| 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. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. |
CMP#216 The [Villainous] Aunt and the [Boring?] Niece (1804), by Anonymous
Felicity Jones and Sylvestra Le Touzel as Catherine Morland and Mrs. Allen A naïve young lady travels to Bath with an older female companion and ventures into society. She meets a charming and witty young man. But will her dreams of romance be destroyed when it is discovered that she is not from a wealthy and distinguished family?
This is not Northanger Abbey, this is The Aunt and the Niece. The Aunt and the Niece was anonymously published in 1804, and was subsequently attributed to the author of Eversfield Abbey (1806), The Woman of Colour (1809), and other novels. If the attribution chain is correct, this authoress moved from Minerva Press (considered to be a low-brow publishing house) to the respectable John Crosby and then to Black, Perry, and Kingsbury, publishers who did not specialize in fiction. Then she went back to Minerva for two more novels. The authoress could be Mrs. Bayfield, but Mrs. E.M. Foster is also tangled up in this chain of attributions--or it might even be a third person whose name has been lost.
The Aunt and the Niece is a brisk-moving two-volume novel with a satisfying amount of drama. Typically of novels of this period, it relies upon untimely death and misunderstanding for its plot, and coincidence for its resolution. The villains are satisfyingly despicable. In fact, the authoress throws some shade at her readers when she suggests that they won't be as interested in the virtuous characters...
This is not Northanger Abbey, this is The Aunt and the Niece. The Aunt and the Niece was anonymously published in 1804, and was subsequently attributed to the author of Eversfield Abbey (1806), The Woman of Colour (1809), and other novels. If the attribution chain is correct, this authoress moved from Minerva Press (considered to be a low-brow publishing house) to the respectable John Crosby and then to Black, Perry, and Kingsbury, publishers who did not specialize in fiction. Then she went back to Minerva for two more novels. The authoress could be Mrs. Bayfield, but Mrs. E.M. Foster is also tangled up in this chain of attributions--or it might even be a third person whose name has been lost.
The Aunt and the Niece is a brisk-moving two-volume novel with a satisfying amount of drama. Typically of novels of this period, it relies upon untimely death and misunderstanding for its plot, and coincidence for its resolution. The villains are satisfyingly despicable. In fact, the authoress throws some shade at her readers when she suggests that they won't be as interested in the virtuous characters...
Published anonymously Don't laugh, good reader!
The authoress turns from describing the machinations of the scheming villains to “return to our interesting heroine.” She adds: “don’t laugh, good reader! –interesting to us, else these her memoirs would not have been written.” This appears to be a meta comment on sentimental novels and "pictures of perfection" heroines. Likewise, the author declines to fully describe the exemplary conduct of the rector in the quiet village where Clara and her mother retreat from the cruel world, because “whatever may be his virtues and his merits, there is little with which to gratify the taste of our polished damsels. We acknowledge ourselves to be in a very awkward predicament, and it is very uncertain if we shall ever recover ourselves.”
The hero, Horace Fairfax, was born in the West Indies, and so he is something of a “hot-brained exotic.” The authoress seems to feel that she ought to have given him more to do in the story. He is attracted to the heroine and then, as is typical, he is briefly estranged from her when she is caught up in a compromising situation. “We have once before apologized about our hero, but if our readers will take him upon trust, we will assure them he promises to be every thing he can wish.” And yet, he is not very different from many other heroes of this era, and he is rather more likeable and charming than many. I think the playful, teasing dialogue between Horace and Clara in Bath convincingly shows two young people who are attracted to one another.
The authoress turns from describing the machinations of the scheming villains to “return to our interesting heroine.” She adds: “don’t laugh, good reader! –interesting to us, else these her memoirs would not have been written.” This appears to be a meta comment on sentimental novels and "pictures of perfection" heroines. Likewise, the author declines to fully describe the exemplary conduct of the rector in the quiet village where Clara and her mother retreat from the cruel world, because “whatever may be his virtues and his merits, there is little with which to gratify the taste of our polished damsels. We acknowledge ourselves to be in a very awkward predicament, and it is very uncertain if we shall ever recover ourselves.”
The hero, Horace Fairfax, was born in the West Indies, and so he is something of a “hot-brained exotic.” The authoress seems to feel that she ought to have given him more to do in the story. He is attracted to the heroine and then, as is typical, he is briefly estranged from her when she is caught up in a compromising situation. “We have once before apologized about our hero, but if our readers will take him upon trust, we will assure them he promises to be every thing he can wish.” And yet, he is not very different from many other heroes of this era, and he is rather more likeable and charming than many. I think the playful, teasing dialogue between Horace and Clara in Bath convincingly shows two young people who are attracted to one another.
