Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

First published: 1988

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical realism

Time of plot: 1850’s-1866 and 1986

Locale: Devon, England; New South Wales, Australia

Principal characters

• Oscar Hopkins, a shy, awkward, English-born Anglican minister with a compulsion for gambling
• Lucinda Leplastrier, an Australian owner of a glass factory with a similar penchant for gambling
• Theophilus Hopkins, Oscar’s father
• Ian Wardley-Fish, Oscar’s friend at Oxford
• Dennis Hasset, the vicar of Woollahra and Lucinda’s mentor
• Bob, Oscar’s great-grandson, who writes his ancestor’s story in 1986
• Hugh Stratton, the Anglican minister who accepts that Oscar has been called to his church
• Jimmy d’Abbs, the co-owner of an accounting firm
• Mr. Jeffris, the head clerk in d’Abbs’s accounting firm
• Percy Smith, an Australian passenger on the Leviathan, later engaged, supposedly, as a collector of animals on the expedition
• Miriam Chadwick, a widow, an opportunist, and the narrator’s great-grandmother

The Story:

In 1986, Bob writes about his great-grandfather, Oscar Hopkins. Bob reveals his mother’s complacent sense of propriety over Hopkins, her grandfather.

In 1856, Theophilus Hopkins, a preacher for the Plymouth Brethren, does not acknowledge the festive trappings of Christmas. He is furious when a servant makes a Christmas pudding for his fifteen-year-old son Oscar to taste. Although Theophilus tells Oscar the pudding is from Satan, Oscar knows his father is wrong because the dessert is delicious. Angry because his father strikes him, Oscar calls on God to test his father’s belief. When God seems to reply, Oscar devises other ways of reading the signs of the Lord. Eventually, he sorrowfully reads the signs as directing him to become the protege of the impoverished Anglican minister Hugh Stratton.

Later, Stratton sends Oscar to Oriel College, Oxford University, to read for the Anglican ministry. At Oxford, Ian Wardley-Fish befriends Oscar and introduces him to the racetrack and gambling. Oscar wins his first bet and devises an elaborate betting system, sending some money to the Strattons, keeping a meagre amount for himself, and donating the rest to the Church.

In New South Wales, Australia, on her ninth birthday, Lucinda Leplastrier takes her new doll to the creek. She plucks the gold hair from the doll and replaces it with black horsehair, imagining the doll as a native of unmapped land, much to the anger and angst of her parents, Abel and Elizabeth.

Lucinda’s father is killed by a horse in 1852, and Lucinda’s mother dies when Lucinda is seventeen. At eighteen, she comes into her considerable inheritance. She is forced to leave the subdivided farm for the city, determined to experience the working world. As a child, Lucinda experienced the wonder of the explosion of a glass ornament called a Prince Rupert’s Drop. She is now drawn to the glassworks for sale at Darling Harbour.

In 1859, in order to purchase the glassworks, Lucinda seeks assistance from Dennis Hasset, a vicar with a fascination with glass, and Jimmy d’Abbs, an accountant. Hasset instructs her in the properties of glass; d’Abbs handles the finances. Though Hasset and Lucinda are not lovers, people begin to talk about them, as well as about Lucinda’s frequent visits to d’Abbs’s house to gamble.

In England, Oscar becomes a school teacher at a Notting Hill boys’ school. He sees betting as a vile monster that he must, yet cannot, deny. Though he is afraid of the sea, he thinks of joining a missionary society and immigrating to Australia. He insists that Wardley-Fish toss a coin to decide whether or not he should take the journey.

On board the ship Leviathan, Oscar is seen off by his father, the Strattons, and Wardley-Fish. Lucinda is also a passenger. She has been in London to study glass manufacture. She watches as Oscar, blindfolded and terrified, is lowered onto the ship in one of the cattle cages. Oscar’s father gives his son a caul said to save one from drowning.

