58 pages • 1 hour read
Henry WoodEast Lynne
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1861A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Lady Isabel”
Content Warning: The novel and the guide reference the death of a child and the contemplation of suicide.
William Vane, the Earl of Mount Severn, meets with a young lawyer named Archibald Carlyle. The earl is ill and suffering from financial troubles; he has put his home, East Lynne (the name of the house and estate) up for sale because he is desperate. Archibald offers to purchase the estate and agrees to keep the sale secret: The earl will continue to live there, and it will not be publicized that the property has changed hands. Archibald also meets the earl’s beautiful young daughter, Lady Isabel Vane.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Broken Cross”
Isabel goes to have tea with Mrs. Levinson and Mrs. Vane. Mrs. Vane is married to Isabel’s relative (who is also her father’s heir since women could not inherit at this time), and Mrs. Levinson is Mrs. Vane’s grandmother. During the visit, Isabel briefly meets a handsome young man named Captain Francis Levinson; he is Mrs. Vane’s cousin and Mrs. Levinson’s grandson. Isabel is wearing a cross that her late mother gave her, and Francis accidentally breaks it.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Barbara Hare”
The Hare family lives close to both the East Lynne estate and the nearby town of West Lynne. Justice Hare is a wealthy and influential man; his wife, Mrs. Hare, is sickly and anxious. Their daughter, Barbara, lives with them. The Hares also have a son named Richard, who is estranged from the family. Archibald stops to visit the Hare family, with whom he is close. Barbara is in love with Archibald and increasingly hopes that he will return her feelings. As she prepares to go to bed, Barbara catches sight of someone lurking near the house and slips out to investigate.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “The Moonlight Interview”
Barbara realizes that the man lurking near the house is her brother, Richard. Richard has been accused of murdering a local man named Hallijohn and has fled to avoid prosecution; he explains to Barbara that he has been working in London but needs money, which he hopes Mrs. Hare will give him. While Justice Hare has disowned his son, Mrs. Hare thinks Richard is innocent, and he insists the same. Richard explains to Barbara, however, that Mrs. Hare is incorrect in believing a man named Bethel to be guilty; he says that the crime was committed by a man named Thorn. Barbara wonders if Richard’s innocence can still be proven, even though everyone believes him to be guilty; she agrees to meet him the following night.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Mr. Carlyle’s Offer”
Archibald lives with his older half-sister, Miss Cornelia Carlyle; she is very stern and rigid, but she loves Archibald very much. Archibald and Cornelia are fairly wealthy due to family inheritances, and Archibald is also a successful lawyer. The day after meeting with Richard, Barbara goes to see Archibald at his office; she explains that Richard has come back and claims to be innocent of Hallijohn’s murder. Archibald helps Barbara, getting her the money she needs to give Richard and arranging for Justice Hare to be out of the house so that Barbara and Richard can meet safely.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Richard Hare, the Younger”
After night has fallen, Richard approaches the Hare house. Archibald comes to meet him and gives him the money. Archibald also asks Richard to tell him in detail about the events surrounding Hallijohn’s murder. Richard explains: He was in love with Afy Hallijohn (the daughter of the murdered man) and often went to the cottage where she lived. Richard was unhappy because he knew that another man, named Captain Thorn, also regularly came to woo Afy. One evening, Richard went to lend a gun to Hallijohn and also to visit Afy. When he arrived, Afy refused to let him enter the cottage; Richard surmised that Thorn was visiting and gave her the gun to give to her father. While Richard was speaking with Afy, a passerby saw him standing outside the cottage with his gun (this would become part of eyewitness testimony against him).
After Afy went inside with his gun, Richard lurked nearby hoping to confront Thorn when the other man left the cottage. He heard a shot from inside the cottage and moments later saw Thorn come running past him, looking terrified. Concerned, Richard entered the cottage and found the body of Hallijohn, who had been shot with Richard’s gun. Panicked, Richard picked up the gun and was leaving the cottage when another man, Otway Bethel, saw him with the gun in his hand. Richard became even more terrified of being implicated in the crime and ran off. All of these events became very damning evidence against him; later, he learned that Afy believed he killed her father. Afy’s version of events was that she had been alone all evening (she never mentioned Thorn), stepped out of the cottage, heard a shot, and came back to find her father dead.
Archibald is intrigued by this account of events but is surprised that he never heard of a man named Thorn wooing Afy. Richard explains that Thorn lived in the town of Swainson, a few miles away, and would ride over in secret to see Afy; he also notes that Thorn “was a totally different man, with his perfumed hands, and his rings, and his dainty gloves” (97). Archibald explains that Afy disappeared right after her father’s murder and that most people assumed she went to be with Richard, wherever he was hiding. Richard clarifies that he hasn’t seen her since the murder and that he suspects that she is with Thorn somewhere.