Giving up her independence: Bing AI image The Hand of Providence
Like the other books in the Foster/Bayfield series which I’ve been examining, there is a strong message of Christian resignation in The Aunt and the Niece. The "Divine Disposer of Events" controls everything, and when bad things happen to good people as –-hoo boy, they certainly do--“Providence always acts in the wisest manner, though we cannot pierce through the veil... we must take care not to arraign Providence.”
This pious resignation might be assumed to include acceptance of the social status quo, but there are two passages where the female villain receives some backhanded sympathy from her author: First, Catherine Fitzallen resents her younger brother Frederic for being the pampered heir: “Seeing in her brother the being who had defeated all her expectations [of being the heiress]… and with a feeling similar to envy, beholding him rioting in dissipations which her sex, and the common usages of society, forbade her to join in, no wonder that Catherine Fitzallan’s disposition grew daily worse.”
Another moment of back-handed sympathy comes after Frederic dies in a pointless duel with his tutor Clifford and Catherine does become the heir. But when she marries Clifford, he took “direction of [Catherine’s] affairs into his own hands… and thus shewing the once independent, now enslaved, Catherine, that the moment a wife marries, she has no longer property, power, even a will of her own.”
So why did Catherine marry the man who killed her brother in a duel, who was her social inferior, and a tyrant? Her husband is blackmailing her! He was the one who deceived Frederic’s widow Angelina into believing that their marriage was just a mock ceremony. She mistakenly thinks their baby daughter, our heroine Clara, is illegitimate. Catherine's reign at Fitzallen Castle is over if the truth comes out. But the secret is safe, because the clergyman who performed the secret ceremony sailed for the West Indies the very next day--
The... West Indies, you say? Yes, where he married a plantation heiress and sired a son. A son? Is his name Horace, by any chance?
Like the other books in the Foster/Bayfield series which I’ve been examining, there is a strong message of Christian resignation in The Aunt and the Niece. The "Divine Disposer of Events" controls everything, and when bad things happen to good people as –-hoo boy, they certainly do--“Providence always acts in the wisest manner, though we cannot pierce through the veil... we must take care not to arraign Providence.”
This pious resignation might be assumed to include acceptance of the social status quo, but there are two passages where the female villain receives some backhanded sympathy from her author: First, Catherine Fitzallen resents her younger brother Frederic for being the pampered heir: “Seeing in her brother the being who had defeated all her expectations [of being the heiress]… and with a feeling similar to envy, beholding him rioting in dissipations which her sex, and the common usages of society, forbade her to join in, no wonder that Catherine Fitzallan’s disposition grew daily worse.”
Another moment of back-handed sympathy comes after Frederic dies in a pointless duel with his tutor Clifford and Catherine does become the heir. But when she marries Clifford, he took “direction of [Catherine’s] affairs into his own hands… and thus shewing the once independent, now enslaved, Catherine, that the moment a wife marries, she has no longer property, power, even a will of her own.”
So why did Catherine marry the man who killed her brother in a duel, who was her social inferior, and a tyrant? Her husband is blackmailing her! He was the one who deceived Frederic’s widow Angelina into believing that their marriage was just a mock ceremony. She mistakenly thinks their baby daughter, our heroine Clara, is illegitimate. Catherine's reign at Fitzallen Castle is over if the truth comes out. But the secret is safe, because the clergyman who performed the secret ceremony sailed for the West Indies the very next day--
The... West Indies, you say? Yes, where he married a plantation heiress and sired a son. A son? Is his name Horace, by any chance?
John Raphael Smith after George Morland, The Slave Trade, 1791, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Small world!
Speaking of coincidences, The Woman of Colour also features a character named Angelina who is a poor dependent orphan living with a rich family and bullied by that family's daughter because she's jealous that the man she loves prefers Angelina. Both Angelinas escape their situations by entering into a valid, but clandestine marriage and both are tricked into believing that their husbands deceived them with a sham marriage ceremony.
Also, the evil Catherine of this novel and the heroine Olivia of WOC both learn that their husbands are married to someone else and their marriages really are invalid. And of course, both novels have characters from the West Indies. Unlike The Woman of Colour, however, The Aunt and the Niece has no word of sympathy, or any word at all, for or about enslaved persons. The only use of “enslaved” refers to Catherine’s marriage. In this novel the West Indies is, as is typical, just a convenient place to park a character until he is needed for plot purposes. In this case Horace’s dad returns and assures Angelina that she was lawfully married to Frederic and the Fitzallen estate belongs to her daughter. Clifford escapes when his duplicity is unmasked, Catherine kills herself, and Horace and Clara are happy ever after.
