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Mrs. Halliburton's troubles, one of Mrs. Henry Wood's earliest novels, first appeared in 1862 as a serialisation in The Quiver, a weekly periodical. The same year saw the publication of The Channings and (in America) A Life's Secret.
Throughout the book, the hard-working and virtuous Halliburton family are contrasted with their relations, the snobbish, spoilt and amoral Dare family. Both families face troubles and disasters, but upbringing, character and trust in God enable the Halliburtons to overcome all that life can throw at them.
There is a second strand to the novel in the descriptions of the lives of the glove-makers and factory operatives. This sub-plot was not well received by some of Mrs. Henry Wood's critics, who complained that the domestic quarrels and drunkenness of Honey Fair were irrelevant to the plot.
A sample chapter of Mrs. Halliburton's troubles is available on this website.
The full text can also be read online or downloaded free of charge. It is in XHTML format, like this page. Please note the file size is 1281kb and it may take some time to open-up if you choose to read it online. Downloading for reading later may be the preferred option and this can be typically achieved by calling up an option box. If you have a mouse and it is configured for left click to select, right clicking the link may give you this option. Link to the full text of Mrs Halliburton's troubles.
Mrs. Halliburton's troubles has a relatively simple theme, of virtue rewarded and misdoings punished. Theft, murder, deception, coincidence and seduction also play their parts. Some characters--virtuous Quaker Patience, sharp-tongued Dobbs, whose bark is worse than her bite, and saintly Charlotte East--have a freshness and novelty in this early work which is not quite so evident in later novels, when the good tend to become more stereotyped and two-dimensional.
Although some contemporary critics cavilled at the inclusion of "social concern" in the depiction of the poor artisans of Honey Fair, at the implied criticism of the effects of industrial action, and at the detailed descriptions of glove-making (Ellen Wood's father had been a glove-manufacturer), they do add extra depth and interest to the novel. And Mrs. Henry Wood's social conscience does seem to have been genuinely aroused by the plight of the workers, even if her solutions (education, the gospel, temperance) might strike us as rather simplistic.
Dirty homes, scolding mothers, ragged and pining children, rough and swearing husbands! Waste, discomfort, evil. The women laid the blame on the men: they reproached them with wasting their evenings and their money at the public-house. The men retorted upon the women, and said they had not a home "fit for a pig to come into." Meanwhile the money, whether earned by husband or wife, went. It went somehow, bringing apparently nothing to show for it, and the least possible return of good. Thus they struggled and squabbled on, their lives little better than one continued scene of scramble, discomfort, and toil. At a year's end they were not in the least bettered, not in the least raised, socially, morally, or physically, from their condition at the year's commencement. Nothing had been achieved; except that they were one year nearer to the great barrier which separates time from eternity.
Ask them what they were toiling and struggling for. They did not know. What was their end, their aim? They had none. If they could only rub on, and keep body and soul together… it appeared to be all they cared for. They did not endeavour to lift up their hopes or their aspirations above that; they were willing so to go on until death should come. What a life! what an end!
Page created 21 November 2002 and last
updated 21 November 2002
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