What to Read When You're Not Reading Jane Austen

Fiction Reviews (Minor SPOILERS)

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Collins, Wilkie

No Name (1862)

In Wilkie Collins's No Name, Norah and Magdalen Vanstone find their happy lives shattered when both their parents die unexpectedly. Compounding their grief in this double loss, they soon discover that their mother and father had not been married at the time of their birth, making them, in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of the law, illegitimate. A problem with their father's will leaves them penniless as well, left to the charity of an uncle they have never known, who inherits both their father's property and his fortune. When the uncle proves cruelly indifferent to their plight, the elder sister, Norah, resigns herself to her altered station, and finds employment as a governess. But Magdalen, the younger sister, vows to take revenge on her heartless relation, and to regain her lost fortune by fair means or foul. When her uncle dies, Magdalen assumes a false identity and sets about to ensnare his feeble son and heir, Noel Vanstone, with the aid of a comically shrewd swindler, Captain Wragge, and his whimsically befuddled wife

A number of parallels may be drawn between Wilkie Collins's No Name and Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Both novels feature a pair of sisters, the younger  impulsive and emotional, the elder reserved and practical. In both novels, the sisters are forced to leave a loving and affluent home when the family estate passes to an unfeeling male relative upon the death of their father.There is even some similarity in the names of the sisters in both books: EliNOR=NORah, and MArianne=MAgdalen.

In other ways No Name is light years apart from Sense and Sensibility. In No Name the elder sister, Norah, is a secondary character, and the younger, Magdalen, is the heroine - a heroine who behaves as no Jane Austen heroine ever did or ever could behave. But the lesson learned as a result is not so unlike Austen's after all.

Eden, Emily

The Semi-attached Couple (1860)

In The Semi-attached Couple, a very young Lady Helen marries handsome, rich Lord Teviot. She loves, but does not comprehend him; he loves, but does not comprehend her; a series of misunderstandings and jealousies threaten their happiness.

The Semi-Detached House (1859)

The Semi-Detached House follows the lives and loves of two families living side by side in (you guessed it) a semi-detached house. Young, lively Lady Blanche moves into the house to await her confinement, while her beloved husband is abroad on a diplomatic mission. She dreads meeting the family next door, whom she imagines will be low and vulgar; but she is soon enchanted by the Hopkinsons, a family which includes two pleasing daughters near her own age, and strikes up a warm friendship with them.

These two short novels display a charming and witty style which certainly has something of the flavor of Jane Austen, though falling far short of Austen’s works in plotting and characterization.

Gaskell, Elizabeth

North and South (1855)

Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South is a stirring, sensual love story set amid the bitterness and violence of class antagonism in England during the Industrial Revolution. Gaskell was a contemporary, not of Jane Austen, but of Eliot, Dickens and Charlotte Bronte; however, pride as well as prejudice figure prominently in North and South.

Margaret Hale is the daughter of a dissenting clergyman, uprooted from her beloved rural home in the south of England, and transplanted to the smoky manufacturing town of Milton-Northern. Intelligent and self-possessed but deeply passionate, Margaret is unfortunately burdened with the prejudice of her class against 'the vulgarity of tradespeople'. John Thornton is a mill-owner: forceful, resolute, honest, and defiant; afraid to show weakness, whether towards his workers, or towards Margaret. Gaskell's hero and heroine are fully fleshed out and thoroughly believable. In addition, Gaskell's portrayal of working class struggles shows an intimate knowledge of her subjects; she never falls back on stereotypes of good and evil to describe masters or men.

North and South is a bit slow getting started, but those who persist will be amply rewarded. Devotees of Austen, Eliot, and Bronte should find North and South eminently satisfying.

Wives and Daughters (1866)

Molly Gibson is happily growing to young womanhood when her much-beloved widowed father, the village doctor, marries a shallow and pretentious widow, with a daughter about Molly’s age. Though she dislikes and resents her stepmother, Molly is altogether captivated by her new stepsister, Cynthia. Unfortunately, Roger Hamley, the young man Molly has grown to love, is also captivated by the charming and beautiful Cynthia, as is another man with whom Cynthia shares a mysterious past.

