Like her first novel, Self Control (1810), Mary Brunton’s second novel, Discipline, remains most important for its contribution to the development of silver-fork fiction and the manners novel, later made most famous by Jane Austen.

Didactic in nature, the novel offered a blueprint of behavior to readers by elevating the value of religious piety. Its message held that, if one avoided seduction, whether of a carnal or a materialistic nature, one received reward. Shrewdly voiced and drawn with minute detail, the plot remains filled with erotic intrigue. Couched in a style that marks its author as intelligent and imaginative, with an ear for realistic dialogue and an eye for the motivation behind human action, Discipline tempers its preachiness with an appealing first-person narrator in the form of Ellen Percy.

Her humanity becomes immediately evident as she confesses herself once willful and egotistical, a storyteller who will attempt to avoid the very “professions of humility” that often mark a narrator as “glorifying” in the “candour” of her “confession.” She foreshadows her tale of a failed attempt to join the historically aristocratic English community by noting her father’s lack of “illustrious descent,” and his own frequent statement that those who flaunt their social stature engage in the worst of vices. Those who have read Austen’s Emma (1816) will note definite similarities between the two novels’ young heroines, despite their differences in social status.

Young Ellen has a high opinion of herself, encouraged by her mother’s reticence to correct her misbehavior—actions her mother feels grow more from an admirable spirit than a wicked nature. She describes herself by age eight as perverse, importune, obstinate, combative, all traits that her father deems desirable for a boy but not for Ellen. In a statement that supports the novel’s interest for feminist critics, he tells his wife, Fanny, of his daughter’s intelligence and keen sense of analysis: “It is a confounded pity she is a girl. If she had been of the right sort, she might have got into Parliament . . . but what use is her sense of?” When Fanny replies, “I hope it will contribute to her happiness,” she foreshadows Ellen’s eventual emotional state, but one that will be reached only after much suffering.

Almost immediately, Ellen suffers the grief of her mother’s death and the simultaneous loss of her father in an emotional sense, developments that endear her to readers before they can judge her too harshly. She takes solace in trying her leadership capabilities at boarding school, where she lives until age sixteen and adopts as an enemy the well-born Lady Maria de Burgh, simultaneously making a lifelong friend of Juliet Arnold. These individuals remain important to the novel’s rising action, and both will reappear in various capacities.

When Ellen returns home, her father asks his dead wife’s faithful friend, Miss Elizabeth Mortimer, to oversee Ellen’s care. From Miss Mortimer, Ellen eventually learns piety and faith but, most important, will meet Miss Mortimer’s acquaintance, Mr. Maitland, whose language is that of a gentleman, “always correct, often forcible, and sometimes elegant.” When he rescues the ladies from a potential disaster caused by Ellen’s poor judgment, she shows little gratitude and judges him too quiet, which she believes marks his lack of passion. Time will teach her that it actually marks his grace and strength. Maitland and Miss Mortimer become models for Ellen, although she at first rejects their guidance.

Ellen experiences a number of temptations, including those exercised by Lord Frederick, who pretends to love her but has only evil thoughts in mind. She discovers that Mr. Maitland holds her in high esteem, despite her self-centered behavior. A masquerade ball adds imagery of a lively social scene, but a damaging rumor about Ellen threatens to discredit her, even in the eyes of Juliet. Too late, she learns that Juliet has helped construct her fall, out of jealousy of Ellen’s relationship with Miss Mortimer.

A lengthy letter from Miss Mortimer, who has left the Percys due to Ellen’s actions, makes Ellen realize for the first time her folly. She notes that “the darkness of midnight” surrounded her, as she confesses, “I could not disguise from myself the uselessness of my past life; and I shrunk under a confused dread of vengeance.” Brunton extends the imagery of dark and light to emphasize a moment of near-epiphany for Ellen.

When Maitland appears to explain he is leaving, Ellen learns that he has loved her, but he explains he also “perceived, pardon my plainness, that your habits and inclinations were such as must be fatal to every plan of domestic comfort.” Stating she had no ambition to become his wife, Ellen dismisses Maitland, an act she later regrets. In short order, her father loses his fortune and commits suicide, leaving Ellen completely isolated.

Ellen’s transformation into a woman of character still moves slowly until threatened by the loss of Miss Mortimer, with whom she lives following her father’s death, to illness. Only then can Ellen realize how much she depends on her caretaker. Even Juliet Arnold’s transfer of affections to Lady Maria and her abandonment of Ellen fail to arouse Ellen’s famous temper in light of Miss Mortimer’s death. Before dying, her friend charges Ellen to know her own religious faith and piety, but warns her that will be impossible until Ellen is forced to turn to faith due to a lack of support from family, friends, and material goods.

Ultimately her prophecy is fulfilled as Ellen loses everything. Destitute, she finds the faith and humility that return her chaotic life to order through several near-melodramatic turns of fate, including a reuniting with Juliet Arnold and her subsequent death; a meeting of Charlotte Graham and her family, among whom Maitland is a part; and the restoration of a portion of her inheritance. Maitland’s return is advanced through a subplot common to romance, that of mistaken identity, and through that contrivance the novel concludes on a happy note.

Discipline remains available in print and electronic texts due to the efforts of feminist critics who recovered Brunton’s works in the mid-20th century. Even those who object to Brunton’s overt Christian dogma find much to enjoy in her work.

Bibliography
Spender, Dale. Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen. New York: Pandora, 1988.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 19th century novels, british romantic literature, christian fiction, discipline novel, early women writers, ellen percy, female authors before jane austen, female Bildungsroman, female character development, Feminist literary criticism, feminist recovery project, historical romance fiction, jane austen influences, literature of transformation, manners novel, mary brunton, Mary Brunton’s Discipline, mistaken identity trope, moral didacticism, novels about redemption, proto-feminist literature, religious piety in literature, seduction and morality, self control novel, silver-fork fiction, women in literature