Henrietta

Henrietta (1758), by Charlotte Lennox, is a funny, charming Fieldingesque novel about the adventures of the eponymous heroine. Henrietta is a very well-born young lady, down on her luck. She refuses to submit to her aunt's decree that she convert to Catholicism, and this leads to a downhill spiral that sees Henrietta go from being the niece of an earl to the servant of a succession of very silly women. What is remarkable about Henrietta is her unwavering sense of pride and dignity - she has no problem saying no to people, and is not willing to bend her principles or beliefs, even when it would mean significant financial gain (or the ability to escape certain sticky situations). Henrietta undergoes many misfortunes, and finds herself in situations where lesser heroines would have come completely unstuck, but her sense of pride and dignity never falter. She is not a prig, however, as she is willing to do a lot of things that proper women should never do (such as run away from home), so she is never a boring character.

I found this novel really wonderful. Henrietta is a great heroine, and mercifully does not faint as much as Lennox's Harriot Stuart. Lennox has wonderful comic timing and the social satire in this novel is brilliant. I really enjoyed her portrayal of Miss Woodby, which I think may just have influenced Austen's portrayal of Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey. And Lord B's proposal to Henrietta echoes both Pamela and Pride and Prejudice. As Perry's introduction points out, this novel fits neatly between Fielding and Burney. Fielding is obviously a major influence on Lennox, particularly in her portrayal of comic types, and Burney obviously looked to Lennox's use of the bildungsroman.

While I am still giving The Female Quixote the Lennox prize, this is a very readable, funny and interesting novel about a woman who dares to stand up for what she believes in, despite the consequences.

Madam de Beaumont and The Count de Vinevil

As my Garland edition puts these two novels by Penelope Aubin together, I thought I'd review them together.

The Life of Madam de Beaumont, a French Lady (1721): This is a short novel about a very virtuous family who are separated due to Madam de Beaumont's refusal to convert to Catholicism. This gives Aubin an opportunity to do some Catholic bashing, and also subject the three protagonists of the novel (de Beaumont, Madam de Beaumont, and their daughter Belinda) to all sorts of wild adventures. I think Belinda actually gets kidnapped three times whilst she is being kidnapped. As in, she's being carried off somewhere, only for somebody else to fall in love with her and carry her off, only to be kidnapped whilst trying to escape from that person and so on and so forth. Despite all these lurid adventures, this is a very pious, moralistic book about the importance of virtue and chastity. The de Beaumont family are rewarded for their morality and patience. It's all a little tiresome, really. The plot is vaguely Eliza Haywood, but not half as sexy or well written and with this priggish morality brushed over the top.

The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vinevil and His Family (1721): This is another short novel about a nobleman down on his luck who decides to move his family to Turkey so that he can make money as a merchant. Of course, this doesn't exactly go as planned. His beautiful daughter is lusted over by almost everybody, apparently, and a Turkish nobleman who is determined to obtain her by any means necessary causes all kinds of trouble for them. It's all very racist, of course. The Turkish people are lustful, extravagant, and violent, whereas the French, the English and the Spanish (in other words, the Christians) are the very epitome of perfect Christian morality. I did find this more entertaining than the former novel, though, because there is a very strange section of the novel where the main characters have a Robinson Crusoe-esque adventure, which I found rather hilarious.

All in all, though, I'd much rather read Haywood.

The Parent's Assistant

The Parent's Assistant (1796), by Maria Edgeworth, is a collection of short stories designed for children. It is really a fictionalization of the Edgeworth's educational theories, in that the stories are designed to teach children by practical example. It is full of stories of virtuous young children who learn lessons about industry, patience, tolerance and kindness. It is very 18th-century - I doubt many children these days would take well to the stories - but it was a very modern idea for its time.

I think I enjoyed "Simple Susan" the best, because there is a vile character in that story that definitely deserves what she gets. I also liked "The Orphans" and "The Mimic". "The Mimic" has a wonderfully drawn comic character, Mrs Tattler, and since the children in that story aren't initially as wonderfully good as the other children in the collection, I found it more entertaining.

Despite the sometimes heavy-handed morality, I rather enjoyed reading these stories. For the most part, they are very sweet. And I very much like Maria Edgeworth's educational methods, because she shows a lot of respect for children's innate abilities and intelligence. Very old-fashioned reading, but quite charming in its own way.

Dorothea

Dorothea; or, A Ray of the New Light (1801) is attributed to a Mrs Bullock, but that is based mostly on educated guessing, as nothing is known of the author. Dorothea is a little-known anti-Jacobin novel about the courtship and marriage of the eponymous heroine. Dorothea has been educated into "radical" beliefs by her careless governess and a radical philosopher called Thomas Williams (obviously named after Caleb Williams, from Godwin's novel). The novel is so aimed squarely at William Godwin that it seems that most of the novel is directly lifted out of the pages of Political Justice, as almost all of the characters quote from it extensively. Of course, as this is an anti-Jacobin novel, the novel explores how Dorothea learns to turn away from her radical beliefs to embrace a life of happy conformity and conventionality. Godwin's beliefs are held up for ridicule, as they lead Dorothea into a lot of pain and suffering.

