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Book Review: Capitola’s Peril
May. 16th, 2023 12:25 pmI’ve finished E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Capitola’s Peril, the second half of the story begun in Hidden Hand! (I mean this in the most literal possible sense: Southworth doesn’t even pretend to tie a bow on the end of Hidden Hand. The book just flat-out stops at the halfway point of the story.)
My God, this book is a wild ride! Sensation novels were the thrillers of their time, and this book is chock full of excitement, and most of all chock full of Capitola, our thrilling heroine. When we first meet her, she’s dressed as a newsboy, eking out a living on the streets of New York. In short order she’s adopted by a crusty old guardian (nicknamed Old Hurricane), who tries to stop her from running wild in the hills of Virginia, but Cap informs him firmly that “liberty is too precious a thing to be exchanged for food and clothing.”
Cap is, as her guardian insists, as innocent as any sheltered maid (that is, still a virgin), but she knows the score. When a minister tries to reform her, she puckishly teases him into thinking that she’s snuck a man into her room. Late in the book, Old Hurricane forgives his long-rejected wife, explaining to Cap that “A diabolical villain made me believe that my poor little wife wasn't good!” - to which Capitola thinks, “There! I knew you'd lay it on somebody else. Men always do that.”
(Capitola’s internal comment does not in any way hamper the happy (??) ending in which Old Hurricane is reunited with his poor wife who worked her fingers to the bone for twenty years looking after herself and their son after Old Hurricane kicked them out. Southworth - an abandoned wife herself - is happy to point out the hypocrisies of the patriarchy, but she is not going to imperil her income stream by bucking reader expectations too radically!)
Moreover, Capitola challenges a man to a duel after he insults her, and with her quick cleverness foils multiple attempts to rape/assault/kidnap her, including that of the charming burglar Black Donald.
Southworth evidently fell in love with Black Donald as she wrote him, and ends up retconning his earlier murderous reputation: never murdered anyone in his life! Indeed, never intended to assassinate Capitola! He only agreed so Capitola’s evil uncle wouldn’t hire someone else to do the job.
(Capitola’s evil uncle dies in the Mexican-American War, meaning that Capitola does not get to foil him single-handedly, but I think we can all agree that she has enough on her plate!)
Now Black Donald did mean to kidnap Capitola and force her to be his wife, but Capitola takes an “all’s well that ends well” attitude to the event: she defeated him, so why hold it against him! The victor can afford to be magnanimous! So she helps him escape from prison and he leaves forever, to live a reformed life hereafter.
Now often in books with a heroine who seems so strikingly “modern” (although what a silly way this is to describe a character! As if we somehow had a better claim on her than the time that produced her!), I wonder how readers reacted to her at the time. Helpfully, Southworth gives us a hint: after Cap has been absent for a few chapters, she tells us, “How glad I am to get back to my little Cap, for I know very well, reader, just as well as if you had told me, that you have been grumbling for some time for the want of Cap.”
As the book was originally published serially, I bet readers were in fact sending in grumbling letters! Like the reader of today, they clearly felt that Cap was the best thing in the book, livelier even than the bandit Black Donald.
My God, this book is a wild ride! Sensation novels were the thrillers of their time, and this book is chock full of excitement, and most of all chock full of Capitola, our thrilling heroine. When we first meet her, she’s dressed as a newsboy, eking out a living on the streets of New York. In short order she’s adopted by a crusty old guardian (nicknamed Old Hurricane), who tries to stop her from running wild in the hills of Virginia, but Cap informs him firmly that “liberty is too precious a thing to be exchanged for food and clothing.”
Cap is, as her guardian insists, as innocent as any sheltered maid (that is, still a virgin), but she knows the score. When a minister tries to reform her, she puckishly teases him into thinking that she’s snuck a man into her room. Late in the book, Old Hurricane forgives his long-rejected wife, explaining to Cap that “A diabolical villain made me believe that my poor little wife wasn't good!” - to which Capitola thinks, “There! I knew you'd lay it on somebody else. Men always do that.”
(Capitola’s internal comment does not in any way hamper the happy (??) ending in which Old Hurricane is reunited with his poor wife who worked her fingers to the bone for twenty years looking after herself and their son after Old Hurricane kicked them out. Southworth - an abandoned wife herself - is happy to point out the hypocrisies of the patriarchy, but she is not going to imperil her income stream by bucking reader expectations too radically!)
Moreover, Capitola challenges a man to a duel after he insults her, and with her quick cleverness foils multiple attempts to rape/assault/kidnap her, including that of the charming burglar Black Donald.
Southworth evidently fell in love with Black Donald as she wrote him, and ends up retconning his earlier murderous reputation: never murdered anyone in his life! Indeed, never intended to assassinate Capitola! He only agreed so Capitola’s evil uncle wouldn’t hire someone else to do the job.
(Capitola’s evil uncle dies in the Mexican-American War, meaning that Capitola does not get to foil him single-handedly, but I think we can all agree that she has enough on her plate!)
Now Black Donald did mean to kidnap Capitola and force her to be his wife, but Capitola takes an “all’s well that ends well” attitude to the event: she defeated him, so why hold it against him! The victor can afford to be magnanimous! So she helps him escape from prison and he leaves forever, to live a reformed life hereafter.
Now often in books with a heroine who seems so strikingly “modern” (although what a silly way this is to describe a character! As if we somehow had a better claim on her than the time that produced her!), I wonder how readers reacted to her at the time. Helpfully, Southworth gives us a hint: after Cap has been absent for a few chapters, she tells us, “How glad I am to get back to my little Cap, for I know very well, reader, just as well as if you had told me, that you have been grumbling for some time for the want of Cap.”
As the book was originally published serially, I bet readers were in fact sending in grumbling letters! Like the reader of today, they clearly felt that Cap was the best thing in the book, livelier even than the bandit Black Donald.
