Belinda

"Yes, my last two choices only just sneak in. They were both drafted solidly in the 18th century, so that’s my justification. Maria Edgeworth was both a great novelist in her own right and a major influence on Jane Austen. She was Anglo-Irish, so she was thinking about the colonial relationship between Britain and Ireland . Belinda also coincides with the acceleration of abolitionism in England and is one of the first novels in English to depict an interracial marriage. There were two older books that touched on inter-racial relationships: Oroonoko by Aphra Behn in the late 17th century, which is a pseudo-novel, and a little-known novel by Eliza Haywood called The Adventures of Eovaai, which is a sort of Orientalist fantasy. In Belinda , and English farm girl called Lucy marries Juba, who is a Black servant from the West Indies. Belinda herself, the heroine, almost marries a Creole man from the West Indies called Mr. Vincent. So Edgeworth, partly because she’s Irish, partly because of the period in which she’s writing, is thinking about the impact of imperialism and colonialism on the state of the world, and she’s really opening up the possibility of interracial marriage, which is very radical. The other amazing part of the book is the character of Lady Delacour, who is this fascinating aristocratic woman who thinks she has breast cancer for two-thirds of the novel. A bit like in the Sterne novel, we see the inner torment of someone who believes herself to be dying. Part of what’s so brilliant about the way Edgeworth tells the story is that it’s always quite opaque. We never fully understand what’s happening. I think that reflects Lady Delacour’s sense that she can’t communicate the extremity of her fear and vulnerability to the world. There’s this extraordinary scene where she reveals what she believes to be her tumorous breast to Belinda, the heroine. Everything in the novel has this slight quality of possible fantasy or speculation about it. How do you blur the line between what’s really happening on the page and what the characters are just imagining? There’s also a character called Anne Percival, who’s an older woman in the novel. Edgeworth is experimenting not just with representing women, but women in phases of life that no one’s previously been particularly interested in. The last thing to point out is that in the list in Northanger Abbey —where Austen defends the novel as this incredibly important form—she belatedly added Belinda . She mentions two novels by Fanny Burney and then added Maria Edgeworth. And rightly so. Belinda is a page turner. I’ve made it sound a bit too worthy, and I’ve been calling attention to what’s interesting from a literary history point of view, but it’s first and foremost a great read."