[In the following essay, Groves contends that Hogg's The Three Perils of Woman demonstrates a mythical vision of descent into chaos followed by a reaffirmation of human unity.]

James Hogg's The Three Perils of Woman; or, Love, Leasing, and Jealousy (1823) is a minor masterpiece which treats the theme of love through sustained mythical and structural parallels between two time-settings. I use “myth” to denote a single meaningful pattern underlying the three very different narrative sections of Hogg's work; each constituent part illustrates in a unique and imaginative way the journey into what Northrop Frye calls “the night world, a life so intolerable that it must end either in tragedy or in permanent escape.”¹ In its use of myth and structure, The Three Perils of Woman has much in common with James Hogg's greatest novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which appeared one year later.

The opening section of “Peril” is entitled Love and deals with the relationship between sexual and spiritual love. Two Scottish cousins named Agatha Bell and Cherubina Elliot become enamoured of the same man, a highlander named McIon of Boroland. Early in The Three Perils of Woman a vision recalled by Cherry seems to foreshadow the outcome of their respective loves: “What were you saying about love last night, cousin Gatty,” she asks, “when I fell asleep in your bosom? Either you spoke to me a long time after I was more than half asleep, and told me an extraordinary story, else I dreamed a strange and unaccountable dream.”² Her cousin replies, “Tell me your dream, cousin Cherry, and then I will tell you all that I said to you about love” (“I,” 67). Cherry then tries to remember the details of her vision, without knowing whether it represents a dream or an actual conversation:

“Ah! you told me now,—did you not, Gatty,—either you told me, or I thought you were gone to a lovely place far above me, and I could not reach you, and neither would you return to me. And then I thought I saw hangings of gold and velvet, and a thousand chandeliers, all burning brighter than the sun; and I saw you dressed in gold, and diamonds, and bracelets of rubies; and you had a garland of flowers on your head. And then I wept and called long, but you would not answer me, for I was grieved at being left behind. And I saw a winding-path through flowery shrubs, and ran alongst it, asking every one I saw, if that was the way; and they all said ‘Yes.’”

(“I,” 67-68)

According to Cherry's remembrance of the vision, she ignores Gatty's advice not to follow the “winding-path”:

“… I saw you far above me, farther than ever. And then you called out, ‘Dear cousin Cherry, you shall never get here by that path. Do you not see that tremendous precipice before you?’—‘Yes I do,’ said I; ‘but it is a delightful flowery bank, and the path is so sweet to the senses! O suffer me to go by that road!’—‘Nay, but when you come to that steep, the path is of glass,’ said you; ‘and you will slide and fall down into an immeasurable void, and you will be lost, and never see this abode of beauty. Remember I have told you, for the name of that rock is love.’”

(“I,” 68)

In her vision Cherry tries to follow Gatty, but without success:

“You then went away from my sight, and as soon as I saw you were gone, I took my own way, and followed the flowery path; and when I came to the rock, the walks were all of glass, and I missed my footing and hung by some slender shrubs, calling for help. At length young Boroland, cousin Joseph's friend, came to my assistance; but instead of relieving me, he snapped my feeble support, and down I fell among rocks, and precipices, and utter darkness; and I shrieked aloud, and behold I was lying puling in your bosom, and you were speaking to me, and I cannot tell whether I was asleep or not. Did you not tell me any such story as that, cousin Gatty?”

(“I,” 68)

Superficially, Cherry's vision delineates a vast separation between herself and Gatty, but several details suggest that beneath their differences they are in some ways the same. Cherry is “grieved” at the separation, and her motive in misguidedly following the “flowery path” is to rejoin Gatty. Cherry also explains that her experience mirrors a similar experience of her cousin's: “I had forgot that you told me you fell from that rock yourself; and if it had not been someone … that saved you, you had perished” (“I,” 70). It is also possible that in looking up to Gatty, Cherry actually perceives a mirror-image of herself, since what divides them is a “path … of glass,” “walks of glass,” and, as Gatty later explains, “a precipice of glass” (“II,” 3). Appropriately the two cousins have been lying in each other's arms during the vision.

The passage is ambiguous in several ways. Cherry is uncertain whether she is recounting a dream or repeating something Gatty had told her. The vision seems to be prophetic, yet we are not told whether the “lovely place” to which Gatty ascends indicates a spiritual ascendancy, or merely a social or economic one. Gatty's response is also ambiguous, since at first she promises to reiterate “all that I said … about love,” but later she asserts, “Not a sentence of such matter did I tell you. It is wholly the creation of your own vain fancy” (“I,” 69). Throughout The Three Perils of Woman, Hogg deliberately obscures the distinctions between reality and illusion and between unselfish motives and selfish ones.

