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Pillars of the House; Or, Under Wode, Under Rode
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
712 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1873
8 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Mary Yonge
811 books77 followersCharlotte Mary Yonge was an English novelist, known for her huge output, now mostly out of print.
She began writing in 1848, and published during her long life about 160 works, chiefly novels. Her first commercial success, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), provided the funding to enable the schooner Southern Cross to be put into service on behalf of George Selwyn. Similar charitable works were done with the profits from later novels. Yonge was also a founder and editor for forty years of The Monthly Packet, a magazine (founded in 1851) with a varied readership, but targeted at British Anglican girls (in later years it was addressed to a somewhat wider readership).
Among the best known of her works are The Heir of Redclyffe, Heartsease, and The Daisy Chain. A Book of Golden Deeds is a collection of true stories of courage and self-sacrifice. She also wrote Cameos from English History, Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands and Hannah More. Her History of Christian Names was described as "the first serious attempt at tackling the subject" and as the standard work on names in the preface to the first edition of Withycombe's The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 1944.
Her personal example and influence on her god-daughter, Alice Mary Coleridge, played a formative role in Coleridge's zeal for women's education and thus, indirectly, led to the foundation of Abbots Bromley School for Girls.
After her death, her friend, assistant and collaborator, Christabel Coleridge, published the biographical Charlotte Mary Yonge: her Life and Letters (1903).
-Wikipedia
The Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship, a website with lots of information.
See Charlotte's character page for books about her.
She began writing in 1848, and published during her long life about 160 works, chiefly novels. Her first commercial success, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), provided the funding to enable the schooner Southern Cross to be put into service on behalf of George Selwyn. Similar charitable works were done with the profits from later novels. Yonge was also a founder and editor for forty years of The Monthly Packet, a magazine (founded in 1851) with a varied readership, but targeted at British Anglican girls (in later years it was addressed to a somewhat wider readership).
Among the best known of her works are The Heir of Redclyffe, Heartsease, and The Daisy Chain. A Book of Golden Deeds is a collection of true stories of courage and self-sacrifice. She also wrote Cameos from English History, Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands and Hannah More. Her History of Christian Names was described as "the first serious attempt at tackling the subject" and as the standard work on names in the preface to the first edition of Withycombe's The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 1944.
Her personal example and influence on her god-daughter, Alice Mary Coleridge, played a formative role in Coleridge's zeal for women's education and thus, indirectly, led to the foundation of Abbots Bromley School for Girls.
After her death, her friend, assistant and collaborator, Christabel Coleridge, published the biographical Charlotte Mary Yonge: her Life and Letters (1903).
-Wikipedia
The Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship, a website with lots of information.
See Charlotte's character page for books about her.
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 31, 2026
Pillars of the House was a community effort read! I read it alone, but I wouldn’t have gotten around to it this quickly (or enjoyed it so much!) without:
- Darryl, Knight of the Order of CMY, enthusiastically recommending Yonge, and this book in particular as “my” Yonge (he was right!)
- Elizabeth, with whom I have such an absurdly large overlap in taste, also encouraging me to read it, and handling all my emotional outbursts at characters misbehaving
- Tig, a friend from church, who referred to Yonge by saying “well, no one reads Charlotte Mary Yonge anymore” and I said “I DO!” and we gushed for a bit and then she gave me eight Yonge books (her doubled-up copies she had since her mother passed and they both collected Yonge books) and turns out I’d already purchased two that she’d sold to the local used bookstore and she convinced me to join the Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship and also told me Pillars would work for me (it’s her favorite)
So, my heartiest thanks to Darryl, Elizabeth, and Tig, for this wonderful reading experience!
Getting to know the thirteen Underwood children, watching them grow up, and seeing them face their individual challenges and chart their lives was a wonderful experience. Yonge’s plot here is so interconnected and nothing ever feels like it came out of the blue--nor is it predictable!
Yonge wrote oodles of books, was simply prolific in that way only Victorians could be, and had major popularity in her day. We have gotten over frowning on Dickens, Gaskell, and other popular Victorian authors. Why not Yonge? Where is her widespread revival? (Might we be in the early days???) Her work is religious, but Trollope has gotten by with that, and frankly, in Pillars it’s mostly the children growing and testing and doubting their faith and expression rather than clergy politics. Yonge wouldn’t even use the word Jesus out of reverence. I find Yonge vastly less moralistic than, say, Louisa May Alcott, who usually has to underline her moral like Dame Ursula at Brede. And, compared to Trollope, Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Braddon, Oliphant, fill-in-the-blank-Victorian-novelist, Yonge’s dialogue is positively modern.* First, her use of it--much higher dialogue-to-narration ratio--and second, her individual voice for each character, and Pillars has a lot of characters who also grow up over the course of the novel! It’s Jane Austen level, but sprawling, because Victorian.
