Tag Archives: Braveheart

A Love Quadrangle, Platonic Love, and History in Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs

This blog post is a follow-up to one I posted on September 18, 2017 on Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs. In that post, I lamented that no complete biography has been published of Jane Porter and that there has been no critical edition of the novel. Since then, Devoney Looser published her wonderful biography of Jane Porter and her sister Anna Maria Porter, titled Sister Novelists. I posted about Looser’s biography on January 10, 2023. Besides being a well-researched and thoroughly interesting biography, it revealed to me that the edition of The Scottish Chiefs I own and have read twice, the Scribner 1921 edition with illustrations by N. C. Wyeth, is a heavily abridged edition. Yes, I had read the introduction in that edition by Kate Douglass Wiggin where she describes how she and Nora Smith, the book’s editors, hardly changed anything in the book. Wiggin states:

Neither of the editors believes in abridging the classics; still less in altering, interrupting, or adding to a text that should be sacred; but we hope that we have taken away from the present edition nothing but negligible phrases, paragraphs that are not a part of the main flow of the story; a little of the descriptive matter, retaining the most beautiful where there is little else than sheer beauty; preserving the historic content, and not allowing a single romantic incident to escape us in a world that sometimes threatens to be dull, dreary and lacking in idealism. (p. ix)

Reprint of the 1921 Scribner’s Edition with illustrations by N. C. Wyeth

Could anything be more untrue? Wiggin tells at least a half-lie here since she and Smith did everything she says, but her tone makes us believe just a word or at most a paragraph here or there was cut or changed. In truth, about one-third of the book was cut for the Scribner edition. Worse, they constantly rewrote sentences, often to make them shorter, but rarely improving them. The novel’s very first sentence was altered. In the Scribner edition, the first sentence is “Bright was the summer of 1296.” In Porter’s original, it begins, “That war which had desolated Scotland was now at an end.” Only later in the paragraph does Porter insert the year 1296, but Wiggin and Smith felt the need to insert the date earlier. The number of such changes is far too numerous to discuss in detail. But worse, whole paragraphs and even pages of text are cut. In one place, a very Radcliffean exclamation about nature is chopped out, which detracts from the work’s place in the Romantic tradition. In another, Wallace meets a poor family and hears them praise him before his identity is known to them—it is all cut from the novel. In other cases, chapters of Porter’s novel were trimmed down and combined into new chapters. In short, a travesty was committed.

The Broadview Press edition of 2007, containing the complete text of Porter’s novel

Fortunately, I have since learned that Broadview Press published an edition of The Scottish Chiefs in 2007, edited by Fiona Price, which includes the complete five-volume original text. While not a critical edition, it has a wonderful introduction by Price, retains Porter’s own notes about her sources in writing the novel, and includes appendices of Porter’s prefaces to later editions, contemporary reviews of the novel’s editions, and poems about Wallace by other authors. I would like more notes and clear statements on the historical people in the novel to separate them from the fictional characters so I don’t have to keep looking them up at Wikipedia, but the Broadview Press edition is the one to read. That said, I found it fascinating to carefully compare it to the Scribner edition as I read to discover what changes were made.

I always wanted to like The Scottish Chiefs, but when I first read it in 1992, I found it dull. That was three years before Braveheart (1995) was released. After rewatching Braveheart in 2017, I wanted to revisit Porter’s novel. I found it more interesting on a reread, but somewhat dull in places, still not knowing I was reading a heavily abridged volume. Now, on reading the Broadview Press edition, I was blown away by Porter’s writing and the strong Romanticism evident throughout the novel. Now I think the novel a true marvel and one of the gems of the Romantic period.

Wallace and Bruce meeting on the beach by N. C. Wyeth

For the remainder of this essay, I will discuss the role of love in The Scottish Chiefs and how it affects the love quadrangle of characters. While some readers might only think a love triangle exists in the novel, in many ways, it is a very subversive text, and a close reading reveals that gender fluidity marks the text. The members of this love quadrangle are Sir William Wallace, who is widowed early in the novel; Helen of Mar, a young virgin and daughter of the Earl of Mar; her stepmother Joanna, Countess of Mar, who though married falls in love with Wallace and throws herself at him; and Edwin Ruthven, Helen’s cousin who—believe it or not—is clearly in love with Sir William Wallace despite all the descriptions of it being brotherly love in the novel. Some might argue Edwin simply hero-worships Wallace, but I will argue and cite passages that demonstrate the text clearly implies Edwin has homosexual tendencies toward Wallace and that Wallace may even share those tendencies. In her introduction to the Broadview Press edition, Fiona Price notes the novel contains “latent homosexuality” (p. 21), but I’m not sure it’s solely latent). Because homosexuality would be a taboo subject, while Porter repeatedly hints at it, she also pulls back into claims of platonic love. (Porter never uses the word platonic but describes it as “brotherly” or “spiritual.”) The only member of the quadrangle whose love is not purified by being described as being spiritual is Joanna, whose love is “passionate.”