Gatty and Cherry ostensibly remain friends, despite being rivals, both in love with McIon. McIon has loved Gatty since childhood, but she suddenly begins to treat him “with marked indifference, if not rather disdain” (“I,” 35), convinced that she must maintain “the sacred bounds of virgin decorum” (“I,” 14). McIon interprets her aloofness as proof of her dislike, and turns for solace to the more openly affectionate Cherry. Unlike her cousin, Cherry refuses to be “a systematic liar” (“I,” 74), and insists, “I will always think as I feel, and express what I think … and if I should love Mr. McIon ever so well, and die for him too, what has any body to say?” (“I,” 74).

McIon and Cherry become engaged, but when it becomes clear that McIon still loves Gatty, Cherry despairingly releases him from his promise. At the wedding, Cherry falls into a stupor which prevents her from fulfilling the duties of bridesmaid:

Cherry started as from a dream, but, instead of pulling off her cousin's glove, she stretched out her hand to put it into the bridegroom's. That hand did not open to receive hers. Poor little Cherry's hand was turned aside: and the bride, ashamed of the delay on her part, was obliged to pull off her own glove with her left hand, and finally gave her hand to her lover, and with it herself forever.—Cherry clasped her hands together, cowered down, and looked in their faces; then, again assuming her upright position, her eyes rolled about from one face to another so rapidly as to shew that her mind was bewildered. These looks spoke as plainly as if she had said in words, “Where are we? what have we been about?”

(“II,” 58-59)

Like her earlier vision, this trance brings about Cherry's temporary loss of personal identity. It also conveys the tension between Cherry's desire to identify with Gatty or to take Gatty's place, and her painful awareness of their separation. As elsewhere in the story, a sense of humanly unknowable mystery extends to the major characters, and also to the reader. Both vision and trance undermine conventional notions of individuality and identity, and suggest that the specific locus of mystery is in the nature of human love.

Gatty and Cherry are in many ways interchangeable. Each loves McIon, and each is courted and then deserted by him. On one occasion Gatty dreams “that Cherry Elliot was a bride, and that I was to be bride maid” (“II,” 3), even though this is the exact reverse of what actually transpires. After the wedding, Gatty, Cherry, and McIon live together until Cherry becomes mysteriously ill and foretells her own death, which occurs precisely as she had predicted. Gatty acknowledges her complicity in the suffering and death of Cherry, crying “But I have murdered her!” (“II,” 94). Gatty now perceives her affinity with her dead cousin, and wishes “that we were both laid in one grave on the same day!” (“II,” 94). She becomes increasingly distracted from everyday concerns, “as if her mind were irresistably drawn to something else” (“II,” 103), and soon McIon announces that Gatty too is mysteriously ill, and is “fast following her cousin to the grave” (“II,” 103). Gatty tells her maid, “I fall the victim of love; and, alas! I fear that another has likewise fallen the victim of that love of mine, which must therefore be unhallowed. I will never try to cancel it from my heart, but I have been trying to endear it still farther by a tie of a more refined and heavenly nature” (“II,” 111). Gatty sees in her fate “the hand of the Almighty” (“II,” 130), and like her cousin confidently predicts the day of her death.

Gatty does not die, however, but merely falls into a deep coma. This remission in the divine punishment is apparently due to her father's prayer, in which he implores God, in his “hamely mother tongue” (“II,” 138), “dinna tak my bit favourite lamb frae me so soon” (“II,” 136). While in her coma, Gatty undergoes a “singular metamorphosis” (“II,” 165), and gradually assumes “the dead countenance of an idiot” (“II,” 177). The narrator tells us that, “though the body seemed to have life, it was altogether an unnatural life” (“II,” 177), and assumes that “the almighty had … given the possession of it to some spirit” (“II,” 181). Gatty lives exactly three years in this condition “of mere idiotism, in the very lowest state of debasement” (“II,” 183), and when she revives she learns that she has given birth to a son.

Like Cherry's vision and trance, Gatty's coma is a descent into confusion, chaos, and the unconscious. It confirms the affinities and parallels between the cousins, and in each case the fall corresponds with a recognition of their spiritual kinship. The trance and the coma are frightening and humiliating experiences, but afterwards the two women behave with new-found humility and concern for others: Cherry by freeing McIon from his promise, and Gatty by renouncing “all the vanities of this life” (“II,” 107). We are informed by the narrator that Gatty's subsequent life “has been modelled after his who cannot err: it has been spent in doing good” (“II,” 241). Despite their awareness of the fragility of the human self and of personal identity, both heroines transcend despair by conceding full spiritual kinship with the rival, by assenting implicitly to the oneness of all people, and by practicing the appropriate virtues of humility and love. The descent into confusion teaches each heroine to accept the unity of mankind on a primordial level, and later to strive to reaffirm that underlying kinship on a conscious level, by affirming humility, love, and community.

