The Three Perils of Woman facts for kids
The Three Perils of Woman is a book by James Hogg that came out in 1823. It has three parts: one longer story (a novel) and two shorter stories (novellas) that are connected. For a long time, this book was not included in later collections of Hogg's works. It was finally published again in 2002.
The two shorter stories take place during the Jacobite rising of 1745. This was a time when supporters of the Stuart royal family tried to take back the throne. The stories also show the harsh punishments given by the English army under the Duke of Cumberland. The longer story is set in Edinburgh in the 1820s and is about a woman who loses her memory.
Contents
About the Book's Creation
On January 9, 1823, James Hogg told his publisher, William Blackwood, that he was working on a new book. This book was meant to be a companion to his earlier work, The Three Perils of Man, which came out in 1822. Hogg said that John Gibson Lockhart had suggested the idea to him. He started writing it in October and finished it in the first half of 1823. By August 11, the publishers Longmans in London were ready to receive the printed copies from Edinburgh.
What Are the Three Perils?
The book's title, The Three Perils of Woman, refers to three main challenges or dangers. These are love, leasing (which is an old Scottish word for lying), and jealousy. Each part of the book explores one of these perils through its characters' experiences.
The Peril of Love
This first and longest part of the book takes up the first two volumes. It is set around 1820. The story follows a young woman named Agatha Bell, also known as Gatty. She is the daughter of Daniel Bell, a sheep farmer from the Scottish Borders.
Gatty meets a Highland nobleman named M’Ion and falls in love with him. He feels the same way about her. However, both Gatty and M’Ion are very shy and do not like to show their feelings. Because of this, they each mistakenly believe that the other person dislikes them.
Gatty is staying in Edinburgh with her old nurse, Mrs. Johnson. It turns out that M’Ion lives in the same building and is Mrs. Johnson's son. Gatty asks her father to take her home, and he agrees. Meanwhile, M’Ion proposes to Gatty’s friend, Cherubina (Cherry) Elliot, and she accepts.
Eventually, Cherry is convinced to let M’Ion go, and M’Ion finally tells Gatty his true feelings. Gatty and M’Ion get married. Sadly, Cherry dies, and Gatty becomes convinced that she will also die on a specific day. On that day, Gatty falls into a deep sleep, almost like a coma.
She is taken back to Edinburgh, where she slowly starts to wake up. She gives birth to a son but has no memory of her life before falling asleep. She stays in this state for three years. When her memory finally returns, she is shocked to find she has a young son. M’Ion and her friends gently help her remember her past life. Her story ends happily.
A Funny Side Story
There is also a funny side story about Richard Rickleton. He is a kind but rough and impulsive farmer. He is brought to Edinburgh to try and marry Gatty when M’Ion is not around. Rickleton makes many social mistakes. M’Ion and his friends, encouraged by Gatty’s mischievous brother Joseph, talk about things that accidentally upset Rickleton. He becomes very angry and ends up in jail.
Still furious, Rickleton challenges M’Ion and his two friends to duels. In one duel, he wounds M’Ion, as the others did not want to face his anger. While he was supposed to be Gatty’s suitor, he also tries to win over Katie M’Nab. Katie is very bold, which is the opposite of Gatty.
After Gatty’s story finishes, Rickleton’s story is completed. He marries Katie, but three months later, she leaves him to visit Edinburgh. He follows her and discovers she has just had a baby that is not his. Rickleton decides to divorce Katie. However, during one last visit, he forgives her and accepts the child as his own.
The Peril of Leasing (Lying)
This shorter story takes place just before the Battle of Culloden in 1746. This battle was a major defeat for the Jacobite forces, who were then brutally scattered by the Hanoverian army.
Sally Niven is a pretty and good young woman who works for the local minister. She is in love with Peter Gow, the smith. Peter accidentally shoots a man who is secretly burying someone in the churchyard. Sally quickly makes up a lie, saying he was stopping a grave robbery. This lie helps Peter avoid punishment.
However, Sally is not as successful with another lie. Her master, the minister, was very scared after being arrested and then released. He insisted that Sally stay with him all night. Sally tells Peter she was visiting somewhere else. But Peter had overheard them, so he knows she is lying. Their plans to get married are then called off.
The story happens during the events leading up to Culloden. The author, Hogg, shows a dangerous time filled with suspicion, accusations of treason, and quick punishments, even if people were innocent. In a funny part of the story, Gow and a few friends scare away a large group of pro-Hanoverian soldiers. The soldiers mistake them in the dark for a big army, panic, and run away.
The Peril of Jealousy
This is the final and shortest story, set after the Battle of Culloden. Sally and Peter are again the main characters. Sally has married Alexander (Alaster) M’Kenzie, a noble Highlander who is being hunted by the English government. They get separated and try to find each other.
By bad luck, they meet at a place where M’Kenzie’s female cousin lives. Sally wrongly thinks he has found another lover and runs away. Meanwhile, Peter, who has married an older woman and is also on the run, meets Sally. He knows she is married, so he does not act too familiar with her, but he escorts and protects her.
Someone sees them and misunderstands, telling M’Kenzie that Sally has gone back to her old love. M’Kenzie and Peter meet at a lonely cottage. Both are sure the other has done them a terrible wrong. They fight and seriously injure each other. While they are recovering, with Sally, who is becoming more confused, taking care of them, Peter’s wife betrays them to the government soldiers. They are then killed by a sergeant. Shepherds later find Sally and a baby girl frozen to death on the grave of M'Kenzie and Peter.
Storytelling Style and Main Ideas
Even though the third part of Three Perils is very sad, the book has more funny parts than Hogg’s more famous book, Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. In the first two stories, Hogg includes funny characters like Rickleton, the minister, and Daft Davie Duff. These characters provide moments of laughter. Humor also comes from people speaking English, Scots, and Gaelic trying to understand each other. Hogg writes how Gaelic speakers might pronounce English words. Modern editors note that some of this is realistic (like "By God!" becoming "Py Cot!"), but most of it was a common way to write back then.
A special thing about this book is that the chapters are called 'circles'. Hogg explains why at the end of the first 'Circle' of 'Love'. He says he likes to tell a story by going "round and round my hero, in the same way as the moon keeps moving round the sun." This helps him show both the good and bad parts of Scottish life.
Gatty’s loss of memory is similar to what happens to Robert Wringhim in Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Wringhim finds he cannot remember six months of his life, during which others say he lived a bad life. In his case, it seems to be caused by his other self, Gil-Martin.
As someone from the Lowlands of Scotland, Hogg had mixed feelings about the Jacobite Rebellion. He saw the good qualities of the Highlanders and felt bad about the harsh punishments from the English under the Duke of Cumberland. However, near the end of the book, he suggests that these punishments might be a form of divine punishment for the terrible things done to the Low Church Covenanters in southern Scotland in the 1600s.
The well-known Highland Clearances were happening during the time of the 'Love' story. This was when many small tenants were forced off their land to make way for large sheep farms. While the story is set in Edinburgh and the Borders, Daniel’s comment about making Highland estates profitable hints at these Clearances.
About the Book's Publications
The book was first published in London in August 1823, in three volumes. Later, Victorian editors did not include it in collections of Hogg’s works. One possible reason is that it dealt with topics like children born outside of marriage in a straightforward way. These were subjects that many people still thought were not suitable for books, even much later when authors like Wilkie Collins wrote about them. Also, the only clergyman in the book is shown as a hypocrite, and Hogg does not directly teach a moral lesson from his characters' bad actions.
A special academic edition of the book was published in 1995 by Edinburgh University Press. The editors believe the book is of high quality and should be as well-regarded as Hogg’s Confessions.
