The Waverley Novels: Superstition and the Enchanted Reader

Abstract

Superstition is a major element in almost all of the Waverley Novels and would merit attention if only for that reason.2 Its significance, however, goes beyond the fact that it is a characteristic topic in Scott's fiction as well as in other works, such as Rime of the Ancient Mariner, loosely grouped under the title of Romanticism. For the attitude which Scott takes towards superstition is a contradictory one, at once rational and superstitiously irrational in its own right; and this contradiction is repeated in the attitudes he takes towards the past, women, class differences, and the reader. By analyzing the appearance of superstition in Scott's work, in fact, one may come to a new reading of that work which not only helps to restate its importance in literary history but which also helps to show how the contradictions within it are essential to its masterly style. Superstition would be an entirely uncomplicated topic in Scott's novels if the rational notice taken of it were allowed to pass unchallenged. The following reference to an incident at the Tower of Ravenswood is representative of such comment: