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Available
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Publication
Oxford University Press, USA (2003), Paperback, 512 pages
Description
'Human nature may be easy to see through, but it is very hard to understand.'The ageing Catherine Vernon, jilted in her youth, has risen to power in a man's world as head of the family bank. She thinks she sees through everyone and rules over a family of dependents with knowing cynicism. But there are two people in Redborough who resist her. One is Hester, a young relationwith a personality as strong as Catherine's, and as determined to find a role for herself. The other is Edward, Catherine's favourite, whom she treats like a son. Conflict between young and old is inevitable, and in its depiction of the complex relationships that develop between the three principalcharacters, Publishing October 2003 (exact date?)Margaret Oliphant is one of the great Victorian novelists, and this edition establishes her rediscovered importance.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Misfit
This is the story of Catherine and Hester Vernon, and the relationship between the two women and the one man whom both of them loved; Catherine as a son and Hester as a woman. Catherine once saved the family bank from ruin at the hands of Hester's reckless father when he fled the country in
Sound boring? Actually it's not; it's a fascinating tale of two women and their intertwining relationships between themselves and others. I loved the secondary characters, especially the two Misses Vernons, such delightfully catty old maids! Oliphant does a fine job of setting her scenes and giving you a wonderful in depth look at a slice of Victorian England.
Just be warned, this is not an action packed, sit on the edge of your seat, can't put it down until its finished type of novel. This is a story to savor and enjoy the multi-faceted characters like a fine red wine or a box of chocolates (or both!!). If you are looking for high action and adventure, this is not the book for you. Oliphant is superb and although she doesn't quite come up the ten star standards of George Eliot, this is one author well worth taking the time to check out. If you are a first time reader to this author your best bet is to try her delightful Miss Marjoribanks (Penguin Classics) first, a very funny and lighthearted romp and a refreshing change from the strum and drang of most 19C British literature.
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disgrace, and Hester and her mother return years later as paupers living at the charity of cousin Catherine, as do several other assorted Vernon relatives. Hester makes a poor impression on Catherine on her first day there and for years the two women barely tolerate each other. Catherine rules the "Vernonry" as it's called where those relatives live in relative comfort and she amuses herself watching their minor quirks and foibles as they gossip and interact with each other. As Hester matures, she catches the eye of two of her cousins, Harry and Edward Vernon, Edward being the apple of Catherine's eye and loved as she would her own son. Edward chafes under Catherine's thumb and plots to free himself forever, but he must find a way to obtain funds to do so, which could lead to the downfall of all the Vernons and the bank. Sound boring? Actually it's not; it's a fascinating tale of two women and their intertwining relationships between themselves and others. I loved the secondary characters, especially the two Misses Vernons, such delightfully catty old maids! Oliphant does a fine job of setting her scenes and giving you a wonderful in depth look at a slice of Victorian England.
Just be warned, this is not an action packed, sit on the edge of your seat, can't put it down until its finished type of novel. This is a story to savor and enjoy the multi-faceted characters like a fine red wine or a box of chocolates (or both!!). If you are looking for high action and adventure, this is not the book for you. Oliphant is superb and although she doesn't quite come up the ten star standards of George Eliot, this is one author well worth taking the time to check out. If you are a first time reader to this author your best bet is to try her delightful Miss Marjoribanks (Penguin Classics) first, a very funny and lighthearted romp and a refreshing change from the strum and drang of most 19C British literature.
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LibraryThing member Kasthu
Mrs. Oliphant is an author who was enormously popular when her novels were first published but who is nearly forgotten nowadays. She is maybe better-known for her Chronicles of Carlingford series (of which Miss Marjoribanks is one), but Hester is also a very fine novel.
The story centers firstly
Hester has a variety of suitors vying for her hand (he cousin Harry, Edward, and the stranger in town, Roland Ashton), which is intriguing, but what I enjoyed the most was the interplay between the two main characters. I was interested in the contrasts that exist between them: one young, one old, both locked in an antagonistic struggle with each other. There’s also a fair amount of antagonism between Hester and Edward Vernon (bringing to mind comparisons with Pride and Prejudice). Is he in love with her or not? It’s fairly obvious from the start that he’s not (someone who’s into you generally doesn’t start fights with you or ignore you completely), so it’s fun to watch Hester figure that out for herself. The plot of the novel drags a bit in the middle, and as such, I thought the book could have been at least 100 pages shorter. But nonetheless, I really enjoyed this novel.
