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Passage Illustrated: The Sisters Reunited

Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed to hear.

"My love, my sister!" said Marion, ‘recall your thoughts a moment; listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would strive, against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves and worldly loves and hopes for ever. When women do so, they assume that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. But, there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places, and among its busy life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good, — learn the same lesson; and who, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the victory long won. And such a one am I! You understand me now?"

Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply.

"Oh Grace, dear Grace," said Marion, clinging yet more tenderly and fondly to that breast from which she had been so long exiled, "if you were not a happy wife and mother — if I had no little namesake here — if Alfred, my kind brother, were not your own fond husband — from whence could I derive the ecstasy I feel to-night! But, as I left here, so I have returned. My heart has known no other love, my hand has never been bestowed apart from it. I am still your maiden sister, unmarried, unbetrothed: your own loving old Marion, in whose affection you exist alone and have no partner, Grace!"

She understood her now. Her face relaxed: sobs came to her relief; and falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and fondled her as if she were a child again. ["Part the Third," pp. 164-165]

Commentary: A Happy Ending with a Difference — The Self-Banished Daughter Returns

Against the delicious sentimentality of the sisters reunited after so many years apart, and Marion believed to have run off with the aristocratic rake, Michael Warden, Maclise has depicted another scene dominated by Cupid outside in Dr. Jeddlar's orchard, where the story began. If The Battle of Life is, as its subtitle proclaims, "A Love Story," it is not a conventional romance of love and marriage so much as an effusion at the close on the bond between the siblings, Grace and Marion Jeddlar. Rather than be the cause of a romantic triangle for Grace, Marion supposedly elopes in order to leave Dr. Alfred Heathfield to her sister. In fact, she has spent these years with her Aunt Martha, and has returned only when Alfred and Grace have a daughter, Marion's "little namesake" (172).

The scene outside the window would suggest that Cupid now strikes Michael Warden (the man pointing upward) to prepare us for the epilogue in which Dickens implies that Warden will marry Marion after all.

Bibliography

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.

Dickens, Charles. The Battle of Life: A Love Story. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Daniel Maclise, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846.

_______. The Battle of Life: A Love Story. Illustrated by Charles Green. London: A & F Pears, 1912.

_______. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVII.

_______. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VIII.

_______. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by A. E. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876. Vol. V.

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Created 20 February 2001

last updated 23 October 2023