Review: Hester, by Margaret Oliphant

Review: Hester, by Margaret Oliphant

a review by Rich Horton

Here I continue my discovery of Victorian writers. This ongoing project has been as rewarding as any reading I have done for a long time. There is something in the Victorian approach -- partly the prose, partly the particular angle on realist fiction, partly the portrayal of an interesting historical time, and also, I think, the use of author-viewpoint omniscient. I maintain that this is a tremendous way to tell a story, and the more recent insistence on, typically, either first-person or tight-third (sometimes tight-third with multiple viewpoints) is an overreaction. Those are certainly valid choices for many stories, but the near abandonment of omniscient is a loss of a great tool.

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was born in Scotland in 1828. Her mother was named Margaret Oliphant, her father Francis Wilson. She married a cousin, Frank Wilson Oliphant (the name suggests he may have been a double cousin.) They moved to London, and had six children. Frank, a stained glass artist, contracted tuberculosis, and the family moved to Italy for his health, but he died there. Margaret returned to England, to Windsor. She had already published some novels and stories, and now set to work writing regularly to support her family. Her life was generally sad, it seems -- all six of her children predeceased her, and so did other family members (a couple of dissolute brothers) whom she supported. She wrote quickly, and ended up publishing 93 novels, as well as some nonfiction (including a rather frank autobiography) and many stories, some of these supernatural. She died in 1897, at 69. 

Her prolificity may have harmed her reputation. Indeed she herself worried about her literary status, in particular with respect to George Eliot. But if she concluded that she would not be ranked with Eliot by posterity -- which proved true, of course -- it does not follow that her work was negligible. Indeed, to be the second best, or fourth or tenth best!, Victorian novelist is hardly anything to be ashamed of. And on the evidence of Hester -- considered perhaps her best novel -- she was very good indeed at the top of her form.

Hester was published in 1883. As with most of her work, it was signed Mrs. Oliphant. This was common practice for married women writers at that time, but the present day editions tend to use the writer's full name. That said, Mrs. Oliphant was how she chose to sign her books, and certainly that may have been a surrender to convention, but there is also evidence that, especially in her case, her identity as "Mrs. Oliphant" was important to her, perhaps especially given her husband's early death, and the fact that Oliphant was her mother's maiden name.

Hester opens sometime in the late 1820s, with a careful description of the background to Vernon's, a provincial bank in the town of Redborough. The bank has a reputation for conservativism, making it a very safe place to keep your money. It has been owned for generations by the Vernon family, and the current owner is one John Vernon. He was expected to marry his cousin Catherine, who has as much hereditary right to the bank as he, but who will not be in charge because she's a woman. Instead, John marries a pretty woman who is part of a respected county family, and cousin to a baronet -- hence by some measures of higher social status than merely wealthy people like the Vernons. John builds a new house for his bride, and otherwise keeps her in luxury. And somehow the bank is not doing quite as well -- whether due to John Vernon's extravagance, or his poor management, or both, is not clear. Then comes a rumor of a run -- which will ruin the bank. John Vernon is nowhere to be found -- he has run away and abandoned his responsibilities. All is lost -- until Catherine Vernon is summoned, and, using her personal fortune (as a descendant of the bank's founder) and her, it turns out, very impressive management skills ("she has the brain of a man" people say, not entirely in an approving way) she saves the bank. Over the next few decades she makes it as successful as ever, and also establishes a reputation as a wonderful philanthropist.

In the late 1850s, after John Vernon dies in France, his wife and their 14 year old daughter return to England, and are offered a place in a house Catherine Vernon owns, called "The Vernonry" as a wry pun based on its original name, The Heronry. Catherine has retired from an active role in the bank, handing the reins to two cousins, Edward and Harry. Edward is Catherine's favorite, and the more intelligent of the two. Harry is much more stolid, and lazier, interested more in football than banking -- though he is faithful enough about doing his work. 

Hester and her mother, called Mrs. John, settle into their new rooms. The Vernonry has been subdivided into several apartments, and Oliphant takes great joy in sardonically portraying some of the other residents, particularly two sisters, Martha and Matilda Vernon-Ridgway; and another cousin, Mr. Mildmay Vernon. They are mean and jealous people, professing gratitude at the place Catherine has given them, but ever sarcastically snipping at her behind her back. There is another couple, Captain Rowley Morgan and his wife, who are in their 80s. Captain Morgan is a connection to Catherine on her mother's side, so "not really a Vernon" as the Miss Vernon-Ridgways insist, and they are more truly grateful to Catherine. Hester befriends the Morgans, and both in their way are moral beacons for her (even though they are not perfect people either.)