I will now highlight the significant moments in the relationships between the characters in the love quadrangle. The novel opens when Wallace is pulled into the events of the Scottish War against the tyrant King Edward I of England. A Scottish noble, Donald, Earl of Mar, seeks Wallace’s aid to hide him and a mysterious casket. By the end of the novel, we will learn the casket contains the regalia of Scotland. Wallace and his wife Marion hide Mar, but when the English soldiers come, Marion is slain. This crime causes Wallace to take up arms for his country to free it. He repeatedly from this point on feels like God has chosen him to save Scotland and that Marion’s death, as much as it hurts him, is part of Scotland’s plan.

Once Wallace takes up arms to free Scotland, he also feels he is no longer capable of loving another woman. While in time he grows to love both Helen and Edwin, he refers to this love as that of a brother and sister.

Helen and Edwin also develop love in their hearts for Wallace. Helen realizes she loves Wallace, but she also understands his statements that he cannot love again, and she does not believe he can love her in that way. Wallace is repeatedly described as being like a god and someone to be worshiped, so not surprisingly, Helen may feel she is not worthy of the love of a being so superior to her.

Edwin is a different story. Edwin is a boy of fifteen who has been weak and sickly, so he has been sent to a monastery to live. The monastery is attacked by the English, causing Edwin to be rescued by Wallace. From that point, Edwin is dedicated to Wallace, indeed worships him, and likely has homosexual feelings for him. At the same time, through Wallace’s fatherly or brotherly love, Edwin gains confidence to become more manly and do manly warlike deeds. We might just call this male bonding or a father’s influence, but an extreme number of scenes about Wallace and Edwin’s love suggests something more is going on.

It is hard to tell if Wallace has any feelings for Edwin that might be of a sexual nature, but I suspect his relationship with Edwin is a type of surrogate relationship for his inability to love a woman—both because he mourns Marion and because a woman’s love would interfere with his ability to focus on the fight for Scotland’s independence from English tyranny. Consequently, the love Wallace feels for Edwin seems to be a vicarious replacement for his love of a woman.

Edwin, however, clearly has stronger feelings for Wallace that go beyond hero-worship or brotherly love. Wallace, in turn, transforms Edwin into a pseudo-female in his thoughts. For example, at one point Wallace has a nightmare that Edwin has drowned. He awakes and declares:

“Oh! I love thee, Edwin,” he exclaimed to himself, “and I fear my hermit-heart was to be separated from all but a patriot’s love! So is Heaven’s will; and why then did I think of loving thee?—must thou too die, that Scotland may have no rival, that Wallace may feel himself quite alone?” (p. 252-3; all subsequent page numbers from the Broadview edition)

Here, Wallace is equating Edwin with the dead Marion. She had to die so Wallace would be free to fight for Scotland. Now that he realizes he loves Edwin, he fears Edwin will have to die also.

Later, Edwin tells Wallace, “Ah, my beloved general, what Jonathan was to David I would be to thee!” Wallace replies, “But thy love, passes not the love of woman, Edwin!” In response, Edwin replies, “No, but it equals it…what has been done for thee, I would do; only love me as David did Jonathan, and I shall be the happiest of the happy.” Wallace replies, “Be happy then; sweet boy!…For all that ever beat in heathen or in Christian breast for friend or brother, lives in my heart for thee” (p. 295).

Porter continually does this, hinting at something more than brotherly love, then pulling back to call it something more innocent. The David and Jonathan reference recalls 2 Samuel 1:26, where after Jonathan dies, David says of him, “thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Notably, though, both Wallace and Edwin agree Edwin does not offer love that passes that of a woman. Rather because Edwin’s love equals a woman’s love, it equates him with a woman, making him the subordinate in his relationship with Wallace, the dominant male.

If I seem to be reading between the lines too much, consider the following passage. Here, Wallace and Edwin have been parted and they express their joy at being reunited.

“[Edwin was] clasped in the arms of Wallace. Real transport, true happiness, now dilated the heart of the before desponding chief. He pressed the dear boy again and again to his bosom, and kissed his white forehead with all the rapture of the fondest brother. “Thank God! thank God!” was all that Edwin could say; while, at every effort he made to tear himself away from Wallace to congratulate his uncle on his safety, his heart overflowing towards his friend, opened afresh, and he clung the closer to his breast; till at last exhausted with happiness, the little hero of Dumbarton gave way to the sensibility of his tender age, and the chief felt his bosom wet with the joy-drawn tears of his youthful knight.” (p. 255)

To me, this is hardly less than a veiled orgasm on Edwin’s part. Edwin is pulled repeatedly to Wallace until he is exhausted and ejaculates tears. Call it brotherly love if you want, but having had a brother, I’ve never seen two brothers express love in such a dramatic fashion. Notably, the Scribner edition completely cuts this scene, suggesting Wiggin and Smith could read between the lines also.

Other characters are also aware of the heightened affection between Wallace and Edwin. Witnessing the above scene, Edwin’s cousin Murray says to Wallace, “That urchin is such a monopoliser, that I see you have not a greeting for anyone else!” (p. 255). Murray is only joking, but several other characters find this homoerotic love less amusing and take it more seriously.

