Sons and Daughters E-Book

Mrs.oliphant

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Mrs. Oliphant's "Sons and Daughters" is a nuanced exploration of familial relationships set against the backdrop of Victorian society. Through her deft narrative technique, Oliphant weaves a tapestry of character studies that illustrate the intricate dynamics of parent-child relationships, especially in the context of social expectations and personal desires. Her literary style is marked by psychological insight and rich descriptive language, which invites readers into the emotional landscapes inhabited by her characters, revealing their inner conflicts and moral dilemmas with great sensitivity. Oliphant, an accomplished novelist of the 19th century, often drew from her own experiences of loss and motherhood to inform her writing. As a prominent female author in a predominantly male literary landscape, her work reflects a keen awareness of the gender norms of her time, as well as the limitations imposed on women. This background provides a poignant lens through which she examines the struggles of her characters, making their journeys resonant and relatable. This incisive novel is recommended for readers interested in deep psychological insights and the societal constraints of the Victorian era. "Sons and Daughters" not only captivates with its compelling narrative but also serves as an incisive critique of the era's social conventions, making it an essential read for anyone fascinated by historical literature. 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.

Leseprobe

Mrs. Oliphant

Sons and Daughters

Enriched edition. A Victorian Tale of Family Dynamics and Social Commentary

In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience.

Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Felicity Somerville

Edited and published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4064066198718

Table of Contents

Introduction

Synopsis

Historical Context

Sons and Daughters

Analysis

Reflection

Memorable Quotes

Notes

Introduction

Table of Contents

Binding love, duty, and ambition into the intricate ledger of family life, Mrs. Oliphant’s Sons and Daughters weighs what parents owe their children, what children owe themselves, and what society demands of both, unfolding the tensions between affection and expectation, generosity and prudence, hope and disappointment, in a world where character is tested as much by domestic choices as by public ones, and where the rewards that matter most are never entirely separable from the costs they exact in loyalty, independence, and the shifting balance of power between generations that must learn, however imperfectly, to share a future they cannot fully control.

Sons and Daughters belongs to the tradition of Victorian domestic realism, where the moral and emotional stakes of everyday life are rendered with clarity and restraint. Written by Margaret Oliphant—one of the nineteenth century’s most prolific and discerning novelists—it reflects the cultural and social textures of the later decades of that century. Readers can expect a closely observed portrayal of family dynamics within the conventions and pressures of the age. Rather than sprawling across continents or cataclysmic events, the book draws significance from parlors, letters, confidences, and choices that echo far beyond the rooms in which they are made.

At its heart is a household whose fortunes and feelings are interlaced, with sons facing the blunt realities of work and reputation, and daughters navigating the fraught intersection of affection, self-respect, and opportunity. The premise is simple and inexhaustible: people who love one another must also negotiate money, pride, and social standing. Oliphant’s narrative voice is poised and sympathetic without sentimentality, attentive to small gestures and the quiet leverage of custom. The pace is measured and cumulative, building insight through conversation, reflection, and the recurring tests of daily life. The result is an immersive experience that favors psychological depth over melodrama.

Themes of duty and desire, independence and dependence, are treated with a scrupulous fairness characteristic of Oliphant. Parents grapple with the limits of prudence and sacrifice; adult children strain toward autonomy without severing ties that sustain them. The novel examines how education, livelihood, and marriage are constrained by expectations that seem practical yet often become moral absolutes. It also probes the subtle economies of respectability—how reputations are earned, guarded, and occasionally redeemed. Throughout, affection is both refuge and pressure, its comfort complicated by the ledgers of obligation that keep a family solvent in more than financial terms.

Stylistically, the novel exemplifies the lucid, observant storytelling associated with the period’s best realist fiction. An assured, omniscient narrator orchestrates a chorus of perspectives, allowing readers to see motives rub against manners and ideals collide gently—but decisively—with circumstance. Dialogue carries much of the drama, and description tends toward the telling detail rather than the grand tableau. Oliphant’s irony is quiet and humane, sharpening judgment without souring sympathy. The effect is a moral panorama achieved through intimacy: by lingering over choices that seem small, the narrative reveals how character is shaped and how futures are plotted, often almost invisibly, within the family sphere.

