Charlotte Evans was born in Oldham, England on 21 September 1841 as Charlotte Lees, one of four children of James and Sophia Lees (neé Ball) (ATL-MS-5135-03). The Lees were Lancashire cotton merchants who emigrated to New Zealand in 1864 to settle in Oamaru in the region of South Otago. Evans died at the age of 40, in Oamaru, on 22 July 1882. In common with other women of the Victorian period she had in early youth expressed her feelings for the written word, in the form of ‘stories, poems and hymns’¹ (Skillbeck 65). Evans was to become the author of two of New Zealand’s earliest romance novels, publishing both Over the Hills and Far Away: A Story of New Zealand and A Strange Friendship: A Story of New Zealand in 1874. An earlier work Guy Eversley was introduced to the local public in the Oamaru Times and Waitaki Reporter in serialised form between 1865 and 1866. Unlike Evans’ later works, Guy Eversley’s storyline, with a male narrator, still reflects Evans’ familiar plot characteristics concerning marriage and Christian piety set amongst the colonial temptations of vice and greed² (Moffat 19). In common with English emigrants to New Zealand Evans was strongly influenced by her Christian faith. It was a trait noticeable also among her wider body of published and unpublished work.

Evans’ family the Lees came originally from Clarkesfield in the north of England that was situated in the district of Oldham and recognised during the nineteenth-century for its cotton industry. Following a decline in cotton in the 1860’s, the family moved further south to live in the vicinity of Richmond in southern England (ATL-MS-5135-03). There Evans spent her girlhood holidays, staying among friends and relations, becoming familiar with some of the better known landmarks of Devon and Sussex such as Plymouth and Dawlish Bay, both of which are mentioned in her novel Over the Hills and Far Away. In 1864 Charlotte’s parents decided to emigrate to New Zealand as their elder sons, Joseph and James, had already travelled ahead of them to settle in South Otago. The remainder of the Lees family consisting of James Snr., Sophia and their younger daughter Charlotte, finally left England in 1864, sailing aboard the passenger ship Chile. They arrived, several months later, in November at Port Chalmers situated in the southern region of Otago. The Lees brought out capital to invest, which they succeeded in doing, in an area outside Oamaru then known as ‘Teaneraki’ (later ‘Enfield’) (Skillbeck 58). It was in that same vicinity that Charlotte met her future husband Eyre Evans, a young man from Trinity College, Dublin, who several years later accompanied his brother out to New Zealand. The couple were married at Teaneraki on 14 April, 1868. The wedding notice recorded that a Reverend Algeron Gifford officiated at the ceremony, with Eyre mentioned as the ‘eldest son of Captain George Evans and grandson of the late Eyre Evans, Esq of Ash Hill Towers County Limerick’ and Charlotte ‘the youngest daughter of James Lees Esq Teaneraki’ (ATL-MS-5135-09).

Evans is among the earliest of New Zealand’s romantic novelists with a significant, though largely unrecognised, position as an early literary contributor to New Zealand’s nationhood in providing escapist entertainment for a mainly overseas readership (ATL-MS-13-19-1). Her two published novels Over the Hills and Far Away: A Story of New Zealand (1874) and A Strange Friendship: A Story of New Zealand (1874) were modelled upon the ‘sensation’ novel, a ‘new’ form of melodramatic romance that was popularised during the 1860’s by the British journalist and author Wilkie Collins and having its own set of conventions (Jones 125). In addition to the novel form, Evans produced a miscellany of writing that included poems and a collection of short stories. A selection of her poetry was published posthumously as Poetic Gems of Sacred Thought (1917). The short stories, in the form of three short novellas, were published as Only a Woman’s Hair (1903). The stories were set in New Zealand and like her other published romances also written in a style both ‘highly contrived and melodramatic’ (Moffatt 19). Evans’ writing also belongs to the genre of popular ‘romance’; a more recent version can be found in the Mills and Boon novel. The Mills and Boon romance, noted for its predictability and plot repetition with ‘happy endings’, is somewhat modified in Evans’ writing through the influence of the sensation novel with which A Strange Friendship and Over the Hills and Far Away are associated.