Helen feels she must repress her feelings for Wallace, though she thinks of him as “a God” and is aware that she could easily fall down and worship him (p. 346). She thinks, “I may steal some portion of the rare lot that was Lady Marion’s—to die for such a man,” but then she adds, “Ah, that I could be in Edwin’s place, and wait upon his smiles, and with my bosom shield his breast! But that may not be: I am a woman, and formed to suffer in silence and seclusion. But even at a distance, brave Wallace, my spirit shall watch over you in the form of this Edwin; I will teach him a double care of the light of Scotland” (p. 347). In other words, Helen wishes she could be Edwin so she could always be with Wallace, and she imaginatively transforms herself into Edwin to protect Wallace.

Wallace repeatedly holds Helen at a distance, citing he must fight for Scotland and that he can love no woman, but he keeps having a spiritual relationship with her. At one point they are in “communion” and she is described as “the sublimest of beings.” He then gives her a chain to wear to “bear witness to a friendship…which will be cemented by eternal ties in heaven!” (p. 378).

Later, Helen feels resigned to live like a nun for Wallace, and she tells Edwin, “He has spoken to me the language of friendship: you know what it is to be his friend: And having tasted of heaven, I cannot stoop to earth” (p. 409).

In response, Edwin says, “Ah, Helen! Helen!…durst I speak the wishes of my heart! But you and Sir William Wallace would both frown on me, and I dare not!”

“Then never do!” exclaimed Helen, turning pale, and trembling from head to foot; too well guessing by the generous glow in his countenance, what would have been that wish” (p. 409).

But does Helen guess correctly? We are led to assume Edwin wishes Helen and Wallace could be together, but perhaps Edwin is only wishing to be with Wallace himself.

Joanna also suspects something unusual about the closeness between Edwin and Wallace, largely because of her jealousy toward anyone Wallace loves since she loves him herself. Joanna is the only one in the love quadrangle who is not chaste or pure in her feelings. To some degree, we might argue that Wallace, Helen, and Edwin are all repressing their sexuality while Joanna is the only one in touch with her sexual needs and passion. However, because she is married to Lord Mar, not to mention she is too forward and obnoxious for Wallace to love, Wallace repeatedly refuses her. Joanna is a sublime villain, even wishing her husband were dead so she can marry Wallace. But while she clearly admires Wallace—everyone in the novel does; even Queen Margaret of England falls for him later—Joanna’s love is love of self-interest. She is herself descended from one of the houses contending for the throne of Scotland, so she considers herself a princess. She envisions her royal blood can help Wallace take the throne for himself, and then he will want her to be his queen. It will be a marriage of convenience for them, but also one of love. Wallace wants nothing to do with such a relationship, however.

After her husband dies and Joanna reveals the full extent of her intentions toward Wallace, she comes to embody the statement that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. In the end, she plots against Wallace, wishing him dead rather than seeing him marry Helen, whom he denies he can love because his heart belongs to Marion, but Joanna knows better. In the end, as Joanna feared, Wallace and Helen do marry when he is in prison and about to be killed by King Edward. Again, Joanna seems the only character in touch with her and even others’ sexuality, and while she is the greatest villain in the novel, save perhaps King Edward, she is perhaps the character who feels most real to us today.

Being in touch with her sexuality, Joanna not only realizes the love between Helen and Wallace, but she recognizes Edwin’s improper feelings for Wallace. This recognition first happens when Edwin teases her for not letting Wallace leave her presence by saying, “if you do not mean to play Circle to our Ulysses, give us leave to go!” She whispers, “Are you indeed my nephew?” At first, I thought she was offended by his remark, but Porter then tells us, “A strange jealousy glanced on her heart; she had never seen Edwin Ruthven; the blooming cheek of this youth, his smooth skin, his almost impassioned fondness for Wallace: all made a wild suspicion rush upon her mind” (p. 262). What can this mean other than that she realizes Edwin is in love with Wallace? Fiona Price interprets this as saying Joanna suspects Edwin is really a woman (p. 21), which is possible since she has never seen him before and cross-dressing is not uncommon in the novel, but whether she really thinks Edwin a woman or suspects he is queer, it is a shocking moment in the novel and I suspect she feels Edwin is trying to steal Wallace from her.

Later, Joanna is stupid enough to reveal to Edwin her plans to marry Wallace and have him make her his queen. When Edwin upbraids her, she replies, “when you love yourself, and struggle with a passion that drinks your very life, you will pity Joanna of Mar, and forgive her!” By this point her husband is recently dead, so she tries to claim she has only just begun to love Wallace, but Edwin responds that love grows by degrees, and there has not been time for such love to grow. Joanna then realizes “by the remarks of Edwin that he was deeper read in the human heart than she had suspected; that he was neither ignorant of the feelings of the passion, nor of what ought to be its source” (p. 491). Edwin has had no passion for a woman at this point; he is a fifteen-year-old boy who has been locked up in a monastery—what passion can he know except for the passion he feels for Wallace?

