Emmeline
A Cinderella story in which the heroine stands outside the traditional economic structures of English society and ends up wealthy and happy, the novel is a fantasy.
Smith's criticisms of marriage stemmed from her personal experience and several of the secondary characters are thinly veiled depictions of her family, a technique which both intrigued and repelled contemporary readers.
Emmeline comments on the 18th-century novel tradition, presenting reinterpretations of scenes from famous earlier works, such as Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747–48).
Loraine Fletcher notes in her introduction to the Broadview Press of Emmeline, "there were times when she did not know how a novel would finish even when she was well into the last volume", however outright errors were "rare".
It is suggested at the beginning of the novel that Emmeline's parents were not married when she was born, making her illegitimate; on these grounds, Lord Montreville has claimed Mowbray Castle for himself and his family.
Delamere falls in love with her and proposes but Emmeline refuses him because his father does not approve and she feels only sisterly affection for him.
Emmeline then travels to France with Mrs. Stafford and Augusta, where she discovers her parents were actually married and that she deserves to inherit Mowbray Castle.
Emmeline criticises the traditional marriage arrangements of the 18th century, which allowed women little choice and prioritised the needs of the family.
As Fletcher explains, the doubling of the two characters invites a comparison and "in keeping with the increasingly liberal tone of the time the narrator allows Adelina to be happy in the end".
[9] In writing a version of the Cinderella fairy tale, Smith highlights the disjunction between the fantasy and the 18th-century reality that women without property had little worth in English society.
As Fletcher explains, "she shrewdly promoted her career, gained sympathy for her problems as a single mother and turned herself into a celebrity through self-revelation.
"[12] Initially readers found this technique fascinating and persuasive, but over the years, they came to agree with poet Anna Seward:[13]"I have always been told that Mrs. Smith designed, nay that she acknowledges, the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Stafford to be drawn for herself and her husband.
Whatever may be Mr. Smith's faults, surely it was as wrong as indelicate, to hold up the man, whose name she bears, the father of her children, to public contempt in a novel.
[15] Mr. Elkerton is terrified of fighting in a duel; he remains part of the commercial class, failing to achieve the respectability of a gentleman.
[16] However, she also criticises "aristocratic recklessnes and self-indulgence" in the characters of Delamere and de Bellozane—both fight duels intending to kill their opponents.
For example, "Delamere's half-tricking, half-forcing Emmeline into a waiting coach" mirrors a scene from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747–48).
However, unlike Richardson's tale, Smith's does not end tragically but rather with Delamere succumbing to Emmeline's wishes and returning her safe to her home.
Darker elements of the Gothic appear in the Adelina plot line, as she descends into madness and fears violence from those surrounding her.
For example, Emmeline observes that the storm she sees from the Isle of Wight, has "grandeur [which] gratified her taste for the sublime", indicating a Burkean view of nature.
[26] However, Smith challenges these strict gender conventions, for example, when she has Emmeline decide to care for Adelina and disregard the social risk involved.
[27] Smith describes nature precisely, accurately listing flowers and trees, but she also adds "an emotional and political colouring".
[33] The Monthly Review praised it generally, saying "the whole is conducted with a considerable degree of art; that the characters are natural, and well discriminated: that the fable is uncommonly interesting; and that the moral is forcible and just".
She "lamented" "that the false expectations these wild scenes excite, tend to debauch the mind, and throw an insipid kind of uniformity over the moderate and rational prospects of life, consequently adventures are sought for and created, when duties are neglected, and content despised."
