Gina Montani

Concerning the revisions of "Gina Montani" compared to the 1851 story "The Punishment of Gina Montani", Chloe Holland has this to say in her thesis The professional identities of Ellen Wood: "Many of the [republished] stories attempt to subdue the overtly anti-Catholic tones of Wood's earlier stories, one particularly striking example is 'Gina Montani' in which a non-Catholic woman, idealised by the narrator, is murdered by a jealous, Catholic wife who is controlled by her evil priest. While the plot remains almost identical, Wood removes a scene in which the priest asks for Gina's Bible, 'tears the leaves from the Book' and 'set light to them, till all, both the Old and New Testament, were consumed, and the ashes scattered on the ground.' The shocking scene is omitted... seemingly in another attempt to reduce the more sensational aspects of the tale."