Frequently the word “singular” has a special connotation in Hogg's writing.³ Gatty's coma is a “singular metamorphosis,” partly because it reinforces her growing sense of oneness (or “single”-ness) with Cherry. Similarly, Cherry's vision is referred to as a “singular dream” on two occasions (“I,” 69 and “II,” 3). Just as Cherry's “singular dream” shows her yearning to enjoy the same privileges as her cousin, Gatty's “singular metamorphosis” is shown as the result of her new-found and retrospective empathy for Cherry. The fall into confusion is “singular” in the sense that it imparts an awareness of kinship between rivals, and ultimately of kinship between all members of the human race. Vision, dream, and coma implicitly reduce individuals to a shared realm of experience where personal identities shift, transfer, or dissolve.

The story is complicated by the fact that McIon is reunited with his long-lost mother, and suddenly learns that he is a wealthy highland chief. Since these events occur just prior to Gatty's renewal of interest in McIon, the reader is again radically uncertain of her motives. Again the pun on “singular” appears in conjunction with the motif of human unity achieved through chaos and division: McIon's mother writes (in a letter to Gatty), “The great controller of human actions, who brought a deserted and disowned wife and mother, and her only son together, in a way so singular, and dependent on so many casualties, will order all things aright in our future destinies, and to his mighty hand I leave the events that are wisely hid from our eyes” (“I,” 331).

One difficulty in reading The Three Perils of Woman is that the narrator (another “great controller of human actions”) has chosen to hide certain central events from our eyes. Occasional comments imply that McIon may have engaged in premarital sex with both Gatty and Cherry, but this is never either confirmed or denied. When McIon forsakes Gatty, her father assumes that she is “a lost woman” (“I,” 309), although later he realizes that this judgment was premature. A kitchen-woman known as “fat Grizzy” comments, “Aih, wow me! I wonder whan maidenheads will come as laigh as three halfpence farthing the ounce? or gin they maun still keep up to the price o' the minister's meal?” (“II,” 117). Even after the wedding, Gatty's mother tells her that McIon “is more attached to your cousin than yourself; and that he devotes those attentions to the maid that should be paid to the married wife” (“II,” 70). It remains unclear whether the threesome is united through illicit sexual relations, or through spiritual love.

The story of Gatty, Cherry, and McIon has generally been dismissed as inept by Hogg's twentieth-century critics.⁴ However, while the first section is improbable and perhaps technically rather naive, its effect is considerably strengthened through the ironic and imaginative structural parallels that unify the three parts of The Three Perils of Woman, and which retrospectively place the first part of the work in a very different light. The first of these parallel and qualifying narratives is the comic tale of Richard Rickleton, which begins as a sub-plot to Gatty's story, but mainly continues as an appendage at the end of Peril First.

Richard Rickleton is a cousin of Gatty's and Cherry's, who had once tried to supplant McIon in Gatty's affections. He marries another, however, a woman he describes as “very much disposed to the tender and delicate passion of love” (“II,” 245), and is surprised when she delivers a child only three months after their marriage. Not realizing that he is addressing his wife's lover, Richard Rickleton demands that her lawyer “resolve me whether that boy can possibly be mine or not”:

“‘Mhoai, sir, I believe,’ said the lawyer, ‘that the child being born in lawful wedlock, is yours in the eye of the law.’

“‘It strikes me that he has been forthcoming excessively soon,’ says I.

“‘Mhoai, sir—Mhoai, that very often happens with the first child,’ said the lawyer. ‘But it very rarely ever happens again; very rarely, indeed. But, God bless you, sir! It is quite common with a woman's first child.’

“‘This gave me great comfort …’”

(“II,” 269-270)

Like the main story of Peril First, the episode of Richard Rickleton involves extra-marital sex, a love-triangle, the birth of a son, and a central character's descent into personal confusion.

