Marriage
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- $0.99
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
Marriage (1818) is the shrewdly observant tale of a young woman's struggles with parental authority and courtship. Like her contemporaries, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, Susan Ferrier adopts an ideal of rational domesticity, illustrating the virtues of a reasonable heroine who learns to act for herself. This new edition features an introduction incorporating recent critical work on national identity and gender, and firmly situating the novel within the context of both Scottish literature and women's writing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With her sharp eye for human foibles and fancies, Scottish author Ferrier (1782 1854) outsold her contemporary Jane Austen with witty stories of Scottish social life. Two centuries later, her first novel returns to print, following two generations of women whose desires lead them to disparate fates. At 17, Lady Juliana, daughter of an earl, is certain she "shouldn't at all mind being poor." But when she shuns the wealthy but odious duke selected by her father and elopes with a "captivating Scotsman," she is appalled by everything about his family and life, including the ramshackle family castle surrounded by "dingy turnip fields," bagpipe music, the Scottish diet, and the swarm of long-chinned spinster aunts and hovering sisters. Later, Juliana happily hands off one of her twin baby girls whom she refers to as plagues to her husband's sister to raise. Nurture defies nature and the two girls mature into very different people with morally deserved fates. Ferrier writes with crisp, telling details and a knack for naming characters (Mrs. Wiseacre, Lady Dull). This reprint should delight modern fans of stories of manners much as it did readers 200 years ago.
