Chandos by Ouida

[lunabee34]

Chandos, a Novel; by Ouida

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is such a wild ride. I love it. I mean, it's ridiculous and it is undeniably racist and sexist in places, but it's such a riveting read.

The hallmarks of Ouida's writing include almost unrelenting pop culture references, classical and literary allusions, and mentions of politics and the political figures of the day. I am always so impressed by that as it reveals how smart and how well read she was. I mean, if I want to write a novel about the 1980s, I can google the top billboard hit of 1982 and write it as playing in the background without ever even listening to the song. Ouida did not have the luxury of google; all these references are a clear indication of the breadth (if not necessarily the depth) of her reading and her understanding of the world she lived in.

Another hallmark is the way her writing is often list-like, clause piled on top of clause (also very Margaret Atwoody); in her descriptions of both the decadence of the aristocracy and the glory of the natural world that style creates a lush, rich, sensuousness.

Ouida's novels contain so many tensions: she reveres the aristocracy while also criticizing its worst failings; she demonstrates a real sympathy for the impoverished and the laboring while also writing poverty porn; she writes the most misogynistic things about women while also writing some of the most kick-ass powerful adventuresses in Victorian literature.

Well worth a read.



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So, the plot of the novel follows Chandos from riding the high life as a wealthy, respected aristocrat to his financial ruin and fall from society. Chandos is aristocratic and noble, generous and kind, and really fucking stupid. He's so trusting with his friends that it's foolish. His closest friend, Trevanna, becomes his friend with the sole intention of ruining his life (we don't find out until the very end why Trevanna has made that his life's work although he alternately seems to want to be and be with Chandos), and Chandos makes it easy for him by giving him carte blanche with his money.

Using a Jewish money lending firm which he actually owns as his front, Trevanna manages to bleed Chandos of most of his money, and Chandos is thrown out of high society penniless. What follows is a pretty graphic depiction of drug and gambling addiction that Chandos manages to escape with some help. He then devotes his life to art and intellectual pursuits, becoming a political writer.

Chandos is an artist (writer and painter) as are several other characters in the novel, and Ouida has a great deal to say about the role of the artist (mostly delivering arrows of truth to the unappreciative masses a la Tennyson).

Trevanna becomes a politician, and Ouida has a great deal to say also about class struggle (most of which seems ripped directly from Carlyle). She depicts the struggle for Italian independence from Austria (which is associated with Chandos) as a noble revolution of the lower classes, and the English struggle in a manufacturing town for better wages (associated with Trevanna) as misplaced anger against the upper class.

Some side plots include Chandos falling in love with a young girl and later coming to believe she's his daughter. Surprise incest is best incest! But, never fear, she is not his daughter but the daughter of his best friend who he also seems to be in love with. In addition, at the end, we find out Trevanna is Chandos's bastard brother which gives Trevanna's jealousy that delicious tincture of Flowers in the Attic which all surprise sibling scenes should contain.

Comments

[kore]

This sounds amazing! I love how you write it up.

[lunabee34]

Aww, thank you. :)

It's free on internet archive or project gutenberg. All her stuff is.

I just love what a wild ride it is. Talia Schaffer makes the argument in The Forgotten Female Aesthetes that the Aesthetic movement (Wilde and so on) owes a great deal to Ouida, especially the use of witty epigrammatic language. I think you'd love the Schaffer book as well; it's one of those rare books of criticism that's clear and concise and not jargony and has a real authorial voice that's not just professor talking.

[nyctanthes]

I'm intrigued.

[lunabee34]

I mean, it's melodramatic and silly for sure. But also beautiful and moving with interesting characterization.