Margaret Oliphant

Lady Car: The Sequel of a Life - Nineteenth Century Scottish Women's Fiction Margaret Oliphant

Lady Car by Mrs Margaret Oliphant, first published in 1889, is the sequel to The Ladies Lindores published some years earlier. Having survived her traumatic marriage to her bullish first husband, we now find Lady Caroline happily married to her first and only real love, Edward Beaufort. All should therefore be well and we presume that 'the hero and heroine live happily ever after'. As the story unfolds though we realise that all is not perfection in Carrie's new world. As the spectre of her first husband continues to haunt her through her 'black browed children' and as her beloved Edward fails to meet her expectations, the old demons that dogged Lady Car begin to close in around her once again. Oliphant's Lady Car has attracted both positive and negative criticism - some critics reading it as an astute appraisal of the realities of the Victorian marriage where women live through their husband's achievements, others condemning it as a narrative of female passivity. Jo Haythornthwaite was Chief Librarian at Glasgow Caledonian University from 1989 - 1999, visiting professor at De Montfort University, Leicester, and a lecturer at the universities of Loughborough and Strathclyde. Her PhD thesis, awarded in 1983, was entitled "The Proceeds of Literature: A study of some aspects of the publication and reception of the writings of Mrs Margaret Oliphant'. Dr Haythornthwaite is also the author of numerous articles on the Victorian publishing world and Mrs Oliphant.