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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Double Harness," Anthony Hope crafts a rich narrative that intertwines romantic intrigue and social commentary within the context of Victorian society. The novel features a captivating blend of humor, wit, and psychological depth, exploring themes of love, ambition, and the complexities of social class. Through its intricate plot and distinctive characterizations, Hope reflects the conventions of the late 19th-century novel, while simultaneously bending genre expectations with his innovative storytelling techniques and vivid prose. Anthony Hope, best known for his adventure novel "The Prisoner of Zenda," showcases his narrative versatility in "Double Harness." Born into a Victorian-era England characterized by rapid social change, Hope's experiences as a barrister and playwright allowed him to deeply engage with contemporary issues of class dynamics and gender roles. His background in law and theater is evident in the sharp dialogue and dramatic tension that permeate the story, reinforcing the societal dilemmas faced by his characters. Readers seeking a thoughtful yet entertaining exploration of romantic entanglements and social constraints will find "Double Harness" a rewarding read. Hope's deeply resonant themes and engaging storytelling make this novel an essential addition to any literary collection, offering both a pleasurable escape and an insightful reflection on the societal norms of its time. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Double Harness
Table of Contents
Introduction
Two lives fastened side by side in a single yoke test how far affection, ambition, and duty can pull in different directions before the bonds of partnership must become a choice, a performance, or a hard-won act of mutual freedom.
Double Harness is a novel by the British writer Anthony Hope, best known for The Prisoner of Zenda, and it turns from high adventure to the intricacies of social life at the turn of the twentieth century. Published in the early decades of that era, it belongs to the tradition of the novel of manners and moral inquiry, attending closely to the pressures of reputation, money, and public expectation. The setting is contemporary to its composition, moving through private and public spaces where appearances matter and decisions are observed. The effect is both intimate and panoramic: a portrait of society refracted through a closely watched partnership.
Without disclosing developments better discovered in reading, the book’s premise is clear: a partnership—romantic, legal, and practical—becomes the stage upon which questions of selfhood and social demand play out. Hope writes in an urbane, conversational voice that favors quick exchanges and shrewd observation, giving the narrative a crisp momentum without sacrificing depth. Scenes unfold with an eye for the small signals by which people bargain, yield, and press their advantage. The mood balances lightness and gravity: wit sits beside disquiet, and polite surfaces frequently betray the strain of competing ambitions, obligations, and desires.
At the heart of Double Harness is the metaphor of coupling as both promise and constraint. The novel examines marriage as an institution that confers status and stability while inviting negotiation, resistance, and reinvention. It considers how people reconcile private aims with public roles, how self-respect grows or withers under scrutiny, and how honesty contends with expediency when consequential choices must be made. Hope is attentive to the delicate interplay between calculation and feeling, probing the ways affection can be genuine yet strategic, and how integrity can assert itself even when the rules of the game seem to reward compromise.
Stylistically, Hope’s prose is clean and poised, guided by dialogue that reveals character as much through omission as declaration. He stages conversations where power shifts in a phrase, the tempo of a room alters with a glance, and an apparently trivial decision carries moral weight. The narration keeps a courteous distance, fostering an atmosphere of irony without cynicism. Rather than sermonize, the book tests ideas in action: loyalty in practice, ambition under pressure, and dignity measured against the world’s convenient fictions. The result is a supple narrative architecture that rewards close attention to motive, tone, and the choreography of social exchange.
Readers today may find in Double Harness a surprisingly contemporary meditation on partnership and agency. The novel’s questions—how to share a life without surrendering yourself, how to pursue success without forfeiting candor, how to navigate an audience that never quite leaves—resonate in an era of constant visibility and negotiated identity. Its insights into transactional expectations around intimacy, work, and status anticipate debates that continue to animate modern relationships. At the same time, the book offers the pleasures of classic storytelling: measured suspense, moral subtlety, and the satisfaction of seeing characters learn what they can and cannot carry together.
For those drawn to the crossover between social comedy and serious ethical reflection, Double Harness extends Hope’s range beyond celebrated romance-adventure into a realm of keen psychological and cultural scrutiny. It invites the reader to enjoy elegance of surface while listening for the undertones of unease below it, and to value tact as a mode of truth rather than evasion. In charting the give-and-take of a shared life, it neither romanticizes constraint nor denies the possibility of grace. What remains is a poised, humane inquiry into how two people might pull in concert—without losing the strength, or the direction, of their separate strides.
Synopsis
Set in late-Victorian society, the novel opens in London drawing rooms where ambition, reputation, and family interests intersect. A rising public man seeks a marriage that can steady his prospects, while a poised young woman faces dwindling options amid social expectations and financial constraints. Their encounter is shaped less by romance than by calculation, with relatives and friends subtly brokering possibilities. The phrase "double harness" frames marriage as both yoke and partnership, signaling a story about duty and consent. Early chapters map the milieu—clubs, salons, and country houses—establishing how opinion is made and how private bargains support public success.
