War medals, flowers, a dead boy’s hair: their changing resonance through time brings opportunities to consider the difference between value and values between family and fortune. Divided fortunes can create divided families – and good stories. They feature in Trollope, Wilkie Collins and Dickens and continue into contemporary fiction. Such ructions were the mainstay of the great Victorian novels, often deployed as the turbines in the vast engine rooms of 19th-century fiction. But an inheritance seldom brings out the best in people and the larger the prize, the greater the conflict and moral corruption it is likely to occasion. A legacy need be of no great value to cause a spat: I’ve seen grown siblings weep over their dead mother’s favourite salad bowl. W here there’s a will, there’s often a row.
0 kommentar(er)
