| “A man must be a sordid wretch,” exclaimed Miss Beauclerc, “if in seeking a wife, he considers situation, family, and fortune!” |
CMP#206 Rosella, or, Modern Occurrences -- the prologue
Gothic daydreams. Kate Schlessinger Northanger Abbey (1986). Well, I’ve read over a hundred novels of the long 18th century, and I think I’d put Rosella, or Modern Occurrences at the top of the list for readability because of author Mary Charlton's humorous and knowing voice. I’ll be making more than one comparison to Austen here—Charlton is not quite in the same tier as Austen, but she combines a traditional marriage-plot novel with plenty of wry humour. This is because Rosella, at least in some aspects, is a parody. Yes, she pokes a lot of fun at Gothic novels along the way, but we still have a satisfying love match between a likeable hero and heroine, a love story which takes place in the real world, not in the elevated sentimental world of the 18th century novel. Her views of society and morality are the conventional views, but the story is energetic and fresh and often funny.
Rosella was such a revelation to me that I'll be posting multiple posts and quoting liberally from it, to give you a flavour of Charlton's writing.
Rosella is the titular heroine of this four volume novel, but first I want to look at the prologue contained in the opening chapters of the novel. It is this story which sets up the parodic pattern and also the basic premise—Rosella the heroine must contend, often unknowingly, with the efforts of two deluded older women who try to mold her into a Gothic heroine and who throw her into heroine-like situations which only create difficulties for her...
Rosella was such a revelation to me that I'll be posting multiple posts and quoting liberally from it, to give you a flavour of Charlton's writing.
Rosella is the titular heroine of this four volume novel, but first I want to look at the prologue contained in the opening chapters of the novel. It is this story which sets up the parodic pattern and also the basic premise—Rosella the heroine must contend, often unknowingly, with the efforts of two deluded older women who try to mold her into a Gothic heroine and who throw her into heroine-like situations which only create difficulties for her...
Selina escapes. Bing AI generated image. Prequel: Our story begins
Sophia Beaulerc plans to secretly wed her sweetheart Augustus Raymond in defiance of her parents. Augustus has been busy losing his inheritance and he spends the night before his wedding contracting huge gaming debts he has no hope of paying. He staggers to St. George’s Hanover Square exceedingly hungover, gets married, then sends his bride back home to her parents, while he concludes that his only option is to flee to India and try to repair his life and his fortunes.
When Sophia’s BFF Selina Swinney learns all this, she urges Sophia to prove her devotion to Augustus by following him wherever he goes. Both girls are “novel-reading Misses,” (to use a popular phrase of the day), who imagine that life is like the volumes they devour from the circulating library. Selina runs away with the newly-married couple (shades of what Claire Clairmont would do with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814). Selina’s escape is described ironically as she leaves her mother’s sick chamber: “whose hand she had kissed with great energy the night she had been impelled by sacred friendship to desert her; and twice, after she had quitted the good lady’s apartment, she turned back to water it with tears. After the due observance of these customary ceremonies, she felt her compunction considerably abated.”
Sophia Beaulerc plans to secretly wed her sweetheart Augustus Raymond in defiance of her parents. Augustus has been busy losing his inheritance and he spends the night before his wedding contracting huge gaming debts he has no hope of paying. He staggers to St. George’s Hanover Square exceedingly hungover, gets married, then sends his bride back home to her parents, while he concludes that his only option is to flee to India and try to repair his life and his fortunes.
When Sophia’s BFF Selina Swinney learns all this, she urges Sophia to prove her devotion to Augustus by following him wherever he goes. Both girls are “novel-reading Misses,” (to use a popular phrase of the day), who imagine that life is like the volumes they devour from the circulating library. Selina runs away with the newly-married couple (shades of what Claire Clairmont would do with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814). Selina’s escape is described ironically as she leaves her mother’s sick chamber: “whose hand she had kissed with great energy the night she had been impelled by sacred friendship to desert her; and twice, after she had quitted the good lady’s apartment, she turned back to water it with tears. After the due observance of these customary ceremonies, she felt her compunction considerably abated.”
Bing AI generated image Selina and Sophia's impulsive decision greatly complicates matters for Augustus, for now he must book passage for three people, not one, and he can't find a ship and he doesn't have much money. Instead, he takes a cottage on the Isle of Wight where the girls do their best to indulge their romantic propensities and enjoy “love in a cottage.”
