Scan barcode
A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
Zuleika Dobson: Or, An Oxford Love Story by Max Beerbohm
3.0
I think this book is primed for a reparative reading that emphasizes how the book skewers the British elite and the academy. I watched Triangle of Sadness recently, and I think this Edwardian satire could be read as a forebear to the eat-the-rich cinema that has been popping up as of late. Zuleika herself This is a novel that I think could be tackled or adapted for contemporary audiences.
The novel, which follows Zuleika, a counterfeit conjurer who is, in some ways, a fin-de-siecle influencer, casts this femme fatale as a harbinger of destruction. No one can help but fall in love with her, and she cannot help but feel disinterested in anyone who reciprocates her affections. Poisonous stew.
And poison is the right word for the arrogance and self-destruction of the young men in her wake. Zuleika is like a Helen of Troy; her beauty inspires men to commit sacrifice. Unlike Helen, Zuleika's men just commit suicide. In so doing, Beerbohm eviscerates the young, pompous chauvinist who studies at Oxford. His primary target is the Duke, a vain and egomaniacal man who cannot imagine not getting what he wants (and so dies in retaliation to Zuleika's rejection).
There's a lot here that works in the present: it speaks to the image and status-obsessed culture of the online world, the decadence of the 1% (it's fitting, for example, that Zuleika books a ticket to Cambridge by the novel's end; the book takes shots at the denizens of England's most elite institutions because Beerbohm seems to intuit that these are mere houses of pageantry.
Is Zuleika Dobson timeless, or even well-written? Hardly. But it's a smart farce that aims it arrows at the hoarders of power, and there's something gleefully wonderful about seeing an entire city destroyed because of one woman. Is Zuleika Dobson a "good for her" novel? This honor, we should grant it.
TLDR: They fell in love with her; she felled a whole city.
The novel, which follows Zuleika, a counterfeit conjurer who is, in some ways, a fin-de-siecle influencer, casts this femme fatale as a harbinger of destruction. No one can help but fall in love with her, and she cannot help but feel disinterested in anyone who reciprocates her affections. Poisonous stew.
And poison is the right word for the arrogance and self-destruction of the young men in her wake. Zuleika is like a Helen of Troy; her beauty inspires men to commit sacrifice. Unlike Helen, Zuleika's men just commit suicide. In so doing, Beerbohm eviscerates the young, pompous chauvinist who studies at Oxford. His primary target is the Duke, a vain and egomaniacal man who cannot imagine not getting what he wants (and so dies in retaliation to Zuleika's rejection).
There's a lot here that works in the present: it speaks to the image and status-obsessed culture of the online world, the decadence of the 1% (it's fitting, for example, that Zuleika books a ticket to Cambridge by the novel's end; the book takes shots at the denizens of England's most elite institutions because Beerbohm seems to intuit that these are mere houses of pageantry.
Is Zuleika Dobson timeless, or even well-written? Hardly. But it's a smart farce that aims it arrows at the hoarders of power, and there's something gleefully wonderful about seeing an entire city destroyed because of one woman. Is Zuleika Dobson a "good for her" novel? This honor, we should grant it.
TLDR: They fell in love with her; she felled a whole city.