SOURCE: "British Seduced Maidens," in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter, 1980-81, pp. 109-34.

In the following essay, Staves discusses social responses to the seduction of maidens, which provides the historical context for the theme of the seduced maiden in Opie's work in general and in Opie's The Father and Daughter in particular.

Pathetic seduced maidens, though frequent in eighteenth-century literature, are not universal characters. On the contrary, they appear at a certain historical moment, fascinate writers and draw deep sympathy from readers, then disappear, the pathos that contemporaries found in them now being more likely to evoke smiles than tears. Not, of course, that some unmarried girls have not at all moments in history been persuaded to engage in illicit intercourse. But such girls need not be seen as sweetly pathetic. Instead, they may be seen as loathsome temptresses, damned sinners, sordid criminals, pioneers of sexual freedom, boring...