“[T]hey had likewise a magnificent prospect of mountains ending in grey hills and blue mists, occasionally irradiated by a pale and majestic moon, whose beams might serve to throw a light upon the broad shoulders and awkward gait of some sheep-stealer, or hen-roost stripper, whom imagination might, upon an emergency, convert into the leader of Banditti; and finally, the dashing of impetuous waves to regale at once the eye and ear.”
Pause here, dear reader, to note that the two previous quotes are examples of Free Indirect Style, or filtering the thoughts or opinions of the characters (in this case Selina) through the narrative voice. Jane Austen was “one of the first” to use this technique, but Charlton uses it liberally for ironic humor in Rosella. And for Janeites, what did the reference to "hen-roosts" remind you of? Hmmm?
“[T]hey had likewise a magnificent prospect of mountains ending in grey hills and blue mists, occasionally irradiated by a pale and majestic moon, whose beams might serve to throw a light upon the broad shoulders and awkward gait of some sheep-stealer, or hen-roost stripper, whom imagination might, upon an emergency, convert into the leader of Banditti; and finally, the dashing of impetuous waves to regale at once the eye and ear.”
Pause here, dear reader, to note that the two previous quotes are examples of Free Indirect Style, or filtering the thoughts or opinions of the characters (in this case Selina) through the narrative voice. Jane Austen was “one of the first” to use this technique, but Charlton uses it liberally for ironic humor in Rosella. And for Janeites, what did the reference to "hen-roosts" remind you of? Hmmm?
Here is some more ironic humor as the newly-weds, Sophia and Augustus, have a fraught discussion about where to go and what to do: he cannot bring himself to confess that he is a ruined man because of his debts of honour. “Don’t question me now,” cried he, in an accent of impatience: “perhaps I may shortly tell you all—at present I cannot—I am greatly disordered…” He flies out of the cottage, leaving Selina "who had been a very attentive observer of this enchanting scene, and had almost enjoyed the interesting distress and unfeigned misery of either party, now thought proper to console her weeping friend, declaring at the same time, that she had never beheld anything so gracefully pathetic: “…“You are quite a heroine… don’t wish, my dear, to be a happier one, for distress quite becomes you...”
When she is not inserting herself into her friends’ marriage, Selina entertains herself with novels: she “entered into all the sublimity of pale moons, blue mists, gliding figures, hollow sighs, shaking tapestry, reverberating voices, nodding pictures, long corridors, deserted west towers, north towers, and south towers, ruined chapels, suspicious vaults, damp charnel-houses, great clocks striking twelve, wood embers expiring, dying lamps, and total darkness.”
When she is not inserting herself into her friends’ marriage, Selina entertains herself with novels: she “entered into all the sublimity of pale moons, blue mists, gliding figures, hollow sighs, shaking tapestry, reverberating voices, nodding pictures, long corridors, deserted west towers, north towers, and south towers, ruined chapels, suspicious vaults, damp charnel-houses, great clocks striking twelve, wood embers expiring, dying lamps, and total darkness.”
The romantic idyll only lasts a few days. Some of Augustus’s London associates (“men of fashion") turn up, and he is wounded when he fights a duel over his unpaid debts of honour. Then Augustus accepts a personal loan from a friend, Mr. Estcourt, for over nine thousand pounds to discharge all his gaming debts. This converts his obligations from a “debt of honor” to a genuine enforceable debt. After a few feverish days Augustus expires, leaving Sophia, prostrate with grief and also with a high fever, a widow at twenty.
The narrator occasionally switches from irony to a moralizing tone and she does this when summing up Augustus’ wasted life: “Seduced by the force of pernicious examples, by the sanction of a too pervading practice, and by the insinuations of those who had perhaps themselves been the dupes of anterior villainy, he turned over his inheritance to gamblers, and plunged into a vortex which engulphed his probity, his humanity, his honor, peace, and life.”
Selina has a brief moment of clarity, realizing that “but for her instigations, Sophia would never have consented to leave the house of indulgent parents, to marry against their advice and wishes—but for her persuasions, [Augustus] Raymond would now most probably have been on his projected voyage to India, in good health, and with reasonable hopes of returning to Europe, and seeing better days… In short, Miss Selina felt a dreadful consciousness that her influence over her friend had been exerted to conduct her to misery, perhaps equally with her husband to an untimely grave.”