Wives and Daughters is an absorbing tale — probably more like a George Eliot novel than one of Jane Austen’s, though some of its characters are distinctly 'Austenish' (Mr. Gibson, for example, is reminiscent of P&P’s Mr. Bennett; and Mrs. Gibson seems a direct descendant of Emma’s Mrs. Elton, with overtones of MP's Mrs Norris). There are various other characters and subplots which add complexity to the story. Unfortunately, Gaskell died just before finishing the book, so the conclusion must be left to the reader's imagination.

Hardy, Thomas

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)

When Gabriel Oak falls in love with Bathsheba Everdene, she is a beautiful, penniless young woman, he a farmer with every expectation of future prosperity. If we marry, he tells her, '...at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be — and whenever I look up, there you shall be.' Bathsheba dislikes this picture of wedded bliss, and rejects his offer. Soon after, she inherits a large, thriving farm, while Gabriel tragically loses his small, striving one; by a twist of fate, he ends up working for her.

Far from the Madding Crowd is the first nineteenth century British novel I ever read, and is still one of my most favourite. The characters are winning, the story memorable, and its many sparks of humour delightful. Moreover, Hardy has so wonderfully conveyed the peace and loveliness of the quiet rural world his characters inhabit that, on re-reading this book, a beautiful, indescribable aura of tranquillity sometimes stays with me for days afterward.

A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)

Aspiring architect Stephen Smith comes to the seaside village of Endelstow to work on a church restoration project. While there, he falls in love with Elfride Swancourt, the parson’s daughter, and they become engaged. When her father learns Smith is not well-born, however, he forbids the match. The lovers make an aborted attempt to elope; Elfride returns home the following day unmarried, but still chaste. Smith goes to India, planning to return and marry Elfride after making his fortune; but while he is gone, Elfride falls in love with his best friend and mentor, Mr. Knight.

The first part of A Pair of Blue Eyes, covering the courtship of Smith and Elfride is very enjoyable, and contains a good deal of humour. The second part, dealing with relationship of Elfride and Knight, is less compelling. 

Inchbald, Elizabeth

A Simple Story (1791)

A Simple Story could almost be read as two separate novels. The first tells the story of the beautiful young heiress, Miss Milner, who falls in love with her inflexibly principled guardian, Mr. Dorriforth (later Lord Elmwood). There are numerous bars to their union – the foremost being that he is a Catholic priest, who has taken a vow of celibacy, and that she is a coquette whose behaviour repeatedly offends his strict moral code. By the end of Volume II, all obstacles preventing their marriage have been removed, and we are led to assume they will live happily ever after. However, as Volume III opens — seventeen years later — we learn they have not lived happily ever after. Lady Elmwood (nee Milner) is now dying, a fallen woman, and Lord Elmwood has long since cast off both her and their daughter Matilda. Volumes III and IV tell the story of the blameless Matilda’s endeavours to win back her implacable father’s affection

Though the characters in A Simple Story sometimes behave in ways that, to my mind, strain credulity, it is well-written, and a more enjoyable read than many other novels written before Jane Austen came along.

Marryat, Frederick

Newton Forster (1832)

A baby is rescued from a shipwreck off the coast of Cumberland, identified only by the initials on her linen. A trick played on a shrewish wife lands her in a lunatic asylum. A young man with a promising career as a merchant sea captain is impressed into the British Navy. A misogynistic lawyer is left the guardian of a young girl. All these threads are woven together, and their interconnections eventually revealed, in this somewhat Dickensian novel. An entertaining story, full of incident and adventure.

