The fact that the day of Queen Victoria's funeral coincides with the birth of the narrator may, on the one hand, signify the cultural moment when Victorian decency and codes of femininity are left behind, buried, and put to rest, and in this way, it can be interpreted as a moment when even certain untold stories can be told. On the other hand, however, it may also foretell something of a story in which matrilineage is unnaturally broken; also, it tells us about. the permeability of the border between, and about the coexistence of, life and death. References: Sllei, N., (2009) The mother in mourning as the subject of autobiography in Rosamond Lehmann's The swan in the evening: Fragments of an inner life. In A. O'Reilly, & S. Caporale-Bizzini (Eds.). From the personal to the political: Toward a new theory of maternal narrative (pp. 170- 182). Cranbury, NJ: Susquehanna University Press. The coexistence of life and death, indeed, the permeable nature of the boundary between life and death is frequently the subject of literary analysis. This is also the focus of Sllei's (2009) article on Rosamond Lehmann's novel. References: Sllei, N., (2009) The mother in mourning as the subject of autobiography in Rosamond Lehmann's The swan in the evening: Fragments of an inner life. In A. O'Reilly, & S. Caporale-Bizzini (Eds.). From the personal to the political: Toward a new theory of maternal narrative (pp. 170- 182). Cranbury, NJ: Susquehanna University Press.