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Adeline's mother, Editha, toys with radical theories on a number of subjects, including on education, but she neglects domestic duties and her daughter's upbringing. Adeline's maternal grandmother, Mrs Woodville, teaches Adeline domestic skills and the girl manages the household and estate, including seeing to the needy. When Mrs Woodville dies, Adeline jumps into her admired mother's studies, admiring the works of Glenmurray, a man who rejects marriage, advocating 'an union cemented by no ties but those of love and honour' (35).
Mother and daughter go to Bath and meet both Glenmurray, and Sir Patrick O'Carrol, the latter of whom wants a wife with a fortune to disencumber his estate. He therefore pursues the mother although he desires the daughter; he thinks of women as like animals, having no reason to complain if 'well lodged, fed, and kept clean' (71). He propositions Adeline. Glenmurray likewise avows his passion for her, but he offers marriage, which the narrator says every one who loves desires, wanting monopoly of the beloved (103-4); besides, he doesn't want her to suffer from the world's censure. Although she tells her mother that Sir Patrick has propositioned her, Mrs Mowbray marries him. When he then tries seducing Adeline, she runs off, encounters and leaves with Glenmurray; they sail to Lisbon for his health, she refusing to marry and compromise principles. A friend of his thinks her merely immoral; the sisters of another, Major Douglas, urge Douglas to urge Adeline and Glenmurray to marry.
Sir Patrick decamps; it turns out that he was already married to a woman who now threatens a lawsuit. Mrs Mowbray gives up her position as Sir Patrick's wife, and Sir Patrick drowns pursuing Adeline. Mrs Mowbray casts off not only her former radical principles but her pregnant daughter as well. Adeline and Glenmurray go to Richmond and his acquaintances treat the unaware Adeline as fallen, so he learns his theories do not work in practice. Adeline, however, still refuses marriage. Her old suitor Mordaunt propositions her and offers 'protection' once Glenmurray dies, which finally leads her to see that women must be wives to be free from imprecations; she is also horrified to learn in this fashion what she had not known: that Glenmurray's death is expected. Her maid Mary treats her as immoral and Adeline fires her. Mary's new Quaker employer returns later to help Adeline and her mother.
Glenmurray's fashionably sexually immoral female relatives visit and are hypocritically rude to Adeline. She sees a woman attending her lover's funeral and thinking her son will curse its father; others won't play with the 'little bastard' (137) and the child sees its mother as bad. This finally makes Adeline want to marry Glenmurray, but she miscarries and then once again refuses to marry.
During this time, Adeline helps a mulatto, Savanna, whose husband is being carried off for debt. Savanna comes to serve her now-poor 'Angel woman' (II:176). Glenmurray's cousin Berrendale comes and Glenmurray asks Berrendale to marry Adeline once he dies. He dies. She opens a day-school but Mary ruins her reputation. Adeline now thinks she was perhaps more obstinate than wise in adhering to those theories of Glenmurray's she had learned before meeting him, theories which Glenmurray was ready to cast aside as soon as he saw that they were impracticable (III: 11). She then marries Berrendale.
Berrendale thinks she spends too much, although all she spends on is their food, so she starts eating plainer and plainer fare. Ten months later, she bears a daughter, Editha, her husband hating the cost. He neglects and leaves her at home because she was a 'fallen' bride; she mourns still having no female society. He has an affair and she thinks how much happier she was with Glenmurray.
Berrendale goes to Jamaica to look over his uncle's estate, which will go to his son from a previous marriage and she feels joy at independence. Berrendale proposes a separation and marries another woman, de-legitimating Editha. She tries to sue her husband for bigamy but the lawyer will not pursue the case because he does not believe that she and Berrendale are married. The lawyer's mistress is Adeline's old servant Mary, who says she learned sin from Adeline. Mary is ill with smallpox at this point and Adeline catches it from her (III: 122-3).
Mordaunt again propositions her and she, insulted, says she recognizes the 'fallacy of [her] past opinions' (III 147) but that they were based on reason. Leaving Berrendale to his conscience rather than divorcing him (a big theme of Opie's), Adeline, Editha, and Savanna take lodgings near Mrs Mowbray's, Adeline thinking she is dying. Berrendale dies after a miserable marriage with a violent, overbearing wife; his will owns Adeline as his lawful wife and Editha as his only heir - leaving it unclear what the status is of his son from his first wife, the woman to whom he was married before he married Adeline.
In Mordaunt's presence, women discuss Adeline as sexually and mdorally fallen and tainted but Douglas's sister Emma says Adeline was misguided, not depraved. Mordaunt likes Emma's support of Adeline. He then comes to appreciates Emma for herself and weds her. Adeline writes to him saying that she has altered her opinion about marriage for the benefit of children and ultimately of society as a whole swince marriage, she thinks, provides the best rein on people's licentiousness - men's especially (III: 208). Without marriage, she now sees, parental love would lack a chance to develop and offspring would be neglected and die or be raised 'without morals or instruction ... [and] grow up to scourge the world by their vices, till the whole fabric of civilized society was gradually destroyed'. Adeline now wants to die; she thinks that if she lives, her life might suggest to Editha that one can recover from a fall like hers.
The forgiving and remorseful Mrs Mowbray follows her daughter's earlier example (240), becoming useful to the needy; self-love had kept her from educating Adeline as she ought. She does not feel that she should have censored questionable theories but rather that she should have conversed with her about them. Mrs Mowbray accidentally ends up at the cottage where Adeline resides (she doesn't know that her daughter is in the vicinity). Adeline learns that her former maid Mary was 'ruined' - had had sex - before meeting her, so that Adeline's own behavior was not at fault for Mary's later illicit sexual relationships. Adeline now wishes that an allowance be granted to Mary if she reforms. She also wants Savanna and the fallen woman with its illegitimate child in Richmond, her pensioners, cared for. She dies, kissing her mother's hand, '[laying] her head on Savanna's bosom,' and thanking heaven.
© 1998 J A Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University
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