Sir Walter Scott explores how circumstances and interpretation of events affect his characters in, “The Bride of Lammermoor”. Alice and the sexton show this dichotomy very well. Both are poor and living through a hard time, the Ashton family has recently acquired the land they live off and everything is changing. No longer are they protected by the Ravenswood estate. Alice remembers the reign of the Ravenswoods as the glory days, where the gravedigger bitterly remembers being forced to war. They might have very similar circumstances but their interpretation of the events is much different. Scott uses these two countering viewpoints in many of his characters to contextualize their experiences and give the reader a greater understanding. This theme is particularly active in Lucy Ashton’s character. Lucy is very much a victim of the times. She is entirely under control of her domineering parents and denied access to higher education. She has been conditioned by society to be docile and naïve. Something many of the other characters in the novel takes advantage of. At the time the novel was set, women were intended to be trusting and gentle, which Lucy exemplifies. Ironically, the only thing that makes Lucy feel autonomous is reading and thinking about romantic folklore which ends up playing a role in her tragic fate. Lucy Ashton’s tendency to misunderstand both events and people eventually ends in her death. Sir Walter Scott hints at this in many ways showing how Lucy’s nativity leads her to misinterpret the fountain, romantic folklore and Dame Gourlay’s intentions.
The fountain is an example of Lucy misunderstanding the past, which leads her to be less cautious than she should have been. The Ravenswood’s family has for centuries considered the fountain that serves as a focal meeting place for Lucy and Ravenswood a bad omen. There are several versions of the fountain story, one fantasy and one more rational. Both stories tell of the death of a young, beautiful woman at either the hands of her lover or a mystical death. Throughout his novel, Scott uses this fountain to foreshadow Lucy’s own fate. In one scene, he describes her, “to a superstitious eye, Lucy Ashton, folded in her plaided mantle, with her long hair, escaping partly from the snood and falling upon her silver neck, might have suggested the idea of the murdered nymph of the fountain”. Comparisons between Lucy and the nymph are ample, yet the characters in the novel are oblivious. Lucy comments, “ ‘I like this spot,’ said Lucy at length, as if she had found the silence embarrassing, ‘… I have heard it is a spot connected with the legendary lore which I love so well’ ” . In this moment, she completely misinterprets the history of the fountain. Lucy has not been informed of the history so she cannot be blamed for her assumptions. Yet misunderstanding the symbol leads her to meet a dangerous fate regardless. The juxtaposition of Scott’s eerie fountain description and Lucy’s naivety dooms her. Had she been more educated in the folklore behind the fountain she may have been more cautious in her relationship with Ravenswood. Instead, she believes the fountain is simply a good omen in her romance. She misconstrues the past from a story of caution to one of love and good fortune on more than one occasion especially in that of the romantic folklore.
Romance brings Lucy comfort and a sense of autonomy, something that is more an illusion than reality for most romantic tales. Lucy imagines herself as a princess who holds a tournament to choose a suitor, “in her retired chamber, or in the woodland bower which she had chosen for her own, and called after her name, she was in fancy distributing the prizes at the tournament, or raining down influence from her eyes on the valiant combatants” . This interpretation of what it meant to be a damsel in distress fails to consider the actual situations of these women. A reality Lucy learns the hard way is that often these heroines were entirely under control of their respective Patriarchs. Lucy’s misunderstanding of the nature of romantic folklore leads her to be unprepared when her own romance takes a darker turn. Had she been more aware she might have understood the struggles she went through to be typical of a romantic heroine. This information may have given her the strength to stand up for herself instead of internalizing her struggles and going insane. Lucy fancied only happy romance tales and was completely thrown by the trials and tribulations her relationship with Ravenswood brought. Scott uses Ravenswood’s interpretation of romance to highlight Lucy’s misunderstanding as well. She quotes a poem to Ravenswood and he responds with, “ ‘This is poetry, Lucy,’ said Ravenswood; ‘and in poetry, there is always fallacy, and sometimes fiction’ ” . Juxtaposing Lucy’s trust of romance with Ravenswood’s skepticism foreshadows how Lucy’s misinterpretation of romantic folklore might lead to tragedy. Lucy has been taught to take everyone and everything at their word including literature. Belief in valor, knights and a happily ever after makes Lucy less able to cope with how dark her own tale becomes. The illusion of autonomy that romance gives Lucy is revealed to her as false when she makes the mistake of trusting Ailsie Gourlay.
Lucy Ashton’s misinterpretation of Ailsie Gourlay’s intentions is an active contributor in Lucy’s fit of insanity and ultimately her death. When Ravenswood is away and Lady Ashton is preventing Lucy from receiving any contact from him Lucy becomes distraught. She fears she will be forced to marry Bucklaw, who she does not love. This leads her to become despondent and unwell. Seeing this Lady Ashton does not extend sympathy and instead, she hires Ailsie Gourlay who is monumental in Lucy’s death. Ailsie Gourlay plays into Lucy’s adoration of romance novels and gives her the attention she has recently been denied. Gourlay wins Lucy over by telling romance stories to her and treating her kinder than anyone else. Aware of what she is doing Gourlay gradually began to tell darker stories until they were mostly entirely hopeless, mysterious tales. This has a brutal effect on Lucy’s perception of her own situation, “but circumstances as she was, the idea that an evil fate hung over her attachment, became predominate over her other feelings; and the gloom of superstition darkened a mind, already significantly weakened”. Due to her position, Lucy misinterprets her own circumstances and Gourlay’s intentions until they have a negative impact on her mental health. This is the beginning of the complete hopelessness that eventually leads to Lucy’s death. It all started with Lucy simply trusting the wrong person. Gourlay’s influence over Lucy’s mental health does not stop there however, Lucy proceeds to believe in an illusion faked by Gourlay and Lady Ashton.
Lucy is very trusting of everyone she meets, her misinterpretation of Gourlay’s kindness as genuine and inability to recognize the deception being done to her is clearly not her fault. Scott makes it obvious that both Gourlay and Lady Ashton have the most to do with this. However, Lucy is still misinterpreting the situation. Had she been more attuned she would have been able to tell something was not right. As it was though, they succeed in fooling her by showing an image of Ravenswood laying his hands on another woman, “she had, by the aid and delusions of Satan, shown to a young person of quality, in a mirror glass”. The illusion goes to show Ravenswood having said affair. This has a very negative effect on Lucy’s mental health. She misinterprets the illusion Lady Ashton and Gourlay create as reality, which leads her to fall into a deep despair. Lucy has always been trusting and liable to misunderstand Gourlay’s intentions. This makes her vulnerable to their hoax. Misinterpretation of events chronicles Lucy’s character for the duration of the novel and eventually contributes to her tragic death.
Lucy’s nativity is not her fault but it allows her to misinterpret the fountain, romance literature, and Gourlay’s intentions. Scott shows how Lucy’s character is in a position where although there are many warning signs she is not able to understand them. Her situation prevents her from being aware of these warning signs. The factors that contribute to her death are ample but the way Lucy has been taught to interpret the world around her is perhaps the deadliest. She is not alarmed by the dark nature of the fountain because she has not been taught it, and associates it with her romance with Ravenswood. Lucy believes their romance gives her autonomy and is unaware that when her own relationship takes a darker turn that it was in keeping with the heroines in romance lore’s tales. Lastly, Lucy had been brought up to trust those around her, leading her to misinterpret Ailsie Gourlay and Lady Ashton’s intentions. Scott shows the readers that each of these things is deadly to Lucy in its own way. Lucy’s death was a tragedy but to answer the question of who killed Lucy Ashton, one would have to say that both circumstance and misinterpretation of people and events played a large role.