SOURCE: Ty, Eleanor. “Fathers as Monsters of Deceit: Robinson's Domestic Criticism in The False Friend.” In Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796-1812, pp. 57-71. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Ty reads Mary Robinson's nightmarish Gothic novel The False Friend for its portrayal of Robinson's vision of the end of the eighteenth century.

‘Your father, Gertrude, was a monster of deceit, a false friend, and an enemy to virtue.’

The False Friend (II: 49)¹

Mary Robinson's The False Friend, published in February 1799, was written at a time when the author was at an emotional and physical low point in her life. She had been through a period of illness and convalescence at Englefield Green, near Windsor, in the summer of 1798. Her companion and friend for more than sixteen years, Banastre Tarleton, had just announced his marriage to twenty-two-year-old...