Critical essay on Arrivals from India, by Luther Mardock

 

Henrietta Rouvierre Mosse seems to be one of countless writers who have disappeared under the weight of centuries. Almost nothing is known about her except that she is known to have published seven novels, some of them under her maiden name, Henrietta Rouvierre. There is very little indication of her life span, but her novels were published between about 1805 and 1820. The only indication of a possible birth date I was able to retrieve was a Henrietta Rouvierre that was born in France in 1787, which would have made her nineteen at the time of the publication of her first novel in 1806. It is difficult, therefore, to approach a discussion of Arrivals From India, in relation to the author herself. Fortuitously, she left us an excellent novel that is fertile ground for the exploration of a number of issues important to understanding the literary and cultural milieu in which she worked.

It is interesting to compare the work of novelist from the Romantic period who is almost entirely unknown to the contemporary world with those who comprise the traditional literary canon. It is immediately evident that there was a huge amount of literature in circulation during this period, of which the canonical writers comprise an extremely small percentage. Mosse, like many other authors who seem to have been published primarily for sale to lending libraries, was published by Newman, et al. The circulation of these novels would seem to be rather large. We could guess that the actual number of readers of these novels may have exceeded that of writers who are now considered canonical, much as in the present day popular fiction generally is read by a much larger audience than literary fiction. These are of course somewhat meaningless designations, but they are useful however in understanding the audience for these novels.

It is evident from the reviews and from commentary within other novels of the time, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen is an example, that novel-reading was perceived as being a past-time for women and silly teen-age girls. There are no ways of knowing whether this is really true or not, though in modern times the readership of popular romance novels, a perhaps useful comparative, tends to be almost exclusively female. The novels themselves tend to bear this out as well concerning themselves with issues that would have been of particular interest to young women, specifically, of course, marriage.

Arrivals From India begins and ends with marriages. Marriage was, and still is, a complex issue, however, combining issues of rank, nobility, and class, as well as economic and social issues. For women, especially, since they had very few ways of supporting themselves independently, marriage was an overriding concern. We can see all of these concerns in Mosse's novel. Fanny Stretton, for example, is the daughter of an extremely wealthy yet common born man, James Stretton. His extravagant wealth, ill-got, makes his daughter particularly attractive to the young Earl of Oakland whose family though noble is poor due to his father's mismanagement of the estate. In the novel, there seems to be little personal attraction between the two partners in this engagement. Fanny Stretton, desperate to be introduced at court, arranged the entire affair so that in exchange for a large dowry her father would be secured a position in the peerage. She marries Oakland before her father's peerage, however, though only under some pressure. Oakland seems to have suspected that had her father been awarded peerage and she been introduced at court, she would have little reason to marry Oakland, since she would be both rich and noble. His suspicions were likely valid as she is quick to bring herself into ignominy after the marriage.

Mosse is reaffirming the predominant conservative social sentiment of the time, that being that people should basically stay where they belong socially. Social mobility is shown to be detrimental to society as a whole, disrupting what is portrayed as centuries of peace and prosperity. The only respectable way to achieve nobility in the novel is through inheritance. Thus, when the character Ned Milton, inherits a Ducal seat from a distant uncle despite having been born common and poor, he is portrayed very positively. Mosse further emphasizes this tendency by having the hereditary nobility be highly sympathetic characters; they are extraordinarily kind, magnanimous, and altruistic. Similarly, characters who are common and show no inclination to improving their social position through money or other means are shown as honest and hardworking. Examples of this tendency can be found throughout the book.

Secret marriages play a very important role in Mosse's novel as well. The intrigue that comprises the central concerns of the novel is based primarily on a secret marriage between Adelaide Moncke and Ned Milton. It is their secret marriage that angers the then Lord Riverston and allows the scheming James Stretton to conceive of a plan that effectively destroys the Riverston family for twenty years. It is as a result of this plan that Adelaide is cast out and eventually goes mad believing her husband and all her brothers to be dead, that Ned Milton mourns for the wife he believes to be dead and George to remain in India for twenty years believing he has no family or friends alive in England. It is the revelation of this secret marriage that is the eventual downfall of Stretton. The shock of being discovered is so great that he dies shortly after.

Mosse seems to be cautioning people not to stray from convetional social norms pertaining to marriage. She indicates that if only George Moncke and Adelaide had approached her father, the Lord Riverston, and asked him for permission to marry, in keeping with traditional social convention, that the torture and sorrow that lasted nearly twenty years could have been avoided. Though this marriage would have in some ways been a breach of convention, since Ned Milton was at that time just a soldier, his eventual accession to a ducal seat and a substantial fortune would have made the marriage possible. It is also indicated that Lord Riverston would have allowed the marriage despite Milton's poverty and low social position, as Riverston had effectively adopted him as a son.

We can see that Mosse represents a conservative social voice that was a prominent aspect of this particular type of novel. As a review of the novel says, "the fair author keeps in mind the good old moral of virtue rewarded, and vice punished. Here is nothing to condemn, and certainly nothing very much to commend." Throughout the novel she affirms conservative social mores in every area from marriage to the behavior of members of the various social classes. Servants should quietly do their duty, and not interest themselves in the lives of their masters. Servants that gossip about their masters or even worse attempt to befriend them are without fail dishonored and cast out of the home. Only those that serve quietly and dutifully are praised.

Mosse's conservatism is interesting particularly in relation to the historical milieu. At the time of the publication of this novel, the French Revolution was a profound failure, and there was a conservative backlash taking place throughout Europe. It is likely as well, that the author was a refugee from the French Revolution, perhaps of erstwhile nobility, but that is impossible to know for sure. There is reference to the Revolution in the novel in a minor character who claims to be a French Marquis. The history of the Marquis is given as a short history of the French Revolution. Through him the common Frenchmen is shown as an opportunist, allying himself with whatever faction happens to hold power. She indicates that nothing really changed, but that people just found new ways of doing the same things they had always done. This is of course not entirely true, but her characterization of the average Frenchman in such a negative fashion speaks strongly about what her personal sentiments may have been.

© Luther Mardock, University of Nebraska, December 2002