True to its Victorian forerunners, Taylor’s novelKeptsets out a panoramic view of society, encompassing a host of different characters in quite heterogeneous sit-uations. In contrast to Victorian novels, however, this also includes the perspec-tive of a servant girl. Thus, it becomes possible to assess the way in which money impinges upon the lives and attitudes of different characters who appear in sep-arate chapters and who, for the first hundred pages or so, do not seem related to each other. It turns out, however, that nearly all are somehow connected to the murder of the gentleman Henry Ireton, which took place shortly before, and the fate of his widow Isabel, who is diagnosed as mad and placed as a ward in the attic of the estate of Mr. Dixey–who, it turns out, has no other motive for this act other than getting his hands on her money. Connected to this crime are, among others, not only the main perpetrator Mr. Pardew and the rather mixed bag of people whom he deploys as his instruments, but also distant relations of Isabel, who want to help her, alongside the servants of Mr. Dixey’s estate. These char-acters are linked not only by means of the plot, which slowly becomes discern-ible to the reader, but also by the main motive of the novel, which is highlighted
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in the title:Kept.Kept, under the power and thrall of others, are, for instance, Mr.
Dewar, whose wife is so ill that he can be forced to do just about anything to get money for her; Jemima, Pardew’s literally“kept”mistress; and Mrs. Ireton, who is confined to her attic.
What–apart from being a“means of exchange” –are the qualities of money in this set-up? First of all, the material aspects arising from the exchange of money are highlighted: even before the young servant girl Esther has reached her new place as a servant in Dixey’s estate, she hears that this gentleman does not take proper care of his belongings, that the greenhouses and the estate are falling into decay. Money would be the means to set this right, but money is lacking. As the number of servants diminishes, Esther is required to add more and more to her already substantial number of chores and has to fear for her livelihood: “In which case […] what will become of us all?”(259) However, it is made quite clear from the beginning that Dixey does have money – only that he spends it on other things, paying large sums to people who acquire ‘nat-ural specimens’for him, such as the eggs of rare birds or the corpses of nearly extinct species. Whereas Dixey does seem to have choices, though his decisions are questionable, these opportunities are non-existent in the case of Dewar, a former grocer, who cannot continue working because he wants to care for his mortally-ill wife and who is forced to take part in Pardew’s criminal schemes.
There might seem a great gap between characters like Dewar and Dixey, for the former appears to have few choices regarding the acquisition and spending of money, whereas the latter freely chooses his financial habits. However, the novel suggests that the facts of the matter are more complex as other factors need considering. For instance, knowledge about money and the world of fi-nance becomes an important factor as we find that unawareness may lead one into otherwise avoidable situations if one had been able to foresee the conse-quences. Thus, Dewar, just like the servant girl Esther, becomes implicated in crimes because he does not understand them: the world of money (and deceit) remains inexplicable to this pair of characters. Yet both of them do sense that they are letting themselves into something illegal and wrong:“All this Dewar saw, or rather did not see, for his mind was lost in ceaseless calculation. He knew little of the money world, the world of Grace and his master, but he knew sufficient to be aware that the tasks he had been commissioned to perform could not, of their nature, be legitimate.”(150) Even Esther, who tries hard to ig-nore how her lover William is doing something wrong, has to realize that he has been melting down gold in their house. Both Esther and Dewar risk facing im-prisonment at the end; but although their actions do not quite fit prevalent moral standards, the narrative ordering of events makes it easy for readers to un-derstand the characters’predicament because they find themselves in situations Meanings of Money in Literature 169
similar to those of these comparatively naïve figures, and have to wait rather a long time until they are in full possession of the facts enabling them to under-stand Pardew’s criminal schemes. Money may be a neutral means of exchange but the novel makes quite clear how its different usages are charged with moral significance.
The difficulties of understanding (the loopholes in) the system of exchange are most obvious with regards to the“bills”and“cheques,”which abound in the novel partly because Pardew is a“bill broker.”What this profession involves remains mys-terious for a while. Basically, however, it boils down to something that is of some relevance especially in times of banking crises, for Pardew deals in cheques and bills that are no longer worth anything; it is only later that the new owners of these bills find out that they are worthless and cannot be resold to anyone else.
Money–in the form of cheques, bills, and with a little help from others–thus be-comes a means of deceit, and the more educated characters are not as easily ex-cused as naïve servants who never had the opportunity to gain the knowledge that might have hindered them from becoming ploys in immoral schemes.
Money may also serve to diminish the range of peoples’activities– physical-ly as well as mentalphysical-ly. Dewar’s lack of money has turned him into a puppet forced to act according to the wishes of whoever pulls his strings. In most cases, however, it is not that easy to determine just what is going on. The most interesting case in point is Pardew, who does not seem to need the money he gets by means of the spectacular robbery occurring at the end of the book. Nevertheless, in spite of the risk involved, he is unable to stop himself.
For Pardew, the acquisition of money has become an end in itself; and the costs of his behavior to others fail to make it into any of his calculations.
Even more than the implications of the fraudulent use of money, the novel highlights its psychological significance. In some characters, money has a pro-found influence. The lack of money has robbed Dewar not only of his peace of mind, but also of his self-confidence. Quite the opposite is true with regard to Pardew, who is able to buy all the outer trappings of a gentleman and employs these self-confidently in order to access people“above his station.”Money al-lows him a kind of self-fashioning that serves to convince– and impress–his mistress Jemima. However, the kind of profiling by way of money achieved by William, Pardew and Dewar is exposed as fraudulent and fragile: in most cases, it fails rather quickly.
It becomes clear, moreover, that this form of self-expression is not typical of the 1860s. There are instead two other factors just as important as money: rep-utation and one’s social station. This is shown in Pardew’s dealings with the seemingly respectable lawyer Crabbe, whom he needs for his crimes. Respecta-bility and a good reputation can be turned to profit. While this seems to have
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some bearing even in the era of late capitalism, when buyers of shares some-times pay more regard to promises by respectable brokers than to a plain under-standing of what is going on, the second factor seems more remote today. In the novel, social station, especially titles above the rank of the baronet, still hold the same kind of power as money and reputation when it comes to the necessity of convincing others and making them act according to one’s wishes. However, in the novel, reputation, money and social station are often divorced from one an-other: even Pardew fails when wanting to place a bill personally into the hand of a duke (194). When money is pitted against station, money fails dismally.
In spite of these examples, the novel mainly provides instances of non-ega-litarian usages of money. The acquisition of money does not help any of the char-acters from the lower ranks; apart from Pardew, those who accumulate money
‘above their station’ fail with neither William nor Dunbar and Grace able to enjoy their illegally acquired capital. Large quantities of money would seem to help only those born with the‘right’to them. The novel thus points out an alter-native system of values, in which money is closely related to social station and reputation, and thus invites us to consider different, more efficient or more just ways of ordering our world.
In a similar vein, the novel does not support the view of money’s“power to move everywhere, to link everything to everything else, and to condition every-thing and everyone”(Laqué 2009: 184). The links provided by money (which are often only perpetuated because of mutual mistrust or physical force) are con-trasted with other, more efficient, personal networks.