5. Ladislaw

© 2021 Adam Roberts, CC BY 4.0. https://doi.org/10.11657/OBP.0249.05 It is up to us, as readers, how we choose to pronounce Will Ladislaw’s surname. We might assume that it rhymes its final syllable with ‘coleslaw.’ Then again, we could note the clues as to his family provenance that unobtrusively accumulate as the novel proceeds (starting in chapter 8, when Mr. Cadwallader explains Ladislaw’s relationship to Casaubon: ‘his mother’s sister made a bad match—a Pole, I think—lost herself—at any ...