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The Legacy of Cain, 1888
This is one of Collins' slightly less atrocious potboilers (compared to, say, Jezebel's Daughter, Heart and Science, or The New Magdalen). Fans of the Victorian sensation-novel with a sampling of Collins' late work already tucked under their belts will know what to expect and can dig in without flinching, but general readers will feel better rewarded by the fine novels Collins published before 1872. His last book but one, The Legacy of Cain is readable today only because written by a competent professional and correctly paced, enough so at least to sustain interest in what-happens-next. The text is studded with unsuccessful attempts at pithy irony which are usually out of character (since various narrators are fronting for the hovering author), but the lapses in tone can be ignored. The plot is erected on a shaky scaffolding of incredible coincidences and a hodge-podge of memoirs, journals, and extremely private letters which people keep showing one another beyond all bounds of plausibility and common sense; the characters are cardboard prop-ups prone to gratuitous malice, meddling, or maudlin muddling; and the whole is artificially contrived to explore the question of whether criminal tendencies are transmitted by heredity and are susceptible to the counter-influence of sound moral upbringing. Don't wait breathlessly for a convincing analysis of the problem.
A Congregational minister, the Rev. Gracedieu, performs an impulsive act of charity, adopting the soon-to-be-orphaned infant daughter of a condemned murderess on the eve of execution, although warned that the mother's taint might manifest someday in the child. Shortly afterwards, his previously childless wife gives birth to a daughter of their own and, without his knowledge, conceives the cold-hearted plan of ousting the cuckoo from her nest. Only the Governor of the prison is aware of the lady's perfidy, but when she dies before gaining her ends he holds his peace and allows her doting husband to continue idolizing the wife's sainted memory. Gracedieu retires to a town where his circumstances are unknown and even-handedly brings up both girls, Eunice and Helena, as his own. Both are imbued with the highest principles and a strict education eschewing such corrupting influences as French novels, newspapers, and the theater. To ensure that the adopted child's dubious history is never disclosed, the minister refuses to reveal even to his daughters who is the eldest and where they were born. Through this stratagem, Collins introduces the grown-up young women to the reader without letting on which is which. Although he could easily keep up the mystification until almost the end of the novel, with a decided gain in the suspense factor, the author discards that opportunity less than halfway through when he decides to drag the Governor back on stage to take another turn as narrator.
Eunice, sweet and ingenuous, has fallen in love with a young man she met on a visit to London, the rich and handsome Philip Dunboyne, but when Philip visits the provincial town where she lives to ask Gracedieu for her hand in marriage he is ensnared by the physical charms of the other sister, Helena, who proceeds to rob Eunice of her fiancé. Gracedieu refuses to countenance a marriage with Eunice, while Philip's father threatens to disinherit him if he marries Helena. Philip dithers between the two until Helena has seduced him and Eunice has rejected him, upon which his wandering eye returns to his first choice. Gracedieu's clumsy, but well-meaning cousin Selina, her mysterious friend Mrs Tenbruggen, and the nameless Governor interfere in the interests of one party or the other. Meanwhile, since no Collins novel can do without a crime, one of the rival sisters attempts to poison Philip, but is foiled by the vigilance of the Doctor called in to treat Gracedieu's typical Victorian complaint (a "nervous disorder" requiring rest and foreign travel, followed by "brain disease" because he wouldn't go). Collins recklessly tosses in a supernatural visitation to muddy the waters still more: the dead murderess' spirit seems to haunt her daughter in a dream, tempting her to commit murder herself, and in another scene briefly "possesses" her. Nothing approaching a rational (or even an irrational) explanation is offered.
The Legacy of Cain finally shakes the dirt off its skirts and metes out joy to nearly all concerned. Even the wicked sister eventually lands on her feet. In the merry mood of the last chapter, it's a pity that Collins sees fit to jerk some tears by consigning poor Rev. Gracedieu to senile dementia and the elder Dunboyne to the grave just to spare them the shock of revelations everyone else takes in stride and squelch all possible objections to the happy-end wedding.
© Wordreign, April 2001
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