Mrs. Oliphant knows human nature. I spent a good part of reading this book with a grin on my face because of the antics of the silly characters who ate from the one hand of Catherine Vernon while they bit the other. Catherine Vernon is the matriarch of the Vernon family, the great banking family of an English town. She has saved the bank once already, when the protagonist's father would have ruined it. Hester will not know, till the very end, why Catherine hates her so, but these two will find that they are very much alike.
( )

After her father's death Abroad, teenage Hester and her widowed mother are offered a home in the generic English town of Redborough by their rich cousin Miss Catherine Vernon. There's a kind of Mansfield Park setup, where Hester is presented with a range of potential suitors from among the assembled cousins, with a range of different obstacles to overcome.

But this turns out not really to be what the book is about at all: Hester is determined to challenge the prevailing "Angel of the hearth" idea of what the role of middle-class Woman should be in life. Hester is not content to provide sympathy, moral guidance and domestic efficiency while some man goes out and does things for her; she wants to work and have a real part in informed decision-making. Catherine is the key example that proves it can be done: when the family banking firm was teetering on the edge of collapse (the fault of Hester's father, although Hester doesn't know this) Catherine stepped in to rescue it and ran it successfully for twenty years. Mrs Oliphant, a widow herself, had been supporting her family by her writing for 25 years when this was published, so she knew what she was talking about.

Of course Catherine and Hester dislike each other at sight — they are far too alike — and of course Catherine manages to hold conservative opinions completely inconsistent with her own history, so sparks fly between them.

That part of the plot is all quite fun, but it doesn't really get going until Volume 3, and there are a lot of balls and tea-parties to get through before then, mostly rather repetitive. For a long stretch of Volume 2 it feels as though the plot isn't advancing at all, whilst Oliphant tries to dig out subtle social distinctions through close examination of furniture, dress, hair and speech patterns. There are some jokes — the comic chorus of poor relatives, the notion that "Abroad" is a specific place (like Basingstoke but more exotic), the single-minded husband-hunting of Emma, etc. — but on the whole it's rather heavy going. Oliphant is clearly best at getting inside the heads of her older characters, so Hester and her male cousins often seem surprisingly opaque to the reader, whilst Catherine and old Captain Morgan (not-a-pirate) are very human and believable. ( )

Huh. That summary provided by Goodreads doesn't sound like the same story. Granted, it was done in only 5, 13-minute segments, so the abridger had to leave a lot out. But the whole focus of the story changed. Catherine was made out to be kind, sensible, and suffering, but highly competent. I don't think I noticed that SHE wasn't Hester... I guess I forgot the name of the novel. Hester was the young girl? She hardly figured at all in this abridged audio. Anyway, a depressing story. I guess the end was supposed to be hopeful, but we all know she ended up a bitter old maid. A zebra can't change its stripes. (Or maybe I should say white bread can't change its crust?) ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this. My curiosity was piqued by listening to it on Radio 4 but that version told a substantially different story with a totally changed emphasis.

I left wanting more which is good. It evokes Jane Austen without echoing her and is relatively modern in its attitude towards women. ( )

bookshelves: filthy-lucre, fradio, published-1883, winter-20132014, victorian, cheshire, britain-england, satire, amusing, re-visit-2014, women
Recommended to ☯Bettie☯ by: Laura
Read from January 02 to 03, 2014

Hester by Margaret Oliphant

R4 drama

BBC BLURB: Penelope Wilton and Lyndsey Marshal star in this high Victorian tale of a woman who runs her own bank.

Sometimes called 'the feminist Trollope', Margaret Oliphant is an unjustly-neglected British writer of the nineteenth century, famed for her perceptive, ironic psychology, and her strong female characters. And Hester has a striking premise: a young woman in a nineteenth-century Cheshire town, having been snubbed and discarded in marriage, does something truly radical. When the family bank is in danger of a run, she pledges her whole private fortune to save it. But instead of merely underwriting it, in return she insists on running the bank herself, as a single woman, in defiance of all convention.

Using Oliphant's deliciously witty and sardonic narration, allied to a radical dramatisation by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster, 'Hester' reveals a flawed and fascinating heroine, reborn for radio.
Harp played by Ruth Faber Producer/Director ..... Jonquil Panting. Dramatised by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster.

1/5 This is a tale of banks and bankers. A tale of credit and discredit. This is a tale of a single woman in nineteenth-century Cheshire town, who does something truly radical.

2. When Hester is offered a merger to cancel all her debts, she finds a neat, but risky, solution.

3. When Hester takes her wayward cousin Edward back into the Vernon family bank, she reckons without the influence of his vapid wife Ellen.

4. Hester does not want to see it, but here it is, swinging round slowly: the reverse of the medal, the other side of Edward's picture.

5. This life is full of repetitions. Once again, Mr Rule is facing a run on the bank, which could close Vernon's forever.

Read this a long, long time ago when I landed as manager of my own branch of a national bank. Goodness, but that was one chuffed up, capitalistic chick, and so at odds with my 'now' values.

Crossposted:
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