Though I'm acquainted with various Walter Scott works through adaptation, until reading BRIDE the only things in his oeuvre I'd read were THE TALISMAN (over thirty years ago), IVANHOE, and THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, the latter two having been blog-reviewed here. LAMMERMOOR is one of the better-known Scott titles, partly due to being translated into a famous opera, and it was written immediately previous to the classic IVANHOE. Therefore, it ought to stand as a novel produced by Scott at the very peak of his powers.
Well, it's not terrible, but it's a large disappointment, and it certainly fails my mythicity smell-test. Going on what historical knowledge I have of LAMMERMOOR's composition, two big problems arise. One is that at the time of composition, Scott suffered a severe attack of gallstones, so he was in a great deal of pain while he sought to keep the pot boiling. (He also made some problematic claims about what he thought of the finished work, but these don't affect my judgment.) The second difficulty is that Scott sought to take an old legend of a Scottish family tragedy and turn it into his ROMEO AND JULIET, with various touches of Shakespearean supernaturalism. Intent on following the outlines of the legend, Scott forgot the bring the characters to life.
Set in the years just before England and Scotland united, the clan of Ravenswood is stripped of its title thanks to the patriarch's alliance to deposed King James VII. The clan loses Ravenswood Estate, which is then bought by a minor Scottish lord, Sir William Ashton, a lawyer. The Ravenswood patriarch dies soon after this humiliating event, and his only son Edgar-- who inherits only a dilapidated castle known as Wolfscrag--swears to avenge his father. Armed with a pistol, Edgar seeks out Ashton on the estate. However, Ashton happens to be out and about with his sole daughter Lucy, and both are attacked by a wild bull. Edgar shoots the bull, succors Lucy, and falls in love with her, as she does with him.
So far, the setup sounds like a lot of "unite the clans through marriage" plots, including that of Scott's first original publication, LAST MINSTREL. However, since Scott was following the template of ROMEO AND JULIET, all the emphasis falls upon the forces that keep the lovers apart. This might have been fine had the lovers been interesting characters for whom one might root. But Lucy is just a simpering damsel, with none of the intensity of Ivanhoe's beloved Rowena. Edgar gets more scenes in which Scott might have built him up. Yet he still seems one-note: eternally mordant and pessimistic.
In the Shakespeare play Juliet's father wants her to make a better marriage than with Romeo, but William Ashton, somewhat guilty over the death of the Ravenswood patriarch, encourages the relationship. However, his wife Margaret Ashton, who left her own clan to marry Ashton, is the proverbial iron fist in the velvet glove, and like her model, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, her devotion to power politics will spell the doom of both clans. Yet though she provides a hissable villain, she too seems a stereotype. The same is true of two adventurers who try to insinuate themselves into Lucy's life, and Scott's unfunny comedy-relief, Edgar's seneschal Caleb, whose heavy dialect would challenge even the most devoted defender of Scottish culture.
As noted, Scott throws in a lot of portents, and even a trio of beldames clearly intended to evoke the witches of MACBETH. But LAMMERMOOR contains one definite metaphenomenal presence, though the oracle she gives is as useless as those of Macbeth's hags or of Hamlet's father. Alice, a former retainer of the Ravenswood clan, lives in a hut in the forest, and despite her blindness seems to possess a witchy second sight. She repeatedly warns of an evil fate if Edgar marries Lucy, and Alice apparently believes this so deeply that after her death-- of which Edgar is not aware-- her unspeaking specter appears to warn Edgar again. And yet the novel ends with both of the lovers dead, neither getting the sort of evocative death scene accorded to the doomed Montague and Capulet. It's hard to imagine the fate Alice foresaw as being much worse than this. So her status as an oracle is probably just as informed by her prejudices as are the actions of Lucy's mother, who brings about the doom of the daughter she seeks to control.
On the (slight) plus side, Scott's scene-painting talents are as cinematic before there was cinema. One scene involving a bleeding raven, slain by Lucy's dipstick younger brother, betokens the evil that will befall Lucy when later she's forced to enter the wrong marriage-bed. Scott might even have intended some hymen-symbolism there, though there's not much sexuality, healthy or otherwise, in LAMMERMOOR. In contrast to IVANHOE, which boasts two memorable female leads, LAMMERMOOR is drowned in negative femininity, and the combative struggles of (some of) the males can't escape the morass (which is more or less the evil fate of Edgar, self-immolated in quicksand). LAMMERMOOR seems in most ways a repudiation of the adventurous spirits Scott had summoned forth in 1817's ROB ROY and would summon again in IVANHOE. LAMMERMOOR was popular in its day-- Wiki says it gave new popularity to the mostly dormant name "Edgar"-- but anyone seeking to learn the essence of Scott's importance to literature would do better to look elsewhere.
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