During the journey, Lucinda longs to gamble and eavesdrops on the crew playing cards. When she goes in search of the game below decks, she finds herself face to face with Oscar by chance. She pretends she wants him to hear her confession. In Lucinda’s stateroom, Oscar finds Lucinda’s pack of cards. Forgetting everything else, the pair plays poker until early morning, when a storm terrifies Oscar as a sign from God. Oscar collapses and is carried from Lucinda’s cabin on a stretcher, thus creating a scandal.

In New South Wales, Oscar lives within hearing of the Randwick racecourse. The sounds of the races torture him. He preaches to his flock against gambling, though he still gambles. Meanwhile, Lucinda finds her glassworks neglected by her foreman, d’Abbs, and Hasset. Hasset is called before the bishop of Sydney to discuss his sermons. The bishop directs that Lucinda’s friend be sent to the rough town of Boat Harbour.

From her lonely house on Longnose Point, Lucinda corresponds regularly with the exiled Hasset and reads Victorian novels. In desperation, she heads toward the Chinese gambling dens on the Rocks, where she meets Oscar. Lucinda drives Oscar home to St. John’s vicarage, where they play cards until the belligerent housekeeper discovers them the next morning. The scandal is made public, and Oscar is cast from the Church.

When Lucinda chances upon Oscar again, she takes him home to live with her. To make Oscar more comfortable in her house, Lucinda invents a story about her love for the absent Hasset. She finds Oscar clerical work in an office run by Mr. Jeffris, until Arthur Phelps, her glassblower, invites the pair as a couple to the glassworks. The men treat Oscar deferentially, whereas they are uncomfortable with a woman in the works. Oscar is struck with wonder, and later, when Lucinda shows him a prototype of a glass building, he thinks of it as a church. Oscar and Lucinda each bet their inheritance that a glass church can be made and delivered by Oscar to Hasset at Boat Harbour on Good Friday.

Mr. Jeffris is employed to lead the expedition for Boat Harbour, which leaves in 1866. Jeffris insists that Percy Smith administer laudanum to Oscar. Oscar is horrified by Jeffris as he kills Aboriginal people indiscriminately. He challenges Jeffris, who chases him. Oscar and Smith kill Jeffris. Together, Oscar, Smith, and others erect the church on a lighter. With Oscar inside the church, the lighter arrives by river at Boat Harbour. Oscar wins the bet.

Oscar falls ill. A widowed governess, Miriam Chadwick, is asked to care for him. She seduces Oscar, who feels compelled to marry her as a result. On Good Friday eve, Oscar drowns inside the fractured glass church on the Bellinger River as he asks for forgiveness. He does not know that Miriam is pregnant. She inherits the glassworks and the church, while Lucinda eventually becomes a well-known figure in the Australian labor movement.

Bibliography

Carey, Peter. Thirty Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account. New York: Bloomsbury, 2001. A reflection on Sydney, Australia, that is always alert to the hidden history of colonization.

Gaile, Andreas, ed. Fabulating Beauty: Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. A collection of essays on Carey’s oeuvre that includes two pieces on Oscar and Lucinda.

Gillett, Sue. “Oscar and Lucinda: Shattering History’s Self-Reflection.” In Representation, Discourse, and Desire: Contemporary Australian Culture and Critical Theory, edited by Patrick Fuery. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1994. Explores the processes of constructing truth in fictional and historical narratives.

Hassall, Anthony J. Dancing on Hot Macadam: Peter Carey’s Fiction. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1994. This introduction to Carey’s fiction provides a useful section on Oscar and Lucinda’s narrator.

Huggan, Graham. Oxford Australian Writers: Peter Carey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Outlines Carey’s writing, from his short stories to the novel The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994).

Lamb, Karen. Peter Carey: The Genesis of Fame. Pymble, N.S.W.: HarperCollins, 1992. Explores Carey’s evolution and reception as an author and analyzes Oscar and Lucinda as a parody of the Victorian novel.

Woodcock, Bruce. Peter Carey. 2d ed. New York: Manchester University Press, 2003. Links Oscar and Lucinda to Carey’s earlier, metafictional approach to story and history.