Like all Charlotte Smith’s novels, her first, Emmeline, contained strong autobiographical elements. Through fiction, Smith found a way to protest her situation as mother to a large brood of children with a profligate husband who had abandoned the family. According to Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, one reader remarked that she hoped the novel would bring badly needed “benefit” to Smith, who had to “purchase her freedom from a vile husband.”
Smith modeled the protagonist of her first novel after herself, shaping a highborn, sensitive young woman forced to live beneath her deserved social status. Smith also incorporated her own poetry into the novel, having first gained notice from publishing her sonnets. While not all her readers appreciated her public airing of personal circumstances, most enthusiastically received the novel.
Influenced by contemporary writer Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, or The Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Emmeline continued the development of the novel of sensitivity, one focused on domestic issues that affected a vulnerable young woman. Smith added to the conventional plot a new focus on detail, creating settings more clearly drawn than those of her predecessors, reflecting her poetic bent. Her addition of elements such as a gloomy castle surrounded by dense woods and fog reflects the influence of the Gothic novel as well.
Emmeline received praise from Sir Walter Scott, among other notables, and immediately sold out its first printing of 1,500 volumes. A second edition of about 500 copies was published before year’s end, and a third followed in June 1789. Author Henry James Pye, selected England’s Poet Laureate a year later, devoted almost 40 pages to discussing the morality of the novel in his own epistolary novel, The Spectre (1789), and Jane Austen would refer to the novel both in and out of her fiction. Pye enjoyed the novel but complained that the author placed characters whom readers wished to admire in situations where they could only behave immorally. However, he praised Smith’s attempt at promoting virtue, even though some of the book’s scandalous action might result in dangerous emotional arousal of female readers.
Austen found Smith’s heroine much too perfect for her realistic tastes, and her Catherine Morland, protagonist of the novel that satirized the Gothic style, Northanger Abbey (1818), appears to be a complete inversion of Emmeline.
The novel’s Emmeline Mowbray had been born to an elder brother in the ancient family of Mowbray. Her father died when only 30 years old, and Emmeline, whose mother had already died, remained at Mowbray Castle, an orphaned infant. Her care passed into the hands of her father’s younger brother, who had married into the wealthy family of Lady Eleonore Delamere, with whom he had a son and two daughters. Because the Delamere name would die due to lack of male “issue,” he assumed her family’s name and later, upon her father’s death, became Viscount Montreville.
He rarely visited Mowbray Castle, where Emmeline was raised by the kindly housekeeper, Mrs. Carey, who provided her little education. However, Emmeline’s “intuitive knowledge” and facility for comprehension stood her in good stead, and she matured bright and happy, despite her perilous situation in a castle falling into disrepair with a surrogate parent she would soon lose. Emmeline discovered on her own in the dilapidated library copies of works by Pope, Shakespeare, and other sources that would help her mind develop along with her body.
When Mrs. Carey dies, Emmeline fears the attentions of the steward Maloney, who becomes enthralled with the 16-year-old beauty. When the viscount learns of his niece’s situation, he visits the castle, bringing his son, the spirited Frederic Delamere, to enjoy a hunting vacation. Delamere immediately falls in love with his cousin, much to his father’s dismay. The viscount had far greater plans for his son, as had his mother, as the only male heir to his title and fortune. Blind to any of her son’s imperfections, Lady Montreville also rendered him incapable of sound judgment.
When Maloney makes clear his intentions toward Emmeline, who has remained too distressed to discuss her situation with her uncle, the viscount assumes she has agreed to a future as Maloney’s wife. Emmeline at last finds a voice to speak with her uncle and makes clear her horror over the prospect of marriage to Maloney. He relents and agrees to her plan to go live with Mrs. Carey’s sister.
That night Delamere stages a scandalous entry into Emmeline’s room at 2 A.M., begging her not to depart. She resists his charms, and asks the viscount to protect her from his son. The following day, she begins the first of many adventures as she departs the castle. Delamere does not give up his pursuit, rejecting the prospective matches his mother contrives, deeming them “rather pretty women” but not possessing the “native elegance of person and mind” possessed by the Orphan of Mowbray Castle.
At her new home, Emmeline forms a fast friendship with the polished and mannered Mrs. Stafford, who will become her role model. She staunchly waits the appearance of a man she feels worthy of her, withstanding pressure by the conniving Lady Montreville, who hopes to discourage Delamere by forcing Emmeline to marry a wealthy suitor she does not love.
Emmeline endures many tribulations as Delamere’s pursuit continues, including kidnapping. Delamere and his soldier friend, Fitz-Edward, force her into a carriage by applying a “gentle violence,” a phrase that would interest feminist critics.
Emmeline eventually accepts Delamere as her fiancé, although she later breaks her pledge. She rejects him, much to the dismay of many readers, for Captain William Godolphin, brother to the ever-ill and appealing Lady Adelina, neither of whom appear until halfway through the novel. Although not nearly as interesting as Delamere, Godolphin possesses a far superior character and does his best to rescue the young man from the fatal passions that lead him into a duel.
When Delamere dies, the viscount realizes his error in allowing his wife to turn him against Emmeline, who had always behaved with the utmost propriety. The book concludes with a return to Castle Mowbray for Emmeline and Godolphin, “the tenderest of husbands, the best, the most generous and most amiable of men,” along with Lady Adelina and her son.
Well-drawn type characters brighten the novel. They include the wicked schemer, Lady Montreville, and Fitz-Edward, described as possessing an “inveterate and cowardly malignity” of heart.
Bibliography
Ehrenpreis, Anne Henry. Introduction to Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle, by Charlotte Smith. London: Oxford University Press, 1971, vii–xv.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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