(Related, but not required: TikTok about This Other Eden)
From the chrysalis of The American Dream — that insidious lie of upward social mobility — emerges a new kind of despair. What happens to optimism when you can’t see the green grass from underneath a boot?
With this in mind, I’ve convinced myself that Marilyn Harris: novelist, and daughter of an Oklahoma oil executive, made it her mission to rouse any mawkish dreamer with the force of a dynasty. Look across the pond, my friend! In her Victorian England, there are no bootstraps, no ladders. Only ceilings, ceilings, ceilings, and a thousand pits, enough to accommodate a misstep in any direction.
Pt 1: The Bastard
Lord Thomas Eden is a milk and water earl, puffed up on his birthright but, unfortunately, self-aware enough to suspect that he himself is unremarkable. When he’s rejected by Marianne, the lowly daughter of a fisherman, he tries to silence his self-doubts through domination. There’s no type of coercion he won’t try in order to bed Marianne, a woman he tied his life to through one shocking act of violence.
Sleeping with Marianne proves to be a years-long challenge, but he finally cracks the code with an elaborate lie. Wanting a consummation without having to sully his family name with Marianne’s undesirable lineage, he hires a priest and stages a fake wedding ceremony. For a time, he’s happy to have Marianne as his false countess. But on the eve of the birth of his son he realizes, belatedly, that he wants an heir.
He gets a bastard instead.
Thomas and Marianne have three children: Edward, James, and Jennifer. More than years separate Edward and James; there's also the gulf of legitimacy. After Edward is born, Thomas Eden makes Marianne a countess in truth, and their next child, James, becomes the future Lord Eden.
How can a second son of the same parents become the heir? To assure Marianne that Edward will always be cared for, Thomas Eden cooks up a solution right out of the Judgement of Solomon. Before now, the title and the estate, Eden Point, were one and the same. What if he split it in half?
Almost forty years later, the prisoners in the common cell of Newgate are enraptured by a new arrival: The Prince of Eden.
Unbelievably wealthy from his inheritance but unburdened by the solipsistic “duties” of the aristocracy thanks to his illegitimacy, Edward Eden has become somewhat of an anomaly. Without a buy-in to the concept of the Eden Dynasty, Edward sees no problem with gradually selling family property in exchange for funds. The money is a boon and a balm: he gives to the charitable causes of his radical best friend, and he papers over his own frequent missteps down the social ladder. Edward is kind but Edward is fallible. The cushion of his wealth turns him into a self-immolating Robin Hood: the hero of the masses, but the failure of those closest to him.
Edward let himself be arrested and taken to Newgate to save Charlotte, his lover. Charlotte’s newly infamous: found guilty of adultery by a judge and her outraged husband, and the exorbitant punishment she receives — Newgate for a week and mutilation for a lifetime — shocks the country. Why is she being made an example? Edward asks his lawyer:
“Humiliation,” he stated bluntly. “The young lady was brazenly playing the game of the aristocracy. No Tory in his right mind could permit it….
The middle classes will rise, Edward,” he comforted. “The peers have no objection to that. In fact most good Tories are only too willing to make room for them.” He leaned still farther over his desk. “Make room,” he repeated pointedly. “The aristocracy will make room. They will not absorb them. The difference is subtle and very important.”
Edward is determined to help Charlotte, but something in his plans goes awry. For the first time in his life, and arguably when it matters most, his currency is void.
But money can still buy oblivion. Money can buy opium.
Up until now, Edward was resilient - impenetrable. His disillusionment and intoxication signal an opportunity for his brother James, who is embarrassed to be living on an allowance. James Eden’s lawyer and opportunistic servants whisper in his ear: isn’t he the rightful heir? Shouldn’t he have control over the funds- the estate? Edward’s addiction is a character flaw — one James can exploit legally. He can get what’s rightfully his, what his father denied him.
If Edward meandered his way to rock bottom, James was dragged by his malleability. An idle earl can be weaponized, manipulated. Because dynasty is everything, James is easily convinced that he must not only wed and sire heirs, but divest his brother of his property.
