2 - John Marchmont's Legacy and the Topologies of Dispossession

Summary

The title of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's John Marchmont's Legacy (1864), though extremely indicative of its main theme, seems to confute its own semantic premises. In relating the history of the ‘legacy’ left by John Marchmont, Braddon deals in fact with a legal, sentimental and existential ‘dispossession’ which involves all the characters. The novel opens in a London theatre, where Edward Arundel is watching his former college teacher John Marchmont playing in a drama, and realises that John and his daughter Mary are living in poverty. Marchmont, who hopes to inherit a large estate in Lincolnshire, asks Edward to take care of Mary if he should die, since he believes it will be dangerous to leave her in the hands of his brother Paul Marchmont. Mary is secretly attracted by Edward, who is loved by his cousin Olivia Arundel, the daughter of the local vicar at Swampington Rectory. John Marchmont decides to marry Olivia not because he loves her but to protect Mary after his death. Edward and Mary get married secretly, but while travelling back home to his father's deathbed Edward is badly injured in a train crash and is unable to tell anyone of his marriage because he has momentarily lost his memory. Olivia is consumed by hate and on the verge of madness, while Paul Marchmont is determined to use her as his tool to obtain the Marchmont property. After Edward comes back to Marchmont Towers (following a long recovery) Olivia tells him that Mary has disappeared and has probably committed suicide.