Page:The Semi-attached Couple.djvu/13

Rh In plot and characterization The Semi-attached Couple is a curious parallel to Pride and Prejudice and there can be no doubt that Miss Austen's masterpiece—which had appeared in 1813 and was at length beginning, like its lamented author, to secure the highest recognition—was not absent from Miss Eden's consciousness when she wrote, and that the Douglas family had their origin in the Bennets. This view is supported by the text, where reference is made to the current novels of the day, and Pride and Prejudice is singled out for special mention. If it be argued that Miss Austen depicted the social life of a generation preceding Miss Eden's, it must be remembered that Miss Eden's novel was actually written only twenty years after the publication of Pride and Prejudice, and that however violent the changes during that period in the social life and thought of London Society, these convulsions reacted very little on the dull and ordered existence of the lesser country house. The movements to break down social barriers and conventions, to secure freedom for thought and action, and emancipation for women, progressed very much more slowly than is commonly believed. It was in the interval between the writing and the publication of The Semi-attached Couple that the revolution in social life began universally to be seen and its direct expression to be observable in literature, and in her preface Miss Eden admits that she is aware of the change.

The story deals with the family life of the proud and aristocratic Eskdale family, and of their humbler neighbours, the Douglas family. The plot, which is admirably simple, turns on the marital misunderstandings that arise in the first few months of the married life of Helen Beaufort, the youngest of the three lovely daughters of Lord and Lady Eskdale. Helen, the most adored of an adoring and self-sufficient family, marries "out of the schoolroom," and entirely as a matter of pre-ordained destiny, "Lord