Selina resolves to abandon all romantic delusions and during a short period of obedience to her parents, she is married off to a cranky middle-aged lawyer, Mr. Ellinger. Her vow to stay unromantic lasts only until she learns that “her widowed friend was on the point of becoming a mother. This delightful intelligence set every heroic faculty in motion.”
Sophia’s parents want to hush up both the marriage and the pregnancy, in the hopes that Sophia will re-enter the marriage market unencumbered. Furthermore, they don’t want Mr. Estcourt coming after their daughter’s dowry for her late husband's debts. (Since Sophia married Augustus without marriage settlements reserving any part of her income to herself, everything she has belongs to her husband and, I suppose, to her husband's estate.) So, Sophia gives birth in the country, and her infant daughter, romantically named Rosella Montresor, is passed off as a random orphan. Just as Jane Austen’s mother did with her own children, Rosella is given to a working-class family to be nursed until she’s a toddler. Then she is given into the care of Selina Ellinger and her husband, who are suitably compensated.
The narrator occasionally switches from irony to a moralizing tone and she does this when summing up Augustus’ wasted life: “Seduced by the force of pernicious examples, by the sanction of a too pervading practice, and by the insinuations of those who had perhaps themselves been the dupes of anterior villainy, he turned over his inheritance to gamblers, and plunged into a vortex which engulphed his probity, his humanity, his honor, peace, and life.”
Selina has a brief moment of clarity, realizing that “but for her instigations, Sophia would never have consented to leave the house of indulgent parents, to marry against their advice and wishes—but for her persuasions, [Augustus] Raymond would now most probably have been on his projected voyage to India, in good health, and with reasonable hopes of returning to Europe, and seeing better days… In short, Miss Selina felt a dreadful consciousness that her influence over her friend had been exerted to conduct her to misery, perhaps equally with her husband to an untimely grave.”
Selina resolves to abandon all romantic delusions and during a short period of obedience to her parents, she is married off to a cranky middle-aged lawyer, Mr. Ellinger. Her vow to stay unromantic lasts only until she learns that “her widowed friend was on the point of becoming a mother. This delightful intelligence set every heroic faculty in motion.”
Sophia’s parents want to hush up both the marriage and the pregnancy, in the hopes that Sophia will re-enter the marriage market unencumbered. Furthermore, they don’t want Mr. Estcourt coming after their daughter’s dowry for her late husband's debts. (Since Sophia married Augustus without marriage settlements reserving any part of her income to herself, everything she has belongs to her husband and, I suppose, to her husband's estate.) So, Sophia gives birth in the country, and her infant daughter, romantically named Rosella Montresor, is passed off as a random orphan. Just as Jane Austen’s mother did with her own children, Rosella is given to a working-class family to be nursed until she’s a toddler. Then she is given into the care of Selina Ellinger and her husband, who are suitably compensated.
Bing AI image Sophia never marries again; those few days with Augustus on the Isle of Wight will be all she will know of married life and romance. Selina is stuck in a quarrelsome marriage with Mr. Ellinger, raising two loutish children. Both Sophia and Selina turn to living their lives vicariously through the attractive and graceful Rosella. (Our heroine doesn’t know that her dear friend “Miss Beauclerc,” whom the Ellingers allow her to visit and stay with frequently, is really her mother.) Thus we have our main characters all arranged for the commencement of Rosella’s story. We have our heroine in the position of many a novel heroine before her—a lovely young girl of charm, intelligence and accomplishment, but of ambiguous social standing and uncertain future expectations. We have Selina and Sophia interpreting all occurrences in terms of novel tropes, and they will also manipulate events in an effort to create novel-like scenarios.
| Rosella might be difficult to get a hold of if you don't have access to a university library. The modern Chawton House re-issue is priced for the academic market. Your university library should have digital access to the original. |
Previous post: Conclusion of Sons of the Viscount and Daughters of the Earl Next post: The adventures of Rosella
I previously high-lighted another forgotten female author, Ann Ryley, and her outspoken novel Fanny Fitz-York (1818), with a series of posts.
I previously high-lighted another forgotten female author, Ann Ryley, and her outspoken novel Fanny Fitz-York (1818), with a series of posts.
RSS Feed