Joanna is so consumed by passion that at one point she dresses herself as the Green Knight of the Plume to join Wallace. After a battle, she reveals her true identity to him and claims she has proven her love for him by putting herself in danger. Wallace once again rejects her. She then works to destroy Wallace. When the Scottish chiefs hold a trial and Joanna accuses Wallace of treason, others speculate that the Green Knight might have been the treasonous one or working with Wallace. Joanna is now afraid that Wallace may have told Edwin that she was the Green Knight and he will reveal it. Wallace has not told Edwin since he is too honorable to cast shame on her by revealing her ill behavior. However, to protect herself, Joanna “informs the council of the infatuated attachment of Edwin Ruthven to the accused, and she concluded by asserting that she had ample cause for knowing that the boy was so bewitched by the commander who had flattered his youthful vanity by loading him with the distinctions due to approved valour in manhood, that he was ready at any time to sacrifice every consideration of truth, reason, and duty, to please Sir William Wallace” (p. 623). In other words, “That gay boy is so infatuated with lust for Wallace he’ll lie for him.”

In Edwin’s final scene, he tries to protect Wallace, resulting in being shot with an arrow to his heart. He embodies that there is no greater love than to die for one’s friend. Wallace, in mourning, says of Edwin, “In thee was truth, manhood, and nobleness; in thee was all man’s fidelity, with woman’s tenderness” (p. 67). With Edwin’s death, I rest my case on whether he was gay or not.

If Edwin and Wallace do have homosexual feelings for each other, Porter tries to cover this up with depictions of Wallace’s heroism and the argument that after Marion’s death, he can only love on a spiritual level. Consequently, she repeatedly depicts Wallace in Christ-like terms. Such references are numerous, so I will only cite a few examples of how Wallace resembles Christ.

Wallace rallying the troops by N. C. Wyeth

At one point, Wallace is reunited with his old steward, Gregory, who declares, “O Power of Mercy, take me now to thyself, since my eyes have seen the deliverer of Scotland!” (p. 390). This recalls the priest Simeon when he sees Christ as a baby in the temple and proclaims, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2: 28-31).

In another scene, Wallace arranges to feed the poor, though obviously he can’t multiply fish and loaves (p. 392).

Also like Christ, the common people love Wallace so much that the other Scottish leaders begin to feel threatened by him (p. 444). At this point, Joanna begins plotting to get Wallace crowned king and the people are crying out “Long live our King!” (p. 444). They want to crown him just like the Jews wanted Christ to be King of the Jews, a title he refused just as Wallace refuses to take the throne. And yet, the Sanhedrin accused Christ of wanting to be king and the Scottish leaders accuse Wallace of the same.

Eventually, to remove contention, Wallace steps down from being regent, but he says if Scotland is in danger, “the spirit of Wallace will be with you still!” (p. 487) just like Christ tells the apostles after he leaves earth that he will always be with them (Matthew 28:20).

Edwin tells Joanna that Wallace will not accept a crown, saying “Earthly crowns are dross to him who looks for a heavenly one” (p. 490). Later, when Wallace is imprisoned, he is mocked like Christ by having laurels thrown at his head, which reflects how Christ was given a crown of thorns. In fact, Porter’s note says Wallace was given a wreath of laurel, but she says for obvious reasons she changed this (p. 676). The reasons are not that obvious; why would she shy away from comparing Wallace to Christ here when she does so frequently elsewhere? Later, Wallace, though referring to himself as a servant to his master, remarks that Christ laid down his life for a rebellious world, so he can do no less (p. 691).

Numerous other passages support my arguments that I will not quote, but anyone who reads the novel will not fail to realize the hero worship of Wallace that exists, the way all the characters (save his enemies) feel almost compelled to love him, and the parallels between Wallace and Christ.

The question remains as to how accurate the novel is. Most events are historical as Porter attests, but her treatment of Wallace himself may be more romanticized than realistic. While The Scottish Chiefs fits most strongly into the categories of Romanticism and historical fiction, it is also worth noting that Porter is carrying on the eighteenth-century novel of manners tradition and writing very much in the style of Fanny Burney and Samuel Richardson in how she handles gender themes. Porter’s Wallace is a study in hero-worship, continually referred to as godlike, perhaps even a more perfect Sir Charles Grandison. The female conduct books of the eighteenth century taught a young woman how to conduct herself (largely to win a man). Richardson and Burney both created novels to illustrate how to conduct oneself. In Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4), it is the demure Harriet Byron who wins the title character, not the forward Lady Olivia. In Burney’s The Wanderer (1814), Harleigh is loved by the forward Elinor, but it is the demure Juliet he marries. So here, Wallace rejects the forward Joanna in favor of the virginal Helen with whom he can experience spiritual love, and while he marries her in the end when he is in prison, notably, she is still a virgin when he dies.

