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Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago
Kirsteen is the tale of a young woman from an old but impoverished Argyllshire family who escapes her domineering father and seeks her independence. Kirsteen’s options appear to be unpaid drudgery at home, or a loveless marriage. Rejecting both, she escapes to London where she makes a living through her own innate craft and skill. Though scorned by her family for choosing to work as a mantua-maker, Kirsteen becomes highly successful in the life she carves out for herself. Kirsteen is a startlingly modern novel whose powerful voice, narrative drive and ironic exposure of injustice and hypocrisy give a fascinating perspective on women in Victorian society. First published in 1890, and written by Queen Victoria’s favourite novelist Margaret Oliphant, Kirsteen is a deep, rich novel by an author at the height of her powers.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1890
About the author
Mrs. Oliphant
1,109 books174 followersMargaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (née Margaret Oliphant Wilson) was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works encompass "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural".
Margaret Oliphant was born at Wallyford, near Musselburgh, East Lothian, and spent her childhood at Lasswade (near Dalkeith), Glasgow and Liverpool. As a girl, she constantly experimented with writing. In 1849 she had her first novel published: Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland which dealt with the Scottish Free Church movement. It was followed by Caleb Field in 1851, the year in which she met the publisher William Blackwood in Edinburgh and was invited to contribute to the famous Blackwood's Magazine. The connection was to last for her whole lifetime, during which she contributed well over 100 articles, including, a critique of the character of Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.
Margaret Oliphant was born at Wallyford, near Musselburgh, East Lothian, and spent her childhood at Lasswade (near Dalkeith), Glasgow and Liverpool. As a girl, she constantly experimented with writing. In 1849 she had her first novel published: Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland which dealt with the Scottish Free Church movement. It was followed by Caleb Field in 1851, the year in which she met the publisher William Blackwood in Edinburgh and was invited to contribute to the famous Blackwood's Magazine. The connection was to last for her whole lifetime, during which she contributed well over 100 articles, including, a critique of the character of Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 29, 2024
The first 100 or so pages of this were a bit of a struggle - it just failed to capture my interest - but after that it was excellent stuff. Kirsteen is (like Hester) a fascinatingly complex female character, unusual for the time. Well worth reading if you can find a copy.
February 22, 2024
Kirsteen is the second daughter in a very proud but poor Scottish family. Their domineering father values only sons, and their mother has had her spirit and health broken by bearing said husband fourteen children. An opportunity to leave the house comes in the form of a suitor - but Kirsteen, who has pledged her heart elsewhere, decides to run away to seek her fortune in London.
Published in the 1880s but set some 70 years prior, this is such an interesting, entertaining read. Kirsteen as a character is not going to fit perfectly neatly into contemporary ideas of feminism and at times I was impatient with her - but she does feel startlingly modern much of the time. In contrast to her sisters, who all choose variations of married life, Kirsteen walks her own singular unconventional path and never compromises her principles.
With this and 'Miss Marjoribanks', Mrs Oliphant is 2/2. At some point I will be brave enough to start Hester (the 3 volumes are intimidating me).
Published in the 1880s but set some 70 years prior, this is such an interesting, entertaining read. Kirsteen as a character is not going to fit perfectly neatly into contemporary ideas of feminism and at times I was impatient with her - but she does feel startlingly modern much of the time. In contrast to her sisters, who all choose variations of married life, Kirsteen walks her own singular unconventional path and never compromises her principles.
With this and 'Miss Marjoribanks', Mrs Oliphant is 2/2. At some point I will be brave enough to start Hester (the 3 volumes are intimidating me).
March 11, 2014
Wow! I loved this book. It has the reminders of a Jane Austen book with a strong female heroine, but also a Charles Dickens with its dark undertones. Kirsteen is such a well written character that I found I cared deeply for her and was a companion in all of her life's struggles.
June 13, 2019
I am a little drunk on Margaret Oliphant these days, having read so many of her books in such short order lately, but I think I would agree with many that Kirsteen is one of her best as well as best-known novels. It's one of her Scottish stories, which I have a soft spot for, as they invariably include charming dialect with words that are completely new and delicious, humorous scenes and character portraits, and, often, striking impressions of the Scottish landscape. Kirsteen, set in the early nineteenth century, centers around the development of the title character from youth to old age. In a rare foreword to another book (a pair of novellas called The Ways of Life) Oliphant comments on how boring it can be to write solely about young people as the public seems to demand. (She may not use precisely that word.) She thinks the challenges of maturity offer more and more interesting subject matter than the brief moment of romance that dominates the novel genre. Perhaps that is why so many of her older characters are finely and sympathetically drawn. At any rate Kirsteen is unusual among Oliphant's works in telling the heroine's whole life story.