Meredith, George

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859)

Betrayed by his wife and best friend, Sir Austin Feverel turns hardened philosopher, and resolves to raise his young son by means of 'scientific' principles of his own formation. According to Sir Austin's 'System', young Richard, if protected from corrupting influences - particularly from the undeserving of the other sex (a group which, by Sir Austin's reckoning, includes most females) - will become 'something approaching to a perfect man'. 

As Richard grows, qualities such as pride, selfishness, deviousness, and spite spontaneously arise in his character, calling into question the wisdom of the 'System'. But through the influence of a wise and caring uncle, the boy begins to develop into an honest and honourable young man; and all proceeds fairly smoothly until, on the brink of manhood, he suddenly becomes awake to the existence of women. 

Sir Austin, hoping to avert what he believes to be a catastrophe waiting to happen, flies off to London to find an ideal mate for his ideal boy. In his absence, however, Richard meets lovely and worthy but low-born Lucy Desborough, and the two young people promptly fall in love. The remainder of the story chronicles the consequences of their romance.

The first two-thirds of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel are highly entertaining, but I found the conclusion altogether implausible. The great merit of this novel lies in its witty ironic tone, which is maintained almost to the end, and in its interesting and amusing characters, particularly the flawed but likable hero, his loving but misguided father, and an assortment of well-drawn supporting players such as Richard's loyal sidekick Ripton, sardonic cousin Adrian, materialistic aunt Doria, sympathetic Lady Blandish, quaint Mrs Berry, and alluring Mrs Mount.

Oliphant, Margaret

The Chronicles of Carlingford series:

'Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,' Jane Austen advised her niece, Anna Austen, in 1814. I don’t suppose Margaret Oliphant could have read Austen’s letters, or I might think she had this suggestion in mind when she wrote her Chronicles of Carlingford series of novels. In fact, she created the series hoping to match the success of Anthony Trollope’s Barshetshire novels. As The Chronicles of Carlingford center so much on the lives of the provincial clergy (and the disputes between 'high church' and 'low church' adherents), it would not be far off to call Oliphant a female Anthony Trollope — perhaps, a better Anthony Trollope. In The Chronicles of Carlingford, Oliphant created a collection of interesting characters and stories (some admittedly rather similar to each other), as well as a very appealing setting — where today’s reader can find a few hours’ pleasant refuge from the noise and bustle of modern life: '...the air was very still in Carlingford, where you could hear the bees in the lime-blossoms as you went to church in the the sunshine. All that world of soft air in which the embowered houses of Grange Lane lay beatified, was breathing sweet of the limes...' (from The Perpetual Curate)

The Doctor's Family (1863)

Young Dr. Rider, trying to establish his medical practice in the newer section of Carlingford, is burdened and harassed by a shiftless and troublesome elder brother Fred, who has taken up residence in his home. Then Fred's equally troublesome wife and three small children — whose existence comes as an unpleasant surprise to the doctor — also arrive in Carlingford, under the supervision of his wife's younger sister Nettie.

This novella (usually published together with the long short story 'The Rector') is a good introduction to the Carlingford series. It has plot and character elements which are echoed in the longer novel The Perpetual Curate, but there is sufficient variation to give pleasure even to readers already familiar with the latter.

The Perpetual Curate (1864)

Curate Frank Wentworth is impoverished, though a gentleman. He is well-liked in the provincial village of Carlingford, is doing important work with the poor in the 'Wharfside' district of the parish, and is in love with Miss Lucy Wodehouse. However, when Mr. Morgan arrives as the newly-appointed Rector of Carlingford, he resents the extra duties the curate is performing, as he sees it, without proper authority.

To complicate matters, Frank’s three aunts, who have the disposal of a family living in their control, install themselves in Carlingford to determine whether they will confer it on their nephew — a matter of some importance to him, because as long as he remains a curate, he cannot afford to marry Lucy. Unfortunately, his Aunt Leonora disapproves of his 'High Church' views, and vows to bestow the living elsewhere unless he changes them.

