Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Shuttle
eBook
( May 19, 2019)
The Shuttle is a 1907 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, republished in 2007 by Persephone Books. One of Burnett's longer and more complicated books for adults, it deals with themes of intermarriages between wealthy American heiresses and impoverished British nobles.
The title of the book refers to ships passing back and forth across the Atlantic and creating alliances between England and America like the weaving of a shuttle: "As Americans discovered Europe, that continent discovered America. American beauties began to appear in English drawing-rooms and Continental salons... What could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by adoring fathers sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin to rule these lands also?" Burnett made the transatlantic voyage thirty-three times, which was a lot for the era.
Marriages between English aristocrats and American heiresses were common and of considerable public interest at the time. Some of the best known of these alliances was between Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill, who were the parents of Winston Churchill, and between Consuelo Vanderbilt and the 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1895. Burnett would have read the gossip around the marriage of the Marlboroughs and other sources, such as Titled Americans: A list of American ladies who have married foreigners of rank, which included: ‘A carefully compiled List of Peers Who are Supposed to be eager to lay their coronets, and incidentally their hearts, at the feet of the all-conquering American Girl.’
The building and grounds of ‘Stornham Court’ were modelled after Great Maytham Hall, near Rolvenden in Kent, which had a beautiful garden that Bettina starts restoring in The Shuttle and which also inspired the titular garden of The Secret Garden.
Angelica Shirley Carpenter writes in In the Garden, Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett that Burnett's depiction of Sir Nigel's abuse of Rosalie mirrors the abuse that Burnett herself suffered at the hands of her second husband Stephen: "All the classic signs of abuse, which were not so well-known in Frances's lifetime, are catalogued in The Shuttle. Sir Nigel isolates Rosalie from her family and friends, refusing to let her parents see her when they visit England. Stephen tried this with Frances too."
The title of the book refers to ships passing back and forth across the Atlantic and creating alliances between England and America like the weaving of a shuttle: "As Americans discovered Europe, that continent discovered America. American beauties began to appear in English drawing-rooms and Continental salons... What could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by adoring fathers sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin to rule these lands also?" Burnett made the transatlantic voyage thirty-three times, which was a lot for the era.
Marriages between English aristocrats and American heiresses were common and of considerable public interest at the time. Some of the best known of these alliances was between Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill, who were the parents of Winston Churchill, and between Consuelo Vanderbilt and the 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1895. Burnett would have read the gossip around the marriage of the Marlboroughs and other sources, such as Titled Americans: A list of American ladies who have married foreigners of rank, which included: ‘A carefully compiled List of Peers Who are Supposed to be eager to lay their coronets, and incidentally their hearts, at the feet of the all-conquering American Girl.’
The building and grounds of ‘Stornham Court’ were modelled after Great Maytham Hall, near Rolvenden in Kent, which had a beautiful garden that Bettina starts restoring in The Shuttle and which also inspired the titular garden of The Secret Garden.
Angelica Shirley Carpenter writes in In the Garden, Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett that Burnett's depiction of Sir Nigel's abuse of Rosalie mirrors the abuse that Burnett herself suffered at the hands of her second husband Stephen: "All the classic signs of abuse, which were not so well-known in Frances's lifetime, are catalogued in The Shuttle. Sir Nigel isolates Rosalie from her family and friends, refusing to let her parents see her when they visit England. Stephen tried this with Frances too."
- Pages
- 955
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