In this case it is a much-tested, but ultimately well-rewarded life that in some ways will resonate with contemporary readers and in other respects will seem foreign. Avoiding spoilers, I'll just say that Kirsteen, a young woman from a proud but poor Scottish family--"Kirsteen" is an affectionate version of her given name Christina--is forced to abandon her native land and strike out on her own out of fidelity to a secret promise made to a young soldier. Her faithfulness to him sets her at deep odds with her family, but Kirsteen never wavers, in either her promise or her familial love and duty. Her story comprises several crises against a background of long difficult years, and includes subplots related to her three sisters, one comical, one rather bathetic and one that approaches tragedy. I think contemporary readers, especially women, will be most drawn to Kirsteen's strength and unconventional independence -- qualities that are both required and developed by the profound challenges of her life.
Oliphant is a formidable writer of great range who should be much better known. In a ferocious struggle to support herself and her family, she wrote 97 (!) novels, as well as vast numbers of stories, reviews, and works of nonfiction, starting before her marriage and quickening after she became a widowed mother of three at age 30 or 31. Not many of her books are in print today but perhaps that is starting to change. Her admirers consider her one of the greatest Victorian novelists. Free links to all her fiction, with helpful synopses, can be found at www.oliphantfiction.com, and they can also be found on Google Play books, where I read Kirsteen.
A couple of samples to whet your appetite:
" I could not bear it any longer," said Kirsteen, " the talking and all the faces and the smell of the toddy."
" Hoot," said Marg'ret, " what ails ye at the smell of the toddy ? In moderation it's no an ill thing — and as for the faces, you wouldna have folk without faces, you daft bairn ; that's just a silly speech from the like of you."
(Chapter 3)
Kirsteen stood and looked upon them all with a flash of scorn. Was this the effect of marrying and being happy, as people say ? The little plump mother, with her rosy face, no longer capable of responding to any call outside of her own little circle of existence ; the babies delving with their spoons into the porridge, covering their faces and pinafores, or holding up little gaping mouths to be fed. It had been a delightful picture which she had come in upon before at an earlier stage, when Anne had wept at her mother's name, and cried wistfully for a message from home, and longed to show her children. That had all been sweet — but now it was sweet no longer. The prosaic interior, the bondage of all these little necessities, the loosening of all other bonds of older date or wider reach, was this what happiness meant ? Sometimes a sudden aperçu of this kind will flash through the mind of one for whom those ties are forbidden, and give a consolation, a compensation, to the fancy ; but the thought only passed as swiftly as a breath through the mind of Kirsteen.
(Chapter 35)
In this case it is a much-tested, but ultimately well-rewarded life that in some ways will resonate with contemporary readers and in other respects will seem foreign. Avoiding spoilers, I'll just say that Kirsteen, a young woman from a proud but poor Scottish family--"Kirsteen" is an affectionate version of her given name Christina--is forced to abandon her native land and strike out on her own out of fidelity to a secret promise made to a young soldier. Her faithfulness to him sets her at deep odds with her family, but Kirsteen never wavers, in either her promise or her familial love and duty. Her story comprises several crises against a background of long difficult years, and includes subplots related to her three sisters, one comical, one rather bathetic and one that approaches tragedy. I think contemporary readers, especially women, will be most drawn to Kirsteen's strength and unconventional independence -- qualities that are both required and developed by the profound challenges of her life.
Oliphant is a formidable writer of great range who should be much better known. In a ferocious struggle to support herself and her family, she wrote 97 (!) novels, as well as vast numbers of stories, reviews, and works of nonfiction, starting before her marriage and quickening after she became a widowed mother of three at age 30 or 31. Not many of her books are in print today but perhaps that is starting to change. Her admirers consider her one of the greatest Victorian novelists. Free links to all her fiction, with helpful synopses, can be found at www.oliphantfiction.com, and they can also be found on Google Play books, where I read Kirsteen.
A couple of samples to whet your appetite:
" I could not bear it any longer," said Kirsteen, " the talking and all the faces and the smell of the toddy."
" Hoot," said Marg'ret, " what ails ye at the smell of the toddy ? In moderation it's no an ill thing — and as for the faces, you wouldna have folk without faces, you daft bairn ; that's just a silly speech from the like of you."
(Chapter 3)
Kirsteen stood and looked upon them all with a flash of scorn. Was this the effect of marrying and being happy, as people say ? The little plump mother, with her rosy face, no longer capable of responding to any call outside of her own little circle of existence ; the babies delving with their spoons into the porridge, covering their faces and pinafores, or holding up little gaping mouths to be fed. It had been a delightful picture which she had come in upon before at an earlier stage, when Anne had wept at her mother's name, and cried wistfully for a message from home, and longed to show her children. That had all been sweet — but now it was sweet no longer. The prosaic interior, the bondage of all these little necessities, the loosening of all other bonds of older date or wider reach, was this what happiness meant ? Sometimes a sudden aperçu of this kind will flash through the mind of one for whom those ties are forbidden, and give a consolation, a compensation, to the fancy ; but the thought only passed as swiftly as a breath through the mind of Kirsteen.