The publisher of Evans’ novels was the London firm Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle. Originally a bookselling and stationery business, the firm was originally founded by a Mr Sampson Low, the son of a printer and publisher, in 1819. The firm’s premises incorporated a circulating library and attracted a strong middle-class readership constituency. Early patrons to the Sampson Low ‘reading room’ eventually included professional as well as literary men, all of whom contributed to and supported what would become one of the nineteenth-century’s more prolific publishers of fiction and non-fiction (Feather 12). By 1874, the year of publication for Evans’ novels, Sampson Low had moved his firm’s premises to Fleet Street and formed a partnership with Mr Edward Marston. The breadth and scope of Sampson Low’s influence was reflected in a range of New Zealand ‘pioneer period’ publications that were contemporary with Evans and featured fictionalised adventure narratives, along with non-fictional accounts of early New Zealand exploration. In her publishing relationship with the Sampson Low firm Evans incorporated both an international and local dimension. In her role as a New Zealand pioneer novelist, and also as a contemporary within the wider arena of transnational publishing, she inhabited the same field as American novelists Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose depictions of American society parallel to some extent Evans’ less detailed versions of the New Zealand colonists’ milieu). Sampson Low was also more famously the publisher of Evans’ fellow sensation writer Wilkie Collins and his acclaimed novel The Woman in White(1861).

‘Pioneer Period’ Writer – 1861-1889

The decade of the 1860’s categorised by Lawrence Jones as the ‘Pioneer Period’ (Jones 120) places Evans among the very first New Zealand-based novelists to write locally, yet achieve international publication status. This formative period in New Zealand literature, though oriented toward the ‘imperial centre’, is considered nonetheless to have been ‘vigorous, broadly based and central to the culture of the growing nation’ both in its occasional reference to the rigors of colonial frontier society and in the case of Evans, as a romance novel that could provide an antedote to what has been cited as the ‘dangerous unpleasantness of realism’ (Stafford and Williams Introduction: A Land Mild and Bold). As an early New Zealand author working both physically and imaginatively within an evolving national landscape, Evans’ novelistic outlook sought wherever possible to incorporate at least some of the indigenising features pertinent to a ‘Story of New Zealand’. Evans addressed the difficulties experienced in confronting the changing New Zealand colony as a literary subject, mentioning in her ‘Preface’³ (where she refers to her English contemporary, the novelist Charlotte Bronte) how the [colony’s] ‘pattern gradually changes’ (OHFA ‘Preface’). Though conforming to an ‘inherited genre’ of literary style aimed essentially for an established Empire audience Evans formed, in both her novels and collection of stories, at least some reliance upon an ‘ad hoc’ use of New Zealand material termed ‘exploitative conventionalism’⁴ (Jones 122). This often took the form of a narrative ‘punctuation’ or periodic insertion of the ‘exotic’, as for example in the giving of a Maori name to the Cunningham’s station home of ‘Maungarewa’ - or casual mention of food with a name as ‘strange’ as ‘pokekhas’ (OHFA 213 ). As a result, the overall landscape in Evans’ use of the ‘exotic’ began to assert a sense of ‘place’ that was yet strange, which haunted the background of a novel that was also a ‘story of New Zealand’ (See title).

Over the Hills and Far Away consists of 33 chapters, with a short ‘Preface’ by the author and a page dedicated to her husband Eyre Evans. A brief survey of the plot of Over the Hills and Far Away sees the following: Lucy’s departure from England accompanied by her brother Louis followed by the ship journey aboard the ‘Flora McDonald’ and Lucy’s arrival and introduction to life in the colonies (Chapters 1-8) The appearance of the Winstanleys and Lucy’s meetings with the Lennoxes at Deepdene then involve a working out of marriage plots concerning the Cunningham and Lennox families. The two outsiders Rylston Dacre and Laura, however, complicate Lucy’s feelings of attachment to her shipboard ‘fiancée’ Clinton Meredith and instigate a covert, but growing affection between Lucy and Dacre. The resulting love triangle then ends in the climactic resolution of the suspense sub-plot regarding Laura’s identity and Dr Dacre’s past, as the novel’s resolution of the marriage plot concerning Lucy is finally effected in a Christian theme of redemption (Chapter 33).

