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“The hero is obviously much more at home as a peacemaker than as a warrior, and it is
amusing to watch Waverley racing ahead over the battlefield in order to rescue
Hanoverian
officers, and then being commended for his distinguished service by the
chevalier.”
To extend the hypothesis further, it is arguable that action becomes associated in many
Waverley Novels with Catholicism, plotting and subversion. Such would be the message of Rob
Roy. Indeed, the third andfinal Jacobite novel,
Redgauntlet (1824)
throws up extraordinary
possibilities of an invented comeback by the Chevalier organised by a outdated plotter where
heroism passes possibly on to those who capitulate to the state and effectively promise to go
home and give up Jacobitism.
In other words, heroism means the acceptance of the state's
pardon.
It is precisely this relationship between individual and the state which defines the novelty
of Scott's hero. Welsh argues that 'Law and authority are the sine qua non of his being.'(24) This
would be an acceptable reply to the question as to what Waverley learnt during the Jacobite
expedition. It is very much what Talbot preaches and what Fergus could never accept, for what
accompanies it is an acceptance that property is the basis of modern society as it 'exerts and
responds to a workable order in society and keeps individual passions in check.' (67) The true
danger of civil war does not stem from a clear-cut distinction between the policy of one dynasty
and another but from the threat to property that Jacobitism might bring with it,
replacing the
proper acquisition of land through marriage and purchase with royal patronage. However
convincing we might consider Welsh's arguments to be, I think that the whole subject of passivity
can be perplexing. For if the hero is so passive, the first step is to understand why this has to be
so, but then we are left with a more despairing quesion: where does that leave us? In what kind of
world do we now live? Welsh would put forward the idea Scott's world is shot through with
modernity, and this stems from the relationship between the state and the individual.
Welsh draws the following conclusion from the curious situation (215): Thus in his first
novel Scott invented an action in which the hero ambiguously invites and resists his own arrest -
a posture so modern that it more nearly resembles a novel by Kafka than any by Scott's
predecessors.
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