Richard agrees with a woman who tells him, “We have all need of forgiveness” (“II,” 281), but he forgets this lesson in vowing to “slice” his rival “in pieces” (“II,” 282). After chasing the wrong man across Scotland and ending up in jail “on a charge of assault and battery” (“II,” 292), he must confess to the court, “I has been guilty of a foolish mistake” (“II,” 300). Like the vision, trance, and coma of the main story, Richard's “very confused state of mind” (“II,” 271) causes him to confound the identity of his rival, and then eventually to perceive his own involvement in guilt. Meanwhile his wife pleads, “Love alone was my error” (“II,” 310), and eventually Richard forgives her and accepts her child into his home. He informs Cathrine, “Is it not a hellish thing, that, because a woman is made beautiful, and simple, and loving, that therefore she is to be betrayed and degraded, and then abominated and kicked about, as she were not fit to live on the face of God's earth? Mankind may do so with the rest of womankind when they like, Kate, but I say, I'll be d—d ere they shall guide you so!” (“II,” 320). Richard implicitly affirms love and human kinship, and in the process recovers his own sense of personal identity: “And with that,” he continues,

… I gave a tramp with my foot that made the joists of the house crash like eggshells, on which my wife screamed, and in an instant her old mother and the maid rushed in between us, where they stood, holding up their hands, and muttering—‘Hout, hout!—What, what, what!—What's astir? What's astir?’ But I never so much as saw them, so full was I of my own conceptions and resolutions, and so I went on.—‘No, I'll be d—d if they shall!’ and I'm not given to cursing and swearing.

(“II,” 320-321)

Richard Rickleton is a buffoon, but he develops towards maturity after enduring and acknowledging the amorphous uncertainty at the centre of human relationships. Having seen the vision of human unity at that primitive and frightening level, he returns to his normal existence and helps create a new basis for fellowship by abandoning rivalry, forgiving his wife, and accepting her “little rogue” (“II,” 309-310) as his heir. His simple act of forgiveness, like the simple prayer of Gatty's father, saves mother and child and leads to what Richard now calls “social happiness” (“II,” 329). Richard himself says that he is “singularly obliged” (“II,” 278) to the woman who counsels forgiveness, and a minor character appropriately describes Richard's story as a “singular narrative” (“II,” 284).

The first two stories in The Three Perils of Woman are set in the 1820's, but the final story is set in 1745, although it contains the same structural and thematic elements. In the last narrative the (unnamed) minister is an “old amorous divine” (“III,” 210) who becomes jealous of his maid Sarah “to a boundless degree; she durst not be seen casting a side-long glance, or a smile, to any of the young men of the vicinity, … else she was made to feel that she was a servant, for many days to come” (“III,” 16-17). Sarah, however, is “well used with the nocturnal visits of wooers,” and on this particular night she anticipates the arrival of her lover, Peter Gow; “Therefore, as soon as the minister went ben the house, she opened half a leaf of the window-shutter, and sitting down, with her face toward it, she combed her raven locks, and put them up as neatly and elegantly as if she had been the daughter of an earl” (“III,” 17). As in Peril First, this story frequently alludes to disparities of social rank, and to the characters' desires either to increase or diminish those disparities.

Peter Gow arrives in the churchyard, but on seeing what looks like a deer, he shoots it from behind, only to find out that he has murdered a Jacobite soldier. In the chaos that follows, the minister and Sarah hide in the barnloft, where eventually they are discovered by an avenging posse of Jacobites. The minister fears that his reputation is ruined, and pleads before the soldiers, “O my lord! let not the ambiguity on the instant, involving my category, influence your preconception for one moment!” (“III,” 55). He is quite ready to judge others on the basis of appearance, however, for when his manservant Davie Duff is found covered with blood, the minister immediately assumes that he is the murderer: “His garments do bewray him,” he tells the soldiers, “and I would advise, my lord, that he be hanged, or shot dead on the instant—Believe me it is a most pestilential fellow. … His guilt is manifest—It were better and safer that he were dispatched. Although my own servant, I give him up!” (“III,” 61).

The next morning, Sarah dupes her master into consenting to a frame-up of Peter Gow, even though the minister is not aware that Gow actually is the guilty one: Sarah asks,

“… Now what would you think, sir, if I gaed down to the Justice, an' made affidavit, that that plaid an' bonnet belanged to Pate, an' that I got them lying about the kirkyard dyke this morning? That wad prove him the murderer; an' then he will either strap for it, or be banished the country,—an' we'll be weel quit o' a great skemp. If ye thought I might venture to do that, sir, without sinning away my soul awthegither, I could trim him for aince.”

The minister replies in a moralistic and sententious tone:

“Why, Sarah, the object is a most desirable object, and one that will preponderate if laid in the balance, against many lesser crimes. When we do a little evil that a great good may come, our conduct is laudable, and we may hope for forgiveness. The goodness and congruity, or evilness, unfitness, and unseasonableness, of moral and natural action, fall not within the verge of a brutal faculty; and as every distinct being has somewhat peculiar to itself, to make good in one circumstance what it wants in another, I therefore think, Sarah, that the incommensurability of the crime with the effect, completely warrants the supersaliency of this noctivagant delinquent.”