As a form of novel genre Over the Hills and Far Away incorporates aspects of the classic realism normally associated with fiction (David 192), while also following in the format of the sensation style popularised by Wilkie Collins; the writer and journalist contemporary of novelist Charles Dickens. Her novels were published during what is commonly referred to as the ‘sensation decade’ (David 1). Collins was noted for his adoption of gothic, romance and melodramatic elements to create a sensational form of writing which addressed popular court cases and themes of criminality (Jones 120). The Collins style of the popular novel encouraged the development of a certain form of modern storytelling. Based in contemporary settings and involving an experimentation with the violation of Victorian sexual mores, or accepted conventions of the bourgeois code, the sensation novel’s narrative placed female characters in crime drama scenarios for which narrative disclosure became, in addition, a form of ‘dissecting’ the feminine (Flint 25). Collins’ novels also, like Evans’ colonial versions, addressed male melancholia, the position of women within marriage and the ‘domesticated gothic’. All these factors are recognisable within Over the Hills in the following chapters: in ‘The Slope’ (Chapter 31) involving the hidden guilt and anxiety of Rylston Dacre; in ‘The Third Time’ (Chapter 11) the portrayal of Laura in the domestic interior of her ‘dark sitting room’ in a final confrontation with Dacre and Louis Cunningham (Chapter 11); and the trials of Lucy toward womanhood, culminating in the closing chapter - ‘Forgiven’ (Chapter 33).

Evans’ insertion of detail concerning emigration and ship journeys with that of social custom also confirms her attention to the mode of ‘classic realism’ (David 65). This is noticed more particularly in the novel’s opening chapters concerning the Cunningham’s departure from English shores which refer specifically to the cities and ports of southern England such as Brighton, Plymouth and the coastal cliffs of Sussex (OHFA 30). Once aboard the ‘Flora MacDonald’ the features of shipboard life, undoubtedly drawn from Evans’ own travel experiences, begin to colour the story. Based on simple day to day interactions, the diary Lucy writes aboard the ‘Flora MacDonald’ obeys the Victorian diarist’s convention of daily observances of people and cabin arrangements, weather patterns and leisure reading (see Chapters 2-7 ‘Lucy’s Diary’). Amidst these scenes of shipboard activities and the forming of new acquaintances, Evans developed her future plot scenarios regarding romance and relationships between the home country and the colony soon to be established. In the naiveté of its descriptions of shipboard romance and arrival in the colony with meetings on horseback, Evans’ narrative directed itself toward a vision of landscape and people that was ‘escapist’, while also containing elements of realism. The escapist element formed itself particularly around the reconstituting of an idealised colonial landscape when, upon disembarkation at Port Chalmers, the characters’ former ties with their home country appeared to swiftly re-established themselves - with seemingly little or no sense of intervening time, distance or physical effort. Of the progress of colonisation in her own area of Otago Evans wrote: ‘The land which lay waste and desolate is now fenced and under cultivation’ (‘Preface’). Subsequently, in her novel on the colonial farm, is found the saccharine vista of Evans’ conventionally idealised New Zealand landscape of home-like features, including ‘English grass’ (79), lawns, fences and ‘enclosed’ gardens (79).

Evans’ exploitation of plot in the sensation genre emphasises certain features mentioned by Lawrence Jones i.e., the crimes and secret past separating hero and heroine; an emphasis on the ‘unravelling of a mystery’⁵ (Jones 125) and use of false identity; the ‘documentary method’⁶ (125) of telling the story with ‘partial perspectives’ (letters and journals)⁷ (125), as well as the effect of shock and surprise and use of evocative settings. The influence of the sensation novel and a break with usual social boundaries begins to be felt in (Chapter 1) when after a protected life spent in the company of her aunts, Lucy’s breaking of ties with England among a group of strangers appears to plunge her into an adult world of hidden intrigue and romantic possibility fitting the gothic stereotype, yet alleviated by the ‘lighter’ tone of the sensation narrative. While Lucy is ostensibly meant to be under the male protection of her brother Louis she often paradoxically appears to risk flirtation with a range of other male characters, the observations of whom she enters into her diary in ladylike fashion (see Chapters 2-7). For the Victorian traveller, and most particularly the young unmarried woman, a ship journey was clearly symbolic of encounter beyond normal social horizons. This is evidenced in Lucy’s early flirtation with Clinton Meredith and anticipation of life in the colonies. In the opening chapters of emigration to the ‘colonies’ the ship becomes its own ‘social cocoon’. Evans then manages to find scope for a delectating ‘pas de deux’ of amorousness, flirtation and worldly intrigue whilst maintaining a semblance of Victorian moral respectability. The question might then be raised as to the future meaning of the colony for the characters: is it to be a distant locus of escapism, of the socially dissident and ‘unsanitary’, or the place of prosperity, fortune and marriage?

