Customer Reviews

Rob Roy (Signet Classics)

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For those seeking the famous tale on which the recent film was based, this will sorely disappoint. This is Scott's tale of a young Englishman, son of a prosperous middle class businessman, who is sent to live with distant cousins in the north of England (just below the Scottish border) because of his failure to live up to his father's mercantile expectations of him. Here he becomes involved with all manner of intrigue and gets pulled into a vortex of events involving rebellion against the English crown, a scheming cousin, a beautiful girl and that famous Scottish outlaw and freedom fighter, Rob Roy.

But the outlaw, certainly the most interesting character in the tale, is only a side player so to speak, and makes a number of appearances, often in disguises (a favorite Scott motif), only to guide and/or rescue our blundering hero. This is most definitely not a tale of high adventure and derring do, and the complex and twisted intrigues of the plot do not sustain the book adequately.

For those who like period pieces or the works of the masters (and Scott was certainly one), this book might be okay. But this is one of those rare instances where the movie, based, at least on the face of it, on Scott's own preface to his book (in which he sketches out the life and times of the historical Rob Roy), is better.

And frankly the movie wasn't half bad; superior, in my view, to that other film of historical Scotland of the same production vintage Braveheart (Special Collector's Edition) with Mel Gibson. Oddly enough, the Rob Roy film (Rob Roy) did worse at the box office. Who can account for tastes?

SWM

Frank Osbaldistone, like Edward Waverley, is another young, weak Walter Scott dreamer male hero. In the novel ROB ROY Frank falls in love with Diana Vernon, an 18 year old orphan, a niece by marriage of his ferociously Jacobite Roman Catholic uncle, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone. Uncle Hildebrand and his six sons live a traditional early 18th century country squire life in Northumbrian England up against the border of Scotland.

But before meeting Diana or "Die," Frank returns to London from four years as an apprentice merchant on the Continent. His father, William Osbaldistone, destines Frank for a career prepping to be his successor. But Frank is a poet at heart and makes it clear that he will not serve.

In punishment, and to shape Frank up, his Protestant, pro-King George The First father ships Frank off to his younger brother Hildebrand -- Catholic, pro-The Old Pretender, James Stuart. Uncle Hildebrand's immensely learned, Jesuit-trained son Rashleigh is then invited to London to work for Frank's father.

Rashleigh's purpose is, however, evil: to rob his uncle in order to bring funds to Glasgow to help fund a planned 1715 invasion of Scotland by the exiled Old Pretender.

Meanwhile, young Frank Osbaldistone, residing in relative idleness and ease with his uncle and his five remaining loutish cousins in Osbaldistone Hall, has fallen for a fair niece of Uncle Hildebrand's deceased wife, 18 year old Diana Vernon.

By her father's will, Diana must either marry one of her cousins or join a nunnery. She is also very active in the 1715 plot to bring James Stuart back as the rightful King. At a certain point Frank is written to from London about cousin Rashleigh's theft and is urged to head him off in Glasgow and retrieve the funds, or the London firm faces ruin.

With advice and secret material aid from Diana, Frank sets off. He is befriended by the only major historical character in the novel, the Jacobite supporter Robert MacGregor Campbell, best known as Rob ("Red" in Gaelic) Roy, so called for the matted red hair all over his body.

How all this plays out I leave for you to enjoy during five or six hours of very pleasant reading.

But do notice some of the characters. Rob Roy's wife wife Helen is a fierce amazon of a Highland lady. Frank Osbaldistone first sees her standing atop a ridge, leading an armed mass of old and young MacGregors barring the advance of English Redcoats.

A few minutes later Helen MacGregor has won the skirmish and her sword has blood on it. Minutes after that she weighs down with a rock a hostage for her captured but not released husband and tosses him to drown in deep water.

The second masculine woman of the novel is young Die Vernon. In Chapter ten she reveals how much her brilliant but unscrupulous cousin Rashleigh had made her mistress of: Latin, Greek, "most of the modern languages of Europe," science, history, poetry, classics. She can also ride, jump a horse and shoot. For her five loutish cousins have made a tom-boy of her. Her heroic ancestors were sung by Shakespeare and other bards. And she is very proud of their devotion to Stuart monarchs.

Later, Frank is made jealous of a mysterious man (it is Die's father, but that is revealed only slowly) whom he judges his rival in love. Diana makes it clear that she and Frank can only be good friends:

"Boys and girls prate themselves into love; and when their love is like to fall asleep, they prate and tease themselves into jealousy. But you and I, Frank, are rational beings, and neither silly nor idle enough to talk ourselves into any other relation than that of plain honest disinterested friendship. Any other union is as far out of our reach as if I were man, or you woman -- To speak truth," she added, after a moment's hesitation, "even though I am so complaisant to the decorum of my sex as to blush a little at my own plain dealing, we cannot marry if we would; and we ought not if we could." (Chapter Seventeen)

Frank Osbaldistone is an unmanly man and Diana Vernon is a manly woman. Is it any wonder then that sociologists of gender and feminists love Walter Scott's ROB ROY?
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