3/26/2013- The Shadow of a Sin by Charlotte M. Brame

Yesterday, perhaps because I hate myself, I read The Shadow of a Sin by Charlotte M. Brame (though it is sometimes credited to Bertha Clay). It was a lovely Victorian melodrama about the young and fair Hyacinth Vaughn. The poor, sweet Hyacinth is raised in seclusion by her loving, but staid grandparents, and she longs to experience the brightness of life in the outside world. That's why she decides to elope with the first handsome young man to profess his undying love for her. Though Hyacinth repents of her rash plan before having the chance to go through with it, her plan to sin casts a sinister blot upon her young life.

Though there are plenty of things that I could complain about in The Shadow of a Sin, my biggest problem with the book is that Hyacinth Vaughn is one of the stupidest heroines in any novel that I've ever read. In her case, I'm not going to complain about how outdated the social mores depicted in this novel are, and I'm not going to say any more than this about how every book that I've ever read by Charlotte M. Brame has had at least one idiotic character in a leading role that could have solved every problem suffered by every character in a thirty second speech. I am, however, going to spew a couple of slight spoilers, so if you get upset about people ruining plot points in books from the 19th century, you may want to skip my next paragraph.

First of all, if you find a dying woman in a field, saying over and over again that a man is going to murder her, I think that Hyacinth's plan of, "Oh! My handkerchief is too lacy to bandage her wounds, so I think that I need to ask my boyfriend to lend me a better handkerchief, with his name on it, to leave on her body before we leave her lying in the field!" would not be the first one that sprung to the minds of many people. The fact that he also leaves his address with the dying woman is his fault, not Hyacinth's, but he wasn't in the novel enough for me to get infuriated with his character, so he doesn't get to be the subject of this rant.

Once all that is over with, if you have a fiancee who says that he'll love you no matter what, and you find yourself having to testify in court to save your last boyfriend from the gallows, it might be a good idea to mention this to the fiancee. Hyacinth does not do this. In fact, she runs screaming from the fiancee, assumes that her having a previous boyfriend will spoil his heart against her forevermore, goes crazy, and goes into hiding. At no point does it occur to her that, having saved someone's life, the new fiancee might be willing to forgive her for having spoken to other boys. If Hyacinth did assume that people weren't constantly willing to throw her in a ditch and ride away in their carriages, though, there really wouldn't be much of a story, though, so her mind-numbing stupidity is necessary to the plot.

The one thing that I can say for The Shadow of a Sin is that, although it is insane nonsense, it is interesting and fairly well written, like the rest of Charlotte M. Brame's work. I know that, whenever I start one of her books, I'll be ready to stomp my Kindle to pieces during at least one part of it. While her books are ridiculous, though, and involve foreshadowing as subtle as beating the reader in the head with a tree branch, most of the melodrama is actually pretty page turning. Since I'm not a reader of the Victorian era, I can't say for certain that her books seemed any less insane then, but I can see how they kept selling.

If you too would like to waste a day on The Shadow of a Sin, it is available as a shiny new eBook from Project Gutenberg. A Fair Mystery, another of Brame's books, was made available alongside it, but, for the sake of my own sanity, I'm going to wait a while until I read that one.