A central preoccupation of Evans’ characters would then appear to lie in the uncovering and restitution of their various past relationships in England. The freshness of the colonial vistas, though inviting, nonetheless contain shadows of secret dilemmas, providing the necessary ingredient of spice and intrigue anticipated by the Empire reader, as the colonies themselves become the scenario for a working out of sexually triangular relationships. In this respect, Evans staged much of her narrative action between the two geographical points of reference of Maungarewa and Deepdene, both of which serve as picturesque settings for a series of romantic episodes involving hidden desire (when can Dacre fully reveal his feelings), death scenarios (the ‘sudden’ death of Effie (192)) and marriage contracts and flirtations which see Mrs Lennox becoming confidential (see Chapter 15) – with all the scenes set amidst imported drawing room splendours. Using the now colonial family associations of the Lennoxes, the Priors and the visitors Winstanley and Dacre, Evans continued to sustain a web of romance sub-plots and mini dramas, during which characters are not allowed to be fully aware of each other’s hidden relationships or feelings. This is so particularly in the sub-plot of Clinton Meredith’s flirtation with the Lennox sisters in (Chapters 15-18), as Clinton’s intentions come under increasing scrutiny followed by his eventual admission to having had a former love in England. On another subversive note is the sub-plot concerning Dacre’s tantalising former association with Laura, linked in the plot through the Brighton letter. The said clue first appears in the chance encounter between Lucy and Laura, prior to Lucy’s departure, when she inadvertently picks up the letter about to be posted to Dacre. The letter then later reappears in the chapters surrounding Laura’s full disclosure of her identity.

A further interesting and perhaps more subtle feature of the Evans plot is the apparent superficiality of the romantic interlude and tacit engagement of Lucy to Clinton Meredith, which in the succeeding chapters, is eventually to assume an increasingly complex and subverted character. This takes the form of Lucy’s passing attachment, in view of a delay over Meredith, to a number of other possible suitors. An underlying plot theme of romantic dilemma involving discernment and subterfuge then ensues, whereby relationships in New Zealand become further complicated with the emergence of the Priors and the ‘apathetic’ outsider Arthur Winstanley. The romance and sensation plot theme of marriage settlement in Over the Hills and Far Away is also to be found in the courtship of Effie Lennox and Clinton Meredith, carefully overseen by Mrs Lennox (who plays confidant to Lucy). However, Lucy’s own journey towards a marriage settlement, being more circuitous and fundamental to the suspense element in the novel itself, is rather less governed by watchful family members. Lucy in fact lacks the conventional family pattern of the Lennoxes, with no mother still alive and an ‘absent’ father who has been settled in advance in the colonies. Similarly, in her round of courtship with several suitors, Lucy is able at times to demonstrate independent traits of discernment and self-possession. The narrative voice of Evans then assumes a ‘mother figure’ role for the heroine, with commentaries aimed to cast amused or critical judgement. In her working out of the sensation romance plot Evans employs the element of time effectively, allowing for both leisurely and realist descriptions of colonial habitation and custom (i.e. ‘lavish’ outdoor Victorian picnics and horseriding) whilst also introducing characters so as to culminate in pivotal episodes such as ‘The Country Concert’ (Chapter 14), or ‘Lucy’s Ride’ (Chapter 20) and, finally, in the climactic scenes of the closing chapters involving ‘The Picture’ (Chapter 28), in which Dacre’s and Louis’ mutual entanglements with Laura are finally discovered.

In the final two Chapters, ‘A Charge’ and ‘Forgiven’, Laura’s charge against Dacre is resolved. Prior to that, Evans has skilfully allowed for both Dacre and Laura’s reputations to be fully explored before the denouement which discloses upon Laura’s scandalous impersonation over her dead sister Beatrice. At this point, Laura’s disclosure of her real identity and the sad tale of her sister’s death and association with Dacre fulfils the role of the purposely mistaken identity associated with the sensation novel. The presence of a Victorian moralist flavour is thus largely everted until the penultimate chapters, notably in the ‘Forgiven’ episode, when the suspect Dacre becomes not only Lucy’s ‘true love’, but also an idealised Christian figure whose love must remain ‘spiritual’.

In terms of narrative style Over the Hills and Far Away is seen to imitate the ‘documentary method’ whereby events are related through diaries, letters or journals⁸ (Jones 125). The principal source is firstly evident in the use of Lucy’s diary during her journey to New Zealand, then followed later on by a more factually driven and linear sequence narrative in the criminal genre⁹ (Jones 120). In comparison to the in-depth characterisations and descriptiveness of other ‘serious’ fiction, the sensation phenomenon as seen in Over the Hills and Far Away brings a more altered reading into perspective, demonstrating an ‘expedient’ interpretation of character and event. Thus the frequently vacuous and saccharine presentation of Evans’ characters (as echoed in Clinton Meredith’s sudden remark over the Lennox sisters’ ‘regular’ and ‘horribly insipid’ faces) have a banality that serves the underlying purpose of sensation narrative. A further indication of Evans’ spare yet telling method of characterisation, is Lucy’s sudden yet insightful observation of Meredith: ‘One foot on shore, and one on sea, to one thing constant never’ (OHFA 94).