Because Yonge remained unmarried, lived in one place for most of her life, and led a quiet life devoted to church and vocation, I think there is an impression that her books must be mincing, moralistic, unaware of the world’s troubles. Certainly not! She doesn’t write condition-of-England novels, quite, but we don’t fault her contemporaries for that. She lived in the rural south of England, so she wasn’t as focused on London squalor or northern factories as Gaskell or Dickens. However, her characters are aware of these issues, even if the plot isn’t focused on it. Her characters get into real trouble, she handles downward mobility (!!!) in an honorable way. None of Yonge’s characters are all good or all bad. They are all very human. As I read I remembered Alcott’s propensity for her young women characters to influence the young men away from evil, and that just doesn’t happen in Pillars. Each and every character is portrayed as fully responsible for his or her own actions. There is no Angel in the House (well, there is a character named Angela, called Angel, in Pillars, but she is a cutup and would certainly not be idealized by Coventry Patmore!). Yonge’s women in this novel, while perhaps conventional in some ways, do not reinforce our contemporary stereotypes of Victorian women, especially in novels.
I also loved Yonge’s detailed depictions of the art world, Felix’s business, et c. Two characters display their work at the Royal Academy, and Yonge shows a detailed awareness of contemporary art, describes the characters’ art in vivid detail, and has an understanding of artistic production, temperament, materials, et c. Wonderful! I also loved the details about Felix’s newspaper, but also the shop, and when Lance messed up the inventory, I longed to see and handle all the stationery. Even places that only showed up in one chapter felt real to me, without that much description. I loved the floor plan of the priory/church that comes in the second volume! I kept thinking of the conversation in Little Women between Meg and John Brooke and Kate, about America being good for workers. There was a bit of Robina in that conversation!
I started my Yonge journey with The Heir of Redclyffe, and enjoyed it very much, but besides the character-level realism, there’s something about its plot that is a little fairy-tale to me. While that is a fine and good thing, I really enjoyed the realism of Pillars. I never had the sense that it would all work out for every character, that far-fetched salvations would swoop in and magic away the troubles. Pillars has even more sensational content than Redclyffe, but functions differently in the narrative. In Pillars, the narrative centers on characters’ decisions and resulting consequences affecting the family as a whole. Redclyffe always felt a bit more focused on the dyad of Philip and Guy, and the Edmonstones are not at the center of the narrative. Pillars is about the Underwoods as a unit, and how each of the 13 Underwood children make or break it.
My favorite character was Geraldine. She emerges as a rare character in Victorian fiction to me: an artist with an artist’s temperament, but tries to manage her feelings; an invalid, who somewhat recovers but makes peace with her limitations without allowing them to be more than they should; an unmarried sister who finds true contentment in her circle of loved ones and making her own income. I enjoyed Wilmet, less so when Alda (her twin) grew apart from her so sharply. Lance and Clement were my favorites of the boys. Fulbert got a little annoying, but I think Yonge thought so too and exiled him to Australia (complimentary) for most of the book. Felix was fine, but I got tired of him falling “in like” with a girl who later turned to one of his brothers (twice is too much!) and he didn’t have enough of his own personality for my taste--perfectly reasonable in the story’s world. Robina is probably my second-favorite next to Geraldine. I’d totally read a book just about her time as a governess! Kate Caergwent also shows up (and gets married) in this volume, very fun to see her again, still being an absolute mess.
This book was so absurdly long: 965 pages in the two-volume 1911 edition I read, with about 1/3 more text per page than contemporary printing. (Tig gave me this version because the other one has larger type, ha!) I have said so much already and barely scratched the surface. I am glad to have found “my” Yonge and anticipate going further up and in. I’d love more of Sister Constance, which The Castle Builders apparently has, and that will be my next CMY!
*My husband was digitizing one of Yonge’s books recently, and in handling the text, he said “She uses a lot of dialogue. I mean a lot of dialogue!” (All the initial quotation marks digitized backwards and he had to find-and-replace.)
- Darryl, Knight of the Order of CMY, enthusiastically recommending Yonge, and this book in particular as “my” Yonge (he was right!)
