1800s
Castle Rackrent
Maria Edgeworth
Lifespan | b. 1767 (England), d. 1849 (Ireland)
First Published | 1800
First Published by | J. Johnson (London)
Full Title | Castle Rackrent: An Hibernian Tale
Though little known and read, Maria Edgeworth’s first novel is a small gem—several gems, perhaps, because it tells four stories of successive generations of the Rackrent family and their estate, linked by their narrator, Thady Quirk, loyal steward to the last three. The novel’s subtitle indicates the nature of its humor: “An Hibernian tale taken from facts, and from the manners of the Irish Squires, before the year 1782.” Sir Patrick is devoted to drink and wild living, while the debt-ridden Sir Murtagh lives for the law. Sir Kit is an inveterate gambler who dies in a duel, while the last squire, Sir Condy Rackrent, is a spendthrift politician and philanderer. Through varying degrees of neglect, profligacy, and obsession, the estate is finally run into the ground; or rather, it ends up in the hands of a canny young lawyer, Jason Quirk, none other than old Thady’s son. Once the reader’s ear is tuned to the vernacular idiom of Thady Quirk (because he is illiterate, the novel affects to be the transcription of an oral narrative), the ironic comedy of the old butler’s tale is easy to appreciate. Nevertheless, Edgeworth thought it necessary to include a glossary for her English readers.
Castle Rackrent has been long regarded as the first regional novel—it capitalizes on Edgeworth’s first-hand knowledge of Anglo-Irish relations in the late eighteenth century—as well as the first historical novel. It had a strong influence on Walter Scott, who greatly admired Edgeworth and referred to her as “the great Maria.” ST
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1800s
Henry of Ofterdingen
Novalis
Lifespan | b. 1772 (Germany), d. 1801
First Published | 1802, by G. Reimer (Berlin)
Given Name | Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg
Original Title | Heinrich von Ofterdingen
Henry of Ofterdingen, the most representative work of early German Romanticism, is an extraordinarily light and profound fusion of novel, fairy tale, and poem. Young Henry is a medieval poet who seeks the mysterious “blue flower” that, in his dreams, acquires the beautiful traits of the yet unknown Mathilda. He sets out on a long journey to gain his poetic and philosophical education. The novel, which reflects, in part, events in the life of its author, remained unfinished and was published posthumously. Its impact on the history of German literature and, in the long term, of European literature, was, however, remarkable.
Novalis originally thought of his novel as an answer to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, a work that he initially read with enthusiasm but later judged as being highly unpoetical; he disliked the victory of the economical over the poetic that Goethe’s work, in Novalis’s opinion, so conspicuously celebrates. Unlike Goethe’s text, Novalis’s simple narrative, interspersed with lyrical tales and exquisitely chiseled songs, ingeniously presents in literary form the mysticism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which was to influence Romantic thought considerably and with which he expressed the idea of describing a universal harmony with the help of poetry. The symbol of the blue flower, which is central in Henry’s quest, later became an emblem for the whole of German Romanticism, a symbol of longing and the search for the unattainable. LB
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1800s
Rameau’s Nephew
Denis Diderot
Lifespan | b. 1713 (France), d. 1784
First Published | 1805 (composed 1761–1784)
First Published by | Goeschen (Leipzig)
Original French Title | Le Neveu de Rameau
Denis Diderot is one of the most important figures of the French Enlightenment, a contemporary of Rousseau and Voltaire. As well as editing the world’s first encyclopedia, he managed to create a body of work that includes novels, philosophical dialogues, scientific essays, art, and drama criticism. Diderot was a polymath of verve and originality, and nowhere is this more visible than in Rameau’s Nephew. Part novel, part essay, part Socratic dialogue, it expanded the boundaries of what is possible in fiction.
The action is straightforward. While taking a stroll in the Palais-Royal gardens, the narrator, a philosopher, bumps into the nephew of the great composer Rameau, and they become engaged in conversation. Underlying their discussion is the question of morality and the pursuit of happiness, which they approach from opposite poles. The prudish philosopher argues for the Greek ideal of virtue being equal to happiness. The nephew, witty cynic and lovable scoundrel, shows that conventional morality is nothing other than vanity, that the pursuit of wealth is society’s guiding principle, and that what matters is how you are perceived, not how you actually are. The book is not a simple morality tale, however. Like its tragicomic hero, it is a complex challenge to all forms of reactionary thought and behavior. Too controversial to be published in Diderot’s lifetime, it is also a savage indictment of the moral hypocrisy, intellectual pretensions, and spiritual vacuity of eighteenth-century Parisian society. AL
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1800s
Elective Affinities
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Lifespan | b. 1749 (Germany), d. 1832
First Published | 1809
First Published by | J. F. Cotta (Tübingen)
Original Title | Die Wahlverwandtschaften
The phrase “elective affinities” is both precise and rich with ambiguity. It evokes a condition ripe with emotional and romantic possibilities. When Goethe chose Wahlverwandtschaften as his title, however, it was a technical term used solely in chemistry. That it subsequently came to have the connotations it does—both in German and in English—is in large part due to the power of Goethe’s elegantly rigorous novel.
