skygiants

The thing I love about Miss Marjoribanks is that it's just basically social engineering competence porn. It's like watching someone swordfighting or dancing or breaking into a bank vault -- like, I am no good at this thing, but ye gods, Lucilla Marjoribanks is AMAZING at it.

Miss Marjoribanks is a Victorian novel by Margaret Oliphant about a serenely self-possessed young lady who, as she explains frequently to anyone who asks, has come home from school in order to pursue the great object of her life and live as a comfort to her dear papa. In fact Lucilla's dear papa is doing perfectly well and has absolutely no need of comfort of any kind. Fortunately he is nonetheless vastly entertained to sit back and watch his daughter pursue the real object of her life: RULING LOCAL SOCIETY WITH A BENEVOLENT IRON FIST.

Lucilla Marjoribanks, while generally well-intentioned overall, is not a particularly nice person, but the thing about Lucilla Marjoribanks that Margaret Oliphant would like us all to understand is that she is genuine political genius. It just so happens that the only sphere she has to express her genius is the Victorian drawing room, and she pursues it with a visionary passion.

Worth noting, to start, is the masterful way in which Lucilla gets rid of Love Interest #1, a very sweet but tragically unlucky cousin, during his first attempt at proposing:

UNLUCKY COUSIN TOM: Lucilla, how do you think I can bear it, to see you settling into your father's place as if you meant to stay all your life? It is very hard to see you care so little for me!
LUCILLA: My goodness, Tom, how can you say I do not care for you! We have always been the very best friends in the world, and I always said that I liked you best of all my cousins, and I am very fond of all my cousins.
UNLUCKY COUSIN TOM: Lucilla, you know I love you! How can you trifle with me so?
LUCILLA: Of course we love each other -- what is the good of being relations otherwise? I suppose it is because you are going away that you are so affectionate today, it is very nice of you, but I really have got to get upstairs to supervise the people who are moving furniture in the drawing room, and I'm sure you haven't packed yet.

Poor Tom! When up against Lucilla, he doesn't stand a chance. (He does eventually manage to get the proposal out. She tells him very kindly that if he was going to think about getting married just now at his age, he might as well jump into the sea.)

While I'm talking about romance, I feel it is also worth noting that Lucilla is explicitly described as a large young lady, but she is perfectly confident in herself and her attractiveness, and so is everyone around her. Unlucky Cousin Tom has plenty of competition. Lucilla has several potential suitors, and at various points throughout the book, various people attempt to make love triangles happen. However, love triangles pretty much fail to happen, because Lucilla Marjoribanks -- while occasionally somewhat regretful that any of the eligible gentlemen in town might evidence the poor judgment to prefer somebody else when she is clearly the best thing going -- prioritizes a really solid social event much more highly than a really solid marital prospect. Her friends may be scandalized that she's expressly sent one of her suitors off to have a flirt with a hypothetically rival love interest instead, but to Lucilla, it makes perfect sense! After all, if something had not been done, the other girl would probably have just gone on singing forever and completely bored everyone at the event; and really, you know, there is nothing so useful for social engineering as a man who can flirt.

There are also lots of other women in the book, and I'm very fond of all of them. My favorite is Mrs. Woodburn, who is a sort of antagonist; the book doesn't like her very much, but I LOVE HER. She is the local Mean Girl with a Dark Secret. Her favorite thing is doing impressions, and even when the Dark Secret is threatening to come out she just cannot stop herself from doing rude impressions of everyone around her, which is a level of chutzpah that I in turn cannot stop myself from respecting. I'm also very fond of both Rose and Barbara Lake, the lower-class daughters of the local drawing-master who are drawn into Lucilla's orbit, though I wish the book treated them better. (The standard warning notes for Victorian classism and occasional casual racism apply.)

But I will forgive Miss Marjoribanks a lot as a Victorian novel because -- unlike in many books about women who take on social engineering projects -- Lucilla Marjoribanks is never humbled, or forced to face the error of her ways, or acknowledge that it would have been better if she'd never meddled with anyone. Her meddling pretty much always ends up exactly as she planned it!

Lucilla does face some situational downturns, and in fact some of my favorite parts of the book are towards the end, when she's coping with situational downturns; for a Victorian novel Miss Marjoribanks actually takes several fascinating steps towards examining how frustrating it can be for a woman of exceptional talent to be so limited in the scopes where she can express it. Nonetheless, Lucilla exits the book as she entered it: a genius, triumphant. I am seriously considering asking for Yuletide fic in which Lucilla Marjoribanks becomes queen of a magical kingdom.