| 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. This post is one in a continuing series in which I look at the novels which were possibly written by the anonymous author who wrote The Woman of Colour (1809). |
CMP#241 Jaquelina of Hainault, an uninspiring heroine
Jacquelina of Hainault (1401- 1436) Many historical novels put fictional characters at the forefront of real historical events but Jaquelina of Hainault (1798) is loosely based on the life of a real medieval European princess. Jacquelina (not Jaquelina) was the heiress to her father’s lands in what is now Holland. The real Jacquelina unsuccessfully struggled to retain sovereignty over her territories in a male-dominated world. She had four husbands and was briefly the Dauphine of France. Her third husband was English, a royal duke. This marriage is elevated into a love story for the novel, even though the known facts suggest that Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, married Jacquelina out of ambition and divorced her when his campaign to establish his own kingdom in Europe ran into opposition from France and Burgundy.
I plodded through Jaquelina, finding it boring and the “ingenuous” heroine quite uninteresting and weak. She’s so “ingenuous” that at first she doesn’t realize she’s in love with Humphrey, or understand why she feels jealous of any other beauty he admires: “’No doubt some of those ladies whom he extols so highly for their beauty makes him weary of Hainault, and anxious to return to England!’ This thought gave her a disagreeable sensation she could in now way account for, and her attendants for the first time had reason to think the princess difficult to please.”
By the third time she accidentally gets herself into a compromising situation with Humphrey which hurts her reputation, I was pretty sure she wasn’t intelligent enough to manage a medieval kingdom.
I plodded through Jaquelina, finding it boring and the “ingenuous” heroine quite uninteresting and weak. She’s so “ingenuous” that at first she doesn’t realize she’s in love with Humphrey, or understand why she feels jealous of any other beauty he admires: “’No doubt some of those ladies whom he extols so highly for their beauty makes him weary of Hainault, and anxious to return to England!’ This thought gave her a disagreeable sensation she could in now way account for, and her attendants for the first time had reason to think the princess difficult to please.”
By the third time she accidentally gets herself into a compromising situation with Humphrey which hurts her reputation, I was pretty sure she wasn’t intelligent enough to manage a medieval kingdom.
Weeping, blushing, fainting
In brief, this is a sentimental romance with a typically dead serious weepy heroine, interspersed with long narrative sections about political and military events of the time. The writing style is at best pedestrian. Here is an example of paint-by-numbers landscape description: “A thick plantation of tall pines rose towering to the left, and excluded, by their dark foliage, the too powerful influence of the sun; an endless variety of wild and characteristic plants covered the sides of the banks; and abundance of mosses were seen fancifully clinging in various forms to the rocks, which burst forth upon the spectator in bold and picturesque shapes.”
As for the history, the authoress clearly is interested in the 15th century, as she wrote another book (Duke of Clarence) set in the same era. In both titles, she takes the side of the French against Henry V of Agincourt fame, agreeing that Henry had no just claim to the throne of France. Given the importance of Agincourt to the English psyche, I thought this was a surprising concession.
On the other hand, she praises English civil liberties and asserts that English commoners and women enjoy greater freedom than people elsewhere: Jaquelina “readily admitted the superiority of those [English] laws by which the property of the lowest individual was protected from tyrannous oppression. She admired too its customs; and she would feel charmed with hearing that in that happy country the unjust distinction of sexes was not known—that THERE due respect was paid to the understandings [ie, intelligence] of those beings whom custom, not nature, had ranked as inferior.”
Jaqueline may be in that respect a proto-feminist, but her sufferings don't teach her wisdom; she does not learn how to play the medieval game of thrones. Her Christian faith sustains her through her travails: “Brought up with a just sense of religion, which teaches us that this life is but a mere passage to immortality, she resigned herself with calmness to the will of Heaven.”
I see no striking plot or thematic resemblances with The Woman of Colour. Except, I suppose that like The Woman of Colour, there is no happy ever after. Humphrey basically ruins her life, aided and assisted by her parents, her cruel second husband, and two jealous love rivals. The authoress omits the real-life fourth husband.