Using both a scientific configuration of desire and the symbolism of nature, Goethe’s novel is a complex, yet measured and smoothly impersonal exploration of love. The marriage of Charlotte and Eduard is used to examine the perceptions of morality, fidelity, and self-development inscribed deeply within the concept of love. When this marriage is interrupted and challenged by the advent of the Captain and Ottilie, the state of marriage takes on a pastoral hue, at once idyllic and unreal. Through the reserved courtship between Charlotte and the Captain, and the consuming passion forged between Eduard and Ottilie, the novel lingers on the irresistible chaos of desire.
The novel was condemned at first for its immoral thesis that love had a chemical origin. But it is rather a sustained reflection on the complications arising out of human intercourse and demonstrates the ways in which our experience of other people makes our experience of love and desire fluid and unreliable. Just as love cannot be caught and immobilized in marriage, desire cannot rest with one person. PMcM
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1800s
Michael Kohlhaas
Heinrich von Kleist
Lifespan | b. 1777 (Germany), d. 1811
Partly Featured | 1808, in Phöbus
First Published | 1810, in Erzählungen
Full Name | Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist
Heinrich von Kleist’s short tale, based on a true chronicle, tells of an honest man who, after being wronged, becomes an outlaw and a murderer. Michael Kohlhaas, a hardworking horse dealer, is one day mistreated by an arrogant local aristocrat. He seeks redress through the courts, only to find that the powerful lord’s influence blocks him at every turn. Despairing, he agrees that his wife should petition the highest representative in the land, but she dies after being hurt by over-zealous bodyguards.
The initial trivial incident now becomes a cause for vengeance. Kohlhaas decides that, because the law has failed him, he has the right to claim justice through other means; so he razes the lord’s castle and kills his servants. He amasses a small army and rampages through the land, following the escaping aristocrat with fir
e and violence. Upon the intervention of Martin Luther, an amnesty is forged, and Kohlhaas is promised the legal justice he desires. But corruption and nepotism are rife, and Kleist complicates the tale by describing yet more twists and turns in Kohlhaas’s case.
The themes of justice, the right to obtain it, and the right to resist corruption are still relevant today, making Michael Kohlhaas a surprisingly contemporary read. The tale pivots on the ambiguity between justice and vengeance, from both the official political side and that of the powerless individual. Kohlhaas’s eventual fate is at once logical and absurd, fitting and deeply unsatisfying. JC
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1800s
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
Lifespan | b. 1775 (England), d. 1817
First Published | 1811
First Published by | T. Eggerton (London)
Original Language | English
Charles Brock’s illustration of Sense and Sensibility sentimentalizes Austen’s work to match the patronizing image of her as “gentle Jane.”
Like Jane Austen’s other novels, this is a marriage plot: its principal protagonists are all, eventually, united with the partners they deserve. Important as this resolution is, however, it is not where the chief satisfaction of Austen’s narrative lies. Elinor and Marianne, the two sisters at its center, may well correspond to the sense and sensibility of the novel’s title, but a simple identification of reason and passion as their enduring qualities would be unwise.
The creation of perspective, the transition between apparent extremes, is achieved primarily through language, in the precise placement and patterning of phrase, clause, and sentence to create character. As a result, her prose charts exactly the movement between the distortions and blindness of passion, and the reasonable good sense that always seems to succeed it. Sense and Sensibility was developed from an earlier novel in letters called Elinor and Marianne, but it was only by abandoning the epistolary form of her eighteenth-century precursors that Austen was able to achieve such analytical precision. Her shift in titles is instructive: we no longer move from one viewpoint to another, but remain within a common syntax that propagates the implications created by patterns of ideas. The novelist now writes with one voice, but in doing so, she speaks for all the voices she creates. DT
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1800s
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Lifespan | b. 1775 (England), d. 1817
First Published | 1813
First Published by | T. Eggerton (London)
Original Language | English
Pride and Prejudice is the second of four novels that Jane Austen published during her lifetime. As widely read now as it was then, Austen’s romance is indisputably one of the most enduringly popular classics of English literature. Written with incisive wit and superb character delineation, Pride and Prejudice tells the story of the Bennett family, its ignorant mother, negligent father, and five very different daughters, all of whom Mrs. Bennett is anxious to see married off. Set in rural England in the early nineteenth century, its major plot line focuses on the second eldest daughter, Elizabeth, and her turbulent relationship with the handsome, rich, but abominably proud Mr. Darcy. Slighted by him when they first meet, Elizabeth develops an instant dislike of Darcy, who, however, proceeds to fall in love with her, despite his own better judgement. Subsequent to a disastrous and rejected marriage proposal, both Elizabeth and Darcy eventually learn to overcome their respective pride and prejudice.
