Affiliation and Filiation: The Nation-Family in Scott’s Ivanhoe and Anne of Geierstein

This article studies Sir Walter Scott’s use of the family-as-nation trope in Ivanhoe and Anne of Geierstein. The importance of this trope in his figuration of nationhood is discerned by carrying out a close reading of the texts and placing them in their historical context, which primarily consists of a comparison with Edmund Burke and Maria Edgeworth. Consequently, his position is revealed as being between that of Burke and Edgeworth and the significance of his status as a non-English British writer is seen as a source of his opinions. His use of father-son and father(-figure)-daughter couples allows him to examine the existence of multi-lateral ethnicities as well as to express his attachment to a patriarchal view of descent and filiation, whilst simultaneously permitting hybridization through marriage to foreign women. By comparing the manner in which he uses the trope in the two novels, it is seen that his opinion on hybridization changes from one that permits men to be hybrids to one that restricts it to women.  Thus Scott permits filiation to both men and women, but limits affiliation to women.