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lunabee34WHAT IS IT?
Princess Napraxine is a 3 volume novel published in 1884 by Ouida.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?
It is in the public domain and available for free lots of places. For example:
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
It also has a sequel Othmar, which you might find interesting.
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT?
First, a little about the author:
Ouida is so full of contradictions. On the one hand, she wrote deeply purple, melodramatic prose about convoluted situations. She loved to write bits of dialogue in foreign languages, and her command of them was often shaky. She was frequently derided in the press of her day for writing books that are licentious, frivolous, silly, pretentious. And yet, everyfuckingbody read her books because they were fun and funny and she could hit you in the id with such a delicious anvil. Her books are a romp. She can elicit emotion from the reader like whoa.
On the surface, she seems to hate women. Her novels contain many misogynistic statements. Male friendship is always depicted as superior to heterosexual relationships. Her heroines are often childlike, morally pure, boring as shit women, but even some of these women have backbones of steel that can surprise the reader. She makes many, many misogynistic statements in her non-fiction writing about how silly and stupid women are and how transcendent men are next to the fairer sex. And yet, her female villains are powerful; they are movers and shakers; they have agency; they are freaking cool as shit--sexy and smart and the equal of the men in the novel--and they aren't always punished for their villainy. In real life, Ouida seems to believe in a kind of third sex, The Genius, who (male or female) is just better than everybody else. She clearly includes herself in this category. LOL
She is an object of pity in many ways. She made so much money; she was so rich (and entirely from her writing), and she squandered it all on hothouse flowers and entertaining and feeding a little squadron of dogs veal for every meal. She died penniless in a rented house that stank of dog piss. She could not afford burial and was only interred decently because her friends paid for it.
She knew everybody, all the glitterati and literati of her age. She invited mostly men to her parties and held court, staying in the dining room with them while they smoked cigars instead of retiring for a sedate sherry with her mother and the rare additional woman in attendance as was customary.
She was weird and gauche and pretentious, and I love her to bitty bits.
Now for some comments on the novel, including spoilers:
I love this three volume novel. In volume one, we are introduced to Princess Nadine Napraxine who is young, beautiful, rich and at the pinnacle of society. She is described as an amateur scientist (or psychologist, really, but Ouida uses the language of science) who is constantly analyzing everyone around her and who is cold and incapable of feeling emotions, even for her own children. She goes beyond mere coldness, though, and is actively cruel at times, deriving amusement from the men who fall in love with her and who ruin their lives (or even end them in duels) attempting to win her love in return. They all fail. Nadine is completely faithful to the husband she despises but not out of any sense of morality; rather, she feels like it would be beneath her to engage in affairs.
We are also introduced to Othmar, the richest man in the world; he hates his wealth because he sees it as immoral and tainted. He's also young and smart and handsome and an artist. Othmar falls in love with Nadine, but she rejects him as she's rejected all other suitors.
The final character of import we meet in this first volume is Yseulte; she is impoverished aristocracy, an orphan who mostly lives at a convent school but who winters with a cousin who just happens to own a property adjoining Othmar's. Yseulte is innocent, beautiful, young, aristocratic and noble despite her poverty, and completely pure and moral.
And the points of the triangle are complete.
The dialogue in this novel kills. I absolutely love reading bon mot after bon mot. Ouida's depictions of the idle rich are so much fun to read.
In the second volume, Nadine rejects Othmar's offer to run away with him; in response, he marries the innocent Yseulte. Not much happens here except for Nadine feeling piqued, Othmar realizing that he cannot forget Nadine by marrying someone else, and Yseulte slowly realizing that something is not quite right in her marriage. And yet, for the lack of actual plot, it's a very good read. The dialogue is sparkling as always.
In the final volume, Yseulte finds out that Othmar was in love with Nadine when he married her and loves her still. Nadine's husband dies in a duel, leaving her free to marry again. When Yseulte realizes she is the only thing standing between Nadine and Othmar, she commits suicide (she's also depressed after having another miscarriage).
