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In her Preface (v-viii), the author excuses any errors by explaining both that she is the 'mother of a growing family, activity engaged in the duties of her station' (v), and that she needed to publish the novel quickly for its critique of Glenarvon (1816) to be most successful. She dislikes the novel to which hers responds for 'its horrible tendency, its dangerous and perverting sophistry; its abominable indecency and profaneness.' Lady Calantha, she admits, is meant to represent the heroine of Glenarvon. She adds that 'if the world has indeed saddled the production of Glenarvon on the right owner, // she hopes and believes it is one solitary instance of depravity which cannot be paralleled' (vi-vii). The quick sale of the first edition of this novel suggests to our author that her readers have forgiven any errors because of the 'pure morality ... she has endeavoured to inculcate' (viii).
In the novel itself, the beautiful, well-educated Camilla Walsingham loves Lord Ellesmere, but when he wants her to sacrifice everything for him and worship him, she balks. Three years later, she weds her cousin, Sir Lusignan Dellbury. Though loving and attentive during courtship, he wants to live fashionably: ignoring his wife, having separate social lives and apartments, and having affairs. She thinks that their lives should be more closely intertwined, however, and that she should be led by her husband.
Three years later, Ellesmere returns. Around this time, Camilla meets the eccentric Lady Calantha Limb, who makes Camilla her unwilling confidante. Lady Calantha raves about her love for 'De Lyra' and says it is her destiny to love him even if he is faithless and evil; she is willing to follow her lover's instructions to ignore societal rules and abandon everything for him. Camilla recommends that she battle desire and gain self-command. When Lady Calantha is abandoned by De Lyra, she writes a book about it. Camilla points out that the book mostly suggests both that Lady Calantha has been improper and that she is angry because De Lyra has not eloped with her; Camilla adds that no modest woman could read the book and that its ideas cannot be based in the imagination, so Lady Calantha must have experienced such vitiated thought herself. Lady Calantha writes for revenge on De Lyra and brags that she can never resist temptation, that giving in to it 'Is [her] destiny' (115). She puts on a performance: dressed in mourning, she cuts off her hair and flings it on a coffin on an altar, asking, 'having been gifted with passions, [I have] dared to indulge them: is this criminal?' (127). She tries killing herself with a bodkin De Lyra has given her but it will not penetrate her dress. Her audience laughs and then leaves when she starts raving, thinking her crazy.
Sir Lusignan leaves Camilla for Lady Carbury. Ellesmere woos Camilla, who gets a companion, Mrs Marton, to keep Ellesmere from gaining access to her alone. While Camilla's parents counsel divorce, she says that since marriage, 'I lost my individuality; I have no separate ... wish; I can think only as the wife of Sir Lusignan' (140-1) and that scripture, allowing divorce, 'neither commends or [sic] commands [it]' (141). She follows Sir Lusignan to Paris and tells Mrs Marton that any woman who marries a libertine should not complain but instead stay with him when he is unfaithful; she does not think her husband a libertine, however. Ellesmere follows her, presses his company on her in public, and forces his way into her home; he wants to harm her reputation, thinking this will get her to capitulate to him. Because her husband's elopement leaves her unprotected and vulnerable, she fears she may become tempted by him but asserts that Heaven keeps her pure in thought, keeping her pure in action. He writes to Sir Lusignan implying that she wants a divorce and Sir Lusignan writes to Camilla telling her a divorce is fine with him. She falls ill and raves, thinking she has fallen to Ellesmere and asking why he has ruined her and her good name; the shocked, penitent Ellesmere reforms and writes the truth to Sir Lusignan, but Lady Carbury purloins the letter.
Lady Carbury abandons Sir Lusignan when he grows ill, however; sane again and hearing this, Camilla finds him and nurses him back to health. When he recovers and learns she has always been faithful to him, he berates himself for his conduct, but she excuses him partly on the basis that males are raised to greater 'freedom of conduct' than are women (270). He nevertheless confesses his errors and says he cannot love or respect Lady Carbury 'after her dereliction from virtue' (272).
Meanwhile, while Camilla is in Paris but before she falls ill, Lady Calantha appears, saying that De Lyra's new lover has had a son. She still loves him, however, and dresses as a Prussian soldier so that she can go fight the 'Algerines,' whom De Lyra has fought and by whom he has been imprisoned. She plans possibly to seduce then kill the enemy commander. She leaves on this errand, and Camilla, seeing Lady Calantha's plans as a shocking sign of insanity, lives on in wedded happiness with the reformed Sir Lusignan.
© 1999 J A Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University
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