“D'ye mean, that it is my duty to gie him up, then?”

“I do so opine, Sarah. …”

(“III,” 90-91)

In his readiness to impute blame, the minister presumes to possess absolute knowledge and to judge with divine certainty. His distrust of natural or “brutish” existence commits him to an intellectual outlook which sees only the separateness of “every distinct being,” rather than the connections and affinities between them. He also uses pompous habits of speech which likewise accentuate his self-importance, and the emphasis he places on individuality, separateness, and discrete categories.

When the Jacobite uprising begins, Sarah and her master are interned at Inverness, where he becomes jealous of her flirtations with the soldiers. In this passage, Sarah is torn between the man of God (who represents a debased version of spiritual love), and men of war (who imperfectly represent human love): the minister

… could no longer contain his jealousy, but followed her, calling her always to him, and reprimanding her at every turn.—“Sarah, I say; come hither, Sarah; come this way a little, Sarah. Where are you proceeding to, linked arm in arm with that young gentleman?”

“Oo, that's just a cousin o' mine, sir, that I haena seen for a long while.”

“Sarah,—what are you saying, Sarah? Are the Munroes of Foulis your cousins, girl?”

“Oo, I daresay they ir, sir,—That young chield that's waiting is my cousin, ony how. I maun away til him.”

(“III,” 140)

When her master demands whether “there is no danger to your honour or virtue even from a cousin,” Sarah responds,

“Oo, I dinna think it, sir. He's a married man yon.”

“Sarah, what do you say, Sarah? He is no more married than I am. I know the gentleman perfectly well, and if he be your cousin, you are very well connected, Sarah.”

“Hout, ay, bayan weel connected, sir.—He's maybe no the man he said to me he was after a', an that be the gate o't. I maun away an' see about that.”

“Sarah, I will discharge you from my service, Sarah, if you attempt going any such way. Whither are you going with him, do you know?”

“I dinna ken where he wants me to gang. I fancy we're gaun away to get a dram an' a crack thegither; that's just a'.”

(“III,” 141)

The minister warns that she is “on the broad way that leadeth to destruction,” adding

“… Remember that you are my hired servant; and though I intend raising you to rank and high respect, I will not suffer you to go away with that young officer. I dislike his look exceedingly.”

“Aih, how can ye say that, maister? I think I never saw as gude a looking young gentleman i' my life.”

“Ah, but your virtue would be very unsafe with him, Sarah; your virtue would be very unsafe with him.”

“Nae fear o't, sir; we's let it take its chance. Ye're aye sae afeared for my virtue, I wonder what you are gaun to do wi't!”

(“III,” 141-142).

Here the minister fails to perceive the irony, that all human beings are in a sense “cousins”; his narrow denial of relationship contrasts with Sarah's open acceptance of “cousin”-ship. As before, he judges others with perfect faith in his own omniscience, and appropriately he says that he knows the soldier “perfectly well.” His emphasis on the distinctness and separateness of individuals forms the basis, in this conversation, of his judgmental veneration for terms of distinction like “honour,” “virtue,” “rank,” and “respect.” The minister's excessively intellectual and categorical manner is later burlesqued, by Sarah, when he proposes marriage

… on condition that she was never to speak to a young man save in his presence, and, in particular, to Peter Gow the smith. Sally answered, without altering a muscle in her face,—“But I wad like to ken the limits o' that restriction, sir, afore I snap. How many winters must a man hae seen afore he be out o' the count o' young men? I wad like to ken your line o' march atween auld an' young men exactly, for I hae always fund men of a certain age the far maist impertinent, an' warst to deal wi'!. …”

(“III,” 204)

Unlike her employer, Sarah charitably asserts a more universal concept of love: “I cannot live wanting men,” she informs him; “I would rather be a sparrow on the housetop, then live a woman without the company of men. Marry when I will, I shall converse wi' a' the young men that will converse wi' me, an' haud the gilravige wi' them too” (“III,” 205). The narrator helpfully tells us that Sarah “was of a singularly obliging disposition” (“III,” 147).