Just about every other character in the book is more interesting than the main characters, but nobody is portrayed with any depth. Humphrey is not much of a hero, Jaquelina is a doormat of a heroine. She dies in the end of wasting heroine disease.
In brief, this is a sentimental romance with a typically dead serious weepy heroine, interspersed with long narrative sections about political and military events of the time. The writing style is at best pedestrian. Here is an example of paint-by-numbers landscape description: “A thick plantation of tall pines rose towering to the left, and excluded, by their dark foliage, the too powerful influence of the sun; an endless variety of wild and characteristic plants covered the sides of the banks; and abundance of mosses were seen fancifully clinging in various forms to the rocks, which burst forth upon the spectator in bold and picturesque shapes.”
As for the history, the authoress clearly is interested in the 15th century, as she wrote another book (Duke of Clarence) set in the same era. In both titles, she takes the side of the French against Henry V of Agincourt fame, agreeing that Henry had no just claim to the throne of France. Given the importance of Agincourt to the English psyche, I thought this was a surprising concession.
On the other hand, she praises English civil liberties and asserts that English commoners and women enjoy greater freedom than people elsewhere: Jaquelina “readily admitted the superiority of those [English] laws by which the property of the lowest individual was protected from tyrannous oppression. She admired too its customs; and she would feel charmed with hearing that in that happy country the unjust distinction of sexes was not known—that THERE due respect was paid to the understandings [ie, intelligence] of those beings whom custom, not nature, had ranked as inferior.”
Jaqueline may be in that respect a proto-feminist, but her sufferings don't teach her wisdom; she does not learn how to play the medieval game of thrones. Her Christian faith sustains her through her travails: “Brought up with a just sense of religion, which teaches us that this life is but a mere passage to immortality, she resigned herself with calmness to the will of Heaven.”
I see no striking plot or thematic resemblances with The Woman of Colour. Except, I suppose that like The Woman of Colour, there is no happy ever after. Humphrey basically ruins her life, aided and assisted by her parents, her cruel second husband, and two jealous love rivals. The authoress omits the real-life fourth husband.
Just about every other character in the book is more interesting than the main characters, but nobody is portrayed with any depth. Humphrey is not much of a hero, Jaquelina is a doormat of a heroine. She dies in the end of wasting heroine disease.
Was Jaquelina written by the author of The Woman of Colour?
Jaquelina of Hainault is usually credited to Mrs. E.M. Foster, which may be a pen-name but in any event, nothing certain is known about this author's identity. Most of E.M. Foster's novels were published by the Minerva Press, a leading publisher of gothics and romantic potboilers. Jaqueline was published by a different publisher, J. Bell, but the author returned to Minerva for her next novel--supposing that all of the novels credited to E.M. Foster were all written by the same woman, which is by no means certain. The Duke of Clarence and Jaqueline of Hainault were republished in 1831, despite their mediocre quality.
If the author of Jaquelina went on to write The Woman of Colour, she evolved considerably in skill and changed substantially in tone. Adding to the difficulty of comparison is that the books are written in two different genres -- historical versus contemporary. Further, The Woman of Colour is an epistolary novel, but most of the novels tentatively attributed to the same author are third-person narration. One exception is Concealment or the Cascade of Llantwarryhn (1801), up for review in my next post.
Jaquelina of Hainault is usually credited to Mrs. E.M. Foster, which may be a pen-name but in any event, nothing certain is known about this author's identity. Most of E.M. Foster's novels were published by the Minerva Press, a leading publisher of gothics and romantic potboilers. Jaqueline was published by a different publisher, J. Bell, but the author returned to Minerva for her next novel--supposing that all of the novels credited to E.M. Foster were all written by the same woman, which is by no means certain. The Duke of Clarence and Jaqueline of Hainault were republished in 1831, despite their mediocre quality.
If the author of Jaquelina went on to write The Woman of Colour, she evolved considerably in skill and changed substantially in tone. Adding to the difficulty of comparison is that the books are written in two different genres -- historical versus contemporary. Further, The Woman of Colour is an epistolary novel, but most of the novels tentatively attributed to the same author are third-person narration. One exception is Concealment or the Cascade of Llantwarryhn (1801), up for review in my next post.