Situated in the social world of the late nineteenth century, the novel reflects a landscape where professional pathways were narrowing and expanding in unequal ways, and where daughters’ prospects were often measured against the calculus of propriety and security. Oliphant writes with the authority of a chronicler of her time, attentive to conventions that guide behavior as surely as law. Yet the book avoids didacticism; it asks rather than answers, observing how individuals improvise within the confines of their class and community. In doing so, it links domestic life to broader currents of change while keeping the focus on the intimate costs of adjustment.

For contemporary readers, Sons and Daughters offers a mirror to enduring dilemmas: how to balance loyalty with self-direction, ambition with care, and financial sense with emotional truth. Its questions about caretaking, intergenerational support, and the price of upward mobility continue to resonate, as do its gentle interrogations of what counts as success. The novel’s appeal lies in its refusal to caricature: tenderness and tension are allowed to coexist, and moral clarity emerges from attention, not certainty. To read it is to inhabit a world where the smallest choices matter and where the bonds that complicate us are also the ones that hold us together.

Synopsis

Table of Contents

Mrs. Oliphant’s Sons and Daughters opens with a steady, observant portrait of a prosperous middle-class household in late Victorian Britain. Parents who have risen through prudent industry preside over a brood now on the verge of adult life. The domestic rooms, regular callers, and measured routines reveal expectations that seem secure: education has been paid for, prospects are sketched, and the children are thought ready to take their places. Yet beneath this order lies unease about change. The parents know that the world beyond their door is shifting, and the story begins by setting this calm interior against the uncertainties of modern ambition.

The narrative first follows the sons, whose paths are conventionally mapped but not firmly chosen. The eldest is urged toward a stable profession, where diligence and connections promise advancement. A younger brother wrestles with restlessness, attracted by quicker routes to distinction or more creative pursuits that worry his elders. Parallel to this, the daughters are educated and accomplished, but their prospects are framed differently, through household skill, social conduct, and the careful navigation of courtship. Early chapters emphasize contrasting expectations for sons and daughters, and the mild frictions that arise when individual temperament resists the patterns of family and class.

Opportunities gather as acquaintances introduce new circles and polite invitations open doors. A patronage hint offers the eldest son a respectable opening; a promising friendship suggests, without naming it, the beginnings of a match for a daughter. The parents, alert to propriety and position, try to balance encouragement with caution. Plans are drawn, letters exchanged, and formal visits measured by tacit rules. At this stage, the family’s outlook is hopeful but tentative, the children’s futures hinging on conduct as much as talent. The momentum of the plot proceeds through small decisions, each binding the household more tightly to outcomes not yet visible.

A change in fortune alters the family’s calculations. Investments prove less certain than they appeared, or a business support unexpectedly weakens, and the comfortable margin narrows. Allowances are trimmed; consultations grow more serious; cheerful talk becomes practical planning. The sons face the question of earning quickly versus training thoroughly, while the daughters weigh invitations with sharper attention to character and stability. The parents’ tone shifts from benevolent guidance to necessary prudence, and the narrative underlines the fragility of security. This turning point does not devastate, but it tests habits of thought, revealing how money, opportunity, and duty are bound together.

Change of scene brings new influences. With visits to busier streets and drawing rooms, the children encounter wider tastes, livelier conversation, and standards that differ from those of home. Some acquaintances flatter, others warn; a mentor appears who values substance over display. The eldest son learns the quiet weight of office work and endurance; his brother measures the cost of swifter ventures. The daughters face the subtle pressures of fashion and reputation, discovering how kindness and steadiness can be misread amid crowded rooms. The narrative shifts between domestic counsel and public impression, showing how character is tested when the gaze of society grows sharper.

Misunderstandings gather as private wishes collide with public appearances. A friendship for one becomes a liability for another; a confidence, lightly given, spreads beyond its intended hearers. The parents’ advice, once easily accepted, is questioned or evaded. Promises made in haste are reconsidered; obligations assumed without calculation feel heavier than expected. Here the book marks its central conflict: whether affection, ambition, or economic need will govern choice. The sons must decide what they owe to their name and talent; the daughters what they owe to themselves and those who depend on them. A family accustomed to harmony learns to argue in earnest.