This novel is really interesting in that its protagonist is a very curious woman; Nadine can be very brave and can choose to behave morally, but she is also cruel and cold. Ouida constantly uses the language of science (which she deeply distrusts in real life and describes as evil in many of her non-fiction essays) to describe Nadine. The novel ends oddly, too, with Nadine worrying that she doesn't really love Othmar even though they are marrying and with the sense that their relationship is only possible because of death.
I imagine the initial readers of this novel were so happy for the sequel to follow (Othmar) as it ends in such a disquieting place.
I am currently hosting a Princess Napraxine Read Along in my journal; we've finished Volume 1 and are halfway through Volume 2: Link to Tag.
Additional Reading (no lie, I initially wrote Addictional)
The Forgotten Female Aesthetes by Talia Schaffer: I love this book. Schaffer is such a good writer. I think it's so hard to write academic criticism well. The writer has to straddle the line between knowing her stuff/making a convincing argument and coming off like a pretentious twit who's just interested in proving how large her vocabulary is and how convoluted a sentence she can write. The longer I am in the academy, the less patience I have for dense, impenetrable academic writing. Life is too short to read someone masturbating (painfully, no less!) on the page. Schaffer's writing is not conversational, but it's not convoluted either; her writing is clear and convincing. I get a sense of who she is as a scholar and a thinker; her writing is formal, but she has not attempted to absent herself entirely from the process, a conceit I find tedious in a great deal of academic writing (as if our passions and interests and biases as scholars do not inform our work). As a Ouida scholar, what mainly draws me to this book is Schaffer's argument that Ouida is a female Aesthete who can be credited with popularizing the witty, epigrammatic language that will later become characteristic of male Aesthetes like Wilde. She also positions Ouida and other female Aesthetes as a direct influence for Modernist writers; her comments about the way that Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own explicitly denies the lives and literary output of late Victorian women writers in order to create its argument that a female literary tradition doesn't exist are quite compelling (and even shocking) in this context. Identifying Ouida as an Aesthete also helps us to understand some of the seemingly inexplicable choices she made in her personal life (the way she dressed, her love of hothouse flowers, etc) as an attempt to live out the principles of Aestheticism. Highly, highly recommend this as a very readable work that helps define Aestheticism, tells us about the lives and literary works of both male and female Aesthetes, and helps us understand the relationship of Modernism to the Aesthetic Movement.
Ouida the Phenomenon by Natalie Schroeder and Shari Hodges Holt: first book-length work of criticism about Ouida and a solid piece of scholarship; I have problems with the biographical portion of the book as outlined in the post I made comparing biographies of Ouida. I also think that Schroeder and Holt's focus on Ouida as a feminist reclamation project has not aged as well in some places and causes them to write about aspects of her writing in a way that lacks nuance.
The Broadview edition of Moths edited by Natalie Schroeder: It has an intro that includes information about Ouida's biography (although see above for my quibbles about Schroeder's take on Ouida's bio) and works and multiple appendices that might be of interest (contemporaneous critical response to Ouida, the New Woman, marriage in the 19th century, etc.) to someone wanting to learn more about Ouida.
Ouida and Victorian Popular Culture edited by Andrew King: This collection of essays is the second book-length work of criticism about Ouida. It brings together some of the usual suspects in Ouida scholarship (like Jane Jordan, Lyn Pykett, and by now Andrew King). Not a dud among the articles (although I think the Ambrosini article is a little too close in some places (fortunately brief and few) to the ridiculous treatment she gets from some of her biographers. I really enjoyed learning more about the parallels between her and Marie Corelli (who I haven't read yet) and about the history of the stage adaptations of Moths (which Ouida loathed because none of them required her permission). This collection also sheds a great deal of light for me on her time in Italy, her Italian novels, her Russian novels, and her political writing. A must-read for a Ouida scholar.
Ouida by Helena Esser: finally, a second book-length work of criticism about Ouida! This just came out at the end of September 2024, and I have only had the chance to read the introduction, but I had the opportunity to see some of the book before publication, so I know Helena's scholarship is solid. In fact, one of the things she does that I love is correct some of the problems I have with the way that Ouida's biography is presented by Schroder and Holt + others.
