| 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#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:
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....
“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....
Seductive houseguest: Mr. Crawford in Mansfield Park Thus we have the dramatic opening to Miriam. Miriam, since finishing her education, has been living in a big empty old castle with two garrulous but loyal servants. Her guardian Mr. Fitzpatrick made his fortune in India and he brought young Miriam back to England with him. Who her parents are, or how he came to be her guardian is a mystery, but he likes to remind Miriam that she owes every meal she eats and the clothes on her back to him. Miriam resents this—she’s a bit feistier than Fanny Price in Mansfield Park.
And when her guardian and his haughty new wife bring houseguests from London for a visit, Miriam, despite her dependent status in the household, doesn’t hesitate to call out the dashing Mr. Mortimer for the dangerous flirtation he's embarked on with Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Fanny Price said nothing about the shenanigans going on around her but Miriam scolds: “What is the honour of him, who…. while an inmate of the house of him whom he calls friend, is privately stabbing at his peace, is undermining his happiness, is plotting the everlasting ruin of his wife!”
Another houseguest is Henry, the handsome young man she saved from jumping, who turns out to be Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s brother. He is harboring a secret (obviously) and seems to have a secret understanding with the young woman who just married his rich old uncle, both of whom are also visiting. These mysteries lead to misunderstandings which keep Henry and Miriam apart.
And when her guardian and his haughty new wife bring houseguests from London for a visit, Miriam, despite her dependent status in the household, doesn’t hesitate to call out the dashing Mr. Mortimer for the dangerous flirtation he's embarked on with Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Fanny Price said nothing about the shenanigans going on around her but Miriam scolds: “What is the honour of him, who…. while an inmate of the house of him whom he calls friend, is privately stabbing at his peace, is undermining his happiness, is plotting the everlasting ruin of his wife!”
Another houseguest is Henry, the handsome young man she saved from jumping, who turns out to be Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s brother. He is harboring a secret (obviously) and seems to have a secret understanding with the young woman who just married his rich old uncle, both of whom are also visiting. These mysteries lead to misunderstandings which keep Henry and Miriam apart.
Pushed into Mr. Jason's arms Bing AI Image Creator Unlike Fanny, Miriam flees
Miriam flees her unhappy home situation when Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick try to force her into marriage with a vulgar old farmer. Her luck turns when she meets a benevolent older man, also back from India, in the very first mail coach she hops in to. He is so taken with her that he offers her a home. And although some gossipers in Bath assume she’s a kept mistress, he truly is a nice fatherly guy who already has one young female ward.
Her new guardian, Mr. Seymour, is struck by Miriam’s resemblance to his beloved late wife who--so far as he knows—perished with his baby daughter when the ship bringing them to India sank. Aaaand I think we can leave it at that.
The mystery of Miriam’s parentage is cleared up, her stolen inheritance is returned to her, and the misunderstandings between her and Henry Stafford are also cleared up.
At the same time that Mr. Fitzpatrick’s villainy comes to light, his life falls apart. Let’s let the faithful but garrulous old servant Joanna break the news: “Oh Miss! This comes of old gentlemen or elderly gentlemen marrying young beauties, never no good can come, I’m very sartin, but howsomedever I’ll tell you—Last night, ‘twas near ten o’clock, and Joseph was just a-stirring out the fire, and I was unpinning my cap when (etc. etc., etc.)… Well, Miss, the short and the long is that Mrs. Fitzpatrick has ‘loped, and carried off a deal of money with her…. All the servants know was ‘tis with a young East Indian, as she keept company with a great while...”
So, lots of object lessons: don’t marry just for wealth and rank, but marrying when you’ve got no money is a bad idea as well. Instead, marry the impetuous man of sensibility who consistently misinterprets your actions and even accuses you of being a kept woman because he overheard some gossip at the opera.
For all the mention of India, there is no reflection on the cruelties of empire. The social conflict is between the monied nouveau riche and the proud but purse-poor nobility.
I am so used to reading about people being bled when they develop fever after a horrible shock, when Miriam fell ill, I was thinking: Hurry! Summon the apothecary--aren't you going to bleed her? And I was relieved when they did! I guess that's what comes of reading so many old novels.
Miriam flees her unhappy home situation when Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick try to force her into marriage with a vulgar old farmer. Her luck turns when she meets a benevolent older man, also back from India, in the very first mail coach she hops in to. He is so taken with her that he offers her a home. And although some gossipers in Bath assume she’s a kept mistress, he truly is a nice fatherly guy who already has one young female ward.
Her new guardian, Mr. Seymour, is struck by Miriam’s resemblance to his beloved late wife who--so far as he knows—perished with his baby daughter when the ship bringing them to India sank. Aaaand I think we can leave it at that.
The mystery of Miriam’s parentage is cleared up, her stolen inheritance is returned to her, and the misunderstandings between her and Henry Stafford are also cleared up.
