Content area
Full Text
Oh FORTUNE! how thy restless wavering state
Hath fraught with Cares my troubled Wit!
Witness this present Prison wither Fate
Hath borne me, and the Joys I quit.
Thou causedest the Guilty to be loosed
From Bands, wherewith are Innocents inclosed;
Causing the Guiltless to be strait reserved,
And freeing those that Death had well deserved:
But by her Envy can be nothing wrought,
So God send to my Foes all they have thought.
Elizabeth I, "Written on a Wall at Woodstock"1
Gracious Providence, where is this to end? We have sacrificed the peace of our families, the warmest wishes of our young hearts, to right the country in which we were born, and to free her from oppression; yet it appears, that every step we have made towards liberty, has but brought us in view of new and more terrific perils.
Sir Walter Scott, Woodstock2
Several critics have drawn attention to similarities between the thematic concerns in Maria Edgeworth's novels and those in Sir Walter Scott's.3 However, little has been made of the congruence between Charlotte Smith's and Scott's explorations of various notions of revolution in The Banished Man (1794) and Woodstock; or, the Cavalier. A Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred and Fifty-One (1826), respectively, as evidenced by the paucity of comparison between Smith's and Scott's novelistic achievements.4 In fact, little attention has been paid to either Banished Man or Woodstock, works that warrant greater attention both separately and in concert. This is especially curious given Scott's interest in Charlotte Smith's works and his awareness of the importance she attached to notions of landscape. In his assessment of Smith's poetry and novels, he notes the "excellent sketches of description" that "are indeed to be found in all Mrs Smith's works" and her ability to "preserve[] in her landscapes the truth and precision of a painter."5
Although each novel posits very different arguments, both are mature works that draw on similar concepts of place as the means for exploring the actuality, as opposed to the ideology, of revolution. Smith and Scott wrote their respective novels toward the close of their literary careers and well after the French Revolution had degenerated into the chaos of the Terror. Banished Man was written in an increasingly repressive...