It was a happy day for me when I first discovered this wonderful novel. Its hero, though likeable and good (as all heroes ought to be), is also wonderfully human, with an inclination to be impatient and irritable when provoked, and an excess of pride which contributes something to the scrape he finds himself in. There’s quite a bit of wisdom offered up in The Perpetual Curate, along with plenty of humour, and a dollop of suspense. Memorable supporting characters add to the entertainment, including the three Wentworth aunts, Frank’s brother Jack, and the rector’s wife, Mrs. Morgan, whose mid-life marriage to the Rector, after a ten years’ engagement, forms a nice counterpoint to the relationship of Frank and Lucy.

Until it was reissued by Penguin in 1987 as a 'Virago Classic,' The Perpetual Curate had been out of print for many years. It ranks with some of the best literature of the nineteenth century, and deserves to be much more widely known than it has been.

Miss Marjoribanks (1866)

In Miss Marjoribanks (pronounced Marchbanks), the eponymous heroine returns from school to live with her widowed father in Carlingford. Her oft-avowed purpose is 'to be a comfort to dear papa.' Her true 'mission' is to reform the pitiable mess that passes for society in Grange Lane (wherein dwells the upper echelon of Carlingford) through her own wise and benevolent leadership. Extremely heavy in irony, the book continually refers to Lucilla Marjoribanks’ gift for social politics as 'genius,' and repeatedly describes her efforts in military or imperial terms.

The back cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Miss Marjoribanks quotes Q.D. Leavis’ statement that Lucilla Marjoribanks is "the missing link... between Jane Austen’s Emma and George Eliot’s Dorothea Brooke, and ‘more entertaining, more impressive and more likeable than either.’" Well, this is quite an overstatement, to be sure (see my review of Charlotte Yonge's The Clever Woman of the Family, below, for my own choice for missing link). Miss Marjoribanks is slightly and superficially akin to Miss Brooke and Miss Woodhouse; but as a work of literature Miss Marjoribanks can hardly be classed with Emma or Middlemarch — nor are Emma or Dorothea likely to be supplanted by Lucilla in the hearts and minds of most readers. Indeed, Lucilla seems two-dimensional by comparison with Austen’s and Eliot’s heroines — hardly more than a caricature of a woman. Perhaps it was Oliphant’s intention to show that when women with brains and abilities are prevented from exercising their talents in any but the narrowest domestic and social spheres, they are reduced to mere caricatures of human beings. In any case, taken on its own terms, Miss Marjoribanks is certainly interesting and entertaining enough to warrant a look.

Trollope, Anthony

Ayala's Angel (1881)

Egbert Dormer is a successful artist with a taste for beautiful things, who treats himself and his family to every indulgence. But when he dies, 'and his pretty things are sold,' they do not bring enough to cover his debts. His two orphaned daughters are therefore left penniless. Lucy, 21, goes to live in the respectable but rather grim and penurious home of her aunt and uncle, the Dossetts. Ayala, 19, is sent to live with a different aunt and uncle, the wealthy Sir Thomas and Lady Tringle.

Lucy is not happy living with the Dossetts, though she believes she can bear with the austere Dossett household better than Ayala could. Lucy is in love with sculptor Isidore Hamel, a friend of her late father - but Hamel is dependent on his own dictatorial father, who lives in Rome and wishes his son to live there with him. There seems little hope that it will ever be in his power to marry Lucy, or that she will ever escape the uncongenial companionship of her stern Aunt Dossett.

Beautiful, headstrong Ayala, like Austen's Marianne Dashwood, has only a romantic ideal of the sort of man she could fall in love with - her 'angel of light,' as she thinks of him. In the course of the story, Ayala attracts three eligible suitors, but it begins to appear that no one can compare with the hero of her dreams.

Ayala's behaviour at times seemed a little incredible to me, and there were some subplot elements that added little to the story, and would perhaps have been better left out. These criticism aside, I found Ayala's Angel quite an enjoyable diversion.