Please, please consider offering Princess Napraxine for Yuletide this year. <3
Princess Napraxine is a 3 volume novel published in 1884 by Ouida.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?
It is in the public domain and available for free lots of places. For example:
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
It also has a sequel Othmar, which you might find interesting.
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT?
First, a little about the author:
Ouida is so full of contradictions. On the one hand, she wrote deeply purple, melodramatic prose about convoluted situations. She loved to write bits of dialogue in foreign languages, and her command of them was often shaky. She was frequently derided in the press of her day for writing books that are licentious, frivolous, silly, pretentious. And yet, everyfuckingbody read her books because they were fun and funny and she could hit you in the id with such a delicious anvil. Her books are a romp. She can elicit emotion from the reader like whoa.
On the surface, she seems to hate women. Her novels contain many misogynistic statements. Male friendship is always depicted as superior to heterosexual relationships. Her heroines are often childlike, morally pure, boring as shit women, but even some of these women have backbones of steel that can surprise the reader. She makes many, many misogynistic statements in her non-fiction writing about how silly and stupid women are and how transcendent men are next to the fairer sex. And yet, her female villains are powerful; they are movers and shakers; they have agency; they are freaking cool as shit--sexy and smart and the equal of the men in the novel--and they aren't always punished for their villainy. In real life, Ouida seems to believe in a kind of third sex, The Genius, who (male or female) is just better than everybody else. She clearly includes herself in this category. LOL
She is an object of pity in many ways. She made so much money; she was so rich (and entirely from her writing), and she squandered it all on hothouse flowers and entertaining and feeding a little squadron of dogs veal for every meal. She died penniless in a rented house that stank of dog piss. She could not afford burial and was only interred decently because her friends paid for it.
She knew everybody, all the glitterati and literati of her age. She invited mostly men to her parties and held court, staying in the dining room with them while they smoked cigars instead of retiring for a sedate sherry with her mother and the rare additional woman in attendance as was customary.
She was weird and gauche and pretentious, and I love her to bitty bits.
Now for some comments on the novel, including spoilers:
I love this three volume novel. In volume one, we are introduced to Princess Nadine Napraxine who is young, beautiful, rich and at the pinnacle of society. She is described as an amateur scientist (or psychologist, really, but Ouida uses the language of science) who is constantly analyzing everyone around her and who is cold and incapable of feeling emotions, even for her own children. She goes beyond mere coldness, though, and is actively cruel at times, deriving amusement from the men who fall in love with her and who ruin their lives (or even end them in duels) attempting to win her love in return. They all fail. Nadine is completely faithful to the husband she despises but not out of any sense of morality; rather, she feels like it would be beneath her to engage in affairs.
We are also introduced to Othmar, the richest man in the world; he hates his wealth because he sees it as immoral and tainted. He's also young and smart and handsome and an artist. Othmar falls in love with Nadine, but she rejects him as she's rejected all other suitors.
The final character of import we meet in this first volume is Yseulte; she is impoverished aristocracy, an orphan who mostly lives at a convent school but who winters with a cousin who just happens to own a property adjoining Othmar's. Yseulte is innocent, beautiful, young, aristocratic and noble despite her poverty, and completely pure and moral.
And the points of the triangle are complete.
The dialogue in this novel kills. I absolutely love reading bon mot after bon mot. Ouida's depictions of the idle rich are so much fun to read.
In the second volume, Nadine rejects Othmar's offer to run away with him; in response, he marries the innocent Yseulte. Not much happens here except for Nadine feeling piqued, Othmar realizing that he cannot forget Nadine by marrying someone else, and Yseulte slowly realizing that something is not quite right in her marriage. And yet, for the lack of actual plot, it's a very good read. The dialogue is sparkling as always.
In the final volume, Yseulte finds out that Othmar was in love with Nadine when he married her and loves her still. Nadine's husband dies in a duel, leaving her free to marry again. When Yseulte realizes she is the only thing standing between Nadine and Othmar, she commits suicide (she's also depressed after having another miscarriage).