Among other narrative features to which Evans’ novel also adheres, is its essential faithfulness to the conventions of narrative closure usually demanded by the Victorian novel, such as the requiring of a form of ‘resolution’ or moral outcome through death or marriage (Flint 25). An example occurs in Evans’ adaptation of the Collins’ treatment of the ‘iniquities of marriage’¹⁰ (Pykett 201) as seen in the sub-plot of Laura and Dacre’s past entanglement and the suggestion of bigamy in the marriage of Lucy’s brother Louis. The role of marriage in Over the Hills as the suggested means of resolution to the plot differs somewhat, however, in Dacre’s tragic death and Lucy’s forfeiture of the prospect of marriage.

Until the final two chapters, Evans appears to take particular care in maintaining the ‘tightly-plotted’ suspense plot line in this novel of the ‘new mode’ of colonial writing (Jones 125). This is seen for example in ‘On the Lewes Road’ (Chapters 1) and ‘Lucy’s Diary’ (Chapter 3) with the central clue of Laura’s letter emerging as the pivotal feature for resolving the theme of the ‘hidden relationship’. To begin with, at this point in the novel, the main heroine Lucy is established as the narrator’s main focus for the romance theme. At this time Lucy is found surrounded by an emerging cast of characters: her brother Louis, romantic suitor Clinton Meredith, ‘hidden’ love interest Dr Dacre and the ‘mystery’ woman crucial to the plot of ‘Laura’. In what may appear a prosaic narrative style, Evans nonetheless initiates a series of characters and responses that will be developed more fully to include the subversive features mentioned by Jones i.e. a bigamous relationship and mystery of false identity. In the opening chapters, Evans also conforms to many features of romance melodrama, such as in her attaching of significance to descriptions of dress, making frequent mention of minor accessories such as bracelet ‘charms’, velvet neck ribbons and ‘mysterious’ physical deformities associated with a secret ‘past’ (such as the scar on Laura’s otherwise beautiful neck) and items of sentiment (i.e. lockets).

In its overall characterisations Over the Hills and Far Away appears to be rather more influenced by the idyllic recreation of the circle of gentility known at home, what Kirstine Moffat’s The Puritan Paradox describes as ‘aristocratic pleasure seekers rather than pioneers’¹¹ (Moffat 19). Early on in the journey to New Zealand, a leisured circle can be seen forming among Lucy’s sphere of acquaintance which appears strongly middle-class i.e. army officers, doctors and girls being accompanied out to the colony by their brother. Upon leaving England the facts of shipboard life carry constant reminders of the homeland in Evans’ portrayal of shipboard activities. The influence of the Canterbury Settlement and the Anglican Church in New Zealand’s early emigrations are a clearly identifiable feature, as witnessed in Chapter 3, in the captain’s reading of ‘Morning Prayers of the English Church’ (OHFA 26). Seen from the vantage point of the ship’s deck, Lucy’s youthful anticipation of arrivals and future engagements all suggest a smooth transition into the new, waiting social milieu of the colony. For instance, Lucy notes in her diary that a Mr Prior, emigrating to Otago, has relations ‘already settled and prospering’ (40). With an authorial guiding commentary the Over the Hills’ text positions Lucy in the discourse as judge of social appearances and character, fashion and custom; a role clearly illustrated in her observance at a local gathering underlining the following injunction: ‘It was an understood thing [in that part of the New Zealand colonies] that ladies were never to appear before a colonial audience in anything but demi-toilet’ (143). A similar sentiment is to be found in the following from the author’s preface: ‘Society has become more formal, and conforms more strictly to the rules in vogue in Europe’¹².

The novel’s title Over the Hills and Far Away thus suggests a place of distance and geographic isolation from the homeland of Britain where scenarios of fulfilment and romantic escapism might be envisaged - not always within the boundaries of social or moral convention. Mr Cunningham’s station set among the hills of New Zealand, and only recently made hospitable, presents (to Evans’ mainly British or American readers), not only a setting for the visual imagination to roam in, but also an opportunity for a sentimental and melodramatic view of ‘paternalism’ in the ‘transplanted’ Victorian family and gender stereotypes¹³ (David 98).