Consequently, while Porter does provide historical research and develop her characters very well, the novel is still a product of her time. Her gentlemanly, noble, and almost saintly Wallace may not be the rough man he was in reality, as an 1810 review of the novel in The Scots Magazine argued, saying the “rough strength and austerity” of Wallace instead “is represented as finished fine gentleman, and the idol of every female heart” (p. 751). Sir Walter Scott also thought the portrait of Wallace was inaccurate, remarking in a letter to a friend about the novel, “Lord help her!…It is not safe meddling with the hero of a country and of all others I cannot endure to see the character of Wallace frittered away to that of a fine gentleman” (Looser p. 281). Perhaps Scott is right in this regard; perhaps he was so appalled by Porter’s depiction of Wallace that he could not give Porter credit for influencing him. However, the remark proves he read the novel. I won’t get into the controversy here of whether Scott or Porter deserve credit for being the first historical novelist, but I do believe Porter deserves far more credit than she has received to date. Not only is she the mother of historical fiction, but she was not afraid to explore gender roles and sexuality, while reining in her subversive themes under the cloak of platonic, spiritual, Christian love to make them palatable to the reading public. Thankfully new interest in her, new editions, and Looser’s biography are helping to place her back into the forefront of early historical fiction.

Curious to learn more about Wallace and determine just how historical Porter was, I read William Mackay’s 1995 biography William Wallace: Brave Heart, which notably came out the same year as the film Braveheart. Mackay appears to be completely clueless that The Scottish Chiefs ever existed since he never references it, yet he points out that Wallace’s capture of the Red Rover, a historical event, is referenced in Sir Walter Scott’s The Fair Maid of Perth (1828), one of Scott’s lesser-known books.

William Mackay’s 1995 biography of William Wallace, released the same year as the film Braveheart

Porter’s primary source was the poem about Wallace by Blind Harry, and this is also a primary source for Mackay’s biography. Much of what Porter includes has historical evidence or historical tradition, but she deviates from history in many substantial ways. In reality, Wallace began his campaign against the English as the result of his father being murdered (p. 60), not because his wife Marion was murdered. In fact, Wallace was well into his campaign against the English before he ever married. Like Porter’s hero, he felt he had no time for marriage when he had to free Scotland, although in time he did marry Marion and she was murdered after helping her husband to escape (p. 105-13). Mackay notes that many later historians thought depictions of Wallace’s great size and strength were exaggerated, but Mackay states he was likely six-foot-seven and in a warrior culture a man of great strength would have been admired and a leader.

However, Wallace was a gentleman in many ways, if not to the extreme Porter depicts. As a second son, he was actually intended for the church, which may have helped to soften his character. He probably felt the only good Englishman was a dead Englishman, so he was not gentle with his English soldier captives, but he never killed women, children, or the clergy. Mackay also points out that Wallace was innately modest, selfless, worked for the good of his people, and was the only Scottish leader who never took an oath of fealty to Edward I (p. 173).

One fascinating aspect of Wallace’s history is that twice he put on women’s clothes to escape the English and got away. This is quite shocking given his huge size. Porter has plenty of crossdressing in her novel, but it is the women, Helen and Joanna, who cross-dress, never the men. Wallace also nearly died after being captured and assaulted by the English at one point. He was believed dead and even was being prepared for burial when a woman noticed he was still alive and nursed him back to health. Mackay says this symbolic resurrection wouldn’t have been lost on his followers who would have gotten the Christ-like comparison (p. 89). Later, like Christ, Wallace does have a crown of laurels placed on his head in mockery by the English before his death, and Mackay notes such mockery was quite common in medieval times (p. 257).

Porter’s cast of characters is largely fictional, but Mackay notes that an English soldier named Grimmsesby (Grimsby in Porter) did change sides to fight with Wallace (p. 115). Andrew Moray (Murray in Porter) was a major Scottish leader in the North (p. 121), Wallace’s grandfather was murdered by the English (p. 124), and a young night named Ruthven brought thirty men to serve with Wallace; later this Ruthven would be the Sheriff of Perth (p. 136). This Ruthven may be the character Edwin is based on.

Wallace’s visits to the court of Philip IV and his encounters at sea with pirates are also historical and similar to Porter’s depictions. In addition, he visited Rome and likely met with the Pope and may have also visited Norway, but Porter ignores these visits. However, Porter also depicts Wallace going disguised as a minstrel to Edward I’s court and even winning the heart of Queen Marguerite; this incident appears to be Porter’s invention.

The most noticeable difference in the historical record from Porter’s novel is Wallace’s death. Porter allows Wallace to die a natural death in the Tower of London. In truth, Wallace never was kept in the tower but in a private house under house arrest (p. 258). He then received the standard punishment for treason (although since he never swore an oath of loyalty to Edward I, he never technically committed treason). That punishment was hanging, drawing, and quartering—a ghastly form of death that Porter may have felt too ignoble an end for her hero or perhaps too violent for her readers. Wallace’s body parts were then sent to various parts of Scotland for display while his head was put on a pike on London Bridge (p. 263-6).