The story centers firstly
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around Catherine Vernon, a kind of matriarch and queen in Redborough. She is the head of Vernon’s Bank, and it was through her intervention that a run on the bank was prevented in her younger days. The bulk of the story, however, takes place many years later, when Catherine is in her sixties, with her cousin/nephew Edward Vernon playing William Cecil to her Elizabeth I. Catherine’s life is shaken when her fourteen-year-old relative, Hester, and her mother move to “the Vernonry” after a period away. A lot of the novel deals with Hester’s growth from girl to woman, and the men who express interest in her along the way.Hester has a variety of suitors vying for her hand (he cousin Harry, Edward, and the stranger in town, Roland Ashton), which is intriguing, but what I enjoyed the most was the interplay between the two main characters. I was interested in the contrasts that exist between them: one young, one old, both locked in an antagonistic struggle with each other. There’s also a fair amount of antagonism between Hester and Edward Vernon (bringing to mind comparisons with Pride and Prejudice). Is he in love with her or not? It’s fairly obvious from the start that he’s not (someone who’s into you generally doesn’t start fights with you or ignore you completely), so it’s fun to watch Hester figure that out for herself. The plot of the novel drags a bit in the middle, and as such, I thought the book could have been at least 100 pages shorter. But nonetheless, I really enjoyed this novel.
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LibraryThing member nmhale
The longest Virago I own in my collection, this book benefits from small chapters and smooth writing to make it a quick read nonetheless. Hester is the main character, a young girl in the Vernon family who moves back to her home of Redborough years after her father took his young wife off in
Now though Hester's family is out of favor, the Vernon name is much respected in Redborough, and Catherine Vernon is especially revered as the woman who saved the bank. Out of her wealth and generosity, she has set up the Hernonry, where poor relatives are invited to live at her expense.
If the preceeding appears too extensive just to set up a synopsis of the book, try reading the novel itself. The author takes two chapters just to introduce the setting and the background history of the Vernon family, before we even meet Catherine. Hester comes in a few chapters later. In fact, that was an issue that I had with this book - the author was too verbose. She often repeated the same idea, sometimes even the same sentences. A lot of word repetition, too. Paragraphs could drag on for over a page, revealing information that could easily have been delivered in a few sentences. The sentences, meanwhile, were sometimes atrociously lengthy themselves. Of course, long paragraphs and sentences can be used for a stylistic effect or for thematic reasons, but this wasn't the case here. They were just long. This is a nit-picky complaint, based on my training as a writer, where I learned that every word in a sentence is precious and should convey meaning (even though I don't adhere to those skills when I write these reviews, ha ha). The writing was easy enough to read that the constant reiteration was not too big a stumbling block, but it was annoying.
Fortunately, I enjoyed the characters and story enough to overlook this irritation.
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disgrace. Her mother, a gentle but simple woman, never understood that her husband's reckless actions forced them to flee their home and live in exile. Since Hester's father is dead, and no one else has been around to inform her, Hester's past is shrouded in mystery, and she is excited to return to the home she never knew. Imagine her bewilderment when she meets Catherine Vernon, the woman jilted by her father and who saved the Vernon bank after Hester's father had nearly ruined it, and is met with unspoken antagonism and condescension. Hester, being a proud girl of fourteen, instantly bridles at the treatment, and responds with hostility. The two focal women of this story are set up in opposition from the beginning, and their rivalry plays a role in all the events to follow.Now though Hester's family is out of favor, the Vernon name is much respected in Redborough, and Catherine Vernon is especially revered as the woman who saved the bank. Out of her wealth and generosity, she has set up the Hernonry, where poor relatives are invited to live at her expense.
If the preceeding appears too extensive just to set up a synopsis of the book, try reading the novel itself. The author takes two chapters just to introduce the setting and the background history of the Vernon family, before we even meet Catherine. Hester comes in a few chapters later. In fact, that was an issue that I had with this book - the author was too verbose. She often repeated the same idea, sometimes even the same sentences. A lot of word repetition, too. Paragraphs could drag on for over a page, revealing information that could easily have been delivered in a few sentences. The sentences, meanwhile, were sometimes atrociously lengthy themselves. Of course, long paragraphs and sentences can be used for a stylistic effect or for thematic reasons, but this wasn't the case here. They were just long. This is a nit-picky complaint, based on my training as a writer, where I learned that every word in a sentence is precious and should convey meaning (even though I don't adhere to those skills when I write these reviews, ha ha). The writing was easy enough to read that the constant reiteration was not too big a stumbling block, but it was annoying.
Fortunately, I enjoyed the characters and story enough to overlook this irritation.
