SOURCE: "Elizabeth Inchbald and Jane West," in Masking and Unmasking the Female Mind: Disguising Romances in Feminine Fiction, 1713-1799, University of Delaware Press, 1990, pp. 175-87.

In the following excerpt, Schofield contends that Inchbald manipulated sentimental images of women in her novels and in doing so, subverted traditional romantic conventions. (Only those footnotes pertaining to the excerpt below have been reprinted.)

By the end of the century, the masquerading romances had a decidedly different look from those of the earlier years. The adventures of the heroine still made up the mainstay of the romance plot, and the writers continued their feminist bias by depicting the abduction, disguises, rapes, attempted rapes, and escapes of their female protagonists, with little to relieve the intensity of the attacks. . . . What makes the later novels even more grim is not just the continued harassment of the heroines but the author's rational, outspoken critique of...