It is a shame Mackay did not read The Scottish Chiefs and note some of the historical differences. At least two more biographies of William Wallace that I have not read have appeared since Mackay’s biography, so I do not know if other biographers have acknowledged Porter’s novel. An annotated version of the novel is still needed to detail further where Porter was historically accurate and where she differed from the historical record. Regardless, The Scottish Chiefs is the most historically accurate novel about a historical person and period that had been written when it appeared in 1810. For all its elements of romance, it is clearly more historical fiction than romance. Porter’s novel remains a monumental achievement for which all lovers of historical fiction can be grateful.

Jane Porter, Mother of Historical Fiction

____________________________________

Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.

4 Comments

Filed under Classic Gothic Novels, Literary Criticism, Sir Walter Scott

Romantic Wanderers and Cross-Dressing in Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs

The Scribner’s 1991 reprint of The Scottish Chiefs

The Scottish Chiefs (1809) by Jane Porter (1776-1850) is one of the earliest historical novels and some scholars claim it to be the very first. It tells the story of Sir William Wallace and his efforts to restore Scotland’s freedom after King Edward I of England invaded the country and tried to suppress it to his rule. Porter grew up first in Durham and then in Edinburgh and from early childhood heard tales of Sir William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and other Scottish heroes from a family nurse and many others in her neighborhood. The result was that in 1809, she penned her most famous novel The Scottish Chiefs. The novel would go on to be translated into numerous foreign languages and become a bestseller in Europe. It was so popular that Napoleon had it banned because of its message of revolt against an oppressive tyrant. It is said that US President Andrew Jackson was inspired by it when fighting the British in the War of 1812. It remained popular into the twentieth century, so popular that a comic book version was made of it: http://comicbooksonline.blogspot.com/2007/08/classics-illustrated-067-scottish.html and in 1921 Charles Scribner’s and Sons decided to produce a special illustrated edition of it, complete with a foreword by Kate Douglas Wiggin (author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) and illustrations by N. C. Wyeth, one of the greatest illustrators of the time. A 1991 reprint of that edition is the copy I own and have read.

I first heard of The Scottish Chiefs in 1992 when I found the Scribner’s illustrated edition in a bookstore. I loved the illustrations and loved British literature so I bought and read it. I admit I found it rather dull, and as the years passed, I remembered little of it, but it did make me know the name of Sir William Wallace for the first time, before I traveled to Scotland in 1993 and before the film Braveheart made his name once again famous to a wider audience in 1995.

I recently decided to reread the novel after rewatching Braveheart. I knew the film was grossly historically inaccurate in many ways, and more so, it was a very different story from that which Jane Porter told. I also wanted to reread the novel because of my interest in Gothic and historical fiction and my having recently learned that Sir Walter Scott had known Porter. Scott is, of course, arguably the father of the modern historical novel, so I wondered whether Porter had influenced him. I was also interested in rereading the novel because I had a few years before read Porter’s other well-known novel Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and thought it quite interesting.

While Porter does not use Gothic elements in either of her two best-known works, she does rely upon the wanderer theme. Thaddeus of Warsaw is less a historical than contemporary novel since its events take place just over a decade before its publication. Its main character is a Polish refugee. The novel tells the story of how Poland was invaded and divided up between Russia and Prussia. Thaddeus befriends a British officer and also learns he is part-British. He then travels to England where, eventually, he meets his long-lost father. He also falls in love. Once Thaddeus is in England, the novel becomes largely a novel of manners. What is interesting to me as a student of the Gothic wanderer figure is that Porter repeatedly refers to Thaddeus as a wanderer in the novel because he is an exile from his native land.

Sir William Wallace and his wife Marion,, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth.

Porter does not use the term wanderer in The Scottish Chiefs very often, but the novel is not without interest, and her prefaces do play on the wanderer theme. Unfortunately, Porter’s prefaces are hard to come by since they are not always reprinted in copies of the novel. The Scribner’s edition I own does not contain them, and the Wiggin introduction is more focused on how much Kate Douglas Wiggin and her sister enjoyed the novel as children (this edition was, after all, being marketed to children so to have a famous children’s author introduce the novel was, apparently, a better marketing strategy than to have Jane Porter herself introduce it.) I did find the prefaces online at the University of Pennsylvania’s website: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/porter/chiefs/chiefs.html. In fact, it might be said that the prefaces are more interesting than the novel itself.

The 1831 preface contains a lot of insight into Porter’s interest in writing about Sir William Wallace. Porter describes her childhood hearing tales of Wallace from various people she knew, particularly an elderly neighbor named Luckie Forbes. Equally important, she heard from her sister’s nurse, Bel Johnston, about Bonnie Prince Charlie and how his cause was lost at the Battle of Culloden. Porter personally knew many of the widows of men who fought at Culloden. They were venerable old ladies in her childhood.