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LibraryThing member thorold
After her father's death Abroad, teenage Hester and her widowed mother are offered a home in the generic English town of Redborough by their rich cousin Miss Catherine Vernon. There's a kind of Mansfield Park setup, where Hester is presented with a range of potential suitors from among the
But this turns out not really to be what the book is about at all: Hester is determined to challenge the prevailing "Angel of the hearth" idea of what the role of middle-class Woman should be in life. Hester is not content to provide sympathy, moral guidance and domestic efficiency while some man goes out and does things for her; she wants to work and have a real part in informed decision-making. Catherine is the key example that proves it can be done: when the family banking firm was teetering on the edge of collapse (the fault of Hester's father, although Hester doesn't know this) Catherine stepped in to rescue it and ran it successfully for twenty years. Mrs Oliphant, a widow herself, had been supporting her family by her writing for 25 years when this was published, so she knew what she was talking about.
Of course Catherine and Hester dislike each other at sight — they are far too alike — and of course Catherine manages to hold conservative opinions completely inconsistent with her own history, so sparks fly between them.
That part of the plot is all quite fun, but it doesn't really get going until Volume 3, and there are a lot of balls and tea-parties to get through before then, mostly rather repetitive. For a long stretch of Volume 2 it feels as though the plot isn't advancing at all, whilst Oliphant tries to dig out subtle social distinctions through close examination of furniture, dress, hair and speech patterns. There are some jokes — the comic chorus of poor relatives, the notion that "Abroad" is a specific place (like Basingstoke but more exotic), the single-minded husband-hunting of Emma, etc. — but on the whole it's rather heavy going. Oliphant is clearly best at getting inside the heads of her older characters, so Hester and her male cousins often seem surprisingly opaque to the reader, whilst Catherine and old Captain Morgan (not-a-pirate) are very human and believable.
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assembled cousins, with a range of different obstacles to overcome. But this turns out not really to be what the book is about at all: Hester is determined to challenge the prevailing "Angel of the hearth" idea of what the role of middle-class Woman should be in life. Hester is not content to provide sympathy, moral guidance and domestic efficiency while some man goes out and does things for her; she wants to work and have a real part in informed decision-making. Catherine is the key example that proves it can be done: when the family banking firm was teetering on the edge of collapse (the fault of Hester's father, although Hester doesn't know this) Catherine stepped in to rescue it and ran it successfully for twenty years. Mrs Oliphant, a widow herself, had been supporting her family by her writing for 25 years when this was published, so she knew what she was talking about.
Of course Catherine and Hester dislike each other at sight — they are far too alike — and of course Catherine manages to hold conservative opinions completely inconsistent with her own history, so sparks fly between them.
That part of the plot is all quite fun, but it doesn't really get going until Volume 3, and there are a lot of balls and tea-parties to get through before then, mostly rather repetitive. For a long stretch of Volume 2 it feels as though the plot isn't advancing at all, whilst Oliphant tries to dig out subtle social distinctions through close examination of furniture, dress, hair and speech patterns. There are some jokes — the comic chorus of poor relatives, the notion that "Abroad" is a specific place (like Basingstoke but more exotic), the single-minded husband-hunting of Emma, etc. — but on the whole it's rather heavy going. Oliphant is clearly best at getting inside the heads of her older characters, so Hester and her male cousins often seem surprisingly opaque to the reader, whilst Catherine and old Captain Morgan (not-a-pirate) are very human and believable.
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LibraryThing member Sarahursula
This is a fascinating nineteenth century novel about women’s lives. There’s powerful Catherine Vernon; female head of a provincial bank, spinster mother of two adopted sons and local patroness. Even the new church is named St Catherine’s. Mrs John is the archetype of unthinking femininity
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while her daughter Hester is struggling to find herself: ‘People consider a girl a piece of goods to be sold and disposed of’. It also has the most delightful, moving and yet funny scene in Victorian literature on which the whole plots turns - when the price of strawberries will be cheap enough for making jam. Oh for the BBC to adapt Mrs Oliphant’s novel rather than yet another Great Expectations. Show Less
LibraryThing member mumfie
I thoroughly enjoyed this. My curiosity was piqued by listening to it on Radio 4 but that version told a substantially different story with a totally changed emphasis.
I left wanting more which is good. It evokes Jane Austen without echoing her and is relatively modern in its attitude towards women.
I left wanting more which is good. It evokes Jane Austen without echoing her and is relatively modern in its attitude towards women.
LibraryThing member burritapal
Mrs. Oliphant knows human nature. I spent a good part of reading this book with a grin on my face because of the antics of the silly characters who ate from the one hand of Catherine Vernon while they bit the other. Catherine Vernon is the matriarch of the Vernon family, the great banking family of
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an English town. She has saved the bank once already, when the protagonist's father would have ruined it. Hester will not know, till the very end, why Catherine hates her so, but these two will find that they are very much alike. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1883
Physical description
512 p.; 7.72 inches
ISBN
0192804111 / 9780192804112