin tight, first. You know I don't like to be hurt."