The central pair’s courtship proceeds with measured caution. Each recognizes the other’s utility: he needs a wife who can support his public life, and she seeks security and standing. Conversations are marked by tact rather than confession, revealing the terms of a union built on mutual advantage. Side characters—an earnest cousin, a candid friend, a worldly matron—offer contrasting models of attachment and influence. The couple’s engagement becomes a quiet event rather than a rapture, and practicalities dominate arrangements. The narrative stresses calculation and composure, showing how a marriage may be formed as an alliance to navigate society’s harness.
Once married, the pair settles into their roles: he as a politician on the rise, she as a hostess whose tact smooths pathways otherwise blocked by pride or faction. Social calendars fill with dinners and weekend parties, where favors are asked and debts incurred. The home becomes a stage for discreet negotiations. The heroine proves adept at managing visitors and averting small crises, while her husband secures backing for a measure that could define his standing. Early harmony is professional rather than intimate, and mutual respect grows around competence. The arrangement appears successful, yet subtle tensions suggest hidden costs and deferred truths.
Complications emerge as past ties resurface. An earlier admirer, representing a different vision of life, rekindles acquaintance with the heroine, prompting comparisons she avoids acknowledging. Meanwhile, an influential patron presses the husband to compromise on a principle, offering advancement in exchange for discretion. The couple’s alliance, designed for public coherence, strains under private doubts and outside pressure. The narrative juxtaposes private conversations with public appearances, highlighting the gap between sincerity and performance. The social circle, watchful and quick to judge, provides commentary without full understanding, and a sense of precarious balance settles over the household and the husband’s prospects.
Political stakes rise as a contested bill moves through debate, drawing sharper lines between integrity and expediency. The husband’s speeches gain notice, and the press amplifies both praise and suspicion. Behind the scenes, the heroine’s tact averts a misstep at a key gathering, strengthening his support while binding them further to allies whose motives mix conviction and advantage. Invitations, seating plans, and brief corridor exchanges carry outsized consequence. At home, guarded talks begin to touch on trust and obligation. The marriage’s original terms—practical, measured, useful—now must bear moral weight, and the couple learns that partnership demands more than coordinated appearances.
A threat arises from an indiscretion long past, capable of embarrassing the household and weakening the husband’s position. A minor figure, armed with knowledge and grievance, hints at disclosure at a delicate moment. The heroine weighs options: pay the price of silence, appeal to loyalty, or confront the matter openly. Counsel comes from several quarters—one urging pragmatism, another insisting on candor. The couple faces their first true test as partners, forced to decide whether to share facts fully and to divide risks. The social machinery that once protected them may turn indifferent if scandal appears profitable or entertaining.
Events converge at a prominent social and political occasion where reputations can be made or undone. Allies and rivals gather, watching for advantage. The husband must speak under pressure, address a compromise, or hold a line he has drawn. The heroine anticipates moves in the room and manages introductions that may defuse danger. Glances, asides, and a misplaced document add to tension. The hinted exposure hovers, threatening to overshadow the agenda. What follows tests the limits of calculation: the couple’s appeal to shared purpose, the cost of candor, and the resilience of networks that prefer stability until it becomes inconvenient.
In the aftermath, the household recalibrates. Some acquaintances draw closer, impressed by steadiness; others drift away, measuring risk. The marriage shifts from convenience toward something firmer, shaped by choices under stress, though formalities remain intact. The husband’s standing appears altered—strengthened in some eyes, compromised in others. The heroine, having acted decisively, occupies a more central position in the partnership and in the social circuit that once merely appraised her. Conversations turn reflective, invoking the harness as both restraint and instrument: two people moving in step, limited by connection yet able to pull a greater weight together than alone.
The novel closes by affirming marriage as a negotiated enterprise that blends ambition with duty, sentiment with strategy. Without resolving every uncertainty, it suggests that dignity and effectiveness arise from mutual acknowledgment of power and vulnerability. Public life demands surfaces; private life requires trust. Double Harness presents these demands not as a contradiction but as a discipline, asking whether two lives, coupled for advantage, can mature into shared purpose. The overall message emphasizes that partnership, once entered, becomes its own education: a steadying force, a constraint, and an opportunity to turn calculation into character through deliberate, joint effort.
Historical Context
Anthony Hope’s Double Harness is set in the world the author knew best: upper- and upper-middle-class English society in the early Edwardian years, with London drawing rooms, parliamentary lobbies, and country houses as principal stages. Published in 1904, the novel inhabits the precise afterglow of the late Victorian era, when Britain’s imperial reach was vast yet politically unsettled at home. The setting mirrors a culture of salons, clubs, and electoral campaigns, where fortunes turn on alliances and reputation. The geography is distinctly English—West End neighborhoods, clubland around St James’s, and shires governed by landed families—framing a milieu in which marriage and politics interlace as instruments of power.
