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Desmond
Desmond is Charlotte Smith's only epistolary work and is her most politically outspoken text, incorporating the events of the French Revolution into its plot. The Revolution is discussed and a parallel is drawn between political and domestic tyranny.
961 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1792
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About the author
Charlotte Turner Smith
269 books55 followersCharlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 2, 2022
As a document of the 1790s (yes! I'm still reading about the 1790s! I'm sorry! It'll be over soon, I swear!) this is totally fascinating. As a novel, it's less successful.
This is basically a novelistic response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, and is stuffed full of interesting conversations in which we can hear both the conservative and the radical voices expressed more or less as they must have been heard in arguments in coffee-shops and supper rooms around the country at the time.
It is clear where Smith's own sympathies lie: she was a full-throated partisan of the Revolution, and indeed went even further than many other liberals in backing it, even after violence began to intrude. The worst of that, though, was still in the future when this was published in 1792.
Those who find her political speeches a bit grating – and they are pretty much dropped into characters' mouths wholesale – would do well to hurry through volume one, after which the romance plot does start to kick in. And it's a fun one – a classic love triangle between the virtuous Geraldine, her unfaithful and dissolute husband Verney, and her heroic admirer Desmond.
Smith often wrote about women trapped in unsatisfactory marriages, which is no surprise since she was in one herself. Her husband had run off and was living in some kind of weird menage à trois in Scotland with his cook and her niece, and she, Smith, was churning out sentimental novels in an attempt to support her many children. (Geraldine's kids in this novel have the same names as Smith's own.)
It gives the romance in this book a touch of controversy, since it was criticised (as is one of the fashionable novels a character within it is reading) as containing ‘a lurking palliation of conjugal infidelity’. Perhaps more to the point, though, is the way it implicitly equates the position of women under their husbands with the position of the revolting French under their despotic former rulers. Geraldine, like the Gallic masses, is urged to demonstrate ‘that proper spirit of resistance against usurped and abused authority’; and writing to her sister as she plans a trip into revolutionary France, she asks:
The fact that she does put on those fetters – that she tries, from a sense of duty, to comply with all her abusive husband's demands – is not so much a mitigation of revolutionary principles as a way of critiquing female submission in general. She conforms to the ‘proper’ eighteenth-century modes of behaviour, but readers are left with a clear sense, by comparison, of how ridiculous and unjust these are.
This came out the same year as Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and it's a good reminder of how widespread these ideas were in the culture of the time. I'm not saying it's great, but the problem is that the only great novelist at the end of the eighteenth century was Frances Burney, who was an arch-conservative; and it's worth reading these other novels to understand that women were very active on the other side of the debate, too, arguing powerfully for those ideas of liberty and self-determination to apply not just to foreign governments but to English social relations as well.
This is basically a novelistic response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, and is stuffed full of interesting conversations in which we can hear both the conservative and the radical voices expressed more or less as they must have been heard in arguments in coffee-shops and supper rooms around the country at the time.
It is clear where Smith's own sympathies lie: she was a full-throated partisan of the Revolution, and indeed went even further than many other liberals in backing it, even after violence began to intrude. The worst of that, though, was still in the future when this was published in 1792.
Those who find her political speeches a bit grating – and they are pretty much dropped into characters' mouths wholesale – would do well to hurry through volume one, after which the romance plot does start to kick in. And it's a fun one – a classic love triangle between the virtuous Geraldine, her unfaithful and dissolute husband Verney, and her heroic admirer Desmond.
Smith often wrote about women trapped in unsatisfactory marriages, which is no surprise since she was in one herself. Her husband had run off and was living in some kind of weird menage à trois in Scotland with his cook and her niece, and she, Smith, was churning out sentimental novels in an attempt to support her many children. (Geraldine's kids in this novel have the same names as Smith's own.)
It gives the romance in this book a touch of controversy, since it was criticised (as is one of the fashionable novels a character within it is reading) as containing ‘a lurking palliation of conjugal infidelity’. Perhaps more to the point, though, is the way it implicitly equates the position of women under their husbands with the position of the revolting French under their despotic former rulers. Geraldine, like the Gallic masses, is urged to demonstrate ‘that proper spirit of resistance against usurped and abused authority’; and writing to her sister as she plans a trip into revolutionary France, she asks:
If I get among the wildest collection of those people whose ferocity arises not from their present liberty, but their recent bondage, is it possible to suppose they will injure me, who am myself a miserable slave, returning with trembling and reluctant steps, to put on the most dreadful of all fetters?
The fact that she does put on those fetters – that she tries, from a sense of duty, to comply with all her abusive husband's demands – is not so much a mitigation of revolutionary principles as a way of critiquing female submission in general. She conforms to the ‘proper’ eighteenth-century modes of behaviour, but readers are left with a clear sense, by comparison, of how ridiculous and unjust these are.
This came out the same year as Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and it's a good reminder of how widespread these ideas were in the culture of the time. I'm not saying it's great, but the problem is that the only great novelist at the end of the eighteenth century was Frances Burney, who was an arch-conservative; and it's worth reading these other novels to understand that women were very active on the other side of the debate, too, arguing powerfully for those ideas of liberty and self-determination to apply not just to foreign governments but to English social relations as well.
