Sir Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian

Sir Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian was originally entitled Tales of My Landlord, Second Series and was published in four volumes in 1818. It was a great success from the beginning, and many critics have considered it to be Scott's finest novel. One of the reasons for this is a negative one in that this novel does not have the conventional hero and heroine critics see as Scott's weakest characters, characters generally found in his other novels (Lauber, 1966, 106). The novel plot is simple, and it involves multiple characters and so has no hero at all in the traditional sense. The work is structured on the basis of strong characterizations that enhance the themes, a number of which have been identified by critics as unifying elements binding together the characters and serving as the spine that overcomes a number of internal contradictions in Scott's writing. Yet, it is apparent that these critics do not agree on what the theme of the novel is.

Scott wrote several novels depicting the contrasts between opposing social and political forces exemplified by the Covenanters, a fanatical group, and their moral opposites, the hedonistic Cavaliers. These forces in Scottish history stand as extremes that attract the hero one way or the other in novels like Rob Roy. In The Heart of Midlothian, Scott treats these matters in a somewhat different manner:

Here we see the Covenanting tradition tamed by history into eccentricity on the one hand and on the other achiev

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acterization shifts from the typical to the individual, from the conventional to the realistic, in ways that help account for this novel's popularity with critics who have little sympathy for the emblematic rather than psychological characterization found in those Scott novels that place a more overt reliance on romance conventions (Millgate, 1984, 154-155). At the beginning of the novel, it is the people of Edinburgh whoa re featured, and their volatility is given emphasis: The mob of Edinburgh, when thoroughly excited, had been at all times one of the fiercest which could be found in Europe; and of late years they had rise repeatedly against the government, and sometimes not without temporary success (Hardy, 1982, 41). Later in the novel, it is the individual in the form of Jeanie who seeks redress from the government and who succeeds for herself and her sister. Scott makes use of history not merely to comment on the historical record but also to comment on the problems of his own time. He considers his characters in terms of the broad social and political issues which shape them and their destinies, but he does so by removing the action into the past: The Heart of Midlothian is another study of social conflict and reconc

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