The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

The Herione, Or, Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader Week 1: Chapters I - XII

I have not posted any background information regarding the author or the book as there is little to be had, so we're jumping right into week 1. While considered Gothic, The Heroine is a parody and satirical. The Heroine follows the adventures of Cherry Wilkinson, the self-styled Cherubina de Willoughby. The Heroine is an epistolary novel consisting of an introduction and forty-nine letters.

1) The author, Barrett, opened with "The Heroine to the Reader." What did you think of this?

2) Cherry has read one too many Gothic novels, and her father burns her books after finding the Governess and Butler kissing. Do you think this was a realistic reaction?

3) After Cherry discovers a mysterious fragment of parchment and an antiquated portrait in her father's desk, she becomes convinced that she is a heroine and an heiress and that the farmer is not her father, but instead an assassin with designs upon her life. Why do you think she jumped to this conclusion?

4) Cherry leaves her father's house and has one "adventure" after another in a short period of time. How would you describe her? Her character traits?

5) Did you find yourself laughing at her adventures/misadventures?

This is a bit hard to read since it's epistolary, meaning the whole thing in Cherry's over-the-top way of speaking.

Cherubina sounds like an enormous pain in the butt, but she's sometimes redeemed by being quick-thinking. This is going to come in handy later, and I think she'll become more sympathetic and likeable toward the end (but I hope her character doesn't change entirely, making her a "docile wife" - that would be a horrible waste of her exceptional imagination. I'm guessing she'll marry the guy who was visiting her father, but I hope she can keep her personality and perhaps become a poet. Literature of this period is often unkind to young women who like novels, but the author being Irish rather than English gives me some hope).

How old is she, by the way? I thought she mentioned 15 at one point, but she has to be older than that, doesn't she? One feature of this book, with the story being told through the letters of a young, highly dramatic person, is that the narrator is unreliable.
Her poor father. I hope he doesn't suffer too much in the insane asylum.

Lori wrote: "Cherubina sounds like an enormous pain in the butt, but she's sometimes redeeme..."

I didn't want to say it, but up until now it seems like a whole lot of teenage angst and drama. Ugh! lol

I really feel for the father, I hope he isn't in there very long. I assume he would be released if payments are made for his "treatment."

Once of the things I kept laughing about what that everytime she needed to make a decision she thought/said to herself something along the lines of "What would a heroine do?" And her thinking the heroines belong to a "sisterhood." Goodness. She sounds very young.

Cherry (yes, she’s 15) seems like a classic sulky, melodramatic teenager, imagining her parents aren’t her parents. Naturally, she has no knowledge of the world, which makes her situation perilous as well as comical and kept this reader on the edge of her seat. She’s what was known at the time as “a pigeon ripe for plucking.”

I am enjoying this book enormously, starting with the opening letter from the moon. A clever conceit, all the people in books having an existence there so long as their books are read—it reminded me of Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next series. I thought their dialogue was quite clever, though I caught only some of the literary references. Cherry’s being a kindred soul to Don Quixote was telling.

Eaton Stannard Barrett, who mostly wrote anti-Whig political parody, sounds a bit like an early nineteenth-century Oscar Wilde, in moments like “An author who has judgment enough to write wit, should have judgment enough to prevent him from writing it.”

“Montmorenci” is a quick-witted rogue. He absorbed her own story and concocted an elaborate fiction designed to gain her trust, presumably after learning about the £10,000 of her dowry. He doesn’t seem actively threatening to her at least, since he immediately accepted her revulsion at being pawed. He’d probably leave her as soon as they married, though. I wonder if she will start to see through him as they go along, and how Mr. Stuart will figure into the story later on. The latter seems to have enough sentimentality to satisfy at least a chastened Cherry.

I love the whole “What would a heroine do?” trope! It provides so many openings for the author’s satire. All in all, this seems quite a cleverly conceived story. I read that Jane Austen enjoyed it a lot. She must have had some tooth-grinding when this book came out before she’d had the chance to publish her own gothic satire, Northanger Abbey, which she’d written almost 15 years earlier.

I have read first four chapters , i can't believe i am enjoying it so much as a satire. I always entertained the idea of a book telling adventures of a female Quixote (in disguise). It is a relief that the book is humorous, otherwise a teenage girl, planning to runaway after insulting her parent is scary.

I read this before but completely forgot it was epistolary. I just remembered it as a first person narrative.

Cherry is overflowing with Main Character Energy. She is quick thinking and resourceful, but being a Heroine makes her resilient as she expects to get into difficulties but also believes she can make it through anything.

This book is crying out for an annotated edition. Novels referenced so far include:

- Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla by Fanny Burney
- The Mysteries of Udolpho, multiple times, but also The Italian by Mrs Radcliffe
- The Delicate Distress, by Elizabeth Griffith
- Clarissa and Pamela by Richardson
- The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

And some I couldn't track down. I tried googling The Romance of the Highlands, but the only book which came up was Outlander.

I feel for the dad too, but spare a thought for Angelica Angela Angelina, hanged for stealing a broken lute from a haunted chamber.

The Romance of the Forest by Radcliffe was also referenced, but I don't remember if it was in this section.

And then there are all the literary and political references in the opening address to the reader!

The edition by Valancourt Press is pretty thoroughly annotated and identifies many of the specific passages from other books. It makes me want to read some of them, but it will be hard not to read them through the lens of this parody.

Sounds like a good edition. My ebook doesn’t even have an introduction, so I’m flailing about trying to recall my college days, more decades ago than I care to contemplate.

Thank you JP, I tried to download the Valancourt edition on Kindle but it didn't seem to include the scholarly material so I may have to look for a print copy.

Of the books referenced, I really enjoyed Udolpho, The Children of the Abbey and the Fanny Burneys. Northanger Abbey is much funnier after reading Udolpho (in fact that's what inspired me to read it in the first place).

The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox has a similar heroine whose head is turned by fiction but although I liked it I didn't pick up on everything as I wasn't as familiar with what was being parodied.