Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter

Like Jane Porter’s earlier novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw, The Scottish Chiefs, a Romance (1810) is a historical novel that is attentive to the liberty of a small nation. Set during the late thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century Wars of Scottish Independence, the novel is also a national romance in which domestic ties are put aside in favor of patriotic endeavor until national liberty is assured. However, the novel is distinct from the national tale. Whereas writers like Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson interrogate differences in national character and circumstances, The Scottish Chiefs is concerned with distinguishing vice and virtue. While national tales, like Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl (1806), gesture toward union between countries by opening the possibility of marriage between different nationalities, The Scottish Chiefs ends equivocally. The two central characters who have led Scotland through this struggle for independence die, but Robert the Bruce marries. Porter has Bruce emphasize that, in the future, a happy union between Scotland and England will occur. Thus, this novel does not espouse Scottish independence. Instead, the work’s depiction of the small nation’s struggle reflects Britain’s struggle during the Napoleonic Wars.