A crisis concentrates these scattered tensions. An illness, a legal complication, or an urgent financial call forces swifter decisions than anyone prefers. Roles shift: one child rises to steadiness, another recognizes the limits of pride, and a parent, long protective, admits the children must act as adults. Practical arrangements are made with less ceremony and more truth. Letters are replaced by decisive interviews. The plot moves briskly while avoiding sensationalism, using the emergency to reveal character rather than to overturn it. The family’s bonds, tested by stress, hold, but not without cost, and not without a clearer knowledge of each person’s measure.

In the aftermath, paths settle more distinctly. Careers are accepted for what they offer, not what they promised; engagements and friendships are viewed with steadier eyes. The parents’ hopes adjust to realities they can respect. The sons learn that advancement comes by patience, responsibility, and consistent effort more than through brilliance or favor; the daughters learn that affection and respect must align with prudence and mutual support. The household regains balance, though on new terms. The narrative closes its loops quietly, letting outcomes emerge from character and circumstance rather than from dramatic reversals, and restoring the sense of a life lived forward, day by careful day.

Sons and Daughters presents, without polemic, a study of generational duty in a changing society. It contrasts the privileges and constraints assigned to young men and women and asks how families can remain generous while being just. The book’s message rests on the sufficiency of steady virtues—industry, patience, and truthfulness—over display or sudden fortune. It affirms affection and responsibility as mutually sustaining, showing that both sons and daughters must learn to deserve trust. In closing, it offers a tempered hope: that measured choices, honestly made, can preserve both the dignity of the household and the distinct paths of the individuals within it.

Historical Context

Table of Contents

Set in late-Victorian Britain, roughly from the 1860s to the mid-1880s, the world of the novel unfolds in prosperous provincial towns and their widening suburban fringes, the milieu that Margaret Oliphant knew from both English and Lowland Scottish life. Railways, gaslight, and new municipal institutions frame daily routines, while a stratified middle class—shopkeepers, bankers, lawyers, clerks—competes for respectability and security. Parishes, dissenting chapels, and Anglican or Presbyterian councils shape sociability and moral authority. The home serves as an economic unit, where marriage settlements, dowries, and apprenticeships distribute opportunity among sons and daughters. This setting anchors the narrative in the practical rhythms of late-nineteenth-century domestic and civic life.

Industrial and commercial expansion provided the material landscape. After the railway mania of the 1840s, an integrated rail network bound London to provincial centers by the 1860s–1870s, accelerating urban growth in places such as Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Telegraphy (the Post Office assumed control in 1870) and a burgeoning provincial press quickened information flow, while new gas and water companies reshaped municipal services. This widening economy produced both fortunes and anxieties for the middle class of shopkeepers, warehousemen, and clerks. The novel’s attention to career choices, respectable enterprise, and social mobility mirrors these transformations, showing families calibrating status against risk in an increasingly connected marketplace.

Volatile finance was a defining Victorian experience. The collapse of the London discount house Overend, Gurney & Co. on 10 May 1866 sparked a panic that rippled through provincial banks and joint-stock companies; the Bank of England’s rate shot to 10 percent as failures multiplied. Earlier Companies Acts (1856, consolidated 1862) had eased incorporation and limited liability, enabling speculative manias in railways and finance. Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street (1873) formalized lender-of-last-resort doctrine in the panic’s wake. The novel’s recurring preoccupation with prudent investment, sudden reversals, and the moral language of debt and credit evokes this cycle, exposing how a single misjudgment could imperil an entire household.

Victorian family life was structured by coverture and its erosion. Before reform, a married woman’s property merged with her husband’s; the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 established civil divorce but on unequal terms, while the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 protected earnings and certain assets and the 1882 Act granted married women separate property as if unmarried. The Custody of Infants Act 1839 and the Guardianship of Infants Act 1886 slowly recognized maternal rights. These legal shifts frame plots about dowries, settlements, wills, and the stewardship of daughters’ futures. The book’s negotiations over marriage and inheritance reflect the stakes of these statutes for middle-class security and female agency.