ESC: English Studies in Canada

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE: SIR WALTER SCOTT AND THE BORDERS OF GENDER CHRIS FERNS Mount Saint Vincent University X HE first two volumes of Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border appeared in 1802, and from then on the border figures repeatedly in his work, both as a source of literary material in the form of ballads and legends, and as a physical setting: a line of demarcation whose crossing is often fraught with danger and unforeseen consequences. For the hero, especially, the border functions as a testing ground: a region, not unlike the American frontier, where the precarious rule of law places a premium on the bravery and re­ sourcefulness of individuals. Yet, at the same time, it also constitutes a locus where the clashes and tensions between different nations, cultures, and value systems can be explored and interrogated. One of Scott’s major concerns is clearly with issues of national identity, particularly in the aftermath of the 1707 Act of Union. As James Kerr observes, a recurrent theme in the Waverley novels is “the anglicization of Scotland, the process of political and cultural assimilation,” a process that Kerr describes as a form of “internal colonialism” (3). Scott presents a world in which this process is reflected in a range of telling details, from the shift­ ing of the Edinburgh merchants’ dinner hour to allow them “full time to answer their London correspondents” (Redgauntlet 236), to Mrs. Howden’s lament, in The Heart of Midlothian, for the good old days before the seat of government was removed to London, and the representatives of authority were close enough at hand that “we could aye peeble them wi’ stanes when they werena gude bairns” (49). Yet national boundaries are by no means the only borders in question. Within Scotland itself, it is clear that the border between Lowlands and Highlands constitutes a dividing line hardly less dis­ tinct than that between Scotland and England. In Waverley, for example, the Highlands are described as “a stupendous barrier” (73), composed of “huge gigantic masses which frowned defiance over the more level country beneath them” (73), and, when Edinburgh falls to the Jacobites at the out­ break of the 1745 rebellion, Scott emphasizes the consternation aroused by the “grim, uncombed, and wild appearance” of the Highlanders: So little was the condition of the Highlands known at that late period, that the character and appearance of their population, while thus sallying English Studies in Canada, 22, 2, June 1996 forth as military adventurers, conveyed to the south-country Lowlanders as much surprise as if an invasion of African Negroes or Esquimaux Indians had issued forth from the northern mountains of their own native country. (324) The alien, exotic, and especially the primitive character of the world in­ habited by the Highland clans is repeatedly stressed. The border, whether national or, as in this case, cultural and economic, provides not merely a geographical, but also a temporal boundary line: to cross it is to take a step backward in time. On occasion, indeed, the inhabitants of the world beyond the border take on an almost primordial aspect. Removing his heavy traveling coat, the clan chief Rob Roy MacGregor reveals shoulders that are disproportionately broad, and arms “so very long as to be rather a deformity” (Rob Roy 209) — so long, in fact, that he can “tie the garters of his hose without stooping” (209). When he later exchanges Lowland dress for the Highland kilt, he exposes legs “covered with a fell of thick, short, red hair, especially around his knees, which resembled ... the limbs of a red-coloured Highland bull” (307). These animal attributes are combined with a more-than-animal cun­ ning: while his pursuit by the British troops is compared to an otter-hunt, he eludes capture by dint of “a trick beyond the otter” (313). At the same time, his “wild, irregular, and, as it were, unearthly” appearance reminds the narrator “of the Old Piets who ravaged Northumberland in ancient times, who, according to ... tradition, were a sort of half-goblin half-human be­ ings” (209). While Rob first appears in the prosaic guise of a cattle-trader, peaceably taking Sunday dinner...