My hobby is reading books by 19th-century women writers who are considered “minor.” I happened to discover Margaret Oliphant just before the pandemic hit. Since she wrote almost 100 novels, I trusted that her work would get me through the pandemic, with novels to spare.
Have I discovered a new “great novelist”? Probably not. I admit that her plots are sometimes strangely constructed and unconvincing, partly the result of serialized publication. And she has the persistent habit of wrapping up a 500-page novel in the final three pages.
Yet I found so much to admire in her work that I had to blog about it.
She’s been categorized as merely a writer of “domestic realism.” And disparaged as not feminist enough. But I believe she was brilliant at detailing the inner feelings of women, who were portrayed as entangled in their gender limitations. Isn’t the personal always political? Oliphant was one of Britain’s most popular novelists, so her women characters–so many of them aware of their need to repress their inner feelings–must have seemed all-too familiar to her avid readers.
QUOTATION:
When sisters Anne and Ally anxiously awaited word of their missing brother in The Poor Gentleman, they were forced to make idle conversation with a guest. Oliphant wrote, “…the fate of womankind in general was upon these devoted young women…They had to entertain the visitor, to occupy themselves with the keeping up of appearances, and to put everything that interested them most aside in their hearts.”