At the same time that Mr. Fitzpatrick’s villainy comes to light, his life falls apart. Let’s let the faithful but garrulous old servant Joanna break the news: “Oh Miss! This comes of old gentlemen or elderly gentlemen marrying young beauties, never no good can come, I’m very sartin, but howsomedever I’ll tell you—Last night, ‘twas near ten o’clock, and Joseph was just a-stirring out the fire, and I was unpinning my cap when (etc. etc., etc.)… Well, Miss, the short and the long is that Mrs. Fitzpatrick has ‘loped, and carried off a deal of money with her…. All the servants know was ‘tis with a young East Indian, as she keept company with a great while...”
So, lots of object lessons: don’t marry just for wealth and rank, but marrying when you’ve got no money is a bad idea as well. Instead, marry the impetuous man of sensibility who consistently misinterprets your actions and even accuses you of being a kept woman because he overheard some gossip at the opera.
For all the mention of India, there is no reflection on the cruelties of empire. The social conflict is between the monied nouveau riche and the proud but purse-poor nobility.
I am so used to reading about people being bled when they develop fever after a horrible shock, when Miriam fell ill, I was thinking: Hurry! Summon the apothecary--aren't you going to bleed her? And I was relieved when they did! I guess that's what comes of reading so many old novels.
About the Author:
There are no available biographical details about Mrs. E. M. Foster. She wrote feverishly, publishing four novels in one year (1800) for the Minerva Press. Or, perhaps the name is an all-purpose pseudonym used for the work of several anonymous writers. It could be --her name is tangled up in the mystery of who wrote The Woman of Color.
The Critical Review sniffed: “there is nothing new or surprising in the history of Miriam;—we found little to blame, and less to praise.” The Monthly Magazine was even more dismissive. “We could enumerate a great many more [just published] novels—“The Irish Excursion,” “Miriam,” –“Midsummer Eve, or the Country Wake," &c. &c. &c., but many of them are scarcely worth the trouble of transcribing."
There are no available biographical details about Mrs. E. M. Foster. She wrote feverishly, publishing four novels in one year (1800) for the Minerva Press. Or, perhaps the name is an all-purpose pseudonym used for the work of several anonymous writers. It could be --her name is tangled up in the mystery of who wrote The Woman of Color.
The Critical Review sniffed: “there is nothing new or surprising in the history of Miriam;—we found little to blame, and less to praise.” The Monthly Magazine was even more dismissive. “We could enumerate a great many more [just published] novels—“The Irish Excursion,” “Miriam,” –“Midsummer Eve, or the Country Wake," &c. &c. &c., but many of them are scarcely worth the trouble of transcribing."
Modern Characters (1808) by Edward Montague
This novel begins with a warning about the pernicious effects of romance novels and ends with an entirely improbable romance. Modern Characters is a seduction novel, warning of the dismal fate of girls who surrender their virtue before marriage, in the vein of Charlotte Temple. Emily Henderson is particularly vulnerable, since she has an apathetic father, a cold-hearted step-mother, and she read too many romance novels at boarding school. Her best friend Miss Fordyce is not only addicted to romance novels, but she’s an aspiring author. Emily is a sitting duck for the blandishments of the charming Charles Stanly. Modern Characters gives us a tour of the places in London where couples could meet for assignations: fruiterers’ and milliners’ shops were sometimes fronts for brothels. Most of the novel, in fact, is set in brothels disguised as boarding houses, amongst heartless panderers and corrupt, drunken men of the gentry class.
This novel begins with a warning about the pernicious effects of romance novels and ends with an entirely improbable romance. Modern Characters is a seduction novel, warning of the dismal fate of girls who surrender their virtue before marriage, in the vein of Charlotte Temple. Emily Henderson is particularly vulnerable, since she has an apathetic father, a cold-hearted step-mother, and she read too many romance novels at boarding school. Her best friend Miss Fordyce is not only addicted to romance novels, but she’s an aspiring author. Emily is a sitting duck for the blandishments of the charming Charles Stanly. Modern Characters gives us a tour of the places in London where couples could meet for assignations: fruiterers’ and milliners’ shops were sometimes fronts for brothels. Most of the novel, in fact, is set in brothels disguised as boarding houses, amongst heartless panderers and corrupt, drunken men of the gentry class.
Progress of a Woman of Pleasure (detail) Charles leaves with his regiment, Emily’s pregnancy is detected, and she is thrown out of her home. For a time she resists entering the only profession which will pay her well enough to support her twin babies, but in the end she succumbs. The book chronicles her brief career as a beautiful courtesan, or kept woman, and her gradual descent to a common street prostitute.
Along the way, the author includes numerous digressions and anecdotes about other people, including the adventuring cad who marries Emily’s friend Miss Fordyce and takes all her money. A grasping Jew moneylender, portrayed in a typically vicious and stereotypical way in Volume One, is intended as comic relief amidst all this grimness.
Emily’s son Charles ends up as a street criminal and meets a bad end, but her daughter (young) Emily somehow grows up to be pure-hearted and virtuous. Her mother, who once refused to sell herself for five hundred pounds a year, sells her fourteen-year-old daughter to an old man for fifty pounds. Fortunately, (young) Emily escapes. Her mother sells her again and she escapes again.
