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By 1869, when Overdale was published, the uneasiness raised in the Church of England by the Oxford Movement was some 25 years old. Questions of ritualism, dogma, and the status of the Roman Catholic church were to remain burning issues, however. In an attempt to stem the growing tide of ritualism, Parliament would pass the Public Worship Regulation Act in 1875, but it was to prove ineffective. The tone of some of the anti-Roman Catholic polemic in the novel may come as a shock to the modern reader, though the author is at pains to use such words as "misguided" or "deceived" when lambasting those who are drawn towards ritualism and Rome.
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Mrs. Horace Galbraith, who was supposed to be chiefly Agatha's guardian, was a very wise woman. She had drunk largely in her youth from the fountain of worldly wisdom, and the result in mature age was a profound and never-failing sagacity.
With her customary wit and lightness of touch, Emma Jane Worboise begins the story of Agatha Bevan, who is to make her own way in the world as a governess. It seems at first that this is to be a love story: will she or won't she win the heart of Eustace Aylmer? By the half-way point of the book they are married, and now the real story of Overdale begins: Eustace Aylmer's ritualistic predilections and the Jesuitical machinations of Mr. Vallance are discussed endlessly, and theological debates spring up everywhere in the village. It's startling to realise how seriously such matters were obviously taken by Emma Jane Worboise and her readers, and the strength of anti-Roman Catholic feelings at the time.
Page created 5 December 2002 and last
updated 5 December 2002
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