CMP#191          Two minor novels--the foundling plot and the seduction plot
    ​    Here are quick samples of two popular genres of the long eighteenth century. Both novels rely on improbable coincidence for their resolutions: ​

Miriam (1800) by Mrs. E.M. Foster
   “Oh, for mercy’s sake turn back! You know not on what a precipice you stand—a terrible gulph yawns beneath it, and you will be swallowed up for ever!”
     The young man standing on the edge of a cliff, about to jump, must be impressed at our heroine’s eloquence, because even during such a dramatic moment, she is speaking metaphorically, not literally, as she warns him of the damnation awaiting the person who commits suicide.
    “Think of your merciful Creator; --for what did he send you into this world? Oh blessed, thrice blessed are those whom he chasteneth! Turn back, I conjure you turn back…”
   The persuasions of this beautiful girl who has appeared out of nowhere do the trick, and our unknown young man steps back from the edge, totally smitten. But he soon disappears and Miriam only knows that his name is Henry....

     ​Continued from the previous post: The letter telling poor Emily that the man she loves drowned in a shipwreck is the evil work of a friend of Mr. St. Ives. The scheming Mr. Besfield wants to tighten the net around Emily until she consents to become his mistress. When she promises to pay her aunt's and her mother's debts and then her bank goes bankrupt, leaving her with nothing, he sees his chance. Her misfortunes, she tells Besfield, “have rendered her a creature, lost to joy in this world… but she preferred imprisonment, death, all the accumulated sorrows which injustice or cruelty could devise, to loss of honour!”
   “Proud, imperious girl!” [Besfield retorts] while his eyes glared wildly in their sockets. “beware of what you do, for remember no insult to me goes unrevenged!”
    We later learn that with the connivance of Mr. St. Ives, the evil Besfield kidnapped Frederick and locked him up in a cottage. Frederick defies him: “You threaten to destroy the peace and innocence of the lovely Emily Osmond. Reptile! One glance from her eyes, beaming beauty and virtue, shall disarm thee of all power to injure her unsullied purity!"
   To hide from the villain Besfield and from debt-collectors, Emily flees to the mouldering old family castle and the affectionate embrace of the two garrulous but loyal old domestics. Naturally, since she's a heroine and they are servants, they look after her, serving her meals, etc. Not that she eats much--she's usually too upset to eat. She spends her time looking out of the window sighing, and going for pensive walks and--oh, lord--composing sonnets. Emily never volunteers to dust the library books or anything. (I know I've banged on about this before, but really, imagine being so genteel that you don't know how to wash a plate or boil an egg and just take it for granted that someone else will do it for you.)

​     Mary Jane Mackenzie must have been thrilled with the positive review she received for her debut novel Geraldine. The Lady's Monthly Museum hailed "with pleasure the appearance of a tale which may be put into a youthful hand, not only without danger, but with a rational hope that its contents will make a favourable impression on the side of virtue. To this high degree of praise the novel before us is entitled; it is evidently the work of an author who units talent to sound judgment and true Christian principles.”
    Blackwood's Magazine said: "This is the best written Novel, except Anastasius, that has been published in London for several years. The conversational style, one of the best I have seen–clear, natural, and unaffectedly elegant, and full of the spirit of good society."  The Monthly Review said: "Her novel is one of the few which possess the rare merit of entertaining and amusing us, while they are devoted to a moral and religious object.” 
  Geraldine, or Modes of Faith and Practice, was published in 1820 by the prestigious publishing house of Cadell & Davies, who also published the best-selling Christian author Hannah More (and this is the publishing house that turned down Pride & Prejudice years before it was finally published).
    The novel also contains some echoes of Austen--in my opinion. Let's see if you agree. 

​    The Woman of Colour, first published in 1809, has drawn a lot of interest in academic circles because the heroine is a mixed-race woman of colour. It was certainly an unusual and perhaps daring choice to have a main character who is a sympathetic, intelligent, educated woman of colour who can quote Shakespeare, Cowper and Milton, The novel is remarkable in that sense, and it is a little bit unusual because it does not end with a marriage, but it is not, as we will see, remarkable for its literary quality. It is a typical sentimental and didactic novel of the long 18th century.
    Olivia is the illegitimate daughter of an enslaved woman and a plantation-owner. This sounds like a pretty serious bar to admittance in "good" society. But she is also heiress to 60 thousand pounds, three times more than Mary Crawford had in Mansfield Park, and ten thousand more than Miss Grey had in Sense and Sensibility. Further, we should not be surprised to learn that Olivia’s mother was “majestic,” beautiful,” “sprung from a race of native kings and heroes,” and a convert to Christianity.
    Once you know Olivia’s mother was descended from African royalty and that she was an artless and confiding Christian girl in love with a white man, and if you know your 18th century tropes, you will know she's dead: “In giving birth to me she paid the debt of nature and went down to that grave, where the captive is made free!”
   This is an epistolary novel, so the voice you hear is Olivia Fairfield, writing to her “earliest and best friend," her governess Mrs. Milbanke. Let's hope the ship she's sailing on has fewer holes in its hull than this book has plot-holes, the first one being: If Mrs. Milbanke is a governess, why doesn't Olivia just pay for her to come along on the voyage? She really does need a respectable older escort in a situation like this.​ But of course Mrs. Milbanke is a device for exposition, not a character in the novel.