Speaking of coincidences, The Woman of Colour also features a character named Angelina who is a poor dependent orphan living with a rich family and bullied by that family's daughter because she's jealous that the man she loves prefers Angelina. Both Angelinas escape their situations by entering into a valid, but clandestine marriage and both are tricked into believing that their husbands deceived them with a sham marriage ceremony.
Also, the evil Catherine of this novel and the heroine Olivia of WOC both learn that their husbands are married to someone else and their marriages really are invalid. And of course, both novels have characters from the West Indies. Unlike The Woman of Colour, however, The Aunt and the Niece has no word of sympathy, or any word at all, for or about enslaved persons. The only use of “enslaved” refers to Catherine’s marriage. In this novel the West Indies is, as is typical, just a convenient place to park a character until he is needed for plot purposes. In this case Horace’s dad returns and assures Angelina that she was lawfully married to Frederic and the Fitzallen estate belongs to her daughter. Clifford escapes when his duplicity is unmasked, Catherine kills herself, and Horace and Clara are happy ever after.
Anti-Catholic imagery: detail of "An escape a la Francoise," Library of Congress Other themes
Fainting: Both Clara and her mother faint at times of stress and high drama, for example, when the unprincipled Lord Darnley tries to abduct Clara to have his wicked way with her. There is no indication that either one of them hit the carpet when they get the good news about the inheritance from Reverend Fairfax. At other times, it is quite a burden on the alarmed bystanders to have to drag their supine bodies to the nearest bed or sofa and summon a physician. Fainting appears to be a way of demonstrating helpless vulnerability and a lack of agency in trying situations. I disagree with a recent book which suggests that fainting is a subversive commentary on the use of tight corsets or stays.
Education: The Aunt and the Niece stresses the importance of education in forming character. The author interjects: “‘And did this unheard-of malignity [in Catherine] proceed from natural depravity?’ we may ask, ‘from inherent turpitude?’ –Alas! we know not how to answer. Children of sin from our birth, how early its fatal shoots spring up in the heart we know not… if temperate pruning will not do, even the axe should be laid at the source of the evil—this is certain, and Sir Hugh and Lady Fitzallan, when too late, had reason to wish that mildness had given place to severity, in their treatment of their daughter.” Catherine might have been born a sociopath, but her parents were too gentle with her, and too lax with Frederic. Nature versus nurture, folks. For more about the recurring theme of education in sentimental novels, see my series here.
Thee/Thou: The authoress also follows the common device of having her characters break into biblical language and refer to themselves in the third person in moments of high drama. When the bereaved Angelina kneels by Frederic’s coffin, she exclaims: “the wretched Angelina must now separate from him for ever…. Destitute, fatherless as thou appearest, my babe,” added she, pressing her lips to those of her infant, “yet hast thou an Heavenly Father—one who will still care for thee!” Then she faints.
A French fifth column: Politics briefly intrudes when a minor character, the bigamous Clifford’s French wife, laments that her fellow emigres have behaved badly in England: “Alas! I am the type of my unfortunate, my ungrateful nation… Generously your country [has] opened its arms, and sheltered all our wandering outcasts; and what was its return? –Oh horror! Horror! –shame on civilized, on human beings! –they stung their benefactor; they planted their insidious poison and their fatal tenets [of republicanism] in the heart of that land which supported them, and tried to subvert its laws, its liberty, its religion!” That would put this author in the anti-Jacobin camp.
Illegitimacy: The assumption that Angelina, herself illegitimate, would naturally go on to give birth to an illegitimate daughter, fed into the widely-held belief that wanton behaviour in women was a heritable trait. This is why, in Emma, Mr. Knightley tells Emma that Harriet will be “safe” and beyond the reach of temptation if she marries Robert Martin and goes to live with Martin’s mother and sisters. Further, a girl like Clara, intelligent, well-educated, and genteel, makes for an attractive mistress for a gentleman like Lord Darnley, as opposed to picking up some doxy from the streets. Thus foundling heroines are in constant danger of being insulted by gentleman-cads. Luckily, Clara is not illegitimate and retrieves her good name and the family fortunes.
