| 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#235 Medieval Snoozefest -- The Duke of Clarence (1795), by Mrs. E.M. Foster
What a snoozer! Chatgpt art Boy, what a slog. Frankly, I skimmed through most of this book. I had assumed that The Duke of Clarence was an historical novel but as it turns out, it’s a gothic novel set in England and France in the 15th century. Gothic novels aren’t my thing. I just can’t get excited about abducted and immured heroines, evil priests, secret passages, dastardly noblemen, and garrulous servants. So I confess—I didn’t catch every little detail explaining how and why our nobly-born hero Edgar De Montford ended up being mislaid and becoming a foundling.
But the never-ending backstories with their thwarted love affairs and general perfidy--I mean, if you were a noblewoman unjustly immured in a tower for sixteen years and out of nowhere, two different people find you—coincidentally on the same night—and they asked you, Oh my god, what happened? Who put you here? would you give them a brief precis as you were running through the door to freedom, and maybe get into the details later after you've had a hot bath and a good meal? Or would you spend hours telling them the whole story from the beginning, recalling entire conversations and your every gesture with it? I’d be high-tailing it out of there.
As mediocre as this book is, I will say in justice to this authoress, and in contrast with Eliza Kirkham Mathews' youthful effort The Phantom, the backstories at least all tie together and relate to the central mystery of the story.
But the never-ending backstories with their thwarted love affairs and general perfidy--I mean, if you were a noblewoman unjustly immured in a tower for sixteen years and out of nowhere, two different people find you—coincidentally on the same night—and they asked you, Oh my god, what happened? Who put you here? would you give them a brief precis as you were running through the door to freedom, and maybe get into the details later after you've had a hot bath and a good meal? Or would you spend hours telling them the whole story from the beginning, recalling entire conversations and your every gesture with it? I’d be high-tailing it out of there.
As mediocre as this book is, I will say in justice to this authoress, and in contrast with Eliza Kirkham Mathews' youthful effort The Phantom, the backstories at least all tie together and relate to the central mystery of the story.
Joan of Arc So, in terms of my project of reading novels that were perhaps written by the same person who wrote The Woman of Colour, I have decided that academic rigour doe not require that I read The Duke of Clarence carefully because it is a completely different genre than The Woman of Colour. There won’t be many similarities in terms of plot points at any rate.
The Duke of Clarence could very well have been written by the author of Rebecca. Both books feature highly emotional and overwrought language from both male and female characters (as of course do many other novels of the era). Rebecca had a fat character, Mrs. Nesbitt, who was held up to ridicule. In The Duke of Clarence, the evil priest is a fatty, who “waddled out” of heroine’s apartment, “with all the haste his corpulent person would admit of,” and he actually later dies after he trips because he’s so fat.
Although the emotions run high and the dialogue is florid, the narration really plods in this book. As in Rebecca, people's movements are described with clunky amateurish prose. Here, the nasty uncle arrives at the castle after Elfrida's father dies. She's up in her chamber crying, so her father's ward, Edgar, receives the earl.
The Duke of Clarence could very well have been written by the author of Rebecca. Both books feature highly emotional and overwrought language from both male and female characters (as of course do many other novels of the era). Rebecca had a fat character, Mrs. Nesbitt, who was held up to ridicule. In The Duke of Clarence, the evil priest is a fatty, who “waddled out” of heroine’s apartment, “with all the haste his corpulent person would admit of,” and he actually later dies after he trips because he’s so fat.
Although the emotions run high and the dialogue is florid, the narration really plods in this book. As in Rebecca, people's movements are described with clunky amateurish prose. Here, the nasty uncle arrives at the castle after Elfrida's father dies. She's up in her chamber crying, so her father's ward, Edgar, receives the earl.
| “Where is my brother’s chaplain, sir?” demanded the earl. “I will desire him to attend your lordship,” replied Edgar, pleased at a pretext to quit the room. “Do so sir, and I will thank you.” Edgar withdrew, and presently met with Anthony, who was hastening to the earl—“The earl inquires for you, father.” “You have seen him then, my son?” “I have—ah, how much unlike his noble relative! But he is the uncle of Elfrida, and as such I respect him—but his lordship will be impatient.” “I will attend him immediately,” said Anthony, leaving the youth. |
The Duke of Clarence fell in the Battle of Baugé, France, 1421 Page after page of this plodding stuff. As Jane Austen advised her niece Fanny when Fanny was writing a novel: “your descriptions are often more minute than will be liked. You give too many particulars of right hand and left.”