This novel is really interesting in that its protagonist is a very curious woman; Nadine can be very brave and can choose to behave morally, but she is also cruel and cold. Ouida constantly uses the language of science (which she deeply distrusts in real life and describes as evil in many of her non-fiction essays) to describe Nadine. The novel ends oddly, too, with Nadine worrying that she doesn't really love Othmar even though they are marrying and with the sense that their relationship is only possible because of death.
I imagine the initial readers of this novel were so happy for the sequel to follow (Othmar) as it ends in such a disquieting place.
I am currently hosting a Princess Napraxine Read Along in my journal; we've finished Volume 1 and are halfway through Volume 2: Link to Tag.
Additional Reading (no lie, I initially wrote Addictional)
The Forgotten Female Aesthetes by Talia Schaffer: I love this book. Schaffer is such a good writer. I think it's so hard to write academic criticism well. The writer has to straddle the line between knowing her stuff/making a convincing argument and coming off like a pretentious twit who's just interested in proving how large her vocabulary is and how convoluted a sentence she can write. The longer I am in the academy, the less patience I have for dense, impenetrable academic writing. Life is too short to read someone masturbating (painfully, no less!) on the page. Schaffer's writing is not conversational, but it's not convoluted either; her writing is clear and convincing. I get a sense of who she is as a scholar and a thinker; her writing is formal, but she has not attempted to absent herself entirely from the process, a conceit I find tedious in a great deal of academic writing (as if our passions and interests and biases as scholars do not inform our work). As a Ouida scholar, what mainly draws me to this book is Schaffer's argument that Ouida is a female Aesthete who can be credited with popularizing the witty, epigrammatic language that will later become characteristic of male Aesthetes like Wilde. She also positions Ouida and other female Aesthetes as a direct influence for Modernist writers; her comments about the way that Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own explicitly denies the lives and literary output of late Victorian women writers in order to create its argument that a female literary tradition doesn't exist are quite compelling (and even shocking) in this context. Identifying Ouida as an Aesthete also helps us to understand some of the seemingly inexplicable choices she made in her personal life (the way she dressed, her love of hothouse flowers, etc) as an attempt to live out the principles of Aestheticism. Highly, highly recommend this as a very readable work that helps define Aestheticism, tells us about the lives and literary works of both male and female Aesthetes, and helps us understand the relationship of Modernism to the Aesthetic Movement.
Ouida the Phenomenon by Natalie Schroeder and Shari Hodges Holt: first book-length work of criticism about Ouida and a solid piece of scholarship; I have problems with the biographical portion of the book as outlined in the post I made comparing biographies of Ouida. I also think that Schroeder and Holt's focus on Ouida as a feminist reclamation project has not aged as well in some places and causes them to write about aspects of her writing in a way that lacks nuance.
The Broadview edition of Moths edited by Natalie Schroeder: It has an intro that includes information about Ouida's biography (although see above for my quibbles about Schroeder's take on Ouida's bio) and works and multiple appendices that might be of interest (contemporaneous critical response to Ouida, the New Woman, marriage in the 19th century, etc.) to someone wanting to learn more about Ouida.
Ouida and Victorian Popular Culture edited by Andrew King: This collection of essays is the second book-length work of criticism about Ouida. It brings together some of the usual suspects in Ouida scholarship (like Jane Jordan, Lyn Pykett, and by now Andrew King). Not a dud among the articles (although I think the Ambrosini article is a little too close in some places (fortunately brief and few) to the ridiculous treatment she gets from some of her biographers. I really enjoyed learning more about the parallels between her and Marie Corelli (who I haven't read yet) and about the history of the stage adaptations of Moths (which Ouida loathed because none of them required her permission). This collection also sheds a great deal of light for me on her time in Italy, her Italian novels, her Russian novels, and her political writing. A must-read for a Ouida scholar.
Ouida by Helena Esser: finally, a second book-length work of criticism about Ouida! This just came out at the end of September 2024, and I have only had the chance to read the introduction, but I had the opportunity to see some of the book before publication, so I know Helena's scholarship is solid. In fact, one of the things she does that I love is correct some of the problems I have with the way that Ouida's biography is presented by Schroder and Holt + others.
Please, please consider offering Princess Napraxine for Yuletide this year. <3
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