Right or Wrong

The Novel

Geraldine Jewsbury’s last novel, Right or Wrong, published in 1859, takes up the delicate question of the celibacy of the clergy. Paul de Créqui loves Marguerite, but he is a monk and suffers from the struggle in his mind between his religion and his rights as a human being. Marguerite allows herself to be seduced by the Vicomte de Vallambrosa, in order to free her father who has been imprisoned on a lettre de cachet. Marguerite lives with the Vicomte a year and a half, and has a child by him. He is killed in a duel with a rival for Marguerite's affections.


Paul de Créqui finally declares his love for Marguerite and marries her. For twenty years he lives a double life, spending six months of the year as a family man, the remaining six months as a celibate monk. When he is elected Prior he has to choose between the monastery and his family…


The Author

Geraldine Jewsbury was born in Measham, then in Derbyshire, now in Leicestershire. She was the daughter of Thomas Jewsbury (d. 1840), a cotton manufacturer and merchant, and his wife Maria, née Smith, (d. 1819). The family moved to Manchester in 1818, after her father's business failed. After her mother died, she was brought up by her sister Maria Jane Jewsbury. In 1841 Geraldine Jewsbury met the Carlyles.  Thomas Carlyle pronounced her "one of the most interesting young women I have seen for years, delicate sense & courage looking out of her small sylph-like figure." Jewsbury has earned a place in literature in three respects: as a novelist, as a critic and publisher's reader, and as a figure in London literary life. Jewsbury was primarily a novelist of ideas and moral dilemmas.