When the minister is released from Inverness after the temporary defeat of the Whig forces, his first concern is to find out whether his manse has been plundered. The narrator tells us that, as he rides home, “a number of wounded and maimed men interrupted his journey by their unavailing requests of assistance. The minister could do nothing for them” (“III,” 189). Having discovered that Sarah secretly loves Peter, he renounces her in a soliloquy which ironically recalls the charity of Richard Rickleton in a similar situation: “No, no, before I rear up an offspring of blacksmiths, I will die the death!” (“III,” 190). Indignant and fearful, the minister spurs his horse, but suddenly finds himself “flying in the air” (“III,” 190) and lands on top of a corpse. The parson's sense of superiority and separateness prevents him from exercising charity or from perceiving his affinity with people in less fortunate circumstances. He eludes the ordeal of chaos and confusion, because he remains impervious to the suffering of those around him. Hogg's broad satire repeatedly affirms the minister's (unacknowledged) kinship with ordinary humanity and his subjection to normal human limitations as a fallible and mortal being.

Sarah's “natural propensity to lying” (“III,” 140), or what the narrator also calls “leasing-making” (“III,” 16), allows her to enjoy “a little sport” (“III,” 98) in various senses, and to indulge herself by fostering mystery and chaos in her relations with others. It also leads to her downfall, when Peter Gow renounces her because he assumes that she has been sleeping with the minister. On the same day she is dismissed by the parson because she loves Peter, and rejected by Peter because he assumes she loves the parson. Sarah is “compelled … to begin life anew” (“III,” 233) after she admits to herself that her troubles derive from “her own want of veracity” (“III,” 234). She abandons promiscuity and deceit, and, in doing so, implicitly recognizes the inadequacy of human fellowship on an undifferentiating and primal level; like Cherry after her trance, Gatty after her coma, and Richard Rickleton after his pursuit of the wrong man, Sarah ascends from the frightening amorphous realm, concedes her error, and vows to reform. She also moves up in the social scale (at least temporarily), for, again like Gatty, she marries a highland gentleman.

Peril Third is subtitled “Jealousy,” and continues the story of Sarah after she has wed Alaster Mackenzie. Although she has married “on a short acquaintance” (“III,” 252) and “more out of revenge on Peter Gow, than from any warmth of newly-kindled affection” (“III,” 246), Sarah now feels “that her giddy, youthful levity, and fondness of the company of the other sex, were totally changed; and that all her affections and desires were centred on one object alone; on him to whom she had given the possession of her person were all her thoughts, and for his safety were all her prayers offered up” (“III,” 252-253). Her husband is a soldier in the Jacobite army, and after the defeat and massacre at Culloden Sarah sets out on foot to discover whether he is still alive.

In seeking Alaster, Sarah confronts the realities of war. She sees “her husband's kinsmen and associates hanged up, and butchered in the most wanton manner, as if for sport” (“III,” 249). She encounters the minister's former manservant, Davie Duff, who now follows the Whig army and describes himself as “cheneral purial mhaker to H Khing Shorge” (“III,” 255); Davie now works on consignment, and, as he explains,

It pe tamn poor work. But, when I came south to Culloden, I nefer peheld so praive a sight. Tere were tey lhying tier above tier, and rhank pehind rhank; but te tevil a clhan of tem had a reid-coat mixed through and through tem but te Mackintoshes. … Tere was one lhittle mhoss tere tat I am sure I puried a tousand in and mhore, and him will lhy fresh and whole in it too till te tay of shoodgment.

(“III,” 256-257)

This description gives a vivid visual image for the theme of loss of individuality, although the “daft” (“III,” 254) burial agent fails to understand its human significance. The Inferno-image affirms graphically the precariousness of individual life and the oneness of humanity, regardless of hierarchical or schismatic considerations of “rhank,” “nationality,” “clhan,” or partisan rivalry.

Frequent depictions of physical mutilation and slow death in Peril Third have a structural function similar to the visions of shifting or melting identities in Peril First. They combine with Sarah's acceptance of “cousin”-ship in momentarily delineating a central and common area of personal frailty, and in establishing the unity of the human race on that primal, physical, frightful level.

Sarah continues to wander in search of her husband, while he in turn searches for her. Alaster suspects that she and Peter Gow have become sexual partners, just as Sarah presumes that Alaster loves the woman who shelters him (but who is later identified as his sister). At length the embittered Alaster confronts Peter, and each man mortally wounds the other. The husband now learns from Peter that, despite all appearances, Sarah is “as free of stain, as when she first came from her mother's breast” (“III,” 320). The two dying men acknowledge Sarah's innocence, and agree that “all had originated in mistake” (“III,” 322). Peter and Alaster resemble Cherry and Gatty, since their involvement in the love-triangle and the similar circumstances of their deaths establishes a final affinity between the two antagonists. Like the rivalries between Cherry and Gatty or between Richard Rickleton and the lawyer, the two rivals of Peril Third fall into a sphere of “mistake,” where ultimately each must concede his error and (implicitly) accept spiritual kinship with the other.

