| 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. |
CMP239# The Revealer of Secrets, part two
A philosophical Bluestocking by Honoré Daumier In a previous post, I began a synopsis of the complicated plot of The Revealer of Secrets, or, The House That Jack Built, a novel that might have been written by the same authoress who gave us the 1809 novel The Woman of Colour.
The Revealer of Secrets is narrated in the first person by a house, but this is not a sprawling multi-generational saga, it is a story involving five different sets of occupants over the course of several years, as well as some of the local villagers. By the third volume, the author develops a few links between the different tenants. The kept mistress in the first volume turns out to be the sister of the impoverished poet in the third volume, but no-one knows where she has gone. Will the impecunious poet Mr. Hammond ever find his fallen sister and snatch her from vice? (Yes, he does).
Our main heroine is the virtuous and put-upon Agnes Carey who has transformed The House That Jack Built into an abode of peace and harmony. The house-narrator admires her very much. Anyway, even though the house is the narrator, we now switch to Cheltenham, where Agnes and some previous tenants of the house all come together, including the narcissistic bluestocking Mrs. Desmond and Mr. Prune the glutton. Plus, the author adds a host of new, disagreeably vain and stupid people who gossip and backstab all day...
The Revealer of Secrets is narrated in the first person by a house, but this is not a sprawling multi-generational saga, it is a story involving five different sets of occupants over the course of several years, as well as some of the local villagers. By the third volume, the author develops a few links between the different tenants. The kept mistress in the first volume turns out to be the sister of the impoverished poet in the third volume, but no-one knows where she has gone. Will the impecunious poet Mr. Hammond ever find his fallen sister and snatch her from vice? (Yes, he does).
Our main heroine is the virtuous and put-upon Agnes Carey who has transformed The House That Jack Built into an abode of peace and harmony. The house-narrator admires her very much. Anyway, even though the house is the narrator, we now switch to Cheltenham, where Agnes and some previous tenants of the house all come together, including the narcissistic bluestocking Mrs. Desmond and Mr. Prune the glutton. Plus, the author adds a host of new, disagreeably vain and stupid people who gossip and backstab all day...
Regulated Hatred
In the tragic tale of Anne Groves, the author condemned the village market fair, portraying this traditional festive gathering as a needless temptation for the lower orders; now she gives us the petty atmosphere of an English spa town and the repulsive society people who stay there.
All sorts of human foibles are lashed, including the parade of “females of fashion… the very men who lounged at their sides, apparently enamoured of their charms, were no sooner out of their hearing, when they made the most unqualified remarks on their scanty drapery, and attached a meaning to the modern costume, which would have shocked these unsuspecting votaries of fashion to have had suggested by their bitterest rival.”
Pardon me--what were you saying, Mr. D.W. Harding? You were saying that Jane Austen’s light ironic comedy masks her “regulated hatred” of her society? Really? You have no idea what regulated hatred is, pal. Read this novel before sounding off about Austen’s sweet brand of Horatian satire.
In the tragic tale of Anne Groves, the author condemned the village market fair, portraying this traditional festive gathering as a needless temptation for the lower orders; now she gives us the petty atmosphere of an English spa town and the repulsive society people who stay there.
All sorts of human foibles are lashed, including the parade of “females of fashion… the very men who lounged at their sides, apparently enamoured of their charms, were no sooner out of their hearing, when they made the most unqualified remarks on their scanty drapery, and attached a meaning to the modern costume, which would have shocked these unsuspecting votaries of fashion to have had suggested by their bitterest rival.”
Pardon me--what were you saying, Mr. D.W. Harding? You were saying that Jane Austen’s light ironic comedy masks her “regulated hatred” of her society? Really? You have no idea what regulated hatred is, pal. Read this novel before sounding off about Austen’s sweet brand of Horatian satire.
Chickens coming home to roost in Cheltenham
We finally get to the dramatic high point of our story—it’s taken a long time to set up the situation, but when we get there, it’s a doozy. Our heroine Agnes Carey’s childhood sweetheart was Henry Raby, who vowed to marry her but went abroad with his regiment and impulsively married a young English girl. His wife Clara was sent back to England while he remained on the continent with his regiment. Now Henry is back from the wars and he escorts his young wife to Cheltenham and yikes—this is awkward. Henry knows Agnes was in love with him and that he jilted her. Agnes knows that Clara had a baby while she was separated from her husband for one and a half years. Henry doesn't know this.
Henry says, isn't this great we're all together! We should all go together back to Agnes’s house--“Fain would I rivet the friendship of two beings so dear to me.” He also wants to keep away from the “vortex of dissipation” in London, of which his young wife is too fond.
Clara knows that if she goes back to Agnes’s house, the rector and his wife, local doctor, the gossipy nurse, and Agnes's servants will recognize her as the young pregnant lady who stayed with Agnes and gave birth to a child who soon died. Agnes knows this, too.