- Elizabeth, with whom I have such an absurdly large overlap in taste, also encouraging me to read it, and handling all my emotional outbursts at characters misbehaving
- Tig, a friend from church, who referred to Yonge by saying “well, no one reads Charlotte Mary Yonge anymore” and I said “I DO!” and we gushed for a bit and then she gave me eight Yonge books (her doubled-up copies she had since her mother passed and they both collected Yonge books) and turns out I’d already purchased two that she’d sold to the local used bookstore and she convinced me to join the Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship and also told me Pillars would work for me (it’s her favorite)
So, my heartiest thanks to Darryl, Elizabeth, and Tig, for this wonderful reading experience!
Getting to know the thirteen Underwood children, watching them grow up, and seeing them face their individual challenges and chart their lives was a wonderful experience. Yonge’s plot here is so interconnected and nothing ever feels like it came out of the blue--nor is it predictable!
Yonge wrote oodles of books, was simply prolific in that way only Victorians could be, and had major popularity in her day. We have gotten over frowning on Dickens, Gaskell, and other popular Victorian authors. Why not Yonge? Where is her widespread revival? (Might we be in the early days???) Her work is religious, but Trollope has gotten by with that, and frankly, in Pillars it’s mostly the children growing and testing and doubting their faith and expression rather than clergy politics. Yonge wouldn’t even use the word Jesus out of reverence. I find Yonge vastly less moralistic than, say, Louisa May Alcott, who usually has to underline her moral like Dame Ursula at Brede. And, compared to Trollope, Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Braddon, Oliphant, fill-in-the-blank-Victorian-novelist, Yonge’s dialogue is positively modern.* First, her use of it--much higher dialogue-to-narration ratio--and second, her individual voice for each character, and Pillars has a lot of characters who also grow up over the course of the novel! It’s Jane Austen level, but sprawling, because Victorian.
Because Yonge remained unmarried, lived in one place for most of her life, and led a quiet life devoted to church and vocation, I think there is an impression that her books must be mincing, moralistic, unaware of the world’s troubles. Certainly not! She doesn’t write condition-of-England novels, quite, but we don’t fault her contemporaries for that. She lived in the rural south of England, so she wasn’t as focused on London squalor or northern factories as Gaskell or Dickens. However, her characters are aware of these issues, even if the plot isn’t focused on it. Her characters get into real trouble, she handles downward mobility (!!!) in an honorable way. None of Yonge’s characters are all good or all bad. They are all very human. As I read I remembered Alcott’s propensity for her young women characters to influence the young men away from evil, and that just doesn’t happen in Pillars. Each and every character is portrayed as fully responsible for his or her own actions. There is no Angel in the House (well, there is a character named Angela, called Angel, in Pillars, but she is a cutup and would certainly not be idealized by Coventry Patmore!). Yonge’s women in this novel, while perhaps conventional in some ways, do not reinforce our contemporary stereotypes of Victorian women, especially in novels.
I also loved Yonge’s detailed depictions of the art world, Felix’s business, et c. Two characters display their work at the Royal Academy, and Yonge shows a detailed awareness of contemporary art, describes the characters’ art in vivid detail, and has an understanding of artistic production, temperament, materials, et c. Wonderful! I also loved the details about Felix’s newspaper, but also the shop, and when Lance messed up the inventory, I longed to see and handle all the stationery. Even places that only showed up in one chapter felt real to me, without that much description. I loved the floor plan of the priory/church that comes in the second volume! I kept thinking of the conversation in Little Women between Meg and John Brooke and Kate, about America being good for workers. There was a bit of Robina in that conversation!
I started my Yonge journey with The Heir of Redclyffe, and enjoyed it very much, but besides the character-level realism, there’s something about its plot that is a little fairy-tale to me. While that is a fine and good thing, I really enjoyed the realism of Pillars. I never had the sense that it would all work out for every character, that far-fetched salvations would swoop in and magic away the troubles. Pillars has even more sensational content than Redclyffe, but functions differently in the narrative. In Pillars, the narrative centers on characters’ decisions and resulting consequences affecting the family as a whole. Redclyffe always felt a bit more focused on the dyad of Philip and Guy, and the Edmonstones are not at the center of the narrative. Pillars is about the Underwoods as a unit, and how each of the 13 Underwood children make or break it.
