​     What makes a hero? You’ll find lots of modern readers putting down Austen heroes—Edmund Bertram of Mansfield Park tops the list of disliked heroes, followed by Edward Ferrars of Sense and Sensibility. Edmund is clueless and Edward is feckless. Mr. Knightley of Emma and Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey are mansplainers. Persuasion’s Captain Wentworth flirts with the Musgrove girls in front of Anne Elliot, and don’t tell me he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice usually escapes unscathed, unless you fault him for being a wealthy landowner in a nation where so many were desperately poor.
     Well, at this blog we look at Jane Austen’s novels in context, not only in the context of her times but in the context of the novels of her times. And I can report that there are many un-heroic heroes in these novels. Their chief failing is how readily they believe any malicious gossip attacking the heroine's reputation. In other cases, as with Edward Ferrars, they are trapped in circumstances arguably beyond their control. Although he should have mentioned he was engaged. See what you think of the hero of Maria, a 1785 novel by Elizabeth Blower...

   In the previous three posts, I gave a synopsis of the satirical novel Rosella, or, Modern Occurrences, by Mary Charlton. This novel is not so well-known as other novels of the same type, such as The Female Quixote or The Heroine.
   If you're familiar with the modern academy, you won't be surprised to know that scholars are mostly interested in the question of whether Rosella's author Mary Charlton has feminist leanings or not. Natalie Neill devotes much of her introductory essay on Rosella to examining the apparently conflicting messages: “Although Rosella can be read as a conservative satire, there are tensions in the text that complicate such a reading…. Further complicating our understanding of Rosella is the way that it opens itself to feminist counter readings…”
   I think Charlton, like other authors of the period, mocks and criticizes human foibles on both sides of any question. As did Austen. Consider that Austen satirizes the vain Sir Walter Elliott but also skewers his toad-eating attorney Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Shepherd’s ambitious-social-climbing daughter, Mrs. Clay. So, which side is she on--is she with Jacobins who want to overthrow the aristocracy or is she an Anti-Jacobin who believes people should stay in the social class they were born into? I think she’s laughing at both sides. Likewise, Lydia Bennet is ignorant and has no education, Mary Bennet is a pedant and uses her education to be tiresome, while Elizabeth is the happy medium between the two.

    ​At the beginning of the third volume, we are wandering about the romantic landscapes of Scotland and also we’ve wandered deep into Spoiler territory. So if my previous blog posts have convinced you to read Rosella for yourself, perhaps leave this post alone until you've read Rosella. It is available online and there is also a modern Chawton House edition (your local university library might have a copy).
   As Sophia Beauclerc, our heroine Rosella, and their servant Nancy travel through Scotland, escorted by young Mr. Oberne, Sophia is of course drawn to the ruins of every castle and every sublime sight of nature. This section of the novel is part travelogue, which would have been great for Regency armchair travelers.
     An encounter with the poverty-stricken locals gives Rosella a chance to perform an act of charity for a poor widow and her ten children. As I’ve written elsewhere, having the hero be entranced at the sight of the heroine performing an act of charity was a frequent trope in novels of this era, and Charlton plays this straight; the scene is not handled as say, Austen handles the same idea in Emma, with Emma being deluded about Mr. Elton's feelings for Harriet. By now the reader is pretty certain that Mr. Oberne is developing feelings for Rosella.

​   In my previous post, I introduced a discussion of the forgotten novel Rosella, or, Modern Occurrences (1799) by Mary Charlton. This novel is a good candidate for books to read when you've read everything Austen wrote and want more. In the last post I went over the prologue of the book which sets up the premise for the story: this is about two good friends, Sophia and Selina, who are deluded novel-readers. Sophia is a widow, Selina is married to a grouchy old attorney, so they live their lives vicariously through Sophia's unacknowledged daughter, Rosella Montresor.
   Sophia Beauclerc, having buried both of her parents, is a wealthy heiress. For the sake of her Gothic romance fantasies, she is fortunate that her estate outside of London is next door to the stately home of an unmarried nobleman! Rosella doesn’t realize that when Sophia sends her to walk or ride in the neighbourhood, or play her harp and sing in the hermitage rather than in the parlor, it is all with the intention of catching Lord Morteyne’s eye and ear. What happens instead is that a gang of “men of fashion” burst drunkenly on to the property in quest of the beautiful songstress. In the process of frightening Rosella with their loud admiration, her harp is badly damaged.
   The harp disappears, and before long, a beautiful new harp is mysteriously delivered, rather like the pianoforte that shows up in Highbury in Emma. Rosella assumes it’s a generous gift from her dear friend Miss Beauclerc. The reader, or at least this reader, assumed that Lord Morteyne was honourably taking responsibility for the boorish behavior of his guests. Sophia and her friend Selina believe that it’s proof that his Lordship is smitten with Rosella.