Marriage by Susan Ferrier

Marriage (1818) is Edinburgh-born Susan Edmonstone Ferrier’s (1782–1854) first and best-known novel. Focusing almost exclusively on female characters and set in Regency-era Britain, across Scotland and England, it offers a woman’s perspective on marriage as a legal/moral institution, on marriage and family as at the core of every community, local or national, on motherhood and surrogate motherhood and the relations between mothers and daughters, as well as on issues of national identity in post-Union Britain and Scotland, and on the relation between nationhood and gender. After Susan Ferrier’s mother’s death, in 1797, her father, James Ferrier, often took her with him to Inverary, at the residence of the 5th Duke of Argyll, Alexander Campbell, his employer and friend. Here, she was admitted into a stimulating and intellectually lively environment that would complement her Edinburgh middle-class education and would inspire Marriage and shape many of its memorable characters. In Inverary, she also met and formed a fond and significant friendship with Charlotte Clavering (1790–1869), the Duke’s granddaughter. The many letters they exchanged in what turned out to be a lifelong friendship reveal a shared delight in literary topics, that eventually developed into an actual collaboration over a shared project – the writing of Marriage. Even though the novel was essentially written by Ferrier, with Clavering contributing only the single episode “The History of Mrs Douglas”, Ferrier relied widely on her friend’s advice and comments, and on her greater familiarity with the life and mores of the upper classes (McMillan 2008).