In Lucy’s diary and later in the third-person narration Evans explores feelings surrounding paternal authority, sometimes taking what might appear a satirical view of the manly ‘chivalric’ code and models of femininity. In episodes describing flirtation and courtship, the naïve simplicity of a young woman’s first steps into what will be a new ‘society’ in a far away land, takes along with it a world of inherited manners, conventions and social expectations. In accordance with conventional romance plot expectations, Lucy’s diary of meetings with male acquaintances on board ship bear the flavour of a romantic fortuitousness. Though at times simplistically delivered in its narrative style, Evans’effectively presents an underlying ingredient of ‘suspense’. Evans then colours her narrative by exploiting the gothic romance through an expressive romantic imagery and melodrama. See, for example, chapter 28, where ‘the face’ is seen to come forth in its ‘strange wild beauty’ (OHFA 92).

Collins’ fascination with the unstable boundary between the normal and the deviant and power relationships within the Victorian family, as more recently described in texts such as The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel¹⁴ (2001), are incorporated by Evans with histrionic flair, in particular with her depictions of outsider figures and paternal authority within settler culture. This is seen for example in the veiled infamy of Laura or ‘Mrs Keith’ (OHFA) and ‘Madame Ainsleigh’ (ASF) becoming ‘sensationally’ exposed by Evans through an intricately worked plot that confronts internal contradictions of the genre with regard to ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ behaviour, sex and gender stereotyping. With her ‘pale face and black hair’ (OHFA 286), magnificent dresses and ‘velvet on her throat’, Evans positions Laura (or Mrs Keith), in the sexual female gothic element to which her outsider position decrees (287). As a form of shadow figure, Laura appears to exert a degree of control, yet perhaps in the nature of sensation romance lacks the malefic characteristics of the more serious fiction of Bronte.

In Over the Hills and Far Away Evans refers to two other popular romantic novels: The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (whom the author acknowledges in her ‘Preface’). Evans’ first serialised novel Guy Eversley (where the ‘proud heroine must be blinded before she accepts the virtuous hero’) is described in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature as a ‘reversal’ to the character of Rochester in Jane Eyre¹⁵ (Jones 125). In Chapter 1 of Over the Hills, in an overlap with fictional realism, Evans creates a “novel within the novel” effect by incorporating Mill on the Floss and Jane Eyre as books to be read on board the ‘Flora MacDonald’ by Laura, the ‘mystery’ woman figure. The character of Laura’s image as an outsider is further enhanced in Clinton Meredith’s aside that she might well have ‘a whole novel in three volumes connected with her’ (OHFA 76). Further to Jane Eyre the characters Lucy and Dacre appear to play similar roles to that of Edward Rochester and Jane, with each of the novels sharing in common an ‘older man with a past’ and ‘younger’ unmarried heroine. In another, re-occurring instance of the female shadow figure, is Bronte’s invention of Bertha in Jane Eyre. This is echoed in Dacre’s admission that he could ‘curse the day when I took her [Laura] for my wife’ (57). Similar to Jane Eyre is Lucy’s reference in Over the Hills and Far Away to the older Dacre as a man with ‘shock’ and ‘trouble’ that has ‘coloured his whole history’ (66). In the denouement of Over the Hills, Evans is also found to be noticeably careful in her drawing out of Dacre’s feelings for Lucy, which forms yet another parallel with Bronte’s novel in the romantic passion seen in Jane and Rochester’s ‘resolved’ relationship.

