SOURCE: Groves, David. “Myth and Structure in James Hogg's The Three Perils of Woman.” Wordsworth Circle, 13, no. 4 (autumn 1982): 203-10.

In the following essay, Groves contends that Hogg's The Three Perils of Woman demonstrates a mythical vision of descent into chaos followed by a reaffirmation of human unity.

James Hogg's The Three Perils of Woman; or, Love, Leasing, and Jealousy (1823) is a minor masterpiece which treats the theme of love through sustained mythical and structural parallels between two time-settings. I use “myth” to denote a single meaningful pattern underlying the three very different narrative sections of Hogg's work; each constituent part illustrates in a unique and imaginative way the journey into what Northrop Frye calls “the night world, a life so intolerable that it must end either in tragedy or in permanent escape.”¹ In its use of myth and structure, The Three Perils of Woman has much in common...