But the most striking point made in the introduction is when Porter relates how, as a child, she and her siblings were playing outside when a poor gentleman came to their home. The children begged him to come inside and rest, but he refused. He was an elderly man who explained that he had suffered from fighting with Prince Charles. Porter’s mother convinced him to come inside and let her give him something to eat once she explained that war had also made her a widow. He informs her then that he “received a wound worse than death: I shall never recover from it!” and then goes on to say, “I cannot go back…. I ought never to have come back anywhere. Sin should always be an outcast!” Porter’s mother tries to comfort him by saying Prince Charles’ followers were unfortunate, but “their fidelity could not be a sin!” What we have here is a Gothic wanderer figure—someone haunted by the past and past wrongs who has consequently become an outcast. All these widows and those who supported Prince Charles were outcasts in Porter’s childhood, some forty years after the Battle of Culloden, so Porter was very familiar with the outcast theme. Her desire later to write of Scottish history reminds me of Margaret Mitchell’s childhood being raised on stories of the Old South that eventually led to her writing Gone With the Wind (1936)—the Confederate cause was a lost one just like that of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Later, this old soldier leaves the Porter family and is referred to as “wandering along the fields towards the town.”

But what makes this particular soldier even more fascinating is that eventually it is revealed that he is really a she. Porter relates how later the soldier had an accident. Upon a doctor examining him, it’s revealed that not only is a limb fractured but also two ribs broken, and that the soldier is a woman. Knowing she’ll die from her wound, the woman says that if her relatives are contacted, they will “come to lay in a decent grave the last remains of an unhappy wanderer….” Eventually, the woman dies but her relatives reveal her identity as that of Jeannie Cameron, a woman who fought with Prince Charles as if she were a man. Many people considered Jeannie Cameron as possibly Prince Charles’ lover, and in Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones (1749), she is referenced as such. Readers can easily find out more about Jeannie Cameron, although the truth about her age and her role in Prince Charles’ service are somewhat confused. Visit Wikipedia for more information on her, including the fact that she was likely possibly a mix of several women whose identities were confused and melded together: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanie_(Jenny)_Cameron

If Jeannie Cameron is not a historical person, or not the person legend claims she was, it is surprising that Porter mentions her as if she were a real person whom Porter knew personally. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about Porter to say whether she is being honest here, or just using what would become a standard device in historical fiction—the revelation of a stranger’s identity as being that of someone famous. (See my blog on James Malcolm Rymer’s The Black Monk, in which King Richard I keeps his identity secret; King Richard does the same thing in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819), posing as the Black Knight.) What I do know is that cross-dressing happens twice in The Scottish Chiefs where women put on men’s clothing, and I suspect these instances were inspired by Jeannie Cameron’s story, whether or not Porter ever really met her.

A comic book version of The Scottish Chiefs

Sadly, a full-length biography of Porter has never been written, nor do there seem to be many scholarly articles about her. Thomas McLean, a scholar in New Zealand, has written a few articles about her and is working on a project about her and her sister and brother. Her sister Anna Marie Porter was also an author and her brother Sir Robert Ker Porter was a noted painter. Porter’s relationship with Sir Walter Scott especially needs more discussion. We know Sir Walter Scott was a regular visitor to the Porters’ home when they lived in Edinburgh. Scott, however, never acknowledged Porter as a source of influence upon his writing historical fiction, but instead said he was influenced by Maria Edgeworth, whose Castle Rackrent (1800) is also a contender for the first historical novel. In her article “Transporting Genres: Jane Porter Delivers the Historical Novel to the Victorians,” (published in Victorian Traffic: Identity, Exchange, Performance, edited by Sue Thomas), Peta Beasley discusses how Scott never acknowledged Porter’s influence on him and even wrote a scathing comment about her portrayal of Wallace in a letter to his friend James Hogg. Beasley also discusses the possible date for the commencement of Scott’s first historical novel, Waverley (1814). Scott said he began it in 1805 but then mislaid the manuscript so he did not appear to resume it until 1810 or later (by which time he had no doubt read The Scottish Chiefs). In any case, it is a shame that more isn’t known about Porter and I believe it’s time for a full-length biography of her, including a more thorough discussion of her relationship with Scott.

It’s also time for a critical edition of The Scottish Chiefs. In her prefaces, Porter insists that she has sources for almost all the incidents in the novel and only a few characters are fictional. (She never says who those fictional characters are). She does have a few notes in her novel but they are meager and just simply tell us what she is writing is true. For example, the most interesting woman in the novel is Joanna, the Countess of Mar. After Wallace rescues her and her husband, she falls madly in love with Wallace and becomes extremely jealous of her stepdaughter Helen, whom she suspects Wallace loves. Joanna professes her love to Wallace, who instantly rejects her, knowing it isn’t honorable since she is a married woman and also he is obviously not attracted to her. Regardless, Joanna persists in believing he can love her, and she dreams and manipulates behind the scenes so that Wallace, rather than Bruce, will be offered the crown and then she can marry him and become a queen. However, even after her husband, Donald, Earl of Mar, dies, Joanna is rejected by Wallace. At one point, she even dresses in men’s clothing so that she can get close to Wallace, but when he rejects her again, she threatens him. At the end of the novel, partially through her treachery, Wallace is captured by the English. When Joanna learns he has been killed, she blames herself and goes mad. Joanna is a true Gothic wanderer figure in the moment she goes mad, finally feeling guilt for her sinful actions.

