East Lynne represents prototypical 19th-century sensation fiction, extremely popular with English readers. The novel was the second for Mrs. Henry (Ellen Price) Wood, who had begun publishing highly moralistic fiction at the age of 41. It became an immediate hit when it appeared first as a serial in the New Monthly Magazine, edited by novelist Harrison Ainsworth. Though it was rejected for publication in novel form by several publishers with readers that included novelist George Meredith, Richard Bentley published it in three volumes in the fall of 1861.

East Lynne contained all the ingredients that appealed to aficionados of this genre: drama heightened by characters’ greatly exaggerated emotional expressions; an aristocratic female protagonist who suffers a fall from grace and must redeem herself; a stalwart romantic male lead; a subplot involving a murder mystery; and the death of innocent children. It also offers constant authorial intervention as the narrator preaches to her audience. In one scene, the narrator admonishes, “We never know the full value of the thing until we lose it. Health, prosperity, happiness, a peaceful conscience—what think we of these blessings while they are ours?” Rather unpalatable to later readers, such fiction sold well to Victorian readers accustomed to didactic literature.

The aristocratic Lady Isabel Vane, daughter of the earl of Mt. Severn, enjoys a childhood of excess at the estate of East Lynne. Her profligate father, encumbered with debts, can leave her nothing at his death but feels confident that her legendary beauty will result in her marrying wealth. At his death, she marries the novel’s epitome of moral living, Archibald Carlyle, a lawyer from the nearby village of West Lynne, who purchases East Lynne prior to the earl’s death. While Mr. Carlyle’s behavior remains impeccable, Mrs. Wood takes care not to paint him as a prude, offering his maiden sister in that role to serve as a foil to Carlyle and remind her readers that virtue leading to severity is not virtue at all.

In the rising action, Mr. Carlyle attempts to help his longtime friends and neighbors, the Hares, in clearing their son Richard of the accusation of murder. Barbara Hare has been in love with Archibald for some time, but he views their relationship as one of friendship only. With all these basic elements in place, the characters encounter the coincidence and mysterious identities expected by readers of sensation fiction.

Isabel misinterprets Archibald’s attentions to Barbara, and in a fit of jealousy and suspicion, abandons her husband and children, lured to Europe by the evil attentions of a rake who impregnates her with no intention of marriage. Isabel learns a difficult lesson about trust through his ignoble actions and commands him to leave her to raise their son alone. Archibald, now divorced from Isabel, would like to marry Barbara, but as a staunch Christian cannot do so. He quotes the verse with which he must comply: “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery.”

As Isabel mulls her past mistakes, the narration continues its moralistic tone: “A conviction of her sin ever oppressed her; not only of the one act of it, patent to the scandal-mongers, but of the long, sinful life she had led from childhood.” A convenient train accident leaves Isabel disfigured and kills her infant. Because she is reported dead, Archibald may marry Barbara, who becomes stepmother to Isabel’s children.

Readers voyeuristically view Isabel’s suffering as the narrator states, “I do not know how to describe the vain yearning, the inward fever, the restless longing for what might not be.” As with classical tragic aristocratic characters, whose falls allowed catharsis for their audience, Isabel stands as a cautionary tale to her viewers. Circumstance evolves, and she becomes governess to her own children in the home of Archibald and Barbara, where she suffers detailed daily remorse over her haughty misjudgment of her devoted ex-husband.

She endures the death of another child, while the murder mystery, in which her ex-lover is discovered to be the murderer, is resolved. In an emotionally hyperbolic death scene, Isabel reveals her identity to Archibald and dies knowing he has forgiven her foolish actions and the implied fact that she made him a bigamist. The audience may take comfort in the fact that she will join her two dead children in repose.

Additional melodramatic factors in the novel include various invalid women, one of whom has prophetic dreams; devoted servants, one of whom discovers Isabel’s identity but does not reveal it; a falsely accused man who shadows his home in various disguises; the passing of a great deal of time; and multiple mini morality plays involving servants and masters, fathers and offspring.

The novel became one of the biggest best-sellers in fiction history and evolved into a successful stage production. It offered its readers taboo subjects such as adultery and bigamy made acceptable through its highly moralistic narrative. Although it lapsed in popularity for a time, with the increased interest in women writers that surged in the 20th century, new editions of East Lynne became available, as did an electronic text version.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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