Contemporary Pioneer Women Novelists

Two New Zealand women novelists writing during the same period as Charlotte Evans were Isabella E. Aylmer, author of Distant Homes: Or the Graham Family in New Zealand (1862) (NZETC Collection) and more particularly Lady Mary Anne Barker, whose epistolary memoirs Station Life In New Zealand and Station Amusements in New Zealand are now well established in the early national canon¹⁶ (Jones 123). Aylmer’s and Lady Barker’s works share certain characteristics in common with Evans, at least in terms of their portrayal of Christian ethic and social relationships found in pioneer society. The novels shed anecdotal insight upon the construction of everyday existence and European settlement in mid- New Zealand: in Aylmer’s descriptions of early settlement in Nelson and in Evans’ felicitous relating of colonial pastimes, such as the picnic in ‘Under the Gums’ (Chapter 12) and the ‘End of the Concert’ (Chapter 14) at which Dacre and Lucy meet. Evans also shares similar themes with Barker’s memoirs, as for example in Barker’s fictional depictions of social life at a station in early Otago i.e.: ‘Everyday Station Life’ (Letter 15)); ‘A Christmas Picnic and Other Doings’ (Letter 4); and ‘Death in our New Home – New Zealand (Letter 9). If in these narratives Evans did in fact attempt to deflect away from any ‘dangerous unpleasantness’¹⁷ (Stafford and Williams Introduction: A Land Mild and Bold), they did so by embracing both the pleasures and difficulties and everyday crises and hopes within a discourse of gentility. Subsequently, the question of narrative voice presented an interesting comparison for both women authors who were seeking in the nineteenth-century to address in reassuring tones an Empire readership that could then have seemed distant or superior in its demands: an audience made to respond to the ‘tone of command truly imperial’ (OHFA 98).

Unlike Evans who wrote while domiciled in New Zealand, Barker and Aylmer were at least partially absent from the scenes of their narratives. Barker was distinctly autobiographical, basing her writing on letters written during a period spent in New Zealand. Aylmer, on the other hand, never actually lived in New Zealand. Writing from England and also sharing Evans’ Christian background, Aylmer based her novel Distant Homes on letters written by a cousin of her husband’s¹⁸ (Moffat 5). In Station Life Barker reconstituted and reflected upon memory while reliving her former New Zealand experiences. Distance and a lack of direct familiarity with New Zealand’s geographical and social terrain thus posed their own, sometimes amusing, differences in the realism Aylmer in particular brought to her writing¹⁹ (Moffat 5). Aylmer’s portrayal of New Zealand’s early settlement appeared as an epic narrative, with moral overtones derived from the influence in the colony of the early missionary church. Distant Homes has since been criticised for its puritanism in The Puritan Paradox²⁰ (Moffat 5). While the thread of moral didacticism runs through the work of Evans’ and Aylmer’s works in particular, the vein of religious sentiment in Over the Hills provides a thematic ‘crux’ for the romantic plot’s final resolution. As noted by recent biographers, the results of Aylmer’s imagined perceptions of New Zealand have produced their own anomalies in an early pioneer novel that conveys the challenge of writing for a distant Empire audience – of a country situated emotionally and geographically ‘far away’²¹ (Moffat 5).

Evans’ thematic handling of the colonial setting is similar to that of Barker and also another less well-known pioneer novelist Elizabeth Boyd Bayly (NZETC Collection). The primarily autobiographical works by Barker relate to the period of her second marriage to Frederick Napier Broom, whom she married in 1865. Many aspects of Barker’s own life in fact bear similarities to the plots of Evans’ novels, including even a touch of that risqué element associated with the colonial sensation novel. Barker in fact left her children in England to follow Broome out to New Zealand²² (Barker 12). Like the Cunningham family in Evans’ novel Over the Hills and Far Away, Broome intended to buy a sheep station. In common with the Cunningham family’s sailing from Brighton to New Zealand on a long sea voyage and prior to their settling in at the station home ‘Maungarewa’, Barker and her husband were also to brave a ‘long, stormy voyage’ to Lyttelton Harbour in New Zealand’s South Island²³ (Barker 71). The couple then made a laborious trek over the Port Hills of Christchurch. In 1866, the Barkers moved to a sheep station which they named ‘Broomielaw’²⁴ (Barker 109). It was from Broomielaw, situated in the foothills of the Southern Alps, that Barker began a series of correspondence to Britain that would form the basis for her classic autobiographical novels. Barker’s biography and literary motivations also find a parallel with those of Evans, in the form of a frontier farming lifestyle and diminishing financial returns, for which the writing of literature could provide additional income.

Climate, sudden upheaval and nature’s unpredictable elements feature also in both the fortunes of the Barkers and the Somerset family in Evans’ novel A Strange Friendship, whose station home life is disrupted by the sudden rising of flood waters (ASF 203). It was following a ‘severe snow storm’ that the Barkers made the reluctant decision to return to England, from whence the memories of colonial life provided the impetus for a nostalgic look back to the life they had previously led in the colony ‘far away’. Barker’s brisk and entertaining approach to her writing recalls with vigour the impressions she received from what was a relatively privileged standpoint. She joined with Evans in her observations of people and the sense of a new energy or independence synonymous with the expectations of a ‘new’ society, in which class divisions could only be a reflection of the more entrenched class system in England. Barker’s tone of optimism noting the ‘very practical style and tone’ and ‘independence in bearing’ of the people²⁵ (Barker 10), shares in common with Evans the capturing of a breaking down of usual social and domestic boundaries. The pertinent and more ambitious flavour of domestic servants in comes in particular to the regular observation of Barker and also Evans. In A Strange Friendship, Dolly enthuses on the ‘rapidity’ of the new strengths learnt by their new domestic servant Lizzie and ‘her readiness of resource upon an emergency’ (ASF 24 ).