Although the novel has been criticized for its lack of historical context, the existence of its characters in a social bubble that is rarely penetrated by events beyond it is an accurate portrayal of the enclosed social world in which Austen lived. Austen depicts that world, in all its own narrow pride and prejudice, with unswerving accuracy and satire. At the same time, she places at its center, as both its prime actor and most perceptive critic, a character so well conceived and rendered that the reader cannot but be gripped by her story and wish for its happy dénouement. In the end, Austen’s novel remains so popular because of Elizabeth, and because of the enduring appeal to men and women alike of a well-told and potentially happily-ending love story. SD
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1800s
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
Lifespan | b. 1775 (England), d. 1817
First Published | 1814
First Published by | T. Eggerton (London)
Original Language | English
One of Austen’s more sober novels, Mansfield Park deals with her trademark themes—marriage, money, and manners. It tells the familiar story of a young woman, Fanny Price, and her pursuit of the right husband. Fanny is the archetypal poor relative, who is “rescued” from her large and impoverished family to be raised in her aunt’s household, the seat of Sir Thomas Bertram, Mansfield Park. Effectively orphaned and an outsider, Fanny is variously tolerated and exploited, and suffers excruciating humiliations at the hands of her other aunt, the mean-spirited Mrs. Norris. Her cousins, with the exception of the warm and principled Edmund, are shallow characters who court the attentions of any visiting gentry, such as the rakish Crawfords, with disastrous consequences. Fanny, by contrast, is stronger on virtue than vice, and her sterling qualities are steadily revealed, though readers sometimes find her conventional femininity off-putting.
Typically, Austen mocks the pretensions of the rich and idle—their double standards, their condescension, and, indeed, their claims to moral legitimacy. Also typical are Austen’s allusions to the darker side of the Mansfield Park idyll, made through a few strategically placed details. The Bertram family fortune, it turns out, comes—on the backs of slaves—from plantations in Antigua. Intriguingly, how much attention we must give Jane Austen’s attention to these details has recently placed the novel at the center of bitter critical dispute. ST
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1800s
Emma
Jane Austen
Lifespan | b. 1775 (England), d. 1817
First Published | 1816
First Published by | T. Eggerton (London)
Original Language | English
Austen said of her fourth published novel that it would contain a heroine no one would like but herself—and as if to prove her wrong, generations of readers have warmed to the flawed protagonist of Emma. “Handsome, clever and rich,” Emma is a young woman used to ruling over the small social world of the village of Highbury. The comedy as well as the psychological interest of the novel lies in seeing what happens when people fail to act as she hopes and ordains. She attempts to pair her protégée Harriet Smith with two unsuitable candidates, and completely fails to read the true direction of the men’s affections. She also fails to decipher, until it is almost too late, the nature of her own feelings for Mr. Knightley, her wise neighbor who functions throughout as Emma’s only critic. Some recent readers view the novel as dangerously paternalistic in its intertwining of romance and moral education, but it should be said that Emma is less concerned with teaching a lesson than in exploring the mortifying effects of learning one.
Austen’s trademark blending of an omniscient and ironic third-person narrative voice with a more indirect style that renders individual points of view comes into its own. A form suited both to the novel’s concerns with individual, solipsistic desires and to its overarching moral commitment to the importance of frankness and mutual intelligibility, it points the way toward later nineteenth-century works of novelistic realism. CC
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1800s
Rob Roy
Sir Walter Scott
Lifespan | b. 1771 (Scotland), d. 1832
First Published | 1817
First Published by | A. Constable & Co. (Edinburgh)
Original Language | English
“You have requested me, my dear friend, to bestow some of that leisure, with wh
ich Providence has blessed the decline of my life, in registering the hazards and difficulties which attended its commencement.”
Despite its title, this novel recounts more of the experiences of Francis (“Frank”) Osbaldistone than any sustained history of the life of its eponymous outlaw, the legendary “Scottish Robin Hood.” And yet, this distinctly Scottish romance was influential not only in consolidating the disparate accounts of the life of Rob Roy MacGregor, but also in mythologizing the Scottish Highlands as the place of sublime but barbaric attraction for many nineteenth-century English tourists. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, which sought to restore the ascendancy forfeited by the Stuarts in 1688. Scott tracks Frank’s experiences as he journeys from his family home in London, to his uncle’s residence in Northumbria, and on to Glasgow and the highlands of Scotland. Frank crosses the Scottish border in order to retrieve the assets of his father. Frank’s progress northward brings with it exposure to a range of colorful personalities, not least the legendary Rob Roy, who assists Frank in the recovery of the assets.
Much of the narrative impetus of Rob Roy derives from the social and political conflicts and divisions that had plagued Great Britain ever since the Act of Union of 1707. But the vision that Scott ultimately offers up in the novel is one in which the various tensions between commerce and poetry, English and Scottish, Jacobite and Hanoverian, highland and lowland, Catholic and Protestant, have been successfully reconciled. DaleT
1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die Page 12
