Charlotte M. Yonge: Reading, Writing, and Recycling Historical Fiction in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] Budge argues convincingly that the “Victorian typological world view” should be traced—not to the impact of German idealism or early nineteenth‐century Evangelicalism—but to the Common Sense philosophers and theologians of the late eighteenth century such as Joseph Butler. An expanded version of Budge’s analysis here appears in chapters four and five of his recent book, Charlotte M. Yonge: Religion, Feminism, and Realism in the Victorian Novel (Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2007). [2] Yonge slightly misquotes canto II, verse iv, substituting “thou must watch with me” for “I shall watch with thee”. The line also appears earlier in canto I, verse xxii in the form “he shall watch with thee”, as part of Lady Branksome’s instructions to her retainer (Scott, Poetical Works 6). [3] See R.B. Anolik, “Gothic Murder: Containment of Horror in Charlotte Yonge’s Chantry House”, for a fuller exploration of Yonge’s engagement with the Gothic genre in this novel. This paper suggests that Yonge creates a “moral synthesis” which brings closure to the “typically disruptive Gothic text”. [4] Ironically, the box of silver coins has been planted by Lovel—who is believed to be illegitimate himself and thus rejected as a suitor for Isabella Wardour—in an effort to save Sir Arthur from ruin (295–96). [5] The two ladies afford a great contrast, though. While Lady Glenallen is a sinister matriarch whose wicked and duplicitous attempt to prevent her son’s marriage leads to the suicide of the woman he loves and his own decline, Margaret Winslow is a victim of family pride and greed. The first creates a destructive family secret, the consequences of which are only set right by her death; the second exposes a fraud after her own demise. [6] Yonge herself was aware of the criticism in sections of the press concerning her use of the supernatural, and wrote to her friend Miss Barnett that “indeed I did not put in the ghost for the sake of variety or sensation, but to work out my own belief and theory. I could tell you things that I quite believe that chime with it” (Coleridge, Yonge 306).