My favorite character was Geraldine. She emerges as a rare character in Victorian fiction to me: an artist with an artist’s temperament, but tries to manage her feelings; an invalid, who somewhat recovers but makes peace with her limitations without allowing them to be more than they should; an unmarried sister who finds true contentment in her circle of loved ones and making her own income. I enjoyed Wilmet, less so when Alda (her twin) grew apart from her so sharply. Lance and Clement were my favorites of the boys. Fulbert got a little annoying, but I think Yonge thought so too and exiled him to Australia (complimentary) for most of the book. Felix was fine, but I got tired of him falling “in like” with a girl who later turned to one of his brothers (twice is too much!) and he didn’t have enough of his own personality for my taste--perfectly reasonable in the story’s world. Robina is probably my second-favorite next to Geraldine. I’d totally read a book just about her time as a governess! Kate Caergwent also shows up (and gets married) in this volume, very fun to see her again, still being an absolute mess.
This book was so absurdly long: 965 pages in the two-volume 1911 edition I read, with about 1/3 more text per page than contemporary printing. (Tig gave me this version because the other one has larger type, ha!) I have said so much already and barely scratched the surface. I am glad to have found “my” Yonge and anticipate going further up and in. I’d love more of Sister Constance, which The Castle Builders apparently has, and that will be my next CMY!
*My husband was digitizing one of Yonge’s books recently, and in handling the text, he said “She uses a lot of dialogue. I mean a lot of dialogue!” (All the initial quotation marks digitized backwards and he had to find-and-replace.)
October 20, 2023
All the stars!!!! This is easily a contender for my favorite book of the year. I hope to write more soon.
December 28, 2008
Love this long domestic novel detailing the non-adventures of 12 orphaned children. (I take that back--one of them gets to the U.S., where he is scalped during an Indian raid. Other than that, though, they lead a pretty quiet life.)
April 14, 2012
I can't praise this massive book enough. I was totally absorbed in the lives of this long family, left in the care of the eldest two (the 'pillars' of the title). They are not all paragons - mistakes and misjudgements are made and paid dearly for. It's not for you if you don't like upfront Christianity in your novels, though. And be warned, there are some real tear-jerker moments - Miss Yonge makes Dickens seem like an amateur when it comes to Last Moments. I'm relishing the prospect of reading more of her work.
March 3, 2024
I started Pillars of the House at a friend's suggestion back in September. I tried (and dismally failed at) reading it quickly with her group…it took me 6 months!
And I am not sad about that! This is a bildungsroman of epic proportions, and it is masterfully done. Usually we get the growth and evolution of a single character, but here we have the almost-lifespan growth of an entire family of ten kids! Think Little Women, but instead it’s Little Huge Family. Yes it’s didactic, yes it’s long as heck, but I promise you will fall in love with this family.
I will definitely be reading more from Charlotte Mary Yonge. I’m going to miss reading about the Underwoods every day—it felt like she knew her characters as real people.
And I am not sad about that! This is a bildungsroman of epic proportions, and it is masterfully done. Usually we get the growth and evolution of a single character, but here we have the almost-lifespan growth of an entire family of ten kids! Think Little Women, but instead it’s Little Huge Family. Yes it’s didactic, yes it’s long as heck, but I promise you will fall in love with this family.
I will definitely be reading more from Charlotte Mary Yonge. I’m going to miss reading about the Underwoods every day—it felt like she knew her characters as real people.
June 17, 2017
This (very long) novel is probably Miss Yonge's greatest, a "family chronicle" rather like her "The Daisy Chain". (And indeed, some of the characters from "The Daisy Chain" and "The Trial" show up in "The Pillars of the House".) There's plot enough here for six or eight "regular" novels -- a huge slice of Victorian life, all about love and faith, birth and death and illness, religion and honesty and growing up, work and promises and character and art and music. This isn't one of the eight or ten greatest novels in English, but it'd probably make a careful best-100 list. Just wonderful.
October 10, 2017
Half novel half religious tract. Interminable.
January 26, 2015
This is a very long book in two volumes that draws one into the lives of a family growing up in England after losing both parents. The pillars are two teenagers, older brother and sister, who lead the rest of the large family through perhaps one to two decades. The book is difficult to start because the family is so large it is hard to keep everyone straight. But by the end of the book you care deeply about each of the main persons in the story. The ending is has great beauty and sadness, in a painful but not depressing way.
July 8, 2014
Another excellent domestic tear jerker by Charlotte Yonge. Despite the deep religiosity that pervades most of the story, she writes her characters so extremely well that you have to read on to find out what happens to them.
A must read for anyone who loves classic literature.
A must read for anyone who loves classic literature.
March 10, 2016
If you like Victorian family sagas, and find Anglo-Catholicism to be literary catnip, this is the book for you.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews