Mary Brunton: From the Soul of the Baroque to Tron Church

Abstract

Mary Brunton (1778–1818), author of Self-Control (1811), Discipline (1814) and the posthumously published Emmeline and Other Pieces (1819), is a writer whose fiction is dominated by a deep religiosity. This is self-evident from the titles of her first two novels which seem more appropriate for sermons than fiction. The unfinished Emmeline deals with the disastrous consequences of a second marriage; its interest for contemporary readers lies in whether Brunton is able to make the text coherent and relatively homogeneous, in other words whether the development of the tale follows or veers away from the censorious pen of its narrator. Brunton’s intensely moral world-view might make her fiction out of place in a more secular literary tradition where love-plots and bible-thumping are not bedfellows. That in itself is a phenomenon which merits attention, but I believe that her writing not only examines the role of the heroine in Scottish fiction, but also reaches the conclusion that certain fictional subjects are simply too awkward to handle. Why these questions have received scarce attention is greatly the result of the literary persona her husband designed.

‘It is virtue and goodness only, that make true beauty. Remember that, Pamela.’ (Richardson 1984: 52)