Abstract
This essay investigates nineteenth-century writing by Scottish women who, in varying ways, explored the relationship between place and identity over a period of significant change. The lives of Margaret Oliphant (1828–97), Elizabeth Grant (1797–1885), and Mary MacPherson (1821–98) differed hugely, and their decentred visions of Scottish locales within Britain depart considerably from those of more familiar voices in the contemporary discourse. As diverse in terms of social background, experience, and choice of genre as these writers were, their work shares an acute attention to cultural space, mapping class and gender onto locale. Britain as a construct figures only incidentally or peripherally in this writing. Far more important is the regional or local, with emphasis on relationships—family and networks of individuals—through which the wider world is read. However, Scotland’s identity within Britain is complex in that internally the geographical divide into Highlands and Lowlands is reinforced by distinct differences in history and culture (including language). Exploring Oliphant’s, Grant’s, and MacPherson’s representations of Scotland, with particular reference to the Highlands as a site of cultural encounter, illuminates other spheres of region and nation.
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Notes
In Tennyson’s ‘The Defence of Lucknow’, ‘Havelock’s glorious Highlanders’ break their way through the ‘fell mutineers’ to save the garrison (VII, lines 1–8). Regarding the shift in perceptions of Highlanders from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, see Douglas S. Mack, Scottish Fiction and the British Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).
See Carol Anderson, ‘Writing Spaces’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Women’s Writing, ed. by Glenda Norquay (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), pp. 113–21.
Katie Trumpener, ‘National Character, Nationalist Plots: National Tale and Historical Novel in the Age of Waverley, 1806–1830’, English Literary History, 60.3 (1993): 685–731; pp. 697, 689.
Q. D. Leavis, Introduction, The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs M. O. W. Oliphant (facsimile reprint, 1974).
Vineta Colby and Robert A. Colby, The Equivocal Virtue: Mrs Oliphant and the Victorian Market Place (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1966), p. 89.
See Colby and Colby for detailed discussion of Oliphant’s literary output related to Scotland. See also Ralph Jessop, ‘Viragos of the Periodical Press: Constance Gordon-Cumming, Charlotte Dempster, Margaret Oliphant, Christian Isobel Johnstone’, in A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, pp. 216–31;
Helen Sutherland, ‘Margaret Oliphant and the Periodical Press’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Women’s Writing, pp. 84–93.
Merryn Williams, ‘Margaret Oliphant’, in A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, ed. by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan ((Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), pp. 274–90, 276.
Oliphant, ‘Light Literature for the Holidays’, Blackwood’s Magazine (September 1855), 362–74, p. 365.
Margaret Oliphant, ‘New Books’, Blackwood’s Magazine 112 (August 1872), p. 208.
Margaret Oliphant, Kirsteen, ed. by Anne M. Scriven (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2010), p. 194.
Margaret Oliphant, ‘Scotland and Her Accusers’, Blackwood’s Magazine 90 (September 1861), p. 267.
Margaret Oliphant, ‘Scottish National Character, Blackwood’s Magazine 87 (June 1860), p. 717.
Margaret Oliphant, ‘Three Days in the Highlands’, Blackwood’s Magazine (August 1986): 256–66 (p. 257).
Elizabeth Grant, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, ed. by Andrew Tod (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1988), p. 3.
Peter Butter, ‘Elizabeth Grant’, in A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, pp. 208–15 (p. 209).
Aileen Christianson, ‘Private Writing’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Women’s Writing, pp. 75–83, (p. 80).
The Irish Journals of Elizabeth Smith 1840–1850, ed. by David Thomson and Moyra McGusty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 95.
Elizabeth Grant, ‘My Nephew the Laird’, Chambers Edinburgh Journal, 121 (25 April 1846): 261–4; see also Butter, ‘Elizabeth Grant’, p. 212.
See Anne Frater and Michel Byrne, ‘Gaelic Poetry and Song’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Women’s Writing, pp. 22–34.
T. M. Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 213.
Quoted in Ian Duncan and Sheila Kidd, ‘The Nineteenth Century’, in The International Companion to Scottish Poetry, ed. by Carla Sassi (Glasgow: Scottish Literature International, 2016), pp. 64–73, (p. 71).
Meg Bateman, ‘Women’s Writing in Scottish Gaelic Since 1750’, in A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, pp. 659–76, (p. 664).
Sorley MacLean (Somhairle Mac Gill-eain), ‘Màiri Mhór nan Oran’, in Ris a’ Bhruthaich: The Criticism and Prose Writings of Sorley MacLean, ed. by William Gillies (Stornoway: Acair Limited), p. 250.
Mary MacPherson, ‘Nuair bha mi òg’ (‘When I Was Young’), in Màiri Mhòr nan Òran: Taghadh de a h-Òrain, ed. by Domhnall E. Meek (Edinburgh: Scottish Gaelic Texts Society, 1977), pp. 119–21
trans. by William Neil, in The Poetry of Scotland, ed. by Roderick Watson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), pp. 494–7, (p. 496–7).
MacPherson, ‘Fàistneachd agus Beannachd do na Gàidheil’ (‘A Prophecy and Blessing for the Gaels’), in Meek, ed., Màiri Mhòr nan Òran, pp. 221–; quoted in MacLean, Ris a’ Bhruthaich, p. 256.
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Gilbert, S. (2018). Mapping the Nation: Scotland and Britain. In: Hartley, L. (eds) The History of British Women’s Writing, 1830–1880. History of British Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58465-6_5
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