When the money is all gone and (young) Emily has pawned everything they own, she dresses up her shabby bonnet with a feather borrowed from the landlady and goes out to sell her fifteen-year-old self to get some food and medicine. The man who picks her up and takes her to a brothel turns out to be...
Along the way, the author includes numerous digressions and anecdotes about other people, including the adventuring cad who marries Emily’s friend Miss Fordyce and takes all her money. A grasping Jew moneylender, portrayed in a typically vicious and stereotypical way in Volume One, is intended as comic relief amidst all this grimness.
Emily’s son Charles ends up as a street criminal and meets a bad end, but her daughter (young) Emily somehow grows up to be pure-hearted and virtuous. Her mother, who once refused to sell herself for five hundred pounds a year, sells her fourteen-year-old daughter to an old man for fifty pounds. Fortunately, (young) Emily escapes. Her mother sells her again and she escapes again.
When the money is all gone and (young) Emily has pawned everything they own, she dresses up her shabby bonnet with a feather borrowed from the landlady and goes out to sell her fifteen-year-old self to get some food and medicine. The man who picks her up and takes her to a brothel turns out to be...
"Esq." meaning, by a gentleman Eee-yuw
Yes, horrible incest tease. I have no idea why people of this era thought the incest tease was titillating. So, Charles Stanly is undressing for bed when he asks the poor girl's name. Seeing the resemblance, he realizes she is his daughter. Overcome with remorse, he rushes to the abandoned Emily’s bedside. The dying woman pours out eloquence and religious fervor. “I am distracted at the guilty actions of my life, am truly sorrowful and repentant, for having committed them; but I despair of Heaven’s mercy. Charles, I forgive you; and may God forgive you, for having brought me to this abyss of misery.”
Stanly vows to raise and protect his daughter and they move to the country. Emily marries a nice young man who had already helped her escape from a brothel and then he helps her escape from a raging house fire.
The social gulf between Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton in Emma is nothing like the gulf between a young gentleman with an independent fortune and an illegitimate girl whose mother was a prostitute and whose brother was shot while trying to rob a stagecoach.
The novel is depressing and made even more depressing by the thought that the author, up until his improbable ending, is describing real scenes taken from the London Underworld where wealthy young men preyed upon impoverished women in an economy built around prostitution, theft, gambling, and exploitation of women and children.
Modern Characters received no reviews. I checked the five other novels Edward Montague wrote, some of them gothic, some of them under the pseudonym of Edward Mortimer, and none of them received contemporary reviews, that I could find.
“Montague’s identity and the details of his life remain shrouded entirely in obscurity” says James D. Jenkins, the editor of a re-issue of his gothic novel The Castle of Berry Pomeroy (1806) by Valancourt Books. Jenkins raises the possibility that Montague and Mortimer are just names used by the publisher G. Hughes to publish the novels of more than one hardworking anonymous author.
There is one side character of interest in Modern Characters, I'll give the details later.
Previous post: EKM, her hardships and her hopes Next post: Gertrude elopes but lives to regret it!
Yes, horrible incest tease. I have no idea why people of this era thought the incest tease was titillating. So, Charles Stanly is undressing for bed when he asks the poor girl's name. Seeing the resemblance, he realizes she is his daughter. Overcome with remorse, he rushes to the abandoned Emily’s bedside. The dying woman pours out eloquence and religious fervor. “I am distracted at the guilty actions of my life, am truly sorrowful and repentant, for having committed them; but I despair of Heaven’s mercy. Charles, I forgive you; and may God forgive you, for having brought me to this abyss of misery.”
Stanly vows to raise and protect his daughter and they move to the country. Emily marries a nice young man who had already helped her escape from a brothel and then he helps her escape from a raging house fire.
The social gulf between Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton in Emma is nothing like the gulf between a young gentleman with an independent fortune and an illegitimate girl whose mother was a prostitute and whose brother was shot while trying to rob a stagecoach.
The novel is depressing and made even more depressing by the thought that the author, up until his improbable ending, is describing real scenes taken from the London Underworld where wealthy young men preyed upon impoverished women in an economy built around prostitution, theft, gambling, and exploitation of women and children.
Modern Characters received no reviews. I checked the five other novels Edward Montague wrote, some of them gothic, some of them under the pseudonym of Edward Mortimer, and none of them received contemporary reviews, that I could find.
“Montague’s identity and the details of his life remain shrouded entirely in obscurity” says James D. Jenkins, the editor of a re-issue of his gothic novel The Castle of Berry Pomeroy (1806) by Valancourt Books. Jenkins raises the possibility that Montague and Mortimer are just names used by the publisher G. Hughes to publish the novels of more than one hardworking anonymous author.
There is one side character of interest in Modern Characters, I'll give the details later.
Previous post: EKM, her hardships and her hopes Next post: Gertrude elopes but lives to regret it!
 | In A Contrary Wind, my variation on Mansfield Park, Fanny Price also flees her home when life with Mrs. Norris becomes more than she can bear. With the help of her old governess Miss Lee, she finds work as a governess. Events turn out differently for Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford as well. For more about my novels, click here. |
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