December 8, 2007
This is both novel and political essay - Smith's novelistic version of Paine's The Rights of Man. Smith references every major philosopher you can think of in this book, from Rousseau to Burke to Locke to Paine and a whole lot more. However, amongst Smith's tribute to the values of the French Revolution lies a very good, readable story. Desmond is an engaging character, and through the character of Geraldine it becomes clear to what extent women were thought of simply the "property" of their husbands. This novel reflects the optimism surrounding the beginning of the French Revolution, before the Terror, and as such is probably the most politically significant novel written by a woman in the 1790s.
February 3, 2018
I tried to read this once in undergrad and hated it, and this time again I found myself complaining for days about it - it begins ever so dry, all politics and very little plot. however this is just for the first 150 pages or so, most of the first volume - and there are some wonderful gems of scenes even amongst this first section, particularly the lovely gothic description of Montfleuri's chateau. The latter two volumes are a much more enjoyable reading experience, as this part of the novel isn't focused on the voices of men and their rational debates about politics - it's interesting that the first volume is purely focused on letters between Bethel and Desmond, if I remember correctly, and that the letters written by the female characters do not crop up until the second volume. Still, I enjoyed it much more than I initially expected, though how much of that is down to having such a great seminar on it yesterday, to good teaching and discussion and how much is down to the book itself, I couldn't tell.
September 17, 2015
This was Charlotte Smith's response to the early stages of the French Revolution. A feminist and great believer in radical politics, she was a wholehearted supporter of the revolution in France and had seen and heard much of it by her living in Brighton at the time and being just about as close to the action as you could get (whilst not being in France). Brighton was the place that many emigrees arrived in during the Revolution and, indeed, her own favourite daughter, married an émigré later on. However, timing was critical for this novel - the action covers up to the end of 1791 (where the revolution had been relatively tame up until then, despite the sensational rhetoric of Edmund Burke against it). This novel was released just after the real bloodshed began in 1792, and as such it was negatively reviewed by Walter Scott and disliked by many of Smith's dedicated readers because the events in France dismayed them by this stage. Smith who was writing to support her many children (having left her profligate husband by this stage) could not afford for her books to be unpopular - and this one was.
That said, even with the benefit of hindsight and how events in France panned out, this is a FABULOUS book. Written in the epistolary form, it is the most political of Smith's novels and I think my favourite of her works (of the ones I've read so far). Even the form is a political statement, being as women were traditionally supposed to be better at writing letters - Smith uses the feminine form to make acerbic political commentary on the society of her time. Geraldine is the perfect heroine of the novel of sensibility, but is also (as one critic has argued) Smith's "Trojan Horse" - a woman who is literally a carbon copy of the author and who breaches societal etiquette with impunity.
If you are at all interested in the French Revolution/the novels of the eighteenth century, I would definitely recommend this book.
That said, even with the benefit of hindsight and how events in France panned out, this is a FABULOUS book. Written in the epistolary form, it is the most political of Smith's novels and I think my favourite of her works (of the ones I've read so far). Even the form is a political statement, being as women were traditionally supposed to be better at writing letters - Smith uses the feminine form to make acerbic political commentary on the society of her time. Geraldine is the perfect heroine of the novel of sensibility, but is also (as one critic has argued) Smith's "Trojan Horse" - a woman who is literally a carbon copy of the author and who breaches societal etiquette with impunity.
If you are at all interested in the French Revolution/the novels of the eighteenth century, I would definitely recommend this book.
March 22, 2014
Smith's caustic critique of Edmond Burke's REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION in her epistolary novel Desmond, is both an intriguing story in which the women actually gets a voice and minor character Josephine actually doesn't get punished for her sexuality. Smith makes an argument for a woman's voice in the public forum, and ties the revolutionary revolt in France to the oppression women operate under when trapped in marriage. This novel rates as one if my favorite examples of British Romanticism.
October 8, 2011
I thought that the political views in here were simply awesome, but the storytelling was ridiculous. Disjointed -- with political monologues ungracefully lodged in the 'letters'. The protagonist and his squeeze are bizarre and idiotic; the only one of any fun at all is the squeeze's sister.
February 16, 2018
Thank the dickens I've finally finished this novel. I know I'll be called a farce of a scholar for saying so - but should I ever be required to read such an atrocity again, I will be forced to exclaim that I'd rather stick my head in the tub and drown myself.
This thing is boring from the first page to the last, though if you have a hard-on for the French Revolution, you might at least find parts of it interesting. If that is the case, I give you ALL my pity.
This thing is boring from the first page to the last, though if you have a hard-on for the French Revolution, you might at least find parts of it interesting. If that is the case, I give you ALL my pity.
May 17, 2023
This is unfair as I've read only around 40% of it but that's probably as much as I'll ever read...
Like the bits where they're talking about politics the most and I wish a lot of the novelistic stuff was dropped. Charlotte Smith is a very sympathetic figure though: it's clear a lot of the marriage stuff in here is very autobiographical, and is pretty powerful as a feminist critique
Like the bits where they're talking about politics the most and I wish a lot of the novelistic stuff was dropped. Charlotte Smith is a very sympathetic figure though: it's clear a lot of the marriage stuff in here is very autobiographical, and is pretty powerful as a feminist critique
March 13, 2019
Alas! poor human nature!
October 7, 2020
Read for my Age of Roamanticism class at University
2.0 stars
2.0 stars
September 30, 2022
Fascinating. The most political, pro-revolutionary of her novels.
November 14, 2007
Epistolary novels are interesting.
Read
April 22, 2008From the course "Novel Scenes: Traveling through the Eighteenth-Century Novel"
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews