The Lovels of Arden

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The lamps of the Great Northern Terminus at King’s Cross had not long been lighted, when a cab deposited a young lady and her luggage at the departure platform. It was an October twilight, cold and gray, and the place had a cheerless and dismal aspect to that solitary young traveller, to whom English life and an English atmosphere were somewhat strange. She had been seven years abroad, in a school near Paris; rather an expensive seminary, where the number of pupils was limited, the masters and mistresses, learned in divers modern accomplishments, numerous, and the dietary of foreign slops and messes without stint. Dull and gray as the English sky seemed to her, and dreary as was the aspect of London in October, this girl was glad to return to her native land. She had felt herself very lonely in the French school, forgotten and deserted by her own kindred, a creature to be pitied; and hers was a nature to which pity was a torture. Other girls had gone home to England for their holidays; but vacation after vacation went by, and every occasion brought Clarissa Lovel the same coldly worded letter from her father, telling her that it was not convenient for him to receive her at home, that he had heard with pleasure of her progress, and that experienced people with whom he had conferred, had agreed with him that any interruption to the regular course of her studies could not fail to be a disadvantage to her in the future. "They are all going home except me, papa," she wrote piteously on one occasion, "and I feel as if I were different from them, somehow. Do let me come home to Arden for this one year. I don't think my schoolfellows believe me when I talk of home, and the gardens, and the dear old park. I have seen it in their faces, and you cannot think how hard it is to bear. And I want to see you, papa. You must not fancy that, because I speak of these things, I am not anxious for that. I do want to see you very much. By-and-by, when I am grown up, I shall seem a stranger to you." To this letter, and to many such, letters, Mr. Lovel’s reply was always the same. It did not suit his convenience that his only daughter should return to England until her education was completed. Perhaps it would have suited him better could she have remained away altogether; but he did not say as much as that; he only let her see very clearly that there was no pleasure for him in the prospect of her return. And yet she was glad to go back. At the worst it was going home. She told herself again and again, in those meditations upon her future life which were not so happy as a girl’s reveries should be,—she told herself that her father must come to love her in time. She was ready to love him so much on her part; to be so devoted, faithful, and obedient, to bear so much from him if need were, only to be rewarded with his affection in the end.

Genres: Classics, Audiobook, British Literature, Historical Fiction, Fiction

267 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2015

About the author

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She was an extremely prolific writer, producing some 75 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is her first novel, Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition and fortune as well. The novel has been in print ever since, and has been dramatised and filmed several times.

Braddon also founded Belgravia Magazine (1866), which presented readers with serialized sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history, science. She also edited Temple Bar Magazine. Braddon's legacy is tied to the Sensation Fiction of the 1860s.

She is also the mother of novelist W.B. Maxwell.

Reviews

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant meander through parts of England and Europe with deposed heiress Clarissa Lovel with -- of course -- a "happily-ever-after" ending. I think I understand now what typifies the sensationalist novel, for which Mary Elizabeth Braddon was renowned. Just a step above the Harlequin romances of the 1970s (I have the impression that they are different in the 21st century), but good fun nonetheless.

At an extremely stressful time in my personal life, I needed an easy story with a few twists and turns. This fit the bill perfectly. Although this is not the same calibre as Lady Audley's Secret, I will return to Mary Elizabeth Braddon again.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of realistic depiction of a young girl making bad decisions and being tempted by a man with nothing to lose, for all that it was written in the Victorian era and set in high society. Clarissa is well brought up girl who thinks of the feelings of others too much, and is swayed too much by them in matters of the heart. There were times when our heroine was making all the correct decisions, according to the mores of the time, but they were the wrong ones, which only led her to misery and nearly ruin. Some of the decisions made me groan out loud. At one point I had to stop reading for a whole day out of despair. I can see why a nice girl might choose to do or say these things, but I;m old and wise enough to see that she wasn't doing any favours to herself or anyone else. The upping of the stakes as time went by kept the tension rising, and the utter powerlessness of women of the age, especially those with little means, is highlighted. A good read.

