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Rosa's story starts when her father, Melmoth, secretly weds a girl whose lack of status would make his father forbid the match; he then goes to the continent on a trip that has twice been foreseen to lead only to evil for him. While there, he becomes addicted to gambling, everywhere sanctioned on the continent, and then gets seduced by Margaretta Neville, syren living with an evil but adroit Italian man into whose power she has fallen. That Italian, jealous, tries to kill Melmoth but Margaretta intervenes and kills the Italian while Melmoth is too drunk to know exactly what is happening. He continues for years with her, travelling and gambling mostly in Paris and Vienna. They finally go to London, where the same opportunities for gambling exist, although apparently it took a trip to the continent - the Grand Tour - for him to fall to these vices, in part because so widespread among the travelling upper classes, perhaps because those travelling aren't discouraged by harshly judging family and friends, and perhaps because such vices are so societally sanctioned on the continent (although his father's view of Melmoth's vices as peccadilloes suggest they are as sanctioned among the upper classes in England as elsewhere). His father sends him to Ireland to oversee estates and collect rents; he uses them for gambling. Back in London, Margaretta finds a new lover. Distraught and encountering a naval friend, Melmoth goes to sea; makes friends and becomes involved in the mercantile line in Leghorn; and serendipitously returns to save his daughter from rape.
This daughter, Rosa, was born while he was abroad, although he didn't learn about her until she was about nine years old and agreed with his by then late wife's desire that she be brought up with the Oakfields, a farming couple with whom they had been staying. He had agreed with this because he knows he's no proper guardian and that her presence would constantly rebuke him (which would be good, preserving him from further decadence!). She is educated at a local school and by a number of instructors: by a priest driven from revolution-torn France; by a dancing master in a neighboring town; and by Mrs Hastings, a mother-figure and female protector to her. Her story proper starts after her Mrs Oakfield dies and Mr Oakfield falls ill and is taken in by his niece, leaving Rosa to find her own way. First she becomes governess to the two youngest daughters of Mrs Rochdale, a friend of Mrs Hastings'.
The Rochdales' dissolute son paws her in the library, which is witnessed and misrepresented to the mother by the eldest daughter, leading to suspicions of her morality, but the mother believes Rosa, saying that her countenance is proof of her innocence. Then the daughter's fiance prefers Rosa, and when he backs out of the engagement, Mrs Rochdale agrees that Rosa should leave, because then the man might return to the daughter and if not, at least the daughter will calm down. She moves on, with Mrs Hastings' aid, to become companion to Lady Warrington, whose licentious brother Colonel O'Carrol visits, and, in Lady Warrington's absence - she's tending a recently widowed friend - dupes her into travelling to an inn where she thinks she'll be brought to Lady Warrington. Instead, she finds only O'Carrol, who attempts rape; her father, recently returned to England, hears her cries, and, on his miniature falling from her chain, realizes she's his daughter and saves her. While her chastity remains intact, her reputation too must be saved: Lord Warrington thinks she's Melmoth and Margaretta's illegitimate daughter and the family comes to believe she has eloped willingly and has now taken up with another lover, not knowing the man she is with her father. Interestingly, they first begin to think well of her when knowing she's legitimate, before knowing she has not in fact eloped, but then that information is cleared up as well, and she and Lord Clarinsforth, Lord Warrington's son by his first wife, are permitted to wed.
Along the way, many women are seduced. Margaretta's mother was, by a Frenchman, something Margaretta learns only when attempts are made apparently by her mother's relative to force her to take the veil, precipitating her downfall; her mother bore her secretly, returned to society, and wed reputably. Margaretta, parentally abandoned, thinks she's being taken to her guardian but is actually being taken to an even stricter convent so escapes with the help of a marquis; she escapes his advances but becomes mistress to a man she'd earlier admired; she leaves him for a man who wants to control her behavior and spending so escapes with a man she encounters (but already knows) at the theater. He duels her current lover and she flees to avoid imprisonment and gets drawn into the power of the Italian with whom Melmoth finds her. Her fallen life continues even after she tricks someone into marrying her - she elopes with O'Carrol - and she becomes a drunken fury and drowns when the boat on which she's travelling to Ireland sinks. Her unprotected state and youthfulness lead to her seduction, and she falls gradually into an increasingly hardened state, though her depiction and apparently innately violent passions make her nature seem equally blameworthy.
Others seduced include a farm girl: foolishly listening to the wooing of a gentleman, she forgets he'll never wed someone of her class. Her father wants to drive her out but is convinced by Rosa and Mrs Hastings to forgive. She later weds her early suitor, a man who helps at her parents' farm. Another seduced woman is the fiancee of a consistently moral man, Harcourt; she was seduced by a boarder at her mother's house who said he'd marry her, and she decides she'd be wrong to harm Harcourt's name and honor by saddling him with a fallen wife and illegitimate child so absconds. When he later meets her, he still wants to marry her and explains that women who fall through men's machinations, youth, and inexperience do wrong to think themselves utterly fallen, because that leads to their becoming so in fact, whereas they should be allowed and allow themselves to become recuperated. Her sense of guilt is worse while he is around, however, so she refuses him, goes into further reclusion, concentrates too much on her guilt, and dies of consumption. Another seduced woman is a friend of Mrs Hastings', ruined by her officer-suitor (supporting Mrs Hastings' claim that military men prey on women). Others later offer marriage but she refuses, apparently thinking herself more truly ruined than Harcourt would believe and emotionally monogamous; pure in all other senses, she lives in seclusion. The final seduced woman is Lady Anne Mildmay, the woman Lord Clarinsforth's father wants him to wed, who is not as pure-minded and simply duped as Harcourt's fiancee and Mrs Hastings' friend but has become such in part because spoiled by the aunt who raised her and ignored by her father. She tries to get Lord Clarinsforth to marry her before her pregnancy is obvious but capitulates to her non-titled, non-wealthy seducer's offers of marriage and lives a miserable life, he a gambling, intriguing low-life, and she having cast off her father through the marriage and denying herself claims to polite society. It's through her story that we learn that even within one class of women, distinctions in rank are based on chastity or lack of it.
Other women nearly seduced or raped but saved include Rosa and the girl who marries Mrs Hastings' son; Lord Warrington's first wife was dissolute and adulterous, though apparently not seduced; she left her husband of her own decadent volition.
© 1998 J A Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University
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