I chose Waverley after rolling an eighteen – ‘a book I never
finished’ – in my D20 reading challenge, and it is perhaps telling that there
has been such a significant gap between this post and my last.
I first attempted Waverley
during my second year at university, as part of a module on the Romantics, and it
was this novel which caused me to break my vow to finish reading all of the
required course material. This book begins a generation before the protagonist
has even been born, then proceeds to explain his childhood and education in
great depth, and in a style which even Scott himself admits is ‘what scholars
call the periphrastic and ambagitory, and the vulgar the circumbendibus’. This
sustained barrage of exposition was too much for me; I surrendered, and opted
to simply write my assignments about a different text.
Returning to it six years later, the long trudge through the
first volume still failed to enthral me, and it is not until the twenty-fourth
chapter that the main thrust of the narrative begins. After this point, I quite
enjoyed the novel, but there was part of me which begrudged the amount of time
it took to get to there. Part of my
impatience with the earlier half of the novel stems from a sort of
conscientious discomfort around the way that the aristocratic protagonist seems
to see no problem with taking off on a months-long jolly around Scotland within
weeks of beginning his military career.
Sense of entitlement aside, Edward Waverley makes a fairly
likeable hero, in the Romantic bildungsroman tradition. He has a strong sense
of honour, but is naïve, and has allowed Romantic novels and tales of
chivalrous derring-do to shape his understanding of how the world works. Despite
this, the character sometimes seems a little flat – particularly in comparison
to others in the novel who are much more memorable. In particular, Scott draws
warm, believable comic characters in much the same way that Dickens would a few
decades later.
One useful aspect of Waverley’s ‘flatness’ is that he
becomes a sort of blank space for the reader to project themselves upon, and it
is through his English eyes that we are first introduced to exotic world of
Jacobite-era Scotland. This journey takes place in stages, from the
comfortable, pastoral England of his uncle’s estate, to the military encampment
in Edinburgh, then on to the almost feudal Barony of Bradwardine, and
ultimately into a highlands inhabited by outlaws and by tribal chiefs. This
gradual march into the unknown has some sense of thematic importance, but
unfortunately lacks a real sense of purpose until its final stage.
As a modern reader, it is tempting to see Waverley as a story of radicalisation,
and the charismatic Fergus Mac-Ivor could be interpreted as a manipulator,
guiding the inexperienced Edward Waverley into rebellion. However, we should be
careful in drawing parallels with the radicalisation of young men into
extremist causes in today’s society. Scott is ambiguous in his portrayal of the
Jacobite rebellions, and while he is sure to show that his protagonist is, to
some extent, tricked into pledging himself to the highlanders’ cause, he is
also careful to include honourable and dishonourable characters on both sides.
Although some of Scott’s best writing comes in his
description of the Battle of Prestonpans, his depiction of Waverley’s rebellion
is strangely toothless. Despite volunteering with the Jacobites, Waverley seems
to spend the majority of his time on the battlefield trying to prevent
government soldiers from being killed. This is understandable, as contemporary
readers may have found it difficult to sympathise with a hero who commits fully
fledged acts of treachery, but it does soften the impact of the protagonist’s
eventual disavowal of the Jacobite cause. Similarly, while Scott does offer
some brief comments on the effects of war on the landscape, his most
emotionally charged description is saved for Tully-Veolan, the great house of
the Baron of Bradwardine. Scott is pre-occupied with ideas about inheritance
and property, and on some level the novel can be seen as tracing Waverley’s
growth into a suitable lord, complete with a suitable wife.
It is not just the rebellion which is toothless: the
government’s response seems unbelievably lenient. While Mac-Ivor and his foster
brother are put on trial and executed for their crimes (another of Scott’s
finest scenes), Waverley and the Baron of Bradwardine receive convenient
pardons with very little trouble, and the last chapter seems particularly contrived.
Despite its flaws though, I found Waverley to be an interesting read. While the first-volume is dry
and overly-long, Scott does make good use of seemingly incidental details later
in the novel. Scott’s self-aware authorial interjections seem to pre-empt
Forster’s ‘One may as well start with the letters’ – one of my all-time
favourite opening sentences – and serve as a reminder that novels have been
experimenting with narrative voice since the very beginning. There are things
about the novel’s structure which work very well, and it can be enjoyed as an
early example of a historical novel, or as a straightforward adventure story,
even if it fails to fully address the moral complexities of civil war.