[Miriam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I didn't like this novel very much, I couldn't help but going on reading to see how it ended.
It left me a little bit disappointed because usually I love M.E. Braddon's works, but this one was not one of her best ones.
Very thin plot, not so sensational as usually are this author's works, just readable.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clarissa's profligate father, Lord Lovell, sold the ancient family estate of Arden to Mr. Granger, a fifty-year-old industrialist and Hermione's great-great grandfather. Lord Lovell says something to Clarissa like, "I won't pressure you to marry Mr. Granger, I'll just die penniless somewhere unfashionable in Belgium to avoid disgracing our ancient name," which causes Mr. Granger, comfortably ensconced in Arden, to say to his daughter, "Surprise! Your step-mother will be two years younger than you! Won't that be fun?" Clarissa, meanwhile, is beating herself up for the love of George Fairfax, the only man who's ever paid attention to her. When George Fairfax helps Clarissa find her disinherited brother, can she be forgiven for talking to Mr. Fairfax occasionally in well-supervised social situations? Um... yes, but barely, and she almost dies. It's good to know there's a floor on death by indiscretion. As we know, the consequence of adultery is death. The consequence of fornication is death. The consequence of light socializing is six weeks of hysteria and brain fever. The internet says The Lovells of Arden is like East Lynne, but East Lynne has higher drama and funny bits. Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote thirty-some novels, so The Lovells might be one of her also-rans.

http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/20...

[Imelda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ended up liking Clarissa since she stopped acting like a brainless twit.

[Kemaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm currently going through Braddon's books, and enjoyed this one. It's in a different style than some of her other more sensational tales, but it still keeps you glued to the page to find out how things work out.

Where other books run on plot twists or vivid characters, this book runs on morals, so if you don't like morals in a story, this may not be the book for you. :) It was written in 1871, the era that brought us such morally salubrious tales as The Little Girl Who Was Taught By Experience. (Oh, how my husband's eyes lit up when I told him I'd downloaded that on my Kindle. Naturally, he was disappointed to hear what it's actually about.) This book is written in harmony with the old saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." It's what happens someone begins to wander ever so slightly from doing what is right. A little deviation here, a little turn there... and all of a sudden, our heroine is so far from where she wants to be.

Clarissa, the heroine, never tries to be bad or purposely gives in to any wickedness. Her main vice is being weak and pliable in the hands of others - her father and George Fairfax in particular. She tries to do her duty, and ends up in a marriage to a man she doesn't love. (Getting her ancestral home back doesn't sour the pot, either, although she's never so base as to marry solely for money or position.)

She loves George Fairfax, but even when he is trying his hardest to get her to leave all and marry him, she doesn't ever willingly acknowledge her love for him. She is never tempted to take that irrevocable step with him. Modern readers would exclaim, "Well, what a fuss about nothing! She had stray thoughts, but that's it!" True, but each little moment of weakness that she has concocts a chain of events to the point where things are as bad as if she'd actually been what her husband thinks she's become. At one point, Clarissa thinks:

"I tried to do my duty, and yet ruin and sorrow have come upon me." And then the small still voice whispered, "Tried to do your duty, but not always; sometimes you left off trying, and dared to be happy in your own way. Between the two roads of vice and virtue, you tried to make a devious pathway of your own, not wholly on one side or the other."

It's a precautionary tale Braddon tells, and it warns against:

1) Weakness and yielding to impulses that one knows to be wrong. The usual excuses abound in such circumstances: "Oh, this isn't so bad," "He's just a friend", "It's okay if I just listen, I'm not actually going along with it" or "It's just this once, I won't do it again." Braddon shows what the end results of such actions or inactions are: how unlawful love doesn't affect just the two people involved, but has a ripple effect on everyone about them. All the way to making Clarissa nearly lose her baby to illness when she flees from her home in her extremely misguided attempt to keep him from being taken away from her once her husband finds out about Fairfax. One may not be able to help being weak or too pliable, but Braddon points out how much better things would have gone had Clarissa only asked for help from those in a position to help her.

2) Lies and deceit. For someone who tries as hard as Clarissa to do what's right, she is absolutely ensnared by lies, from marrying a man she doesn't love to hiding her brother's identity from her husband, and hiding George Fairfax's attempts to lure her away. She realizes all too late how much misery could have been prevented had she only been honest with her husband.

The very character of Clarissa makes it all the more easy for Braddon's contemporaries to identify with the heroine and think, "That could be me." This is no sensationally vivid Lady Audley here, but a pretty quondam schoolgirl with a sweet, ordinary nature, which makes it all the easier for the moral leaven of the tale to work in the reader's mind.