Elizabeth Boyd-Bayly (A New Zealand Courtship and Other Work-A-Day Stories) (NZETC Collection) also concerns herself with patterns of courtship and popular romance conventions set in the colony - except this time in a strongly working class context. In A New Zealand Courtship published by the Religious Tract Society of London, Boyd Bayly traced the progress of ‘honour’ in romantic courtship between John and Sallie, a working class couple, two Sunday School teachers in the rural settlement of Rakawahi. In Chapter 2, John and Sallie’s story is drawn against a setting of rusticism and visual degradation as the courting couple earn local acceptance through their moral commitment to a lengthy engagement, validated in the comment that they ‘never had done anything on the sly’(60). This romance of the colonial working class occurs during a time of economic depression when ‘great men were failing on all sides; but the little men held on their way—married, and wanted houses for themselves and their stock’ (65). More than Evans, however, Bayly exploited the features of natural landscape to create a sense of hybrid New Zealand romanticism, evoking in the moving and shifting shades of ‘dark and purple’ and ‘fitful gleams of sunshine’, the impressions of lowland plains and rivers (10). In another attempt at romanticisation of the New Zealand landscape, Bayly saw familiar landmarks such as the Port Hills of Christchurch as ‘cumulus cloud, like vast heaps of snow resting on their own grey shadow’ (10). A colonial gothic then looms at the edge of the ‘little settlement of Rakawahi’ in a ‘wilderness of Maori-heads’ (10). In their subjection to the vagaries of the New Zealand climate, the rural livelihood of Bayly’s farm characters have something in common with the home of the Somersets in A Strange Friendship, being ever threatened by floodwaters. As Bayly’s character states: ‘When it does not rain outright in that part of New Zealand, it shines; and when it rains, it 'pays attention to it’ (12). More than Evans, Bayly’s narrative descriptions portray the strenuousness of a physical pioneering life, marked by a local terrain of ‘thick stumps of peaty earth, two or three feet high, each bearing a crown of long, coarse, drooping grass, like unkempt hair’ (12). In Bayly’s hungry, survivalist version of the colonist milieu ‘the stumps are like peat; the people cut them, and use them for fuel. The soil, when cleared, is rich in the extreme’ (12).

In comparison with her New Zealand contemporaries, Evans had a relatively prolific output for an isolated writer, having two published hard-back novels, three published short stories and a small collection of poetry to her credit. Evans combines the influences of literary genre with elements of her own biography to offer an early, yet hybrid, version of a New Zealand novel. As a sensation novelist, Evans explores the breaking of accepted moral codes and social norms by writing of gender relationships and the position of women in marriage. Although working within the framework of light romance fiction, Evans manages to suggest a sense of human character and its consequences, in particular the plight of women, en route to fortune and happiness. Her novel themes include the rituals of romantic courtship and the colonists’ all-important task of acquiring property, wealth and at times even a landed title (readily seen in her extended kinship link with the Ogilvie-Grant family)²⁶ (ATL-MS-5135-03).

As a work of early Empire writing, Over the Hills and Far Away is concerned mainly with adventure and relationship, finding its own place within the everyday world of social identity filled with passing needs and day dreams. Such a story might have been intended not only for the Empire reader, but even more perhaps, for the actual shipboard passenger on a long sea journey to the colonies. In her novel of epiphanies and felicities, double entendre, attractive men and picture box pretty women (including the ineffable prettiness of young Jeanie Lennox) Evans creates a book of entertainment wherein ‘dreams’ might become ‘reality’, yet not without some human ordeal. In this novel is the central character of Lucy, who with her pleasing though not stunning features resembles the heroine of Jane Eyre. For Lucy has at least one salient attribute – her hair of ‘lovely curly rings, clustered full of golden lights ...’ (OHFA 3). As a novel both quixotically sentimental and a reminder of new beginnings, contained within the boundaries of inherited convention – yet indefinably ‘other’ – Over the Hills and Far Away presents an early glimpse of a ‘story of New Zealand’.