And there’s more!
We finally get to the dramatic high point of our story—it’s taken a long time to set up the situation, but when we get there, it’s a doozy. Our heroine Agnes Carey’s childhood sweetheart was Henry Raby, who vowed to marry her but went abroad with his regiment and impulsively married a young English girl. His wife Clara was sent back to England while he remained on the continent with his regiment. Now Henry is back from the wars and he escorts his young wife to Cheltenham and yikes—this is awkward. Henry knows Agnes was in love with him and that he jilted her. Agnes knows that Clara had a baby while she was separated from her husband for one and a half years. Henry doesn't know this.
Henry says, isn't this great we're all together! We should all go together back to Agnes’s house--“Fain would I rivet the friendship of two beings so dear to me.” He also wants to keep away from the “vortex of dissipation” in London, of which his young wife is too fond.
Clara knows that if she goes back to Agnes’s house, the rector and his wife, local doctor, the gossipy nurse, and Agnes's servants will recognize her as the young pregnant lady who stayed with Agnes and gave birth to a child who soon died. Agnes knows this, too.
And there’s more!
1817 spa-town villains: William Elliot (Sam West) and Temple Sylvester Is this a new love interest?
There is a new, handsome, intelligent single man in the mix in Cheltenham. Sylvester Temple’s “person and manners were eminently prepossessing, his air and whole appearance was that of a gentleman of the first order; his conversation was sensible and intelligent, lively without rattle, and impressive without any assumption of importance; and his age was apparently about forty.”
“Temple Sylvester could adapt his conversation to all with whom he conversed; and all, and each, from his looks, his words, and, more than these, the interest with which he entered into, and followed their and her style of conversation, might imagine themselves and herself the favoured fair.”
Naturally Sylvester is aggressively courted by the husband-hunting mamas in Cheltenham, but he is a man of discernment and seems to have eyes only for Agnes. Could it be her intelligent conversation, her quiet good looks, or her inheritance that appeals to him? Agnes has her reservations, though, just as Anne Elliot has reservations about her cousin William in Persuasion: "Agnes had always feared the principles of Sylvester, she had always suspected him of uttering sentiments which had no root in the soil.”
And when Clara Raby sees him, she faints dead away. Why could that be?
There is a new, handsome, intelligent single man in the mix in Cheltenham. Sylvester Temple’s “person and manners were eminently prepossessing, his air and whole appearance was that of a gentleman of the first order; his conversation was sensible and intelligent, lively without rattle, and impressive without any assumption of importance; and his age was apparently about forty.”
“Temple Sylvester could adapt his conversation to all with whom he conversed; and all, and each, from his looks, his words, and, more than these, the interest with which he entered into, and followed their and her style of conversation, might imagine themselves and herself the favoured fair.”
Naturally Sylvester is aggressively courted by the husband-hunting mamas in Cheltenham, but he is a man of discernment and seems to have eyes only for Agnes. Could it be her intelligent conversation, her quiet good looks, or her inheritance that appeals to him? Agnes has her reservations, though, just as Anne Elliot has reservations about her cousin William in Persuasion: "Agnes had always feared the principles of Sylvester, she had always suspected him of uttering sentiments which had no root in the soil.”
And when Clara Raby sees him, she faints dead away. Why could that be?
Harris Bigg-Wither Secrets revealed to Agnes (and spoilers to you)
Agnes stays resolutely silent and suffers like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park as she contemplates the perfidy of her relatives: “It is reserved for me—exclusively for me, to have my mind haunted, tortured, and overshadowed, by images of guilt from which it recoils; it is reserved for Agnes to be the silent, the secret accuser of another! And is it then Sylvester—the elegant, the refined, the sensible, the specious Sylvester, received, caressed, courted in all societies, applauded by all persons, is it—can it be—who is so base, so designing a villain?”
So Agnes knows all, but Henry Raby is blithely ignorant of everything, and wants to invite his new best buddy Mr. Sylvester to join them on a protracted visit back to The House That Jack Built. The secrets are too much for Clara--she swallows poison, which the doctor decides to pass off as a sudden illness, so Henry is still kept in the dark.
Henry is single once again, but this novel does not end with a happy marriage. Like The Splendour of Adversity and The Woman of Colour, we finish with a financially independent and principled heroine who resolves to live a meaningful life here on earth, while looking forward to a better life hereafter.
I feel that if we could ask Jane Austen why she turned down the marriage proposal from the eligible but uninspiring Harris Bigg-Wither, her reasons would be similar to what Agnes says about not marrying Henry: “if I could not look up to my husband as to my superior, I fear I should not feel happy… I must have a confidence in his judgment, a perfect reliance on his understanding, a deference for his opinion, a trust in his protection… these I should vainly look for in Raby.”
