This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
The plot of Charlotte Smith's autobiographical first novel Emmeline(1788) includes the usual thrills of the eighteenth-century courtship novel: abduction, duels, and a "fairy tale princess." At the same time, the novel satirically reworks such literary conventions by focusing on the dangers of early engagement and marriage, and challenges a social and legal system in which woment are inherently illegitimate subjects. The Broadview edition includes primary source material relating to the novel's reception; women, marriage and work; and landscape in eighteenth-century fiction. Mary Hays's biographical writing on Smith is also included, as is selected correspondence.… (more)
Emmeline Mowbray is an illegitimate orphan who has been allowed by her uncle to use her father’s name and live in his castle in Wales. When her uncle and her cousin, Delamere, visit the castle, everything changes for young Emmeline. Delamere becomes obsessed with her and places her in physical danger. Instead of restraining his son, Emmeline’s uncle keeps forcing her to move. She makes friends wherever she goes, but the threat of Delamere’s violence continues to hang over her and limits her choices of companions and activities. Emmeline and her acquaintances are members of the class that doesn’t work, and since they have nothing better to do, they worry about who might say what to whom, and how others will react to that, and work themselves up into highly emotional states. The book is interesting as a specimen of the literature of its time, but readers shouldn’t expect writing of Austen’s caliber. ( )
A fascinating book, written when the 'women's novel', as satirised in Northanger Abbey, was a mix of moral tract (where the good are good and the bad are bad, and the consequences are mostly just in the end); romantic novel (swooning, duelling and beautiful countryside) and - just - character driven plot. It helps to have a taste for novels where the heroine has ' the compassion as well as the beauty of an angel', but as with many of the novels written in the 18th century by heroic women facing extraordinarily difficult lives, Smith offers a fairy tale plot, with some very painful interludes.
In a remote part of the county of Pembroke, is an old building, formerly of great strength, and inhabited for centuries by the ancient family of Mowbray; to the sole remaining branch of which it still belonged, tho' it was, at the time this history commences, inhabited only by servants; and the greater part of it was gone to decay.
Quotations
Last words
She considered him as the victim of his mother's fatal fondness and his father's ambition: yet that his early death was not immediately owing to his violent passion for her, was a great consolation; and with only the one source of regret which his premature fate occasioned, and which being without remedy yielded inevitably to time; she saw an infinite deal for which to be grateful, and failed not to offer her humble acknowledgments to that Providence, who, from dependance and indigence, had raised her to the highest affluence; given her, in the tenderest of husbands, the best, the most generous and most amiable of men; and had bestowed on her the means and the inclination to deserve, by virtue and beneficence, that heaven, where only she can enjoy more perfect and lasting felicity.
The plot of Charlotte Smith's autobiographical first novel Emmeline(1788) includes the usual thrills of the eighteenth-century courtship novel: abduction, duels, and a "fairy tale princess." At the same time, the novel satirically reworks such literary conventions by focusing on the dangers of early engagement and marriage, and challenges a social and legal system in which woment are inherently illegitimate subjects. The Broadview edition includes primary source material relating to the novel's reception; women, marriage and work; and landscape in eighteenth-century fiction. Mary Hays's biographical writing on Smith is also included, as is selected correspondence.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
Emmeline was so spectacularly successful when it was published in 1788 that by June of the following year, it was well into its third edition. Emmeline Mowbray, the ostensibly illegitimate orphan who grows up in an ancient castle in a remort part of Pembrokshire becomes engaged to her wealthy cousin Delamere only because he threatens to kill himself unless she consents to be his future wife. But the same instability and emotional excess leads him to doubt her honour and, although she is a virtuous and modest young woman, Emmeline then decides to set the terms of her own life.
Charlotte Smith's first novel caused something of a sensation because of the dangerous code of conduct it appeared to condone; not only was she writing about illegitimacy, broken engagements, dishonest aristocrats and a dissolute husband, she also failed to punish her guilty characters. Yet the Bluestockings Mrs Carter and Mrs Montague sang the author's praises and sent her their best wishes, hoping that the income from the sales of Emmeline would secure Charlottes Smith's freedom from her vile husband - which indeed, it did.
)
Google Books — Loading...
(3.45)
Group read: Emmeline, The Orphan Of The Castle by Charlotte Smith
Wikipedia in English (1)
1