A review by jeannemixon
The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. by William Makepeace Thackeray

4.0

I found the historical aspect really interesting because to me that period of English history has always been a blur of Jameses and Charleses and you start to wonder if the British monarchy was in danger of running out of names, along with its other problems. You read about the Catholics who were never reconciled to Elizabeth despite her ability to unify the country and the Protestants who detested any hint of monarchical Catholicism, but Thackeray does a wonderful job of personalizing all of that. I had never considered how confusing it must have been for the aristocracy to have these continually changing allegiances religious and governmental. That said, Thackeray of course assumes you are steeped in the history of the period and so as much as it reveals, it is also hard to keep up with who is up and who is down. The frame story about the injustices of class and the need for impoverished nobility to marry wealth is an old one and less interesting. The convolutions to establish why Henry Esmond is simultaneously not a bastard but universally believed to be one are tortuous. And the insufferable goodness of his aunt/mother does get to you after a while. Most interesting really for an analysis of how people felt during all of these power shifts and how they accommodated their religious lives to suit the court.

Forgot to mention too the very modern feeling horror of war -- how it seemed to require its participants to level villages and murder innocents, women and children primarily, as an example. He rails against poetry glorifying war as glossing over the horror and you have to admire that.