31/10/07 - English Literature - Walter Scott: Waverley

It is difficult to imagine just what a phenomenon Waverley was when it was first published. There is no parallel in contemporary society to the significance and scale of Scott's work. He was the biggest writer since Shakespeare, including in terms of imaginative scope. He signalled the turning point of the history of the novel and imaginative literature in the world. The novel was brought into a historical context. He had worried about genre because his genre was new, a conglomeration of the best bits of many genres, particularly in the first and last chapters. Scott allowed a genuine historicity into his novel - his characters are shaped by their context. He decorates the history of the real world with imaginative dressing.

There are undeniably realistic and historical dimensions to Waverley. But a more imaginative element runs with, and sometimes against the historical aspect. Scott opens up a metacritical reflection of the possibility of the storytelling of history and the consequences of this. Scott's history is sequential, progressive and dialectical. Scott conveys a time of civil war, bringing to life the passions of the time but being careful not to create more. He glorifies the present and so glorifies the past, because it has led up to the present, and holds up the past like a moral essay. He uses narrative progression to imitate history moving from past to present, mapped in novel form. The novel is also mapped geographically: the Highlanders, representing one form of history, conflict with Lowlanders, who represent another. Edward experiences both forms and so is best placed to see the best aspects of both cultures. According to a critic, Alexander Welsh, the hero is a blank, a cipher, which means he can understand both sides. Edward is the sympathetic observer. He is morally weak and impressionable, as detailed in the early chapters.

"My intention is not to follow the steps of that inimitable author, in describing such total perversion of intellect as misconstrues the objects actually presented to the senses, but that more common aberration from sound judgement, which apprehends occurrences indeed in their reality, but communicates to them a tincture of its own romantic tone and colouring."

Edward sees clearly enough to depict the world to us, but his descriptions have a romantic tincture; he is Romantic in an imaginative sense. Edwards lacks balance and proportion of reality. The novel is a Bildunsroman, meaning that Edward grows from naive to mature.

"I have already hinted, that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged. […] From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fancies they excited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, with no other light than was afforded by the decaying brands on its ponderous and ample hearth, he would exercise for hours that internal sorcery, by which past or imaginary events are presented in action, as it were, to the eye of the muser."

Edward's reading space is as deep and gothic as the books he reads. There is a difference between actual events and that way Edward perceives them.

"It was about noon when Captain Waverley entered the straggling village, or rather Hamlet, of Tully-Veolan, close to which was situated the mansion of the proprietor. The houses seemed miserable in the extreme, especially to an eye accustomed to the smiling neatness of English cottages. […] Three or four village girls, returning from the well or brook with pitchers and pails upon their heads, formed more pleasing objects; and, with their thin, short gowns and single petticoats, bare arms, legs, and feet, uncovered heads and braided hair, somewhat resembled Italian forms of landscape. Nor could a lover of the picturesque have challenged either the elegance of their costume, or the symmetry of their shape."

Edward focuses on the beauty rather than the poverty of the women. There is an ironic distance between Edward and the narrator. The reader has a different reaction to Edward, because we must make up our own minds about what is really happening. For example, Edward naively does not recognise the treason he has committed by giving his seal to Donald Bean Lean and is not alarmed by Donald's excessive knowledge about him.

Scott criticises the map of history. He finds ways of registering the parts that history left out. The death of Gardiner catalyses Edward's moral development, and romance is left behind after this point.

"Ere Edward could make his way among the Highlanders, who, furious and eager for spoil, now thronged upon each other, he saw his former commander brought from his horse by the blow of a scythe, and beheld him receive, while on the ground, more wounds than would have let out twenty lives. When Waverley came up, however, perception had not entirely fled. The dying warrior seemed to recognise Edward, for he fixed his eye upon him with an upbraiding, yet sorrowful look, and appeared to struggle for utterance. But he felt that death was dealing closely with him, and resigning his purpose, and folding his hands as if in devotion, he gave up his soul to his Creator. The look with which he regarded Waverley in his dying moments did not strike him so deeply at that crisis of hurry and confusion, as when it recurred to his imagination at the distance of some time."

In the heat of battle Edward does not realise the furiousness of the Highlanders. (In history they were known for their great discipline; Scott bends the truth a little.) The Highlanders are evil in this scene so that Gardiner dies like a saint. Scott reminds us that the Highlanders belong to the violent and bloody past.

"'Nay, I cannot tell what to make of you,’ answered the Chief of Mac-Ivor, ‘you are blown about by every wind of doctrine. Here have we gained a victory, unparalleled in history – and your behaviour is praised by every living mortal to the skies – and the Prince is eager to thank you in person – and all our beauties of the White Rose are pulling caps for you, -- and you, the preux chevalier of the day, are stopping on your horse’s neck like a butter-woman riding to market, and looking as black as a funeral.’
‘I am sorry for poor Colonel Gardiner’s death: he was once very kind to me.’
‘Why, then, be sorry for five minutes, and then be glad again; his chance to-day may be ours to-morrow. And what does it signify? – the next best thing to victory is honourable death, but it is a pis-aller, and one would rather a foe had it than one’s self.’"

Here Fergus Mac-Ivor offers the rewards of a chivalric knight to Edward, but these belong to the past and Edward is moving into the present. His reply is simplified and more modern. The world of Fergus is one where honourable death is preferable to dishonourable life. In Scott's footnote on the death of Balmawhapple, he mixes fiction and reality, and uses the striking motif of himself playing on the grave of the soldier. The past is left behind because it is outmoded, yet in the image that Scott paints the past cannot be left behind. It is like the grass. Scott knows he is treating the Highlanders badly by consigning them to the past, so these little hints of the dialectic of Enlightenment, where the past becomes the present, are scattered throughout the novel. Scott uses imagination to allow us to see both the past and present at once. He needs the past, although in the book he leaves it behind.

The closing image of the novel is when the ravaged home of the Baron Bradwardine is restored to its original glory. Scott smooths out the labour of building, making use of his literary power. But one thing changes.

"There was one addition to this fine old apartment, however, which drew tears into the Baron’s eyes. It was a large and spirited painting, representing Fergus Mac-Ivor and Waverley in their Highland dress; the scene a wild, rocky and mountainous pass, down which the clan were descending in the background. […] the ardent, fiery and impetuous character of the unfortunate Chief of Glennaquoich was finely contrasted with the contemplative, fanciful, and enthusiastic expression of his happier friend. Beside this painting hung the arms which Waverley had borne in the unfortunate civil war."

The painting contrasts Edward's innocence with Fergus's impetuous nature, which are befriended and framed for the wall. The figures almost step out of the painting. Scott knows his work is fictional, but there is a danger that he may revive the war by his reconstruction of history. The past is forever threatening the present - it is this principal issue that the novel deals with.