Old Bestseller Review: Belinda, by Rhoda Broughton

Old Bestseller Review: Belinda, by Rhoda Broughton

a review by Rich Horton

Rhoda Broughton (1840-1920) was a very popular writer in the last third of the 19th century, and continued publishing until her death. She was born in Wales, the grandaughter of a baronet, and her uncle was Sheridan LeFanu, the great writer of supernatural stories, including Carmilla, one of the earliest vampire stories. Her first two novels were serialized in Dublin University Magazine, edited by LeFanu. Her early novels were popular, but were denigrated as "sensation novels", with plots such as having a married man kill his mistress and himself in despair. Along with Mary Elizabeth Braddon, she was one of the "Queens of the circulating libraries". Belinda was part of her attempt to rehabilitate her reputation with less sensationalistic works. Happily, both Broughton and Braddon have experienced something of a revival in the last few decades.

Belinda's heroine is Belinda Churchill, a young woman (20 at the outset of the novel) who lives with her grandmother and with her younger sister Sarah. They seem to be in comfortable financial circumstances, though their parents must be dead. We meet them in Germany on an extended visit. Sarah, a vivacious and flirtatious girl, has become engaged, for about the seventh time, this time to an aging Professor named Forth. And Belinda meets a young man, David Rivers, whose father is wealthy but, unfortunately in the eyes of Belinda's family, in business. And soon David and Belinda are deeply in love, while Sarah is trying to extricate herself from her inappropriate engagement. The characters are quickly established -- Sarah is effervescent and friendly, Granny is profoundly lazy, Belinda is internally passionate but externally rather cold, hard to get close to. Professor Forth is a bore, and an hypochondriac. David Rivers, it must be said, is a very thin character. The other recurring character is an impossibly rude and pushing woman named Miss Watson, who will not take no for an answer, and in so doing thrusts herself into any social situation at the most unpropritious times. 

David and Belinda's relationship proceeds slowly, due to Belinda's shyness and coldness, and when Sarah finally pushes her to maneuver him to proposing, just as they are about to return home, David leaves suddenly, even as Belinda as arranged a rendezvous. Belinda and Sarah return home, and for some reason David never contacts them. Belinda is thrown into a deep depression, and after the vile Miss Watson reports having seen David Rivers in the company of a young woman, Belinda decides -- against Sarah's desperate opposition -- to agree to marry Professor Forth, with the understanding that it's a loveles (and presumably sexless) marriage, and that he shall teach her Greek and suchlike while she acts as a secretary to him. And so they do marry, and the Professor turns out to be an abusive taskmaster, while Belinda finds that she doesn't find a classical education inspiring (at least not the way the Professor does it) and begins to hate him. And, of course, we learn that David's absence was for a very good reason, and so he's back in the picture,but of course any relationship is entirely improper.

This summary mskes the novel sound downright dreary, but it isn't. Part of this is that though this situation is objectively terrible for Belinda, the novel remains oddly lighthearted, and often funny. Part of this is due to the character of Sarah, who really is a delight. Part is the comic relief -- the awful Miss Watson and the horrible Professor Forth are awful and horrible in quite comical ways. Belinda and David do eventually meet again and are tempted into a technically improper relationship, though of course they never cross boundaries. There is a portrait, clearly drawn from life, of the Professor's college, here called Oxbridge though it's openly based on Oxford, where Broughton was living by that time. There is a climactic trip to the Lake District, after the Professor's insistence on overworking Belinda drives her close to death. And the reader can see all along the only solution -- which comes as no real surprise.

It's not a great novel. The plotting is exiguous, and the key events are implausible. (For that matter, Sarah's initial engagement to Professor Forth makes no sense at all -- it's inconsistent with her character, and clearly just an initiating plot device.) But Broughton is a fine writer, with an eye for appropriate images, and she's effective in characterizing those people she wishes to depict. (Though as noted, when she isn't really interested in close observation, as with David Rivers, the character is essentially a placeholder.) So -- Sarah, Belinda, Miss Watson, the Professor ... all do come to life. The novel is written in present tense (apparently a habit of Broughton's) but that doesn't distract the reader. So -- if not a great novel, this is a pretty good novel, and quite enjoyable.

The reader will probably have noted a distinct echo, in the marriage of Professor Forth and Belinda, to that of Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, which appeared a bit more than a decade earlier. The similarties can't be missed, but the two novels are quite different, and certainly Belinda and Dorothea are much different characters. Having said that, it is reliably asserted that Professor Forth is based a rather well known academic, a one time friend of Broughton's, Mark Pattison, the Rector of Oxford's Lincoln College. Pattison was notorious for having married a much younger woman, who refused sexual relations with him after a few years of marriage. And he was considered a bit of a fussy academic -- though, unlike Forth, he was apparently a well-respected teacher. Pattison's friendship with Broughton deteriorated after he began an affair with another much younger woman. Interestingly, one of Pattison's research interests was a man named Isaac Casaubon, about whom he wrote a biography. Casaubon from Middlemarch has also often been associated with Pattison, though this position is controversial.