Monarchy, home and nation in scott’s The Fortunes of Nigel and The Heart of Mid-Lothian

Abstract

For all their differences, Scott’s The Fortunes of Nigel and The Heart of Mid-Lothian have distinct similarities. Each has a morally upright protagonist and is set some years after a Scottish-English union has been effected. More important is that each depicts a journey from Scotland to England in search of justice at the monarch’s hand and, inseparably from that, the establishing of a secure domestic space – the creation of a home – that emblematises the concept of successfully co-existent English and Scottish cultural identities. Both novels are thus specifically concerned with the achievement of justice in Scotland by the then-British monarch located in England.