Customer Reviews

The Heir of Redclyffe (Oxford World's Classics)

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Charlotte Yonge's "The Heir of Redclyffe" is the Victorian bestseller that many critics,along with much of her other work,are attempting to revive.I had trepidations before I read this novel.The only things I knew about Charlotte Yonge before this were - her novels were considered models of virtue and propriety and that Charles Kingsley loved her work.This was not very encouraging.But,after reading "The Heir of Redclyffe" I realized that Yonge was well worth reviving.Charlotte Yonge was probably the Victorian Christian novelist par excellence.Even they who are neither theists or Christians would be impressed with Yonge's intense conviction.Unlike most of her contemporaries her use of religion never feels perfunctory or insincere-she wrote as she believed and practiced."The Heir of Redclyffe" tells the story of a flawed yet saintly young man who is persecuted to death by his jealous and self-righteous cousin.Despite its sentimental theme the book is surprisingly restrained and ultimately moving.Its minute depiction of family life in the 1850's is so evocative -that it is worth reading for that alone.Charlotte Yonge, unfortunately,lacked the literary skill to be ranked with the best of the Victorians,but "The Heir of Redclyffe" is an original and powerful experience.

The Heir of Redclyffe is book that brings both pleasure and pain, but pain that causes the reader to think about the nature of good, evil, and human beings. Like Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, you are fully confronted with the pain of likeable human beings doing immoral, selfish things. The world of the Heir of Redclyffe is realistic in its depiction of complex characters with flaws and weaknesses. You meet a family of two parents, three sisters, a cousin, and a ward (the heir). There are also plenty of fully sketched and realistic minor characters as well. Part of Yonge's power is to make you care about a great many characters and to understand them, their different values, temperments, and personalities. There are five major characters that dominate the novel: Charles, the invalid brother with his clever sense of humor; Laura, the serious older sister; Amy, the sweet and charming younger sister; their cousin, Philip, a brilliant scholar who sacrificed his chance of a fulfilling intellectual life for a sister who betrayed him; and Guy, the heir of money, a title, a terrible education, and a family tradition of a wild temper.

If you haven't read the editorial review above, please don't--it's a spoiler. I don't know if being told the fate of a particular character before I read the book would have changed my experience of the novel, but it certainly would have reduced my surprize and sense of "oh my, god, what next!" The major twists and turns of the plot had for me the same sensational impact I felt when reading Frances Burney's Cecilia or the great Chinese classic, The Dream of the Red Chamber. I realize many of my readers here might be unfamilar with these two works, but the common experience I had in reading all three books was to feel extremely moved and upset by the book. In all three books, characters had become so real to me that I felt intense emotional responses to their pleasures and pains. I think one reason I felt so moved reading these three books was that none of the books involves a world in which you expect extreme horror. For example, in reading The Color Purple, a novel narrated by a young girl raped by her father, the extreme horror and sordid nature of novel's entire world in a way protected me from deep shock and pain. In a tale of a lovely family with a lovely home, fun friends, beautiful gardens, balls, walks, fun after dinner games, discussions of great books and art, the realistic introduction of painful situations moved me greatly.

The book displays a complex web of characters with flaws and assets, much like other Victorian novels such a Eliot's Middlemarch and Martineau's Deerbrook. Like these novels, it also gives you a vivid sense of upper middle class life in Victorian England. I have a Ph.D. in British literature, and I focused on eighteenth-century literature and the novel for my fields of specialization. While reading this Charlotte Yonge novel will certainly not give the social rewards you get for reading more famous authors such as George Eliot or Anthony Trollope, it will give you a wonderful literary experience. I also recommend, although less highly, Yonge's The Clever Woman of the Family and The Daisy Chain. These novels more directly address intellectual, feminist, and religious issues of the Victorian period. For some, particularly fans of Eliot's work, this may make them more highly reguarded. I perfer the focus on more timeless problems of human relationships, pride, and honesty that is found in The Heir of Redclyffe.

The Heir of Redclyffe is a wonderful novel that vividly depicts life in the nineteenth century. I greatly enjoyed this novel for its superb characterization. I was truly captivated by the main character,Guy Morville. He is a character that the reader genuinely admires and likes for both his nobility and humanity. The writing is excellent and the novel flows more easily than other Victorian works of fiction.

In general I prefer Victorian novels to modern novels. Victorian novels frequently have a higher moral standard and a more classic literary style. Charlotte Yonge was a prolific writer and The Heir of Redclyffe was a popular and classic novel in 19th century England. While I do not share the author's ritualistic High Anglicanism, I do appreciate her Christian orthodoxy and her lifelong dedication to Christian piety, virtue and nobleness of character. Once I got well into the novel I found my interest increasing rather than diminishing. There is struggle "within" and "between" the main characters and even the tragedy that ensues is what I would term a "pleasing melancholy."
One critic said that Charlotte Yonge had the ability to make virtue appear interesting. I think she does that here.