Reading the Classics: WAVERLEY, by Sir Walter Scott

I found it fascinating for a bunch of different reasons. First I enjoyed the story, even though the two main women in it were pretty much paper thin, as most heroines are in early novels striving for respectability. These one dimensional heroines whose primary characteristics were their beauty and their purity were not always written by men. Female writers could be just as determined to lift the novel out of the mire of trashiness such as the immensely popular but male-het-id-vortex The Monk (I think the author was nineteen when he wrote it?). One period writer firmly attested on her title page that her work was a romance, and not “a novel” as everyone knew novels were trash. (Jane Austen would had no patience with this false distinction: hers are labeled “novel.”)

In Waverley, the cast is mostly male, and what a variety of complex figures! Scott–hitherto known primarily as a poet–sets out to put an ordinary fellow, Edward Waverley, through the ’45. Which was in living memory for many, when Scott penned this novel. Scott keeps referring to Sixty Years Since, meaning sixty years in the past. He talked to a bunch of vets, and the research shows. He also knows Scottish dialects, and that shows. This is where a lot of readers bog down. But I’ve been listening to Scottish folk music for a long time, so I could parse most of it fairly quickly, though there were plenty of words I stumbled over–but I could always get the gist.

I could see why this novel kicked off the modern historical novel form in earnest. Historical novels had been around. As 17-year-old Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey says at one point, she isn’t sure why she finds historical fiction so tiresome when events were so big, but it had something to do with the dullness of the speeches put in the mouths of famous characters, and either no women or they were all good-for-nothing. Austen wrote the first draft of that in 1793, if I remember right.

I think the problem is the preachiness of those earlier, well-meant historical novels. Not just earlier. Jane Porter wrote The Scottish Chiefs around the same time as Scott was writing, or just before, and it remained immensely popular as a kids’ book for the next century or so, but wow is it a fine example of what Catherine is decrying. It’s the story of William Wallace, complete to virtuous speeches, for the Scottish hero is an absolute saint all the way through, including to his saintly martyrdom. The heroes are pure and good, the villains dastardly and evil, the story interlarded with inspiring speeches at every turn.

In contrast, Scott’s book breathes tolerance all the way through. His characters are complex, and some are comical, but everyone has actual human motivations for what they do, and there is a lot of grace on both sides. The characters talk to each other, they don’t stand and pontificate. He does whitewash Charlie Stuart a bit–but even the bonnie prince’s foibles are hinted at pretty strongly, meanwhile Scott demonstrates Charles Edward Stuart’s immense charisma–and some of the problems it brought him. (One thing you can say for him, he inspired some terrific folk songs!)

The narrative voice is wry, observant, and witty. There are some great comic bits, and some vivid action. The main character is pretty much a stand-in for the author (in the journal he wrote later, he uses the same language for his early education as he does for the hero) but this hero has to grow up during the course of the novel. I can see why Scott rocketed to popularity right off the bat–and also how this novel began to lift The English Novel out of the general lack of respect with which it was regarded by society.