Lona Manning's blog

CMP#162 Maria, the saucy heroine

11/27/2023

Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen. I also read and review the forgotten novels of the Georgian and Regency era and compare and contrast them with Austen's. Click here for the first post in the series. Click here for my six critical questions for scholars.

CMP#162 A review of The Portrait, by Miss Elliott (1783): 18th century girlpower!

Saucy and sweet

In an earlier post I suggested that Pride and Prejudice is so magical because Austen had the good sense to demote Jane Bennet from main heroine status and promote the saucy sidekick to main heroine. In novels of this era, the formula called for the sweet and virtuous heroine to have a saucy friend and confidante, who is allowed to say irreverent or catty things that the heroine cannot.
Elizabeth Bennet made an unusual main heroine because she was so outspoken and “arch,” as Austen calls her, while demure Jane would never say or even think a critical word against anybody.
I have found another example of this sweet-girl/saucy-sidekick switcheroo, in the sprightly two-volume novel The Portrait (1783) by a “Miss Elliott.”
Maria Bellmont is the sauciest of the saucy. Naturally I assumed she was a saucy sidekick because The Portrait opens with a letter from her sister Charlotte, writing to their friend Harriot Marchmont. I thought Charlotte would be the main heroine, but Charlotte gets married in the first volume, and the lively Maria takes center stage for the rest of the novel.
Not only that, but the deus ex machina in the novel is another "girl power" female, Lady Mortimer, who comes up with a ploy to help Maria win the man she loves.

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CMP#161 Abolitionists versus "The Interest"

11/16/2023

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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.

CMP#161 The Interest: A Comprehensive History of the Abolition Debate by Michael Taylor

If you're looking for a comprehensive history of the campaign to abolish the slave trade and slave ownership in Britain's Empire, this book would be a good choice. An astounding amount of research has gone into it and Michael Taylor is a good writer with an eye for the apt quote. He explains the arguments--personal, pragmatic, economic, religious, and political--raised by the influential power brokers who opposed the abolition campaign. Taylor also gives us frequent and vociferous condemnations of slavery. I presume this is not because he feels we, his readers, must be convinced that slavery is bad, but rather to forestall anyone who thinks that if he explains the plantation-owners' point of view, he is somehow defending them. It is jarring to see, for example, cartoons from the time which poke fun at the abolitionists.
We also have graphic detail of the misery of life on a sugar plantation, where the planters protested that (a) life in the West Indies was delightful, better than living in Africa, and (b) enslaved Africans were naturally so indolent and the work so hot and miserable that there was no alternative but to use the lash.

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CMP#160 Lady Maclairn: proto-detective novel?

11/9/2023

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CMP#160 Lady Maclairn, the victim of villany (1806) by Rachel Hunter

Austen scholars know that Jane Austen was familiar with the 1806 novel Lady Maclairn, the victim of villany (It’s spelled ‘villany’ on the title-page), because her niece Anna recalled how she and her aunt had a good laugh over its emotional excesses. There also exists a short satirical note that Austen wrote to Anna about it.
I wonder if Austen managed to plow through all four volumes and 700 pages. I confess to skimming and skipping the last half, when the author was gearing up to introduce a whole new raft of characters and more subplots and backstories. Austen scholar Deirdre LeFaye counted ‘a total of nearly twenty flashbacks in all,’ and I don’t know if that includes the long narrative summary which commences the novel. However, even though I didn’t manage to read Lady Maclairn cover to cover, this forgotten novel deserves another look for a number of reasons: the attitude displayed in the book toward the slave trade, the Big Family Secret storyline, the naturalistic portrayal of insanity, and the harsh portrait of a clergyman.
It appears that Lady Maclairn did not receive a review when first published. So here goes:
Mrs. Dawson, a wealthy widow, never forgave her son-in-law for taking her daughter away to Jamaica, where she died far from home after giving birth to little Rachel Cowley, our heroine. Mrs. Dawson’s will leaves her fortune to Rachel, but Rachel will only inherit if the father returns her to England to be raised by Mrs. Dawson's respectable friends, the Hardcastles. It is just as well for Rachel, because she is growing spoiled in Jamaica where she can lord it over the enslaved people. Her character improves in England where she grows up with gentle little Lucy Hardcastle and her older brother Horace. Rachel looks up to him and she grows into ‘’the habit of yielding up her will to Horace.’’
‘’The tribute of Horace’s admiration was directed to the cultivating the taste and forming the judgment of'' our heroine....’’

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CMP#162 Maria, the saucy heroine

CMP#161 Abolitionists versus "The Interest"

CMP#160 Lady Maclairn: proto-detective novel?

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