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Meanwhile, Edwin's sister Emma comes to London with him on his return from an earlier trip home; she is first shocked but gets used to Whitmore's wooing her, in part through reading Werther, with its dangerous pity for adulterous love. After Whitmore fights a duel because aspersions are cast on her (and his wife), she agrees to elope to the continent with him. Much of this would not have happened if Edwin were not so caught up in dissipation that he loses sight of protecting his sister. William comes to London, sees that Edwin is not only married but having an affair with Mrs Whitmore, and disowns him. By this time, he and Fanny are married and Mr Bernard and Agnes come to live with the Godwins.

Agnes, wearing a ring that Edwin has given her, goes insane and bears a daughter in seclusion to which some of her forgiving family and the local lady of the manor, Mrs Palmer, have taken her. Fanny cares for her but then miscarries from doing so. Agnes dies shortly after bearing her daughter. Fanny takes Agnes' child, Anna, as her own; Mrs Palmer, its godmother, will take over its care when it is two. This multiplication of mothers protects it from bastard daughters' usual dangers, including improper fathers. Edwin thinks both Agnes and his child have died, since Fanny's child is buried with Agnes.

After Edwin's wife dies from neglect, he remarries and takes his wife's name - Fitzmorris. Anna travels to London with Mrs Palmer and meets Edwin's daughter Editha Fitzmorris, but neither Anna nor Mrs Palmer know that Fitzmorris is Edwin, neither of them having met him, and Editha has no idea that her father originally had a different last name. Anna and Editha become friends. Anna gets left with Editha for a while, during which time Fitzmorris drugs and nearly rapes her, stopped only by seeing her ring, the one he had given Agnes; he can't know, however, that their child had lived so still wants to rape her, planning to take her off to France - where people seem no worse than in England, but where it is easier to seduce without retribution from the victim's English family.

She is saved in part by ex-slave, Julia, who had seen Fitzmorris drug and rape a mulatta he had owned in Jamaica who had then died from the drug. Julia's freedom has been bought by Mrs Palmer's black servant, Felix, ex-slave of Mrs Palmer's uncle, who later appears and has been a friend of slaves; we learn that under his ownership, slavery is relatively pleasant. Editha loves Felix as a father. Julia writes to the Godwins, who come and save Anna; when Edwin realizes all, he kills himself, leaving his fortune to Anna and to his two children, both of whom turn out to be illegitimate because he had married his wife under an assumed name (Thomas Edwin), making that match not legal, although he may not have known that the match was therefore not legal.

Edwin's incestuous desires are compounded, occurring with his sister too: After Whitmore seduces her, she miscarries and takes up with his friend Hartford once Edwin kills Whitmore in a duel. Edwin takes up with Mrs Whitmore in Paris, who is said to have 'French manners,' although everything in this novel suggests her manners and behavior might better be called 'London manners', since all the characters associated with London share her manners, behavior, and attitudes. Hartford then abandons Emma so she becomes mistress to a married Frenchman who, unbeknownst to him, impregnates her. He wants to marry her when his wife dies, but she has an affair with an Englishman and when the Frenchman hears this, he abandons her. Her new lover takes her to London and wants to pimp her; her French lover is more moral, offering to legitimize their child, than is her English lover. She leaves this latter man, tries to get sewing work, but is lured into prostitution. Her daughter from her English lover dies from venereal disease passed on from Emma, so some ill effects of vice are passed to the illegitimate, perhaps only if the immoral mother lives (as is not the case with the mothers of Anna and Editha, whose stories follow). It is as a prostitute that Emma attracts her brother Edwin's incestuous desires: she discovers one morning that the man she had brought home from a masquerade the night before is Edwin; he was too drunk for them to do anything. Since they were both masked, he had not known that his desire for her was incestuous. On her horror at what almost happened, she cuts off her hair to escape prostitution and comes home to die with her family's forgiveness; they had always longed for her return so they could solace her and keep her from further evil.

William and Fanny Godwin's son, Reuben, wants to marry his cousin Anna, who has been raised with him as his sister but of course is really his cousin. The family tells the whole story at church and the marriage goes forward. Reuben's younger brother, Edward, marries Editha.

Ongoing subplots of sorts erase some hierarchies. One kind of hierarchy which is rejected is racial; this subplot involves good white characters who love good black characters and inveigh against cruel slave owners. Good characters of both races also claim that color has nothing to do with who is evil. Mrs Palmer, whose fortune comes from her uncle's slave-run Jamaican property, also argues that farmers are equal in rank to planters (plantation owners) and the aid she offers - property that makes William independent, but keeps him as a farmer, in the moral countryside - proves more beneficial than does the city-based 'aid' Whitmore offers.

© 1998 Julie A. Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University