[1] It explores issues concerning mother-daughter relationships, female education, and the unfairness of patriarchal marriage customs.
Opie set part of the novel in Paris (which she had visited in 1802), where her characters take what is 'tantamount to a tourist trip around places of revolutionary bloodshed'.
Agatha's own lax education is partly responsible for her unwise marriage to George Danvers.
She and Henry St Aubyn fall in love, and he is finally able to prove that Emma is legitimate.
In the novel, Opie cited William Hayley's popular poem The Triumphs of Temper.