Origins of the historical novel? And what counts as an historical novel?
As Devoney Looser established in her joint biography of the sister novelists Jane and Maria Porter, it is inaccurate and chauvinistic to credit Sir Walter Scott with inventing the historical novel. The Porters felt that Scott basically ripped off their work.
Jane Porter's best-seller Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) came out before Scott's Waverley novels and Ivanhoe. So it’s only fair to point out that Jaquelina of Hainault came out before Thaddeus. The anonymous reviewer at the Critical Review said of Jaquelina of Hainault that it “does not rise above the generality of historical novels.” This suggests that by 1798, historical novels were a recognized genre long before Scott.
I don’t know if anyone has done a deep dive on which Georgian author wrote the first historical novel, which I am going to broadly define as a story placed in an historical setting. There are historians of the historical novel, but it seems the focus on the best-known authors, not the forgotten ones. Certainly we can concede that Scott and the Porters wrote a better, more vivid type of historical novel, not a sentimental novel that happens to be set in a castle. As ChatGPT put it to me, Scott "recreated social conditions, dialect, customs, and political tensions and showed how large historical forces shape ordinary lives." Earlier novelists did not "integrate historical process into the fabric of the narrative the way Scott did."
A Victorian essayist suggested that successful writers of historical fiction give their characters "nineteenth-century ideas and fifteenth century dresses." That is, there is accuracy in historical writing and then there is the imperative to craft a good story with relatable characters and maybe modern readers would be pretty shocked if they encountered medieval attitudes. Speaking of, I recommend Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt.
As Devoney Looser established in her joint biography of the sister novelists Jane and Maria Porter, it is inaccurate and chauvinistic to credit Sir Walter Scott with inventing the historical novel. The Porters felt that Scott basically ripped off their work.
Jane Porter's best-seller Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) came out before Scott's Waverley novels and Ivanhoe. So it’s only fair to point out that Jaquelina of Hainault came out before Thaddeus. The anonymous reviewer at the Critical Review said of Jaquelina of Hainault that it “does not rise above the generality of historical novels.” This suggests that by 1798, historical novels were a recognized genre long before Scott.
I don’t know if anyone has done a deep dive on which Georgian author wrote the first historical novel, which I am going to broadly define as a story placed in an historical setting. There are historians of the historical novel, but it seems the focus on the best-known authors, not the forgotten ones. Certainly we can concede that Scott and the Porters wrote a better, more vivid type of historical novel, not a sentimental novel that happens to be set in a castle. As ChatGPT put it to me, Scott "recreated social conditions, dialect, customs, and political tensions and showed how large historical forces shape ordinary lives." Earlier novelists did not "integrate historical process into the fabric of the narrative the way Scott did."
A Victorian essayist suggested that successful writers of historical fiction give their characters "nineteenth-century ideas and fifteenth century dresses." That is, there is accuracy in historical writing and then there is the imperative to craft a good story with relatable characters and maybe modern readers would be pretty shocked if they encountered medieval attitudes. Speaking of, I recommend Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt.
Once more with feeling
I haven't posted for two months because I went on a lengthy jaunt through Asia with my husband, followed by a bad head cold which knocked me up for a while. While I was away, the website History Reclaimed published my article about Mansfield Park, which restates objections I've been making here at "Clutching My Pearls" -- Jane Austen was not an outspoken opponent of the slave trade, not compared to other female novelists of the day, and Mansfield Park is not an anti-slavery novel.
I haven't posted for two months because I went on a lengthy jaunt through Asia with my husband, followed by a bad head cold which knocked me up for a while. While I was away, the website History Reclaimed published my article about Mansfield Park, which restates objections I've been making here at "Clutching My Pearls" -- Jane Austen was not an outspoken opponent of the slave trade, not compared to other female novelists of the day, and Mansfield Park is not an anti-slavery novel.
Previous post: Two credulous heroes Next post: Matilda, the righteous heroine
RSS Feed