James’s chosen bride is Harriet: a noblewoman who has yet to make a better match. She accepts her upcoming nuptials with a listless grace until she meets Edward at the height of his addiction. Edward begs her to run away with him, but she can’t envision a blissful life with him, only an interlude. The back cover of the book bills this ill-fated love as the crux of the story, but it’s more of a crumb so I won’t devote much time to it. Edward’s star-crossed love with Harriet is a ripple effect of the book’s first major tragedy: Charlotte, the adulteress he created.
Pt 2. The Chartist
The Prince of Eden is an epic saga that Marilyn Harris threads real-life literary and political figures into, including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Queen Victoria herself. The most impact, though, goes to Feargus O’Connor, the leader of the working-class Chartist movement who famously fizzled out after a disastrous demonstration on Kennington Common.
Edward first sees O’Connor at his London home. O’Connor was invited by Edward’s radical best friend for a political meeting and, ever the showman, O’Connor shocks and discomfits Edward with his speech. He’s angry, he’s violent, and he has the right to be. The workers are suffering with no political recourse.
Edward, in the early throws of his opium addiction, leaves London for Eden Point with his ears ringing. “Who - owns- England?” chant hundreds of men, prompted by O’Connor’s charismatic instruction. The chant repeats and crescendoes until finally, it gives an answer: “Who - owns - England? The aristocracy!”
Pt 3: The Prince
When the book opens at Newgate, Edward’s arrival is heralded by a different chant. “He’s comin’! He’s comin’!” The so-called Prince of Eden, a regular interloper in the lives of the poor, bearing gifts of food and alcohol. It is a kindness, but it’s a panacea. Edward’s power is in his pockets, and O’Connor reveals how much more impactful he can be with his money by investing it in a movement.
If you’re familiar with O’Connor, you know where this is going. Edward can’t find fault with O’Connor’s ideals but there’s something off about the delivery. Harris hints at O’Connor’s famous ego until suddenly she slaps you with it. O’Connor’s big plan to march on Kennington Common is watershed for all the wrong reasons.
…It rains.
The promised crowd is greatly diminished, and O’Connor allows a cab to escort him through the downpour. It’s there that the Chartist movement dies with a whimper — their leader revealed to be impuissant, but too self-centered to notice. The guards escorting O’Connor attest that he gave a rousing speech at Kennington, and O’Connor’s response is as egocentric as it is maddening:
Then incredibly he asked in a childlike manner, “Do you really think it will be quoted?”
The Chartist movement dissolved before they could see the success of their influence, but 5 of the 6 aims of the People’s Charter have since been met. So why does Harris include this depiction of O’Connor, which is relatively historically accurate but nihilistic about progressive movements?
The scope of The Prince of Eden is massive: the opium, the lawsuit, the brutal deaths and one excruciating birth. But the plot threads come back to this: you're stuck where you were born and you can only sink.
Charlotte, Edward’s original doomed lover, is brutally punished as a warning to the middle class: stay in your place or we’ll put you there. James’s lawsuit to snatch Eden (and the money!) from Edward is partially about keeping dynastic wealth intact, but it’s just as much about quashing Edward’s aspirations. Edward’s mother, Marianne, seems to be the exception, the fisherman’s daughter turned countess. But her ascension is brief. After her husband — the true aristocrat— dies, power is divested from her once more as she helplessly watches her children flail.
I’m equal parts fascinated and repulsed by The Prince of Eden, which is romance-adjacent but not a genre romance. This Other Eden, Marianne and Thomas Eden’s story, is a bonafide bodice ripper with a happily ever after that The Prince of Eden quickly squashes. The way Harris depicts the aristocracy is more rooted in reality than what is currently popular in historical romance, where every other duke is a benevolent landowner just desperate to meet a governess who will sweep him off his feet. But is two-thirds of the truth, that the world is brutal and nasty and we will likely sink if given the chance, worth more than the fantasy?
It’s an unfair question. The fantasy and nightmare aristocrats serve different purposes, and two-thirds of the truth is still a lie. But when it gets colder, when I’m feeling angry and overwrought and bitter I find no joy in the fantasy. My ears have been ringing for days. “Who - owns - England?”