I think after Austen accepted Bigg-Wither's proposal, she quailed in the middle of the night, because she knew she'd have to take a vow at the altar to obey him. She could not tell herself he was someone she could look up to. Bigg-Wither was younger and not the sharpest tool in the shed, by all accounts. Respect is important in marriage.
Agnes stays resolutely silent and suffers like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park as she contemplates the perfidy of her relatives: “It is reserved for me—exclusively for me, to have my mind haunted, tortured, and overshadowed, by images of guilt from which it recoils; it is reserved for Agnes to be the silent, the secret accuser of another! And is it then Sylvester—the elegant, the refined, the sensible, the specious Sylvester, received, caressed, courted in all societies, applauded by all persons, is it—can it be—who is so base, so designing a villain?”
So Agnes knows all, but Henry Raby is blithely ignorant of everything, and wants to invite his new best buddy Mr. Sylvester to join them on a protracted visit back to The House That Jack Built. The secrets are too much for Clara--she swallows poison, which the doctor decides to pass off as a sudden illness, so Henry is still kept in the dark.
Henry is single once again, but this novel does not end with a happy marriage. Like The Splendour of Adversity and The Woman of Colour, we finish with a financially independent and principled heroine who resolves to live a meaningful life here on earth, while looking forward to a better life hereafter.
I feel that if we could ask Jane Austen why she turned down the marriage proposal from the eligible but uninspiring Harris Bigg-Wither, her reasons would be similar to what Agnes says about not marrying Henry: “if I could not look up to my husband as to my superior, I fear I should not feel happy… I must have a confidence in his judgment, a perfect reliance on his understanding, a deference for his opinion, a trust in his protection… these I should vainly look for in Raby.”
I think after Austen accepted Bigg-Wither's proposal, she quailed in the middle of the night, because she knew she'd have to take a vow at the altar to obey him. She could not tell herself he was someone she could look up to. Bigg-Wither was younger and not the sharpest tool in the shed, by all accounts. Respect is important in marriage.
Feminism Fortitude and Frailty
Like The Splendour of Adversity and The Woman of Colour, the purpose of the novel is to demonstrate to the reader “that the greatest trials are frequently those which the world sees not; and that these, if met with proper fortitude, will be rewarded openly by Him who allots them to his creatures. But that reward is frequently reserved for another world, on which the eye of faith is firmly fixed.” There is also a touch of feminism, when the authoress praises the quiet fortitude of women. Men may be sailors and soldiers, but women must display courage as well: “though spared an hour of tremendous conflict, she meets whole years of suffering. I believe that there is as much female as male courage to be found in the world, though it be confessedly of a different kind; if the latter has been termed ‘field courage,’ I should be apt to denominate the former ‘house courage;’ “
We have three fallen women in this book--Clara Raby, who commits suicide, Anne Groves, who falls down dead, and Rosa Hammond, who repents, takes up millinery instead of prostitution, then, using her last penny and last ounce of strength, travels to The House That Jack Built where Agnes and the rector help her recover her health. They send her to live with her brother.
Like The Splendour of Adversity and The Woman of Colour, the purpose of the novel is to demonstrate to the reader “that the greatest trials are frequently those which the world sees not; and that these, if met with proper fortitude, will be rewarded openly by Him who allots them to his creatures. But that reward is frequently reserved for another world, on which the eye of faith is firmly fixed.” There is also a touch of feminism, when the authoress praises the quiet fortitude of women. Men may be sailors and soldiers, but women must display courage as well: “though spared an hour of tremendous conflict, she meets whole years of suffering. I believe that there is as much female as male courage to be found in the world, though it be confessedly of a different kind; if the latter has been termed ‘field courage,’ I should be apt to denominate the former ‘house courage;’ “
We have three fallen women in this book--Clara Raby, who commits suicide, Anne Groves, who falls down dead, and Rosa Hammond, who repents, takes up millinery instead of prostitution, then, using her last penny and last ounce of strength, travels to The House That Jack Built where Agnes and the rector help her recover her health. They send her to live with her brother.
Slavery and colonial wealth
The Revealer of Secrets can be added to the list of novels which touch on slavery and colonialism in Regency times. As discussed in the previous post, the house itself was built by a slave-trader, who, I’ve learned, was held in much greater contempt by British society at the time than plantation-owners. On the other hand, some slave-traders were respectable in their day, such as Edward Colston (1636 – 1721), a major philanthropist in his native Bristol and a statue was erected in his honour in 1895. Recently, it was tossed into Bristol harbour.
