Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s St. Ronan’s Well

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 14, 2025

While not considered a major novel, St. Ronan’s Well remains important in demonstrating a change of topic for its author, Sir Walter Scott. Scott, who basically invented historical fiction, varies from his traditional approach to employ as setting a fashionable 19th-century Scottish spa that frames a love-triangle plot.

In his introduction, Scott explained he wanted to “celebrare domestica facta—to give an imitation of the shifting manners of our own time, and paint scenes the originals of which are daily passing round us, so that a minute’s observation may compare the copies with the originals.” In so writing, Scott interrogates an age-old argument as to whether art had a duty to imitate life. His historical fiction claimed to be based in the truth of history, but for this novel, he had only his own observations as basis.

Many of the character contrivances remain familiar to readers of romance and of Scott’s other novels. The heroine, Clara Mowbray, cannot stand on her own but must instead be related to power; she is the daughter of a Scottish laird, in this case laird of St. Ronan’s. Blood relations play an equal consideration in the male characters as the two men who battle for Clara’s favor are half-brothers, both sons of the dead Earl of Etherington.

Graham-Gilbert, John; Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Bt, FRSE; The Royal Society of Edinburgh; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/sir-walter-scott-17711832-bt-frse-186223

As the novel opens, Scott introduces the best-drawn character in the book in the form of Meg Dods, landlady of St. Ronan’s inn and the land around it. Her unusual position as a landowner came about due to the energy of her parents in taking over the crumbling mansion of St. Ronan’s and converting it into a public house. The laird so approved of their venture that he gave them the property to bequeath to their daughter, and Meg does not hesitate to remind visitors of her landed position.

Her characterization as an independent and active female overshadows that of Clara Mowbray, who, while considered a free spirit as she roams the area unescorted on her pony, remains burdened by her past relationship with the brothers. She tells her own brother, John, in a statement that clearly foreshadows her fate, “Do not trust to Fortune . . . she has never been a friend to our family—not at least for many a day,” marking her as burdened by melancholy.

When Clara meets one of the brothers, the artist Frank Tyrell, their conversation lets readers understand that a bitter past has left Clara disappointed by love. Her name symbolizes clarity of vision and thought, neither of which helps her enjoy life. Her later expressions of “excited imagination” and belief she has seen “an empty shadow” from her past when the present earl of Etherington, Frank’s half-brother, visits her at her estate marks her clearly as a romantic heroine.

As the earl reveals to Clara’s father that Frank is the bastard son of his father, ineligible to inherit title or property, many of the elements of romance fall into place, with questions of identity and class offered as barriers to the fulfillment of love. As readers suspect, the man claiming to be the earl will be unmasked by Clara’s brother as an impostor with the ironic name of Valentine Bulmer, but the knowledge will be discovered too late to save Clara from tragedy.

Clara’s sharing of Shakespeare’s Ophelia’s fate may have surprised some readers, but it was part of the melodrama that fascinated Scott, who could not focus all his energies on jealousy at a country spa. He had to include a pretend marriage, deathbed confessions, and other trappings for sheer entertainment value.

Bibliography
Allen, Walter Ernst. Six Great Novelists: Defoe, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, Stevenson, Conrad. Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1971.
Rigney, Ann. Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.