Summary
Lola Montrose—scarlet letter in silk, exile by choice—shares a garret with Dr. John Hampton, a widower who keeps guilt in his medical bag and propriety on his bookshelves. When the doctor’s ardor cools, he announces a forthcoming marriage to a ‘reputable’ matron who will chaperone his adolescent heir, Irwin. Lola, branded kept-woman, kneels in lamplight and unveils her own motherhood: a boy sequestered in a Methodist orphanage, identity buried beneath hymnals. Hampton recoils; the bastard must never contaminate the family line. Fury metastasizes into stratagem: Lola will wed the unsuspecting son, become stepmother to the name she was denied. A moonshine-soaked elopement, a minister who slams the chapel door, a dawn-lit falsified union—Irwin believes himself husband, Lola plays the bride of revenge. Yet contagion intervenes: her hidden child contracts diphtheria; Hampton’s scalpel and serum snatch the boy from the reaper’s ledger. Conscience detonates; Lola confesses the counterfeit marriage. Hampton, witnessing the carnage of his caste pride, kneels in the sawdust and offers legitimacy to both mother and child, trading social armor for a cobbled, imperfect redemption.
Synopsis
Lola Montrose ignores the scorn of society to live with Dr. John Hampton, the man she loves. After tiring of his mistress, Hampton tells Lola that he is planning to marry a "good woman" who will exert the proper influence over his son Irwin. Begging Hampton to marry her, Lola confesses that she too has a son, who is being reared in a religious institution for homeless children, but Hampton insists that he must not darken his son's future. Thirsting for revenge, Lola determines to marry Irwin. After inebriating the youth, Lola takes Irwin to the minister, who refuses to perform the ceremony. Too drunk to realize that there has been no wedding, Irwin takes Lola home and introduces her as his wife. After Lola's son takes ill and Dr. Hampton saves his life, however, she relents and admits that the marriage was a hoax. Seeing the error of his ways, Hampton agrees to take care of both Lola and her son.
Review Excerpt
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Louise Glaum’s eyes—half-closed, half-hurricane—open A Strange Transgressor like a switchblade. The camera loves that lacquered stare; audiences in 1917 read it as invitation, accusation, prophecy. One hundred and six years later, the blade still glints.
The Plot as Palimpsest
What sounds like a penny-dreadful triangle—older man, younger mistress, gullible heir—unfurls into a palimpsest of Victorian anxieties. Lola Montrose is not merely “the other woman”; she is the surplus desire capitalis..."
