Italians with white mice

[Dark Muse]

After Dorothea finds out about the codicil that Casuban created against Dorothea marrying Will Ladislaw she is talking to her Celia and her sister says to her, of the idea of her marrying Ladislaw:


Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as well marry an Italian with white mice!

and the phrase is repeated two more times in Dorothea's reflections to herself:


Why should be compared with an Italian carrying white mice?


An Italian with white mice! -- on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.

Being so often repeated the phrase must have some particularly significance. I wondered is this meant to be an allusion to The Woman in White by Wilike Collins, and Count Fosco with his infamous pet white mice? I found it strange that no sort of foot note was provided to explain this passage.

Yet out of context of The Woman in White it really does seem to be quite nonsensical and holds little meaning or that I can see.

Unless it was just some sort of strange common Victorian adage?

[WillLadislaw]

Victorian Englishmen (particularly the conservative type, such as the Cadwalladers, Chettams, and others associated with Fre****t) had very strong prejudices against foreigners of all types. The "Italian with white mice" epithet is a disparaging remark on Mrs Cadwallader's part, implying that Will Ladislaw's foreign background (even though it is partial, coming from only his paternal grandfather) makes him just as undesirable a match for Dorothea as any full-blooded foreigner would be.

At this time, Italians frequently roamed the streets of London and other large English towns as organ-grinders. Daryl Ogden, in an article from Studies in the Novel, mentions this practice: "In the 1820s and 1830s, a relatively large population of Italian 'organ boys' was imported into London. These street entertainers, mentioned by Dickens in Little Dorritt, performed tricks with trained monkeys and mice while their masters played the organ. It was eventually revealed that organ boys were being trafficked in an elaborate white slave trade (the practice was subsequently denounced by Mazzini)" (Ogden, Daryl, "George Eliot and Italy: Literary, Cultural and Political Influences from Dante to the Risorgimento," Studies in the Novel, Fall 2000). So the image of Italians as poor street performers carrying around white mice would have been a particularly strong one for the Victorian audience George Eliot was writing to.

Interestingly enough, we already know that Will's paternal grandfather was a musician, later learn that Will's mother was an aspiring actress, reinforcing the stereotype of performers in his heritage (and, presumably, in Will's own innate character, inherited from his grandfather and mother) and pointing up even more markedly the undesirability of a marriage between Dorothea and Will.

I hope that helps! And thanks for bringing this up, because it's a phrase I've always wondered about myself, and your question inspired me to research it more thoroughly.

[Dark Muse]

Thanks a lot for the information and taking the time to reseach it.

[kev67]

Being so often repeated the phrase must have some particularly significance. I wondered is this meant to be an allusion to The Woman in White by Wilike Collins, and Count Fosco with his infamous pet white mice? I found it strange that no sort of foot note was provided to explain this passage.



I was wondering about this too, having just read Miss Halcombe's first impressions of Count Fosco in The Woman in White.



At this time, Italians frequently roamed the streets of London and other large English towns as organ-grinders. Daryl Ogden, in an article from Studies in the Novel, mentions this practice: "In the 1820s and 1830s, a relatively large population of Italian 'organ boys' was imported into London. These street entertainers, mentioned by Dickens in Little Dorritt, performed tricks with trained monkeys and mice while their masters played the organ. It was eventually revealed that organ boys were being trafficked in an elaborate white slave trade (the practice was subsequently denounced by Mazzini)" (Ogden, Daryl, "George Eliot and Italy: Literary, Cultural and Political Influences from Dante to the Risorgimento," Studies in the Novel, Fall 2000). So the image of Italians as poor street performers carrying around white mice would have been a particularly strong one for the Victorian audience George Eliot was writing to.


This is interesting, because there was also an Italian with a white mouse mentioned in Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. Mary Barton comes across a small Italian boy with a white mouse who begs her for food. First she is going to tell him that hunger is nothing, but then relents and brings him back a few crusts, which he shares with his pet.