The wonderful plot of The Heart of Midlothian – Jeanie Deans’s refusing to perjure herself in court to save her sister’s life, and her tramp down to London to beg mercy from the queen – originate in the misfortune of Effie’s pregnancy. Yet that misfortune, closely examined, is an extremely problematic thing. Certain improbabilities in it force us to assume either, (1) that Scott found himself trapped in a narrative difficulty which he could not easily write himself out of, or (2) that there is more to the episode than meets the casual reader’s eye.

I prefer the second of these assumptions, although in support of the first it should be said that the law by which Effie is condemned contains some very dubious propositions. Scott outlines the 1690 law (which was repealed in the early nineteenth century) in a note to Chapter 15. A woman was liable to execution for infanticide on the circumstantial grounds ‘that she should have concealed her situation during the whole period of pregnancy; that she should not have called for help at her delivery; and that, combined with these grounds of suspicion, the child should be either found dead or be altogether missing’. What is unlikely is that a woman, in any normal social situation, should be able to disguise her altered physical shape in the last months of pregnancy, or that she should be able to deliver her own child without the assistance of a midwife. Common sense suggests that the ordinance must have been most effective, not against infanticide, but abortion. A woman might well conceal her condition for four or five months and procure an abortion, at the actual climax of which the abortionist might be prudently absent. Women likely to fall foul of the law would not anyway be reliable as to when menstruation stopped, and ‘the whole period of pregnancy’ would be very hard to establish.

In Chapter 10 of The Heart of Midlothian we are told, in a rapid summary way, how Effie is sent to work in the Saddletrees’ shop, by the Tolbooth Kirk, in the High Street. Her half-sister (who is some years older, less beautiful, and more religious by nature) is pleased, since there have been signs of lightness in Effie’s conduct – most worryingly a propensity to dancing and unidentified ‘idle acquaintances’ which the young girl has formed around St Leonard’s Crags, at the south side of the city, where her father keeps his small dairy herd.

At first things go well with Effie, who lodges with Mr and Mrs Saddletree (something of a termagant). The young woman does her work cheerfully and well. They are relatives, and kind employers. But:

Ere many months had passed, Effie became almost wedded to her duties, though she no longer discharged them with the laughing cheek and light step, which at first had attracted every customer. Her mistress sometimes observed her in tears, but they were signs of secret sorrow, which she concealed as often as she saw them attract notice. (Chapter 9)

Her ‘disfigured shape, loose dress, and pale cheeks’ inevitably attract the ‘malicious curiosity’ and the ‘degrading pity’ of neighbours and fellow-servants. But she confesses nothing, returning all taunts with bitter sarcasm. Why, one wonders, do not her master and mistress (who are living alongside her) note their kinswoman’s alteration as readily as casual customers in the shop? Bartoline Saddletree, we are told, is ‘too dull at drawing inferences from the occurrences of common life’. Scott concedes that Effie’s changed shape and demeanour ‘could not have escaped the matronly eye of Mrs Saddletree, but she was chiefly confined by indisposition to her bedroom for a considerable time during the latter part of Effie’s service’ (Chapter 9). What this indisposition is, we are not told. But it would seem to have kept her in total quarantine, even from talkative servants (who would surely have observed Effie’s interestingly changed shape). Mrs Saddletree is lively enough in subsequent sections of the narrative, suggesting a wonderfully quick recovery.

A more troubling question is why Effie’s pregnancy escaped the notice of her half-sister. Jeanie, as a cow-feeder and an older woman (old enough, indeed, to remember Effle’s birth) would certainly have known what a pregnant young girl looked like. Scott, rather fuzzily, suggests they never met. Mrs Saddletree’s illness gave Effie a pretext for never coming to St Leonard’s Crags. And ‘Jeanie was so much occupied, during the same period, with the concerns of her father’s household, that she had rarely found leisure for a walk into the city, and a brief and hurried visit to her sister’ (Ch. 9).

There are two problems here. The first is that – despite what readers who do not know Edinburgh may be led to think – the Deans’s farm at St Leonard’s Crags, on the common land beneath Arthur’s Seat – is about twelve minutes walk from the High Street. For a healthy young body like Jeanie Deans (who would be bringing her produce to the High Street anyway), the excuse that she was too busy to walk a mile to visit her sister is highly unconvincing. Moreover, under oath in court Jeanie testifies that she did indeed visit her sister during the latter months of her pregnancy, noticed that she looked unwell, and questioned her as to ‘what ailed her’ (Ch. 22). No answer was given by the unfortunate young woman. None the less, when Effie returns, minus baby, to St Leonard’s Crags, Jeanie immediately deduces (without being told) what the problem is, even though Effie’s shape is now more like its old self. Her half-sister has been ‘ruined’, Jeanie realizes – just by looking at her. This percipience, following on earlier impercipience, is very odd.

The Saddletrees’ ignorance of Effie’s swollen belly and desperately changed appearance is barely credible. But one would have liked a little more detail about the strange illness that kept the lady of the house (an inveterate busybody) so completely out of the affairs of her household for so many months. What is not believable is that Jeanie, having observed Effie’s condition, did not make the obvious deduction, based on her knowledge of what might happen to young girls with light morals in the city. There are two possible explanations: (1) Jeanie saw, and suspected, but said nothing – in the hope that she was wrong or that some act of God might put all right; (2) that, out of anger against her sister, Jeanie deliberately kept out of Effie’s way, thus leaving her exposed to danger. Guilt at having abandoned Effie at this most precarious moment of her existence may be thought to have strengthened Jeanie’s determination to walk, barefoot, like some medieval self-flagellant, the length of the kingdom to win a reprieve.