In the late 18th century and early 19th century, women authors dominated the emerging genre of the novel; they claimed it as their own. While men such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Samuel Taylor Coleridge mocked the trashy novels of the circulating library, female authors quietly got on with writing for its ever-expanding market of readers. Today many of them are barely read and when they are they are usually compared to the one that we have all heard of. Predictably, this new edition of Susan Ferrier’s novel Marriage, first published in 1818, is described as “the Scottish equivalent of Jane Austen”.
Ferrier (1782-1854) was the educated daughter of a prominent lawyer who included Sir Walter Scott and Robbie Burns among his large circle of acquaintances. Scott was an admirer of her work and dubbed her his “sister shadow”. Marriage, which was Ferrier’s first novel, begins in England. It explores the consequences of marrying for love and not for money. The heroine, Lady Juliana, a vain, shallow and beautiful young woman, is in love with a poor Scottish soldier, but is told by her father that she must make a politically advantageous marriage. The earl tells his daughter that for the aristocracy, marriage is a transaction “for the greater aggrandisement of the family — for the extending of their political influence”. Romantic love, he says, charmingly, is for the plebs, for “ploughmen and dairy maids”.
Lady Juliana ignores his advice and elopes to Scotland with her lover, where she is thrown upon the mercy of his Scottish relatives. She loathes and despises Scotland — its disgusting food, miserable weather and coarse manners — and spends most of the time plotting to go home to England. After giving birth to twin girls, she takes one of the babies (Adelaide) with her to England, and gives away the other (Mary) to a relative.
Unsurprisingly, the narrative springs to life in Scotland, where there is a Hardy-esque chorus of rustics and relatives. Much of the comedy derives from Lady Juliana’s bewildered response to their manners and mores: on first hearing the bagpipes, she complains of “that abominable bladder” of “hideous sounds that assailed her ears”.
Regrettably, the action soon returns to England, where the twin daughters are compared and contrasted for nigh on 500 pages. Adelaide grows up to be selfish and ambitious and marries for social advantage, and Mary, a devout Christian, marries for love. Ferrier, unlike the more savvy Scott, might have done better to have remained in the familiar landscape of Scotland, rather than moving the plot to London.
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Ferrier writes lively and spry dialogue, and has a caustic take on the vanities of the upper classes. This new edition would have benefited from a glossary for those readers unfamiliar with Scotch dialect: “na twa cannier beasts atween that and Johnny Groat’s Hooss . . . they wad hae her at the castle door in a crack. Gin they were ance down the brae.”
She is good at social realism, but unintentionally hilarious when it comes to sentimentalism. In another scene, reminiscent of Dickens, we meet a little boy who is addicted to the Bible and the Psalms, who dies young, saying the words: “Dinna waken me, I’m ga’en home.”
The rather brutal truth, however, is that it is difficult to imagine anyone wanting to read this novel for pleasure, except for English literature students, who are routinely encouraged to spurn white male authors and to devour female authors, even if their novels are second-rate. Ferrier’s second novel opens with a tribute to Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that there is no passion so deeply rooted in human nature as that of pride.” There is a reason why Austen’s fiction continues to delight and enthral generations of readers. Her’s novels are nimble, elegant steeds, compared with the clunky shire horse novels of Ferrier.
Marriage by Susan Ferrier, Virago, 544pp, £9.99