Hester herself is an energetic and intelligent girl, hoping to help her mother out by doing real work, such as teaching French to young women. She is also spirited enough to openly defy Catherine. The two set up as cordial enemies. And we realize that while Catherine's philanthropy is real, it is also a bit self-serving. And her attitude toward her beneficiaries, especially family members such as those in the Vernonry, is perceptibly condescending -- she fancies she can see through all their pretensions, and she probably can, but her response makes things no better.

Five years on comes the main action of the book. Hester is 19. She remains fiercely independent. But she has become something of a beauty. Harry's sister Ellen has married, and is setting herself up a social leader of the younger set in Redborough. Edward is inwardly chafing at his staid position as Catherine's more or less adopted son, and as her chosen leader of the bank; while publically he remains devoted, to the point of snubbing Hester at social events if Catherine is present while acting as if he is attracted to when they meet in other circumstances. Harry and Edward both are of an age they should probably marry, but there are precious few eligible women in their circle. Captain Morgan's grandson Roland is coming to visit him. 

So the stage is set. Harry is intrigued by Hester, but he is not at all an intellectual match for her. Edward begins to notice her more romantically, but she is troubled by his inability to honestly confront Catherine. Roland too is briefly an intriguing young man, but he is not terribly interested in marriage, and his grandfather is curiously cool to him -- it turns out, because his father was not a good person, and Captain Morgan fears he's ruined all his children, not to mention being a terrible husband to the Captain's daughter. And then Roland's sister Emma turns up -- and she is quite openly looking for her "chance" -- chance to marry, that is.

But I am making the novel seem like it has a marriage plot, as if the romance stories are the center of it. And that is not the case at all. For Hester does not want to be just a wife. She wants to do things. She wants to be a hero -- like, she ruefully acknowledges, her enemy Catherine Vernon was in saving the bank. And she also values truth, honesty. It's clear to the reader that whatever Edward's virtues, he is weak at the core, and not just in his treatment of Hester (and her mother.) And while Harry is pretty honest, he is also, as noted, a bit dull -- and not imaginative enough to give Hester scope for the life she may want. Roland himself is ambiguous -- his work is on the stock exchange, and that is suspicious, for it can involve dangerous speculation, and possibly outright dishonesty. And, indeed, he attracts the interest of Edward, and Harry, and Ellen's new husband -- will he play them for fools?

So -- the resolution beckons. Hester (even as the reader wants to warn her!) becomes intrigued by Edward's interest in her. Emma is angling for a proposal from another young man in Redborough. Roland has helped Ellen's husband, and Harry, and Edward, to make a bit of money with modest investments, but Edward wants to make a true fortune, so that he can escape Catherine's control. So Edward appropriates money that is truly owned by the bank, and starts to make risky investments, while hinting to Hester that they should marry and run away. And, inevitably, a crisis results ... I won't reveal the ending, though it's mostly not a surprise, if in some ways it defies expectations for this sort of novel. But it's involving and honest. 

What to say of the novel as a whole? It is truly delightful. Catherine and Hester are excellent characters. It's not much of a revelation to say that they are more like each other than either would like to admit. The minor characters are neat as well. The various residents of the Vernonry are a sort of chorus -- the nastier elements are comic relief, and Captain Morgan and his wife are oracles. The Morgans' granddaughter Emma is an excellent creation -- she is not likeable but she is understandable: she truly has been dealt a difficult hand as the youngest daughter of a genteel family sliding into poverty; and her grasping ways are both comic as displayed, and oddly forgiveable. Edward and Harry Vernon are perhaps closer to types, but useful and well-depicted types -- Edward the more intelligent but less honest, Harry quite definitely dull but true. Mrs. John Vernon is wonderfully portrayed -- a silly woman but a sweet woman.

And in the end, what we see, really, is an argument against the roles women in this society were forced into. Catherine escaped those roles -- but at some sacrifice. Mrs. John wholly accepted them, and ended up poor. Ellen tries to become a force in the only avenue available to her -- with some success but with a realization of that role's shallowness. And Hester -- Hester is left in almost tragic position. She is intelligent and strong and powerfully honest -- but there is no way for her to grow into her talents. The novel is also a successful social novel, portraying provincial life, and its limitations, along with the economic risks and injustices of 19th Century England.