The Second Boer War (11 October 1899–31 May 1902) was a watershed shaping British politics and public conscience. Fought in the South African Republic and the Orange Free State against Boer commandos led by Louis Botha and Christiaan de Wet, the war culminated in the Treaty of Vereeniging. Commanders Frederick Roberts and Horatio Kitchener resorted to scorched-earth tactics and concentration camps, where more than 26,000 Boer civilians died, documented by Emily Hobhouse in 1901. The conflict left Britain militarily victorious but morally bruised. Double Harness reflects the postwar atmosphere of patriotic fatigue and recrimination, depicting careers and marriages recalibrated by debates over imperial conduct, national efficiency, and political accountability.
The Tariff Reform controversy erupted in 1903 when Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain resigned to campaign for imperial preference and protective duties, challenging Britain’s long-standing Free Trade. Arthur Balfour’s Conservative government split between Protectionists and Free Traders, and the press, notably Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail, turned economic policy into mass politics. Chamberlain’s Birmingham speech (May 1903) and nationwide tours (1903–1906) polarized constituencies. In Double Harness, the atmosphere of drawing-room debate and caucus intrigue closely mirrors this divide: characters leverage social connections to pick winners, hedge bets, and cement alliances. The novel’s marriages function as political instruments, yoking fortunes to fiscal positions in a moment when tariff loyalties could make or break careers.
The 1906 general election marked a dramatic Liberal landslide: the Liberals won 397 seats, while Conservatives and Liberal Unionists fell to 156; Labour, newly formalized from the Labour Representation Committee (founded February 1900), secured 29 MPs. The Taff Vale decision (1901) galvanized trade union support for Labour, and the result presaged reforms on trade disputes, social insurance, and education. Anthony Hope, conversant with party mechanics, stages a social world in Double Harness where electoral winds drive private calculations. The novel’s political figures fear sudden shifts in public mood and adjust alliances accordingly, using marriages, patronage, and well-placed hostesses to manage risk until a reliable majority can be assembled.
Women’s political activism, though disenfranchised, intensified in this period. Millicent Fawcett’s NUWSS (1897) advanced constitutional suffrage tactics, while Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU in 1903, inaugurating militancy highlighted by the 1905 Free Trade Hall incident involving Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney. Legal frameworks were shifting: the Married Women’s Property Act 1882 granted wives control over property, yet divorce law and political exclusion curtailed agency. Double Harness engages this landscape through its portrayal of strategic marriage and the subtle power of salons. Its women wield influence not at the ballot box but through networks, philanthropy, and social leverage, illuminating how elite domestic spheres mediated public policy in a pre-suffrage polity.
The aristocracy’s economic strain and the recalibration of class alliances form a vital backdrop. Estate duty, introduced by Sir William Harcourt’s Finance Act 1894, and prolonged agricultural depression undermined landed incomes, while industrial fortunes rose. Transatlantic “dollar princess” marriages—such as Consuelo Vanderbilt’s 1895 union with the Duke of Marlborough—signaled how titles and wealth could be traded. The London Season, with its codified calendar of balls and political dinners, functioned as a brokerage floor for status and policy. Double Harness situates its unions within this economy of exchange: the title itself suggests a yoke binding partners for mutual advantage, where fiscal necessity and political ambition drive intimate choices.
Modern party organization and mass-circulation journalism transformed politics. The Reform Act of 1884 enlarged the electorate; the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act 1883 constrained spending; and centralized party machines honed the caucus system. Lord Northcliffe’s press empire—Daily Mail (1896) and Daily Mirror (1903)—made and unmade reputations, while parliamentary whips enforced discipline amid volatile by-elections. In Double Harness, reputational capital is currency: a favorable column, a carefully curated dinner list, or a whisper in clubland can alter a career. Hope, a barrister familiar with institutional nuance, depicts the legalistic and procedural texture of politics, showing how image management and backroom negotiation became indispensable.
As social and political critique, Double Harness exposes the transactional underpinnings of Edwardian respectability. It dissects marriage as an instrument for consolidating capital—financial, social, and electoral—while revealing how class privilege repackages private bargains as public virtue. The novel underscores gendered inequities by showing women’s influence confined to informal channels, even as their choices bear public consequences. It criticizes a politics preoccupied with tariffs, patronage, and newspaper headlines while neglecting ethical responsibility after imperial war. By staging careers and unions as mutually contingent, the book indicts a system where ambition subordinates affection and civic duty to calculation, anticipating the disillusion that would shadow British politics before 1914.