Peter Gow and Alaster live for several days longer, during which time they try to make sense of their ordeal. Peter suggests that “the breath of God has blasted all that were engaged” (“III,” 323) in the Jacobite cause, and Alaster tells about a priest's vision of “a curse descended out of Heaven on our Prince” (“III,” 324). Because many highlanders had previously joined in the unjust persecution of lowland Presbyterians, Alaster supposes that “the Almighty … at last sent out his angel, who pronounced the exterminating curse on the guilty race of Stuart, and a triple woe on all that should support their throne” (“III,” 324-325). As the “royal Adventurer” (“III,” 326), the Pretender Charles Stuart takes on the status of Satan in Alaster's imagination.

As in Peril First, the two rivals believe they will soon inevitably die. In both stories minor characters insist on summoning a doctor, which only serves to demonstrate the futility of medicine. The surgeon in Peril Third, however, is quite in keeping with the demonic and tragic imagery of this section: the narrator presents him as

… an even-down reprobate, … who accounted the life of a man of no more value than the life of a salmon. He examined both their wounds, cursing all the while, and then asked jocularly, what was to be done?

“What done?” said John Mackenzie. “For the love of God, save them if it be possible!”

“And wherefore should I save them, young man?” said the doctor. “If I dress their wounds ever so well, they cannot fly or be removed from the spot for a long period. If they remain here they will be taken, and, being both proscribed men like myself, if they are taken, they will be hung up like two tikes in a tether. …”

(“III,” 328)

Doctor Frazer is so “accustomed to so many scenes of misery, despair, and extermination, that his better feelings were all withered,” and when Davie Duff appears on the scene, the doctor obtains “a diabolical pleasure” (“III,” 355) in conversing with someone more loathsome than himself. He questions Davie carefully about his practice of cutting the ears off the corpses he buries:

“It strikes me, Mr Duff, that some of these small ears have been cut from living objects.”

“Oo, nhot at hall. Tem will all pe count fery whell. His Mhachesty te Tuke will nhot mind alto tem should be a lhittle sore.”

“Some of these are cut from living children, I could almost make oath to it. Tell me seriously—for it is the best jest I ever knew—Do you really cut the ears sometimes from living children, for the sake of a shilling a pair?”

“Oo, nhot at hall. If it would nhot pe some lhittle repel dhogs tat would pe on te steal.”

“Well confessed. Then here's for you, you infernal dog. Here's another pair that will count for a day's work.”

(“III,” 338-339)

with that the doctor seizes Duff and cuts off both his ears, performing this action so deftly,

… that the poor beadle could scarcely believe he had received any injury, but … he perceived his precious blood arching from both ears like so many beautiful crimson rainbows. “Cot tamn you for cuilein madadh,” cried he, in the most intemperate rage. “Fat you cut mhy years? May te dhevil's own lhong pig tamn come ofer apove you for a pomination cooper of physock! Now I doo phray tat you mhay mheet my mhaister te Tuke of Cohumperlhand ackain, poth in te here and te after, and tat a tousand coal dhevils may pe cutting off your lhugs every nhight and every mhorning, and your old dog of a chief's too, and all te Clan-Frhazer, every one!”

(“III,” 339-340)

In this passage Davie Duff is made to experience the same physical mutilation he has formerly visited upon others. His treatment of children is a demonic parallel to Gatty's story and the Richard Rickleton episode, both of which end with the joyful acceptance of a child.

In the meantime Sarah joins the wounded men and shares their grief. She now experiences moments “approaching to utter delirium” in which she talks “about an ideal orphan babe, the total destitution of which seemed to haunt her wandering imagination” (“III,” 349). At other times Sarah converses lucidly, and the suffering the three characters have undergone has “the effect of knitting them strongly together in the bonds of mutual affection.” In their new-found sense of love and human fellowship they become “interested in one another's recovery and welfare” (“III,” 356), but unfortunately they are suddenly captured by “red-coated ruffians” who “regard the lives of Highlanders merely as those of noxious animals” (“III,” 358). Peter and Alaster are executed by the Whig soldiers, who are in turn massacred by a remnant of the Jacobite army shortly afterwards.