Colonial wealth is also touched on in the final volume when we learn the backstory of Clara, the teenage bride of Henry Raby. Her mother was a pretty and fashionable woman “with very expensive ideas, and no activity of mind” who manages to snag a husband in “Mr. Albany, a young West-Indian, wealthy, extravagant, and dissipated.” This is a typical description of a wealthy West Indian. The emphasis is on their personal failings, not their ownership of people.
Female education
“See here,” the heroine exclaims when contemplating Clara's sad end, “see here the fatal consequences of a defective education!” The Revealer of Secrets can also be added to the list of books which stress the importance of a good education. Women shouldn't be kept in ignorance, but on the other hand, they shouldn't vaunt their own learning like the bluestockings. Clara is similar to Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park—a girl who is accomplished but devoid of inner principle. Her parents squandered their fortune, and Clara was raised to look for a rich husband: “intellectual acquirements, the regulation of the temper, the principles of virtue and religion, these had been wholly disregarded; every thing had been done for effect and display.”
The Revealer of Secrets can be added to the list of novels which touch on slavery and colonialism in Regency times. As discussed in the previous post, the house itself was built by a slave-trader, who, I’ve learned, was held in much greater contempt by British society at the time than plantation-owners. On the other hand, some slave-traders were respectable in their day, such as Edward Colston (1636 – 1721), a major philanthropist in his native Bristol and a statue was erected in his honour in 1895. Recently, it was tossed into Bristol harbour.
Colonial wealth is also touched on in the final volume when we learn the backstory of Clara, the teenage bride of Henry Raby. Her mother was a pretty and fashionable woman “with very expensive ideas, and no activity of mind” who manages to snag a husband in “Mr. Albany, a young West-Indian, wealthy, extravagant, and dissipated.” This is a typical description of a wealthy West Indian. The emphasis is on their personal failings, not their ownership of people.
Female education
“See here,” the heroine exclaims when contemplating Clara's sad end, “see here the fatal consequences of a defective education!” The Revealer of Secrets can also be added to the list of books which stress the importance of a good education. Women shouldn't be kept in ignorance, but on the other hand, they shouldn't vaunt their own learning like the bluestockings. Clara is similar to Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park—a girl who is accomplished but devoid of inner principle. Her parents squandered their fortune, and Clara was raised to look for a rich husband: “intellectual acquirements, the regulation of the temper, the principles of virtue and religion, these had been wholly disregarded; every thing had been done for effect and display.”
Last thoughts
When I think of all the books in The Woman of Colour attribution chain that I've read so far, The Revealer of Secrets is definitely the most mature and accomplished in its narrative style. The authoress is not Austen, of course. For example, we are told that Agnes loves Henry Raby but we don't get to know him well enough to understand why she loves him. We learn his faults but don't see enough of his virtues or charms. Austen contrived to introduce William Elliot by the end of Volume I, with the encounter at Lyme, instead of dropping her charming villain into the narrative near the end, as this writer does. However, I think this writer's style, while still moralizing and creaky, looks forward to Dickens and the Victorian age. And the coincidences and the drama are not more unreasonable than anything Dickens produced, either. Coincidences abound in Dickens.
The Revealer of Secrets, or The House That Jack Built, received no reviews when first published. The authoress herself imagines that it will receive unfavorable reviews, and she makes punning comparisons between the structure of a novel and the architecture of a house: “such a jumble of story upon story! No form, no proportion, no order!”
Could Austen have read this novel? Yes-- The Revealer of Secrets was advertised for sale in October 1816. Austen told her niece Fanny in March 1817 that she had "something ready for publication," referring to Persuasion. She died four months later, and Persuasion was published in December 1817 together with Northanger Abbey.
When I think of all the books in The Woman of Colour attribution chain that I've read so far, The Revealer of Secrets is definitely the most mature and accomplished in its narrative style. The authoress is not Austen, of course. For example, we are told that Agnes loves Henry Raby but we don't get to know him well enough to understand why she loves him. We learn his faults but don't see enough of his virtues or charms. Austen contrived to introduce William Elliot by the end of Volume I, with the encounter at Lyme, instead of dropping her charming villain into the narrative near the end, as this writer does. However, I think this writer's style, while still moralizing and creaky, looks forward to Dickens and the Victorian age. And the coincidences and the drama are not more unreasonable than anything Dickens produced, either. Coincidences abound in Dickens.
The Revealer of Secrets, or The House That Jack Built, received no reviews when first published. The authoress herself imagines that it will receive unfavorable reviews, and she makes punning comparisons between the structure of a novel and the architecture of a house: “such a jumble of story upon story! No form, no proportion, no order!”
Could Austen have read this novel? Yes-- The Revealer of Secrets was advertised for sale in October 1816. Austen told her niece Fanny in March 1817 that she had "something ready for publication," referring to Persuasion. She died four months later, and Persuasion was published in December 1817 together with Northanger Abbey.
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