Once Wallace is in prison in London and sentenced to death, Joanna’s stepdaughter, Helen Mar, travels to be with him. She disguises herself as a man so she can get inside the prison. There she and Wallace are married just before he dies.

Perhaps the most interesting character in the novel, however, is Edwin Ruthven. He is a young boy of fifteen and a relative to Helen. He is completely enamored with Wallace and hero-worships him. Wallace treats him like a little brother, taking him under his wing. Edwin is no coward and repeatedly does brave things to the point where the English he is fighting are amazed that a boy is so strong and brave. All that said, modern readers cannot help but think Edwin is homosexual in the way he is portrayed, constantly professing his devotion to Wallace. At one point, Wallace and he are sleeping and Edwin is resting his head on Wallace’s bosom. In this scene, they are attacked and Wallace is taken prisoner, but not before Edwin tries to protect him by taking an arrow through the heart for him.

Of course, there is a fine line between a boy who worships his hero and being gay, and since Jane Porter, a female author, is writing the novel, she may have oversentimentalized the relationship between two men. Certainly, also, homophobia was not as rampant in 1809 as it has been in more recent years and the definitions of masculinity have changed since Porter’s time. Still, I suspect Porter was doing some literary crossdressing herself, projecting herself into the character of Edwin a bit too much in his speaking his admiration for Wallace. She likely projected herself into Helen as well, but in a more acceptable way because Helen’s romantic feelings for Wallace are heterosexual.

Helen descends the Glen of Stones, a scene that recalls for me the sisters in The Last of the Mohicans being taken along cliffs and forest trails as captives. Helen has just been rescued by a mysterious man in this scene.

I have been unable to find information online about most of these characters in the novel. While obviously Wallace and Robert the Bruce are historical, as is Donald, Earl of Mar, I could not find anything about Joanna Mar or Helen Mar. Helen’s sister Isabella Mar would marry Robert the Bruce so she is historical as well. Joanna’s mother was reputedly a princess of Norway so she must be historical and Porter says she was. As for Edwin, I could find nothing about him either. It is for these reasons that I think a critical edition of The Scottish Chiefs is long overdue so we can get a better sense of where Porter romanticized and where she drew from historical facts or at least from the ballads and stories she heard growing up about Sir William Wallace. Certainly, the Wallace depicted in this novel is a far cry from the one portrayed in Braveheart.

I will admit, despite my interest in the novel, that it is rather dull reading at times. I continually found my thoughts drifting away. I think the primary reason is because the characters are never fully fleshed out. They are more shadows than real people. Porter never really lets us into their minds but stands back and presents them through her sentimental and hero-worship lens. The only ones who really seem to live are Joanna, Helen, and Edwin. The rest show no real emotion. Wallace himself is one of the less memorable characters in the novel. His best scene is when he travels to England and visits Edward’s court disguised as a minstrel. At one point, Queen Margaret is rumored to have had an affair with him, but Wallace writes a letter to King Edward declaring she is virtuous, for which he is later thanked by her brother, the King of France when Wallace goes to France for support in Scotland’s cause. Wallace’s death scene is quickly brushed over—there are no explicit and gruesome details as there are in Braveheart.

The comic book version of Sir William Wallace’s death at a scaffold – no ripping out of entrails like in Braveheart.

One final interesting part of the novel is that the action begins with a box containing a secret that comes into Wallace’s possession and that he protects throughout the novel. In the end, it’s revealed that the regalia of Scotland is contained in the box. One wonders whether this mystery in the novel had any influence on Sir Walter Scott’s desire to find the regalia of Scotland, which he later located hidden away in Edinburgh Castle.

Ultimately, I have read a lot of Sir Walter Scott and I can well believe The Scottish Chiefs inspired him, but it is often as dull as James Fenimore Cooper’s novels and it reminded me a great deal of The Last of the Mohicans—especially in the scene where Helen is abducted and later rescued and led through the forest, including a dangerous journey over a bridge. One has to wonder how our ancestors could have been so taken by this novel, or even those of Scott and Cooper, but historical fiction was new then, and they had no movies to watch and no better historical novelists to read. These authors were pioneers of their time, and while I doubt anyone but literary historians are interested in them now (supposedly The Scottish Chiefs remains popular among Scottish children, but I doubt it’s any more popular than other books like Ivanhoe and The Last of the Mohicans which are also often published in children’s classics editions, but remain largely unread and not enjoyed if read. I read them as a child and found them dull and still do.) Nevertheless, Porter deserves a higher place in the history of historical fiction than she has so far been granted.

_________________________________________________

Tyler Tichelaar, Ph.D., is the author of The Children of Arthur series, beginning with Arthur’s Legacy and including Lilith’s Love, which is largely a sequel to Dracula. His scholarly nonfiction works include King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition and The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption. You can learn more about him at www.ChildrenofArthur.com and www.GothicWanderer.com.

11 Comments

Filed under Classic Gothic Novels