Fainting: Both Clara and her mother faint at times of stress and high drama, for example, when the unprincipled Lord Darnley tries to abduct Clara to have his wicked way with her. There is no indication that either one of them hit the carpet when they get the good news about the inheritance from Reverend Fairfax. At other times, it is quite a burden on the alarmed bystanders to have to drag their supine bodies to the nearest bed or sofa and summon a physician. Fainting appears to be a way of demonstrating helpless vulnerability and a lack of agency in trying situations. I disagree with a recent book which suggests that fainting is a subversive commentary on the use of tight corsets or stays.
Education: The Aunt and the Niece stresses the importance of education in forming character. The author interjects: “‘And did this unheard-of malignity [in Catherine] proceed from natural depravity?’ we may ask, ‘from inherent turpitude?’ –Alas! we know not how to answer. Children of sin from our birth, how early its fatal shoots spring up in the heart we know not… if temperate pruning will not do, even the axe should be laid at the source of the evil—this is certain, and Sir Hugh and Lady Fitzallan, when too late, had reason to wish that mildness had given place to severity, in their treatment of their daughter.” Catherine might have been born a sociopath, but her parents were too gentle with her, and too lax with Frederic. Nature versus nurture, folks. For more about the recurring theme of education in sentimental novels, see my series here.
Thee/Thou: The authoress also follows the common device of having her characters break into biblical language and refer to themselves in the third person in moments of high drama. When the bereaved Angelina kneels by Frederic’s coffin, she exclaims: “the wretched Angelina must now separate from him for ever…. Destitute, fatherless as thou appearest, my babe,” added she, pressing her lips to those of her infant, “yet hast thou an Heavenly Father—one who will still care for thee!” Then she faints.
A French fifth column: Politics briefly intrudes when a minor character, the bigamous Clifford’s French wife, laments that her fellow emigres have behaved badly in England: “Alas! I am the type of my unfortunate, my ungrateful nation… Generously your country [has] opened its arms, and sheltered all our wandering outcasts; and what was its return? –Oh horror! Horror! –shame on civilized, on human beings! –they stung their benefactor; they planted their insidious poison and their fatal tenets [of republicanism] in the heart of that land which supported them, and tried to subvert its laws, its liberty, its religion!” That would put this author in the anti-Jacobin camp.
Illegitimacy: The assumption that Angelina, herself illegitimate, would naturally go on to give birth to an illegitimate daughter, fed into the widely-held belief that wanton behaviour in women was a heritable trait. This is why, in Emma, Mr. Knightley tells Emma that Harriet will be “safe” and beyond the reach of temptation if she marries Robert Martin and goes to live with Martin’s mother and sisters. Further, a girl like Clara, intelligent, well-educated, and genteel, makes for an attractive mistress for a gentleman like Lord Darnley, as opposed to picking up some doxy from the streets. Thus foundling heroines are in constant danger of being insulted by gentleman-cads. Luckily, Clara is not illegitimate and retrieves her good name and the family fortunes.
Contemporary Review of The Aunt and the Niece
The Critical Review gave The Aunt and the Niece a favourable if brief review: "Among the numerous works which issue from the prolific brains of those who seek their almost daily bread at the great manufacture in Leadenhall-street, it would be singular if there were not some that rose pre-eminently. Perhaps the volumes before us do not claim such warm panegyric; but, in the plot and management of the story, the author rises above the vulgar herd. The event is sufficiently obvious from the beginning; but the éclaircissement is conducted with skill, neither hurried by precipitation, nor are the means so obvious as to be easily anticipated [really?]. The characters, though sketches only, are well discriminated."
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The Critical Review gave The Aunt and the Niece a favourable if brief review: "Among the numerous works which issue from the prolific brains of those who seek their almost daily bread at the great manufacture in Leadenhall-street, it would be singular if there were not some that rose pre-eminently. Perhaps the volumes before us do not claim such warm panegyric; but, in the plot and management of the story, the author rises above the vulgar herd. The event is sufficiently obvious from the beginning; but the éclaircissement is conducted with skill, neither hurried by precipitation, nor are the means so obvious as to be easily anticipated [really?]. The characters, though sketches only, are well discriminated."
Previous post: Eversfield Abbey Next post: A return to Eliza Kirkham Mathews
| In my novel, A Contrary Wind, a variation on Mansfield Park, Mary Crawford spins a web of lies to keep Edmund Bertram for herself. I took the title from Henry Crawford's remark to Fanny, "I think if we had had the disposal of events—if Mansfield Park had had the government of the winds just for a week or two, about the equinox, there would have been a difference. Not that we would have endangered [Sir Thomas's] safety by any tremendous weather—but only by a steady contrary wind, or a calm. I think, Miss Price, we would have indulged ourselves with a week’s calm in the Atlantic at that season.” Click here for more about my novels. |  |
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