So, the politics in the book are very unpalatable to the modern reader. Dorothea at the beginning of the novel, whilst immature and a bit too literal, is spirited and independent. By the end of the novel, she's the "perfect" wife - submissive and totally subordinate. And this is presented as a good thing. However, if you can get past the politics, this is actually a surprisingly entertaining novel. It is at its best when it leaves aside its diatribes and focuses on social satire. There are parts that are genuinely funny, and I think even the most conservative reader would have found Dorothea, even at her most radical, quite sympathetic. I found this a much more interesting anti-Jacobin text than something like Waldorf, for example. Bullock provides direct parallels to Godwin's work, and actually demonstrates practical situations where Godwin's idealistic principles can be harmful. While I was not convinced by Bullock's arguments, obviously, Bullock's use of direct quotations is quite a persuasive technique.

I don't know that I would read this if I weren't studying anti-Jacobin novels at the moment, but I did quite enjoy it, despite the ultra conservative politics. And even though I hated the ending!

The Force of Nature & The Perplex'd Duchess

The Force of Nature and The Perplex'd Duchess are collected in a compilation called Four Novels of Eliza Haywood. However, as I have already read Lasselia and The Injur'd Husband, the other two novels that make up the four, this review will only be of the first and last novel in the collection.

The Force of Nature, or the Lucky Disappointment (1724) is a novel of misunderstandings, confusions, missed opportunities, and coincidences. It follows the fortunes of a young couple in love. They have grown up together as close as brother and sister, as Fernando has been taken under the guardianship of Alvario, Felisinda's father. Of course, they fall in love, and Alvario decides to separate the young lovers. What follows is rather implausible but rather entertaining. There's mishaps in convents, duels, disguises - all kinds of melodrama. Another couple is introduced as a foil to Felisinda and Fernando. The ending is a little disturbing to a modern reader, but it genuinely surprised me, which is an unusual feat for an early 18th-century novel! Typical Haywoodesque fun.

The Perplex'd Duchess, or Treachery Rewarded (1727) is a short novel about an evil woman. Gigantilla, in spite of her rather unfortunate name, is a typical scheming Haywood villainess, clever and shrewd and manipulative. She's remarkably good at what she does, rising from the servant class to become the Duchess of Malfy - the equivalent of a queen. Of course, Gigantilla is undone eventually, but it is only by chance that her schemes are thwarted. I love reading about Haywood's bad girls, because although their schemes are eventually thwarted, Haywood obviously has a great deal of fun showing women bending gender conventions and assuming power in their own right. This is a really short novel - I read it in one sitting - but it's hugely fun, in typical Haywood style.

The Modern Griselda

Maria Edgeworth's take on the famous folklore stories about the patient and submissive Griselda, The Modern Griselda (1804), is quite hilarious. It's about a wife who is basically the opposite of long-suffering Griselda. If her husband says you pronounce a word a certain way, she says it's pronounced differently. If her husband wants to sit down, she wants him to stand up. If her husband says he likes salad, she insists that eating salad will be the death of him. And so on and so forth.

Of course, this starts to present something of a problem. Their marriage (predictably) begins to unravel, but Griselda keeps on using her "techniques" in an attempt to acquire power over her husband. This is a pretty light novel, but I really enjoyed Edgeworth's tongue-in-cheek depiction of marital power struggles. You definitely don't sympathise with Griselda, but she has her moments of clarity, when she loses the obsession with power, and you can see that she really does love her husband.

There is the obligatory virtuous and moral Edgeworth heroine, of course, but she has a fairly minor role here - which is mainly to irritate Griselda. The point, of course, is that the virtuous Emma Granby is able to acquire power over her husband by simply being a loving wife and not badgering him to death or getting strange ideas about female submission into her head.

I enjoy Edgeworth much more when she lightens up, I think!

Emilie de Coulanges

Emilie de Coulanges (1803), by Maria Edgeworth, is another anti-Jacobin novel. This time, it's about two emigrants, a mother and daughter, who have come to live with an upper-class English woman. Mrs Somers, the English woman in question, is initially very generous to them, but over time, of course, she comes to resent them for various reasons. She thus engages in this very convoluted form of psychological warfare with Emilie (the daughter).

I found this a much more engaging novel than Madame de Fleury. As I said in regards to that novel, Maria Edgeworth is better at creating "bad" characters than good ones, as her "bad" characters are more believable. Mrs Somers is not evil, but obviously has a problem controlling her temper. Her idea of being a good friend involves making over-the-top sacrifices of her money and time. Of course, nobody can ever be as grateful as she wants them to be, so problems arise. I found her scenes with Emilie wonderful, as Emilie has no idea what she's doing wrong, and so keeps on accidentally enraging Mrs Somers. There's a great scene involving the purchase of some paintings (or, really, the inability to purchase the paintings), in which Mrs Somers grows steadily more resentful, and Emilie has no idea, so it's all kinds of complex and delicious.

This is not a perfect novel - the romance plot is a bit tacked on, and there is a miraculous restoration of the de Coulanges fortune a la Madame de Fleury. The anti-Jacobinism of the text is played down, so that all you really hear about the Revolution is that the de Coulanges family have lost their money and that the father of the family has been guillotined (but this is not dwelt upon at any length). The Revolution is a very remote calamity, so you're never really engaged with the question of whether or not the de Coulanges will regain their property. For a family that's just had to cope with the execution of their husband and father, they don't seem to think about it much.

However, for the psychological complexity of the interaction between Emilie and Mrs Somers along, this is well worth a read.