Susan Ferrier was a Scottish author, somewhat contemporary to Jane Austen (although she lived longer and published her novels a bit later). She is sometimes called "Scotland's Jane Austen," so of course I was curious to check out Marriage, her most well-known work, as my first choice of book during Georgianuary.
I can see why she is compared to Austen, although it does her a disservice, because no one can truly match Austen for wit and economy of language. Still, Ferrier paints amusing enough portraits. I suspect that a 19th-century reader would have found much more to laugh at than I did. My chuckling moments were rather far between.
This is a tale of two generations. Lady Juliana marries for love and regrets it (because she expects to always be wealthy, pampered and amused). Her husband takes her from England to his native Scotland, and she HATES it. One of the funniest scenes in the book is her introduction to the bagpipe, and her husband's family's total confusion at why she would be frightened of such an innocuous thing. As soon as she can leave, she does, but not before bearing twin daughters. She mildly approves of one baby and is actively disgusted by the cries and ill-health of the other. Her sister-in-law, a kindly, rational, loving woman, begs to be allowed to raise the second daughter as her own, and thus the households are split.
Fast-forward about 18 years. Mary (the second daughter) has grown up into a well-adjusted, sensible, pretty girl with a sense of humor. When she goes to England to meet her long-estranged mother and sister, she's in for some rude shocks. They are cold and selfish. Mary's only ally is her cousin Emily, an honest though sometimes short-tempered girl who speaks her mind and comes to admire Mary, even though she doesn't always agree with her.
The novel examines the effect various behaviors and choices in marriage have on a person's happiness. Some love-marriages are unsuccessful, but some mercenary marriages are equally so. Mary watches and measures these different situations against the upbringing she had in Scotland, before finally engaging herself to a man that offers her every chance at a loving and rational happiness.
I liked Mary very much, I liked that she wasn't a stupid heroine, and that she was often said to laugh. She is very religious, but not judgmental of other people, and she isn't gullible or overly sentimental most of the time.
What kept me from liking this book more was that key moments of drama were glossed over. For instance, the moment when she and her suitor become engaged takes up... a couple of sentences. In fact, from that moment on there's not one line of dialogue between them. Not very satisfying. I recognize, of course, that the purpose of fiction has changed somewhat over time. Where we now expect to be entertained and to feel every feeling of our heroine, in the past the narrative's larger purpose was to illustrate lessons or broad commentary on life.
There were also whole chapters that introduced characters that were non-essential to the plot and never appeared again. Clearly, they fit into the theme of the novel, but a modern reader grows impatient with them.
I liked that the chapters were quite short (although the book itself was long), and Susan Ferrier is much more readable than Jane West (another female Georgian author from a couple of decades prior, whom I read last month). There was less moralizing and more story. But most of the time she doesn't approach the sharp prose of her neighbor to the south, Jane Austen. ( )

vain and selfish young woman runs away with penniless officer and is horrified by his family in Scotland. She returns to her brother's home in England with their son and one twin daughter, leaving the other to be reared by an aunt. Mary is taught self control and Christian principles by aunt who really lives them. When she visits England her mother rejects her, her sister ignores her and only her cousin seems to like her. Her mother expects her to marry a wealthy man but she is determined not to marry a man she does not know, love and respect. The fates of the sisters work out as one might expect from their characters.

The writing's not a patch on contemporaries Eliza Fenwick or Maria Edgeworth. ( )

At the time Susan Ferrier was writing this book, marriage was still the path to wealth and power. Children who could set you off on that path were domestic capital. The mountain of novels, good and bad, that dealt with the vagaries of courtship and marriage in Regency times is testament to its importance for the monied classes, and to its disastrous consequences if not done properly.

Lady Juliana, the seventeen year old daughter of the Earl of Courtland, could not have read the right novels, or else when her father told her she was to marry the Duke of L---, she would have been more compliant. The Earl contended it was

No such mighty sacrifice, when repaid with a ducal coronet, the most splendid jewels, the finest equipages, the most magnificent house, the most princely establishment, and the largest jointure, of any woman in England.

Juliana acquiesced, what else could she do, her empty head tempted by notions of becoming a duchess, with all the attendant dresses, balls and jewels.

Capriciousness was a defining characteristic of Lady Juliana however, and just before her wedding day, she eloped with "... the blue eyes, curling hair and fine-formed person of a certain captivating Scotsman". Unfortunately, her Henry Douglas was virtually penniless and in a few short months reality set in on both sides. Disowned by her father, they turned to his, and set off for a winter in Scotland.

