Princess Napraxine Read Along

[lunabee34]

Here are the final two entries of the read along.

Chapters 10-11

Ouida addresses class in most of her novels; like many other 19th-century British writers, she was afraid of class revolution, and many of her novels contain scenes of the working class rioting or discussing their hatred for the upper classes ("all the unchanged rancorous class-hatred of the Terror still alive in them and unsatisfied" 273). Even though the peasants in this novel are jealous of the aristocracy, they love Yseulte because she is like an aristocrat from the medieval past.

Yseulte is also sincere in her devotion to the Church. Ouida is ever and always critical of Christianity because she sees it as primarily a form of hypocrisy, but she admires Christians who truly embody Christian principles. The convent where Yseulte has spent most of her time is situated in a picaresque Romantic forested setting; it's a step backwards in time to the Middle Ages and to an expression of "real" Christianity. I love the question Yseulte puts to Othmar: "'Do you think one should only give God what is weary and worn out?'" (310).

The destruction of the flowers by the frost ("the blossoms had died of cold like little children lost in the snow" 209) seems a metaphor to me for Yseulte being shuttered away in the convent. Also worth noting is that they die because they are hothouse flowers she'd never been able to use before rather than the hardy common plants she always uses to decorate.

Her cousin Alain gives her an inappropriate gift. What a jerk. Othmar is able to see the nefariousness in the gift immediately.

I think the contrast between what Nadine would do with Othmar's money (buy a country and be king) and what Yseulte would do (build a cathedral in the forest) is telling.

Chapter 12-End

Alain escalates to propositioning Yseulte and vaguely threatening her for refusing.

Blanchette, age 10, says everyone is vulgar but Nadine and advices Yseulte to have an affair with her dad to get everything she wants out of him. She then tries to blackmail a family heirloom out of Yseulte because she is a spoiled little shit.

Classism and racism: Nadine compares field laborers to animals. We also meet Mahmoud, her African servant (she calls him a slave, but I think slavery is outlawed in UK at that point).

Lady Brancepeth begs mercy for her brother, but Nadine refuses to understand her point, even when Brancepeth calls her a vivisector. This is probably the worst insult that Ouida can think of to call someone. Ouida was virulently anti-vivisectionist, and to compare Nadine to one is to say that Nadine experiments painfully on others and watches like a detached scientist without caring about the harm she causes.

Othmar makes a last declaration of love to Nadine, offering to buy a country and run off with it to her. She says she'll answer him in a fortnight, and Volume 1 ends.

Comments

[landofnowhere]

Commments on Ch 10-11, have not read past this point yet.

Yes, Alain is *the worst*!

Yseulte's religiosity gives her a sense of purpose that both Nadine and Othmar lack, and which I think Othmar envies (though actually maybe Othmar does have a sense of purpose in pursuing Nadine). In general the discussion here gives me a better sense of Ouida's feeling about religion: I get the sense that she respects Yseulte's religious devotion while also seeing how it's a sheer waste.

Othmar is exactly the sort of person who Yseulte would have a crush on! And the bit where he's unrequitedly devoted to Nadine only makes her dreamier.

There's also interesting socioeconomic commentary with the conversation between Yseulte and Nicole "if there were no rich people, no great people, who would buy your primeurs, your December peas, your January asparagus?" -- Nicole, like the other people of her class, both resents and benefits from the capitalist society.

Looking forward to seeing Yseulte and Nadine finally interact at some point!

Blanchette and Toinon are not nice kids, but the narrative gives us a clear sense of them in the short time it spends on them.

[lunabee34]

Yes! Othmar laments multiple times losing his religious scruples and, thus, sense of purpose after his encounter with the prostitute as a young man.

And as much as Blanchette and Toinon are not nice kids, they also are a product of their environment. How else are they supposed to be, Ouida seems to be saying.

[landofnowhere]

Ch 12- end

Blanchette is awful in a very spoiled child way, but also the comparison of Blanchette to Gavroche was interesting -- they're both grown worldly before their time, but in different ways. Also Yseulte is kind of like Cosette as the "naive girl raised in a convent" type. (Though actually the line "It was only the first notes of the cotillon; but to Yseulte it sounded like the song of triumph of the world—that world which she would never know." echoed for me Eponine's lyrics "A world that's full of happiness that I have never known" of in On My Own, though if there's an influence it would have gone the other way presumably :-) )

Nadine seems to get satisfaction out of doing exactly what other people don't want her to do -- it's one of her least mature qualities.