George Fairfax is also well done in a "Beware this kind of man!" fashion. The first impulse to think is, "Oh, what a gentleman, and he loves her so much, how romantic, I wish they could be together!" But as the story unfolds, we realize how he's not what he seemed to be at the beginning of the book, and how selfish his affection for her really is, and how little depth it actually has. It's not real love - he views her mostly as a difficult conquest, all the more because she's given him so much more trouble than his previous ladies in the past. Especially in contrast with the older, not so handsome, but ever so much more reliable and faithful Daniel Granger, George Fairfax stands as a "Have you seen this man?" kind of poster and description of what to avoid in a relationship.

The secondary characters are interesting (don't write off Geraldine Challoner as a throwaway character - she makes you really admire her by the end of the book!), and you gotta feel for the poor villagers under Miss Granger's thumb. Braddon has a way of throwing in humorous observations in her writing even in a book that's not meant to be funny, so the story is engaging. You can guess how it ends (it's Braddon, after all), but the journey to that point is still interesting.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn’t one of Mrs Braddon’s sensation novels but more of a romance or even a coming-of-age novel but nonetheless an entertaining enough read. In the prim Miss Granger and the self-centred Mr Lovel we find characters who would be at home in an Austen novel but the heroine, Clarissa, although bound by the conventions of her time and sex, takes risks that no Austen heroine would.

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clarissa Lovel is a young woman, not quite eighteen, secluded all her life in a strict women's school. Her mother died long ago, her father seems unwilling to know her or have her home even for the holidays, while her brother has quarrelled with their father and left home, nobody seems to know where. Against this canvas, Clarissa returns home after her education has been completed, only to find that her father, in deep financial trouble, had sold their old home to a wealthy merchant and become a recluse.

Clarissa's new life, her falling in love with someone who is engaged to marry another woman, her loveless marriage to the man, more than twice her age, who had bought her father's old home and her relations with her husband and the stepdaughter who is two years older than her, and is governed by duty, propriety and spite rather than any impulsive spontaneous emotion form the rest of the narrative. Of course there are temptations along the way, and of course they are repelled, but not without serious repercussions.

Although the plot is gloomy, grim and rather weak by Braddon's standard, it makes for an engrossing novel nonetheless. All the stock Victorian characters are present: the stern, aloof parent, the heavy handed husband, the lovely and impossibly virtuous wife, the bohemian good-for-nothing brother, the stiff unloving stepdaughter, the kindly careless aristocratic (female) friend, an angelic baby, the deus ex machina in the form of the baby's illness, and best of all, that marvellous creation, the louche villain. Any person can make mistakes in his or her choices in life, but to agonise over them in the manner of the people in this novel is exclusively a Victorian habit of introspection. To a modern reader, the omniscient author/narrator is an intrusive presence, but then, this is not a modern novel, and situations like Clarissa's are impossible today. Altogether, a grand read, despite the fact that it occasionally draws from us an irreverent chuckle at the solemn crises of the heroine's life.

[Patrizia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Elizabeth Braddon ama cacciare i suoi personaggi femminili in matrimoni senza amore da cui non potranno più uscire; in questo caso, la trappola in cui finisce la povera, giovanissima vittima è ordita, si può dire, da tutte le persone che le sono più care. Che la nostra eroina riesca alla fine in qualche modo a salvare la propria integrità morale è quasi un miracolo.
Ma è un vero romanzo vittoriano, dalla scrittura ricca e raffinata. Una bellissima lettura

[Ančka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the characters and their actions were really well-written and reminiscent of Austen. I loved the aspect of female support that emerged towards the end and did like the main character. Yes, she acted a bit silly at times, but it didn't read as stupid or not making sense. She was just a teenager influenced and/or stalked by adults that should be staying far away from her. The mirrored plots and intersections of past/present were great.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic novel by a writer who is becoming one of my favourite sensational novelists
I very nearly cried twice and cate Barrett on LibriVox did an excellent job
Be prepared for long novels with this novelist but in every chapter something happens

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this as a free download from LibriVox.org

[Poppy · Rating 3 out of 5]

What Clarissa Lovel needed was a Sassy Gay Friend: “What are you doing? What-what-WHAT are you doing???” https://youtu.be/lwnFE_NpMsE

[Rachel Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, it genuinely kept me in suspense. Characters are extremely realistic and well developed.

[Kindra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this quaint snapshot of love and betrayal in Victorian-era Britain. There was something intriguing in every sentence; every chapter. It is a long book, but it doesn’t disappoint!

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

1872 Week 1