Here the novel starts to deviate from the standard fare of its day. Its author, Susan Ferrier, was a Scot. The huge cultural differences between the English and the Scots, both real and perceived, were important to Ferrier. Had she been English, she probably wouldn't have sent her characters off to Scotland, and if she had, the story would have been quite different.

In the event, Lady Juliana and her husband were as useless and helpless as babes in the woods, completely unable to cope with life on an agricultural estate, even if it was called a castle. Juliana in particular was unable to discover any common ground with Henry's three aunts and four sisters, nor did she wish to. Ferrier has fun with their mutual incomprehension, aided by use of dialect. She was one of the first to use this tool, and she does it skilfully.

Ferrier had said "The only good purpose of a book is to inculcate morality , and convey some lesson of instruction as well as delight." She does well with the delighting part, but sudden shifts in tone steer her back towards the moral instruction, as if it was suddenly called to mind.

Lady Juliana was delivered of twin girls during her stay in Scotland. Shortly thereafter, she and Henry fled the wilds of Scotland for the dangers of society London, leaving one of the girls behind with Henry's elder brother and his wife. It is the reunion of the girls, now of marriageable age and living together with their mother, that allows Ferrier to explore further the emerging question of marrying for love. The old Earl had said "... it was very well for ploughmen and dairy-maids, and such canaille, to marry for love; but for a young woman of rank to think of such a thing, was plebeian in the extreme!". However, such thoughts had never stopped young girls from entertaining romantic notions of love. Ferrier now introduces the idea of a sort of responsible romantic love; two sensible people of the same rank and background falling in love and marrying, an idea that was creeping into untitled society.

She sets the two sisters up on each side of the marriage question; Adelaide, who has led the London life and learned from her mother's wretched example, and Mary, brought up as a sober and industrious child in Scotland. Here Ferrier goes back to the question of what constitutes a proper education for girls, one first hotly debated by the aunts back in Scotland as they dissect Lady Juliana's shortcomings. The presence of Lady Emily, the girls' cousin, serves to relieve the contrast and provide some real humour, for Lady Emily is an independent young woman who knows her own mind and is not afraid to speak it. The milieux of London and Bath allow Ferrier an opportunity to return to the social satire at which she excels.

[[Walter Scott]] considered Ferrier to be a writer on the level of her contemporaries [[Maria Edgeworth]] and [[Jane Austen]]. He supported he writing, singling her out for praise as one capable of continuing in the Scottish tradition. [Marriage] is a first novel, written in 1810 and published anonymously in 1818. Originally Ferrier had planned a co-authorship with Charlotte Clavering, niece of the all powerful Duke of Argyll. Charlotte's tastes, however, ran heavily to the Gothic, which had too much of sensational and too little of sensibility for Ferrier. The two eventually agreed that Ferrier would continue on her own, after Clavering contributed an early section. The novel was very successful, possibly due to the fact that some of the thinly disguised characters were recognizable to contemporary readers. Ferrier went on to write two more successful novels: [The Inheritance] and Destiny. Of planning [Marriage], she wrote tongue in cheek to Charlotte,

... the moral to be deduced from that is to warn all young ladies against runaway matches... I expect it will be the first book every wise matron will put into the hand of her daughter, and even the reviewers will relax of their severity in favour of the morality of this little work. Enchanting sight! already do I behold myself arrayed in an old mouldy covering, thumbed and creased, and filled with dog's ears.

At a little over five hundred pages, it may daunt the wise matron's daughter, but it was good fun indeed.

like an even funnier jane austen, 30 Dec. 2010

This review is from: Marriage (Paperback)
written in 1818, this novel tells of Lady Juliana, beautiful but poor, who thwarts her father's plans for her to marry into money ('the Duke of L-!' repeated Lady Juliana with a scream of horror and surprise, 'why he's red haired and squints and he's as old as you!') to wed Douglas.Obliged to seek refuge at his parental home in the Highlands, the comedy begins. I particularly like invalid Sir Sampson who requires carrying about and thus 'calls his man Philistine because he has Sampson in his hands'. Years go by, Juliana has twin daughters but rejects the weaker one who is gladly brought up by her Aunt Douglas. The latter part of the book lacks the comic tones of the start; we see virtuous daughter Mary leave her Highland idyll to meet her mother and sister Adelaide who has turned out as vain and silly as her mother. ( )