There's a lot of stuff about how we want exactly what we can't have. I was struck by this quote "If you heard the best of Bach every day, you would get to hate Bach as intensely as you hate a street organ; the music would still be perfect, but it could not withstand incessant repetition." It's interesting to note that this was published shortly after the phonograph was invented but before it was in widespread use, and these days it is much easier for any one of us to hear "the best of Bach" every day. (Though Othmar is certainly rich enough that he could hear the best of Bach every day, and maybe Nadine is too? Also I think Nadine should ask musicians who are in the business of playing Bach every day how they feel?) I mean I take her point that it's easier to get bored of music that you can play on demand. Though I'm not sure in her context, as a metaphor for marriage/relationships, it's particularly apt; people do grow and change more than pieces of music.

[lunabee34]

Oh, that perverse instinct of Nadine's to do exactly the opposite of what is expected/what she is told is so juvenile. LOL

One of Ouida's arguments that shows up in just about every novel she writes (and in some of her non-fiction essays, too) is about the inability of people in marriage to stay in love with each other--mostly because marriage for the upper classes is a business transaction made between people who barely know each other. Multiple times she calls marriage a prostitution in which women sell their daughters to the highest bidder. Ouida thinks that love can't last in marriage if it's ever real to begin with in the first place.

Thank you so much for reading this with me; your insightful comments have really added to my understanding of this novel.

Would you like to continue on to the second volume?

[landofnowhere]

*blushes* You're welcome, and thank you for suggesting this novel -- I wouldn't have read it otherwise, and I'm definitely enjoying it!

I'm definitely in for volume 2!

(A few more comments coming!)

[lunabee34]

I'm sorry for the delay in responding. I'm so glad you're enjoying the novel.

Here's our schedule for volume two:

https://lunabee34.dreamwidth.org/775954.html

[landofnowhere]

No worries, happy to take things at your pace! But looking forward to volume 2.

[lunabee34]

Here we go!

https://lunabee34.dreamwidth.org/775954.html

[landofnowhere]

Yeah, I can see Ouida's criticism of marriage spelled out carefully in Nadine's "why do girls always marry?" speech in the final chapter -- which is interesting to parallel with Yseulte's intention to go into a convent -- she isn't fully aware of her options either, but is her choice any worse than that of women who end up in unhappy marriages?

Did Ouida have a vision of reforms/alternatives to the institutions of marriage? (Was she a Free Love type?)

(As mentioned before, I've read some George Gissing, who was also critical of marriage, but in a way that focused on the less-moneyed classes, so it's interesting to contrast their criticisms.)

[lunabee34]

She was definitely not a free love type. Or a woman's rights type. Despite living the life of a New Woman, Ouida was vociferously against everything the New Woman was advocating for. She didn't think women should go to college or vote or be allowed into the professions.

She thought people should marry for love and no other reason, especially financial reasons.

[landofnowhere]

Fascinating!

[landofnowhere]

So I just realized that the "If you heard the best of Bach every day, you would get to hate Bach as intensely as you hate a street organ; the music would still be perfect, but it could not withstand incessant repetition." bit is echoing the argument in Orsino's "If music be the food of love, play on" speech that opens Twelfth Night! And certainly Othmar seems to have a fair amount of Orsino in him -- he's rich and powerful, loves music, and is completely obsessed with the one woman who won't have him. I'll be interested to see if the love triangle here has any other parallels to the love triangle in Twelfth Night (though you already told me it's not femslashy).

[lunabee34]

I don't know Twelfth Night; that's a Shakespeare I haven't read. But thank you for pointing out this potential connection to me; that's something to explore!

[landofnowhere]

Oooooh, you are in for a treat! I think Twelfth Night is the sort of story that's best first met when one is about 12 years old, but the language is still amazing, the plot has lots of entertaining hijinks (ok, until the servants get carried away with their revenge subplot past the point where it's funny), and it's Shakespeare so there are deeper themes of love and identity. There are lots of good adaptations out there, the 1996 movie is heavily abridged but much fun.

[lunabee34]

That does sound like fun!

[landofnowhere]

Also, I liked this line:

"What a fine thing it is to be an Englishwoman; you think of political economy and of ‘the soil’ the very moment that you wake out of a doze!"

partly because I felt seen -- I'm not English, but I'm interested in the economic commentary going on in this book!

[lunabee34]

Heeeee.

Ouida has very decided ideas about what it means to be British; sometimes those are flattering and patriotic, and sometimes they're critical. She spent the last half of her life as an expat in Italy, which I think gave her an outsider's perspective to some degree.