The narrator tells us that, “The two young heroes were buried, side by side, in the same grave” (“III,” 369), a phrase which distinctly recalls Gatty Bell's wish, on the day her cousin dies, “that we were laid in one grave on the same day” (“II,” 94). Sarah is protected by her in-laws, but she wanders from their home, and on the last page a wandering shepherd discovers

… the poor disconsolate Sally actually sitting rocking and singing over the body of a dead female infant. He ventured to speak to her in Gaelic, for he had no other language; but she only looked wildly up to heaven, and sung louder. He hasted home; but the road was long and rough, and before his brothers reached the spot the mother and child were lying stretched together in the arms of death, pale as the snow that surrounded them, and rigid as the grave-turf on which they had made their dying bed. Is there human sorrow on record like this that winded up the devastations of the Highlands?

(“III,” 371)

The Three Perils of Woman implicitly advocates an experiential and (in a sense) mythical approach to life, which in effect undermines all dogmatic theologies, just as it undermines also the rationalistic, categorical, and abstract outlook of Sarah's master in Peril Second. The fundamental myth in the three stories is that an individual descent into chaos eventually leads to the discovery of human oneness and then to a desire to re-assert that unity on a higher level. All major characters descend to this realm of confusion, which erodes conventional notions of selfhood and demonstrates both their common humanity and their human involvement in uncertainty and error. Those characters who confront the ordeal honestly (unlike the hypocritical minister of Peril Second) are then able to desire reconciliation with their rivals and subsequently to pursue a sense of human community. This higher ideal may be expressed through religious fellowship and devotion to family and friends (as Peril First shows), through forgiveness and charity (as Richard Rickleton learns), or through mutual concern and endurance of suffering (as Sarah, Peter, and Alaster attest). The ideal may also be approximated through the creation of a more benevolent, humane, and equalitarian society, as the multiple marriages between rich and poor suggest, and as the holocaust of Peril Third proves by negation.

The Three Perils of Woman attracted scant notice in its day, and has never been reprinted. A single review (probably by Professor Wilson) gives some idea of the cultural milieu in which Hogg struggled: “It is indeed this rare union of high imagination with homely truth,” the critic observes, “that constitutes the peculiar character of [Hogg's] writings. In one page, we listen to the song of the nightingale, and in another, to the grunt of the boar. Now the wood is vocal with the feathered choir; and then the sty bubbles and squeaks with a farm-sow, and a litter of nineteen pigwiggens.”⁵ The author is described as “a most unmannerly writer,” and told that,

You think you are shewing your knowledge of human nature, in these your coarse daubings; and that you are another Shakespeare. But consider that a writer may be indelicate, coarse, and even beastly, and yet not at all natural. We have had such vulgarity objected to even in Glasgow. … Confound us, if we ever saw in print anything at all resembling your female fancies; and if you go on at this rate, you will be called before the Kirk session. This may be thought vigor by many of your friends in the Auld Town, and originality, and genius, and so forth; deal it out to them in full measure over the gin-jug, or even the teacup; but it will not do at a Public Entertainment.⁶

When allowances are made for this critic's condescension, snobbery, and obtuseness, the review is partly correct in pointing out some of Hogg's limitations in the portrayal of women and genteel society, and also in alluding to the author's “rare union of high imagination with homely truth.” At the same time the review is significant because it indicates clearly that Hogg's contemporaries saw the democratic and egalitarian potential of Hogg's writing. Hogg's freedom from the snobberies and false sophistication of Edinburgh life is reflected in his ability to perceive parallels between different levels in a class society, and to convey reality in imaginative and mythical terms, rather than primarily intellectual or categorical terms.

Despite its faults, James Hogg's Three Perils of Woman retains a freshness and vitality that rewards a sympathetic reading. Its structural and mythical elements communicate a profundity of vision which might well appeal to readers of the present generation.

Notes

1. Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (1976), p. 165.

2. James Hogg, The Three Perils of Woman: or, Love, Leasing, and Jealousy: a Series of Domestic Scottish Tales, 3 vols. (1823), I, 67. Subsequent references are included parenthetically in the text.

3. For a fuller discussion of Hogg's use of this pun, see my “James Hogg's ‘Singular Dream’ and A Justified Sinner” (Studies in Scottish Literature, forthcoming).

4. According to Edith C. Batho it is “portentous” (The Ettrick Shepherd [1927], p. 112), while Louis Simpson sees in it “all the perversely genteel sentimentality of the age” (James Hogg: A Critical Study [1962], p. 201), and Douglas Gifford notes that the main characters are “sentimentalized, stock figures” (James Hogg [1976], p. 128).

5. “Hogg's Three Perils of Woman,” Blackwood's Magazine (October, 1823), quoted by Alan Lang Strout, The Life and Letters of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd (1946), I, 248.

6. “Hogg's Three Perils of Woman,” quoted by Strout, The Life and Letters of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd, I, 248.