After his conversation with Richard, Archibald decides to quietly investigate and see if he can track down Thorn. He also questions Joyce, a woman who works as a servant in the household he shares with Cornelia. Joyce is Afy’s half-sister, and she confirms that in the period before the murder, Afy was having a secret relationship with a man named Thorn, who seemed to be wealthy and from a higher social class. Joyce only met Thorn once, very briefly, and she often tried to warn Afy that the man likely did not have good intentions toward her. Meanwhile, Richard briefly visits his mother and sister and then returns to hiding in London.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “Miss Carlyle at Home”
Archibald now owns the estate of East Lynne, but no one knows this. The Earl of Mount Severn and Lady Isabel come to stay there, which attracts a lot of attention in the local community (the earl owns several properties and does not spend much time at East Lynne). When the earl and his daughter first go to the local church at West Lynne, both Barbara and Cornelia are surprised that Isabel dresses very simply and does not show off her wealth.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “Mr. Kane’s Concert”
The Earl of Mount Severn falls ill and extends his stay at East Lynne longer than anticipated. During this time, he becomes good friends with Archibald, who visits him regularly. An impoverished musician named Mr. Kane asks Isabel to attend a concert he is presenting to earn money to support himself and his family; both know that if Isabel goes, many other people from the local community will attend as well. Meanwhile, Archibald encounters a man named Bethel who was nearby on the night that Hallijohn was murdered, and he questions Bethel to see if he saw Thorn leaving the cottage. Bethel says he didn’t see anyone else and can’t corroborate Richard’s claims.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary: “The Bats at the Window”
Isabel and the earl are planning to depart from East Lynne right after the concert; however, the earl ends up being too sick to accompany Isabel to the event. During the concert, messengers come to tell Archibald that the earl has gotten much worse and may be dying. Archibald helps Isabel to hurry home. By the next morning, the Earl of Mount Severn is dead.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary: “The Keepers of the Dead”
News of the earl’s death spreads quickly, and people to whom he owed money begin to converge at East Lynne; they threaten to confiscate furniture and other household goods and even to seize the earl’s corpse. Isabel is shocked and horrified, especially because she had no idea of her father’s financial problems. Archibald arrives and defuses the situation, explaining that he is the legal owner of East Lynne. Mr. Vane (a distant relative) has now inherited the title of Earl of Mount Severn, along with the Mount Severn estate (where Isabel has spent most of her time) and the London townhouse; as Isabel laments, she has “no home; no home, and no money” (143).
Part 1, Chapters 1-10 Analysis
Economics set the stage for Isabel’s tragedy. Her father spends recklessly and makes no provisions for his daughter’s financial future. Isabel is vulnerable because she is raised as a member of the aristocracy with no expectation that she would ever need to earn a living, but the male guardian entrusted with her well-being fails in his responsibility. Isabel’s father’s behavior foreshadows how Francis Levinson will likewise fail in his responsibilities to provide for her. Ellen Wood probably drew on personal experience in establishing Isabel’s predicament. Wood began her professional literary career largely due to financial obligations after her husband’s business failed in the 1850s (likely due to his mismanagement): Writing was one of very few lucrative career possibilities available to a respectable Victorian woman, particularly if she needed to combine work with the responsibilities of raising children and running a household. Despite the melodramatic and often implausible storylines that animate the novel, Wood thus voices a pragmatic perspective on how finances could bolster or undermine a woman’s security. Isabel laments not just her father’s death but her own vulnerability when she says, “I have no home; no home, and no money” (143).
Class and social position intersect with these financial considerations, developing the theme of The Anxieties and Opportunities of Unstable Social Positions. This is particularly true of the transfer of East Lynne from the Earl of Mount Severn (who inherited the title and estate according to ancient tradition) to Archibald Carlyle. The latter is a well-to-do but ultimately middle-class professional who maintains steady employment: “[T]hough only the son of a country lawyer, and destined to be a lawyer himself, he had achieved the training of a gentleman” (44). Archibald does not hold any titles and purchases an estate rather than inheriting one, which positions him in contrast to both Isabel’s father and (later) Francis. Many literary critics have associated the rise of the novel with the growing ascendency of the middle classes in 18th and 19th-century Europe. That being the case, it is not surprising that the novel’s hero, a man of good judgment and impeccable integrity, is associated with the professional classes rather than the aristocratic ones. In fact, the latter tend to be portrayed as either foolish (in the case of Isabel’s father) or outright villainous (in the case of Francis).
Wood uses the opening chapters of her novel both to establish Isabel’s virtue and to foreshadow her eventual moral downfall. Throughout the novel, the narrator often directly addresses a reader (most often presumed to be a woman), framing various plot points with explicitly moralizing and didactic messaging. This narrative technique anticipates potential moral objection to a plot depicting sexual “impropriety,” portraying Isabel’s story as a cautionary tale. In the opening chapters, the narrator advises readers to “admire and love [Isabel] whilst you may” (51), implying that her subsequent choices will render sympathy impossible (though this is not ultimately the novel’s attitude toward her).
The depiction of Isabel as a “fallen woman”—i.e., a woman who has engaged in sex outside of marriage—is heightened by characterizing her as a sweet and virtuous young girl: She is loving to her father and shows compassion and empathy in her efforts to help Mr. Kane. Her father even affirms his confidence in Isabel to Archibald, commenting that there is “no fear that she will be decamping to Gretna Green” (48). Located just over the border between Scotland and England, this area was associated with clandestine marriages since couples would sometimes travel to Scotland to take advantage of laxer marriage regulations there. In her devotion, obedience, and compassion, Isabel is an apparent model of ideal Victorian womanhood. Besides rendering her fall more dramatic, this characterization complicates the often-rigid dichotomy Victorian society drew between “virtuous” and “impure” women.
Along with beginning to develop the plotline about Isabel and her romantic relationships, the opening chapters also introduce the closely intertwined plotline surrounding Richard Hare, the murder of Hallijohn, and associated False Perceptions of Innocence and Guilt. Richard experiences a trajectory that is the inversion of Isabel’s experiences: While she begins innocent and eventually experiences a moral downfall, Richard first appears as a fugitive who has been ostracized from his community and disowned by his own father. His arc moves him from (presumed) guilt to innocence. The context of the murder also provides thematic connections to Isabel’s storyline. The crime results from a confrontation between one of Afy’s suitors and her father, and the confusion over who is at fault stems from the fact that Afy was romantically involved with multiple men at the same time (Richard and the man known as Thorn, later revealed to be Francis). The murder shows the violent and destructive consequences that can result from a woman’s sexual indiscretions, setting the stage for Isabel’s subsequent fateful decisions.