As with Rebecca, the misunderstandings between the lovers are unconvincing and artificially protracted. Elfrida’s father, on his deathbed, gives her permission to marry Edgar if he comes back triumphant from the latest campaign in France, but being a modest maiden, she can’t share the good news with Edgar, so they have a ridiculous conversation. “Deeply blushing,” she promises him (referring to herself in third person) “Elfrida will not, shall not, marry any but him her father has selected for her husband,” which sends Edgar into a rage of despair because he has no reason to assume that he’s the lucky guy.
He goes to France to help the king hold on to the French territories won by Henry V, which means they are up against Joan of Arc, who is mentioned but who does not appear in the story. He's falsely accused of ravishing a married woman, so further misunderstandings arise between him and Elfrida.
The authoress of this book can never decide if her hero is performing “miracles of valour,” or if he is participating in an immoral, unjustified war. In one chapter, Edgar “persevered in his glorious resolve” for a cause which should “animate every Briton’s arm.” In another chapter, the authoress upbraids the king for his absurd pretensions to the throne of France and being “deaf to humanity, actuated alone by the desire of conquest and monopolizing power, he has been the means of destroying thousands, and of leaving their helpless families a prey to poverty and sorrow!”
But considering that this is a female author, she tackles warfare and battle with more brio than many other female authors--as we know, Austen stayed away completely from warfare scenes.
As with Rebecca, the misunderstandings between the lovers are unconvincing and artificially protracted. Elfrida’s father, on his deathbed, gives her permission to marry Edgar if he comes back triumphant from the latest campaign in France, but being a modest maiden, she can’t share the good news with Edgar, so they have a ridiculous conversation. “Deeply blushing,” she promises him (referring to herself in third person) “Elfrida will not, shall not, marry any but him her father has selected for her husband,” which sends Edgar into a rage of despair because he has no reason to assume that he’s the lucky guy.
He goes to France to help the king hold on to the French territories won by Henry V, which means they are up against Joan of Arc, who is mentioned but who does not appear in the story. He's falsely accused of ravishing a married woman, so further misunderstandings arise between him and Elfrida.
The authoress of this book can never decide if her hero is performing “miracles of valour,” or if he is participating in an immoral, unjustified war. In one chapter, Edgar “persevered in his glorious resolve” for a cause which should “animate every Briton’s arm.” In another chapter, the authoress upbraids the king for his absurd pretensions to the throne of France and being “deaf to humanity, actuated alone by the desire of conquest and monopolizing power, he has been the means of destroying thousands, and of leaving their helpless families a prey to poverty and sorrow!”
But considering that this is a female author, she tackles warfare and battle with more brio than many other female authors--as we know, Austen stayed away completely from warfare scenes.
Vengeful ghost A hard-won happy ending
Well, in case you're on tenterhooks, Edgar and Elfrida do manage to make it to the altar, after several separations and misunderstandings. And after having to listen to a lot of backstories.
Two ghosts appear in the story and I assumed that at some point we’d learn that they are not real ghosts, but somebody dressed up as a ghost (the Scooby Doo ploy), but by golly, there was no such explanation. The reviewer for The Monthly Review thought including real ghosts was an “absurdity” and “an injury to young minds to impress on them, in tales of this kind, the belief of their real existence.”
It’s a mystery to me why this book was republished in Dublin and reprinted in 1831, but it was.
I’ve still got at least one more historical title to look at, Jacquelina of Hainault (1798).
Well, in case you're on tenterhooks, Edgar and Elfrida do manage to make it to the altar, after several separations and misunderstandings. And after having to listen to a lot of backstories.
Two ghosts appear in the story and I assumed that at some point we’d learn that they are not real ghosts, but somebody dressed up as a ghost (the Scooby Doo ploy), but by golly, there was no such explanation. The reviewer for The Monthly Review thought including real ghosts was an “absurdity” and “an injury to young minds to impress on them, in tales of this kind, the belief of their real existence.”
It’s a mystery to me why this book was republished in Dublin and reprinted in 1831, but it was.
I’ve still got at least one more historical title to look at, Jacquelina of Hainault (1798).
| There was a real historical Duke of Clarence who was killed in battle in France but he was not married to someone named Emmeline and he had no son named Edgar. The foundling who turns out to be of noble birth is of course a staple of novels of the long 18th century. Scholar Elizabeth Neimann calls this type of novel a “providential” novel, "built on the secret nobility of the hero or heroine. Yet this is an open secret; the hero’s exceptional good looks and virtuous mind unsubtly signal his real identity to readers as does his pervasive feeling of discomfort when living as a commoner.” The providentiai novel assumes a conservative mindset, in that people are born noble or common, as God ordains. Neiman, Elizabeth. Minerva's Gothics: The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820. University of Wales Press, 2019. Previous post: Rebecca Next post: Et tu, BBC? |
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