Lady Anna (1874)

When the beautiful and well-born but poor and ambitious Josephine Murray marries the irredeemably wicked Earl Lovel, she believes she has at last acquired the wealth and rank she covets. After six months of marriage, however, the villainous Earl informs her their marriage was a sham, and the child she is expecting will be illegitimate: he already has a wife alive and well in Italy. When he returns to that country, Josephine, the would-be Countess, is banished from his estate, and becomes obsessed with proving the validity of her marriage and the legitimacy of her daughter Anna. Though shunned by the Earl's family and by 'society', she is befriended by a tailor named Thomas Thwaite. Over the ensuing years, Thwaite exhausts his own small means to help her and her daughter, and Anna's only playmate and friend, as she grows from childhood to womanhood in poverty, is the tailor's son Daniel.

The Earl eventually dies intestate, and while a distant cousin, the nearest male heir, inherits the late Earl's title and property, the disposal of his enormous fortune is still to be determined. Luckily, the new Earl proves to be a decent young man who wishes to act rightly in the matter. As evidence in favor of the hopeful Countess and her daughter begins to multiply, the lawyers suggest a compromise: the young Earl should marry the young Lady Anna and unite their interests. After meeting lovely Anna, the Earl is delighted to agree to their plan. The Countess, whose one abiding desire has been to establish her daughter in the elevated sphere to which she was born, is also eager to accomplish the match; but unbeknownst to her, Anna has already promised herself to Daniel Thwaite, the tailor's son.

The bulk of the story recounts Anna's struggle to sort out her feelings about these two disparate suitors, and to reconcile her duty to Daniel, her duty to her mother, and her duty to herself in making her final choice. As I read the book, my own opinion as to which man Anna should marry shifted several times. Nonetheless, I was satisfied with the conclusion. Lady Anna perhaps not a great book, but it is a reasonably interesting one.

Yonge, Charlotte

The Clever Woman of the Family (1865)

Like Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch, Rachel Curtis (the 'Clever Woman' of the title) longs to live a more useful and more meaningful life than that generally accorded to young ladies of her station. Like Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse, Rachel also has an arrogant habit of believing she knows better than anyone else how the world ought to be arranged. She governs her own life foolishly, and with great presumption manipulates the lives of others; and like both Dorothea and Emma, she makes colossal blunders in the process. Her actions, however, unlike Dorothea's, hurt other people more than herself; and unlike Emma's, they result in tragedy as well as comedy. The story also offer a rather unusual and utterly lovable hero, and a Persuasion-like subplot of two lovers long kept apart by family disapproval and personal misfortune.

Like Yonge's other works, this novel has an instructional purpose and a high religious & moral tone. However, in this case I did not find these so heavy-handed as to interfere at all with my considerable enjoyment of the book. Needless to say, The Clever Woman of the Family is hardly a feminist manifesto - but then, it was the written and set in the Victorian era, when the mere idea that it was not only acceptable, but necessary, for a young woman like Rachel to read and study deeply (as the author quite clearly implies) was pretty radical stuff.

Heartsease (1854)

As the story opens, pretty, humble, ignorant but devout Violet Moss, barely 16 years old, marries the charming and handsome but selfish Arthur Martindale. Soon his improvidence, and his upper-crust family's disapproval threaten their happiness. For me the real heroine of the book, however, is Arthur’s sister, Theodora, whose willfulness, passion, and benevolence make her a much more interesting character than the cloyingly sweet, submissive, and tediously pious Violet. Percy Fotheringham loves Theodora for her 'noble nature,' despite its flaws, and determines to 'tame the shrew'; but he finds, after they become engaged, that her 'besetting sins' are more difficult to correct than he had imagined

The plot of Heartsease is at times dramatic, encompassing not only family and romantic difficulties, but illness, fire, and money troubles; however, many readers will find the heavy-handed religious tone of the book irritating.

All material ©2004, 2005, 2006 Joan Ellen Delman