![]() ![]() At the same time, Steinberg is finding himself strangely drawn to this previously coarse woman who is now sophisticated and glamorous. ![]() ![]() Desperate to elicit Leonora’s forgiveness, Ricardo marries Hannah in order to have more control over her mediumistic powers.Īfter marriage, Hannah gradually become more assertive, making her husband’s life a misery. He and his friend, Dr Steinberg, persuade her to participate in seances, where in a comatose state she manages to raise the spirit of Ricardo’s late wife, Leonora, who he had murdered in a jealous rage. Professor Ricardo discovers that his landlady’s ungainly servant, Hannah Stubbs, is a powerful medium. In the Saturday Review, H G Wells described it as an “absurd book,” which “far from transfiguring Spiritualism, as it is intended to do, holds it up as a highly dangerous and idiotic pastime.” Short synposis The reviewer concluded: “If this volume is intended to commend spiritualism to unbelievers, we should say that it would rather confirm them in their scepticism.” The Academy thought Marryat had deteriorated with this work, and referred to its “bewildering narrative”. In this novel, the spirit of woman murdered by her jealous husband inhabits the body of his second wife and wreaks her revenge. ![]() First published in 1896, The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs is one of a number of novels in which Florence Marryat uses Spiritualism both for comic effect and to make more serious arguments about gender politics. ![]()
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