I read Hester by Margaret Oliphant this week in my push for more fiction. I really enjoyed its take on generational change (and repetition) as well as the intensity of family within the book. In this novel, family quite literally is an institution, for the Vernons are almost entirely defined by their relationship to Vernon’s bank. Catherine Vernon, the woman who saved the bank back in the day and thus becomes the family matriarch, buys a great old house where she installs her poorer relations. As the novel suggests: “It was some sort of a convent which she was going to institute, a community of an apostolical kind, a sisterhood, a hospital, a set of almshouses” (27). I love this description because it adds another layer of institutionality to the already hyper-institutional family structure. Of course, the center cannot hold. Family as institution slowly destroys the members of the family until institutions–the bank, and the Vernonry community–are all that’s left. The family homes are sold off, and Catherine dies (alas).
The novel has some brilliant moments: the Morgans refusing (or claiming to refuse) the claims of their grandchildren because they think they should be able to enjoy old age unfettered, Hester declaring that she is not a “Cinder wench” to Edward, and Edward’s merger of sex and speculation in a rather daring way (that ends in a far less daring conclusion, a hasty marriage on a train with Emma Ashton who just wanted her chance).