(Chapter 35)
August 24, 2022
I always enjoy Oliphaunt's stories. This begins a bit slow, with some over-sentimental young love, but then as the tale progresses we have a really deep, chewy discussion about the compromises one must make for family honour, the conflict between Scottish family honour, which is clan-based, and English family honour, which is rank-based; the nature of one's responsibility to one's family; and even some discussion of the slave-holding activities of upper class British men. Oliphaunt plays her cards close to her chest: she doesn't ever explicitly say, 'look, sometimes the benefits to one's family of marrying this perfectly kind man are so beneficial that your own disinclination is irrelevant--you claim to be willing to die rescuing them in a fire or flood, and yet you won't do this thing?' or 'look, I don't care what the benefits to my family are; I will never marry someone I don't love'. She simply shows the consequences of making one decision or the other. She doesn't ever explicitly say, 'look how noble and powerful Scottish clan pride is' or 'look what utterly ridiculous lengths people will go to maintain their views of what is due to them by virtue of their family name.' She simply shows people going to these absurd lengths, and the consequences of those actions. I have my own opinions about what Oliphaunt might actually think (and I'll discuss them at length on my blog when I get around to writing up my thoughts), but the book itself is sufficiently neutral in presenting its views that it's not only unpreachy, but downright ambiguous.
And, because this is set up as a romance story but is most definitely not a romance, there are some unexpected developments that genuinely surprised me. Meetings of long-estranged family members bring their own tensions and discomforts--often because the reason for estrangement ties back into notions of family pride that persist even though a bridge past the estrangement can be found---and characters' inner lives and opinions and struggles are rich and varied in a way that you don't often see in contemporarneous books about young women making their way in the world (*coughcough*Trollop*coughcough*).
And, because this is set up as a romance story but is most definitely not a romance, there are some unexpected developments that genuinely surprised me. Meetings of long-estranged family members bring their own tensions and discomforts--often because the reason for estrangement ties back into notions of family pride that persist even though a bridge past the estrangement can be found---and characters' inner lives and opinions and struggles are rich and varied in a way that you don't often see in contemporarneous books about young women making their way in the world (*coughcough*Trollop*coughcough*).
May 30, 2021
"Kirsteen Douglas is no ordinary Victorian heroine. She runs away from her native Scotland to avoid marrying a man she does not love and by her own endeavours, and in the face of her family's disapproval, finds wealth and success in London. Most unusual of all, she remains unmarried, and yet -- Mrs Oliphant seems to suggest -- her is not a fate to be pitied. She knows the intensity of love and sorrow, and her courage, loyalty and determination give her life immense dignity and a sense of worth and real achievement.
"Mrs Oliphant was herself an unusual and a remarkable woman, whose life has an obvious affinity with that of her heroine. She earned her own living from an early age, travelled widely, and managed to combine serious writing with the demands of motherhood and marriage. In some respects she may have been very much a woman of her time, but in her attitude to women and her power to show complex emotions and subtle shades of meaning she is strikingly modern. Her work takes the reader by surprise. It jolts cherishes assumptions, and it is almost totally unsentimental. Kirsteen is an impressive, indeed a magnificent novel, and it is now made accessible to a new generation of readers after almost a century of neglect."
Although a bit too "preachy" and "pedantic" for modern tastes, this was a fascinating story, one that tugged on the heartstrings because it was all too real. Excellent characterization: the bullying intemperate father, the beaten down weepy mother, the various siblings, the staunch mediating housekeeper ... we know that they are drawn from life. So interesting to follow Kirsteen's life, and marvel at her loyalty, and her continuing loyalty when it was no longer required.
"Mrs Oliphant was herself an unusual and a remarkable woman, whose life has an obvious affinity with that of her heroine. She earned her own living from an early age, travelled widely, and managed to combine serious writing with the demands of motherhood and marriage. In some respects she may have been very much a woman of her time, but in her attitude to women and her power to show complex emotions and subtle shades of meaning she is strikingly modern. Her work takes the reader by surprise. It jolts cherishes assumptions, and it is almost totally unsentimental. Kirsteen is an impressive, indeed a magnificent novel, and it is now made accessible to a new generation of readers after almost a century of neglect."
Although a bit too "preachy" and "pedantic" for modern tastes, this was a fascinating story, one that tugged on the heartstrings because it was all too real. Excellent characterization: the bullying intemperate father, the beaten down weepy mother, the various siblings, the staunch mediating housekeeper ... we know that they are drawn from life. So interesting to follow Kirsteen's life, and marvel at her loyalty, and her continuing loyalty when it was no longer required.
October 5, 2022
Of-its-time pre-feminist story, well -written and compelling. Love the written Scots dialect.
October 29, 2022
Oliphant at her best.
Strong female character.
Strong female character.
December 29, 2022
An interesting and unusual Victorian novel set in Regency Scotland and London. A real rollercoaster with a lot happening over quite a span of years. Complex and varied characters, especially the women. The emphasis on class and breeding makes it harder to understand at times as someone reading it over a hundred years later (and two hundred years after it was set!). The swapping between different protagonists for short stretches broke the flow too, although I was glad to have different stories/characters fleshed out.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews