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In this novel, the first edition of which appeared in 1800 (Longman et al), Agnes Fitzhenry is 'the only child of a respectable merchant in a country town' whose mother died when Agnes was young, whose father remained single for her sake, and who added 'To the steady, manly affection of a father ... the fond anxieties and endearing attentions of a mother' (2), to which she reciprocates. While she too wants to stay single to remain in this relationship, she is seduced by Clifford, 'an officer ... who came to recruit in [her] town' and who 'might have taught a nation to look up to him as its best pride in prosperity and its best hope in adversity' but who abuses his qualities, seducing and abandoning women and by running up debts (4). He in fact convinces her that her father is unreasonable and gets her to elope, pretending marriage is his goal, but then ultimately putting it off, causing her fall, abandoning her, and writing her that her father has remarried (i.e. makes her feel abandoned by him too). She bears a son and learns his lover is to marry someone else, though preferring her.
She rushes home and finds her father a lunatic and in an asylum he had helped have constructed; she becomes suicidal but is called back from desperation by others' telling her she's forsaking her child. She is taken in by Fanny, daughter of her old nurse, and asks for a job as servant in the asylum. Others pity her so cannot treat her 'with that open disdain and detestation which her crime deserved' (115) but she is refused the job. She helps Fanny make shawls and an old friend and that friend's father try to get others to treat Agnes better; they do not make light of her guilt but argue that because she is extremely penitent, she earns better treatment. Reabsorption into 'general society' is not urged (150), but encouragement is, and many give her work to help her survive.
Fanny's students get pulled out of her school because of Agnes' presence there. Agnes wants to leave to protect Fanny, but the latter weds a man who agrees to let Agnes reside with them. Agnes refuses to do so, however. She sees Clifford for what he is, but apparently he has sought after her, first heard she and son Edward had frozen to death, learned they were alive, but then had married and remained dissipated, with no heir. He realizes that had he married Agnes as he had originally promised, he would have had 'the heir that he so much coveted, and ... a wife who // would have added dignity to the title which she bore' (180-1). The odd thing about such a statement is that it ignores the other women who had likewise suffered from him and who likewise perhaps could have given him what he wanted.
After three years, Agnes is allowed to take charge of her deranged father; she wishes her son could exchange places with someone lower but legitimately born, so he'd have claims on his father. Her father recognizes and forgives her then dies; she falls 'into a state of stupefaction' (220) and dies too, and they're buried together. Her seducer sees the funeral and is given Edward, being penitent; Clifford, worn down by dissipation and conscience, dies two years later, 'curs[ing] the hour when with short-sighted cunning he sacrificed the honour of Agnes' (233). The novel ends recommending avoiding listening to seducers, as who can really be sure they're strong enough not to be convinced, and noting that one's actions and their consequences affect others.
© 1997 J A Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University
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