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Emma Jane Worboise was a prolific author of novels with a strong evangelical message. If you read the last page of Chrystabel (published in 1873) with its exhortation to "Look ever for the silver lining!" and the final sentence "They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing", you might expect a typical didactic "Sunday book". The book opens with a familiar enough scenario--a young girl left orphaned and destitute by the death of her father, and adopted by a well-meaning elderly brother and sisters. But Chrystabel and those around her are so unusual and so appealing in their eccentricity, that the rather hackneyed and trite events of the story, including an unsuitable love affair, a jilting, a mercenary engagement, financial disaster and so on--take on a fresh appeal and Chrystabel's story is both gripping and entertaining.
A sample chapter of Chrystabel is available to view or download by following this link.
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 973kb 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 Chrystabel.
Chrystabel, the narrator of the novel (nine years old when the story begins), is no sweet and heart-broken child. When gently assured by the family lawyer that although the house and furniture are all to be sold, "I am sure you may keep any little thing you like", her immediate response is "There is a skull on the lower landing window-seat that I should like to have. I have always dusted it and taken care of it."
It's no wonder Chrystabel is unlike other literary heroines of her era: for "My solitary life and the injudicious course of reading which had been permitted had fostered in me a singular and unhealthy growth of character, as unpleasing as it was unusual in a girl not yet ten years old. And to crown all, I was allowed to live in a state which was as near as it could be in a Christian country to actual heathenism; and I had never, as far as I can recollect, exchanged ideas with another child."
Her adoptive family, the Perrens, are also slightly eccentric: when scolding Chrystabel for her reprehensible habit of biting when annoyed, Mona Louisa merely advises her: "Really, my sweet Chrystabel, you must not bite people! Indeed, young ladies never bite. But she is a nasty, tiresome thing; I could bite her myself sometimes, she is so utterly provoking."
Even the evangelical polemic, which can so often be crass and heavy-handed, is integrated into the very characters: we are not harangued by the authorial voice, but people whom we have learnt to view with affection speak authoritatively about their own sincere beliefs.
Indeed, sincerity of belief and independence of thought are invariably seen to be admirable qualities: Uncle Matthew could lose himself for five minutes in "the philosophy of comparative swearing", and James Lascelles, himself an evangelist working with the poor, still accepts "that God's cause is best served by the minister and the evangelist each doing his own work"
Chrystabel herself, with her dry humour and down-to-earth clarity of vision, is a far more appealing heroine than many of her contemporaries. She herself points out the difference: "Doubtless it would have sounded more sentimental had I half-starved myself, or had my appetite failed me, on such coarse, or rather on such very plain fare, or had I pined away, and had a hacking cough, and looked frailer, and of course lovelier day by day, till recovery seemed hopeless, and I resigned myself to an early grave" but that is what literary heroines do, and Chrystabel is an ordinary human being. And, realistically, we are not privy to the climactic moments of her romance: "Then we had a long quiet talk; those who have enjoyed similar "talks" will know all about it. Those who have not would perhaps think our conversation uninteresting, not to say foolish. At any rate, I am not going to repeat any part of it."
And, knowing Chrystabel as we now do, we wouldn't expect anything of the sort.
Page created 15 November 2002 and last
updated 15 November 2002
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