This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. This book review for The Banker's Daughters of Bristol (1824) contains spoilers. |
But most of the novel has nothing to do with Jane and Maria Milsom, the titular characters. The central heroines, representing Compliance and Decision, are Louisa Gordon and Fanny Woodville. Louisa lives in a rustic cottage with her genteel but impoverished mother, and Fanny is the orphaned daughter of a star-crossed love match.
The Banker’s Daughters of Bristol is a strange mixture of hackneyed prose ("pellucid waters," “woo danger in the tented field”) and conventional morality punctuated with strong editorial outbursts. The narrator and some of the characters randomly exclaim against the government, the church, the army, and British society at large. That surprised me, since the novel is a product of the Minerva Press, printers of popular romance and gothic horrors for the reading public.
I wonder, did the publisher even notice these little protest speeches? Maybe he just gave the manuscript a brief glance--
- young man from good family is friendly with a poor family who have a beautiful young daughter whom he is forbidden to marry, check,
- brother kidnapped by Algerine pirates, check,
- another young man from good family is friendly with a poor family who have a beautiful young daughter whom he is forbidden to marry, uh... okay, check,
- dissolute old nobleman tries to force heroine into mercenary marriage, check,
- long-lost brother shows up under an assumed name but drops some exceedingly broad hints that he's not who he claims to be, check,
- hero returns from the dead, check,
And another strange thing about this story: we open Volume I with “Lady Waldegrave” and her bratty little boy, then, without explanation, we turn to a completely different cast of characters. Not even a dividing line--