SOURCE: "Amelia Opie's Adeline Mowbray: Diverting the Libertine Gaze; or, The Vindication of a Fallen Woman," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Summer, 1994, pp. 121-52.

In the following essay, Eberle explores Opie's criticism of conservative and radical expectations of women 's behavior and philosophy through her novel Adeline Mowbray.

My father will have told you a great deal. He will have told you too how much we are interested & agitated by the probable event of the approaching trials .. . we are resolved to emigrate if the event of the trial be fatal.¹

In 1794, the treason trials of Home Tooke, Thomas Hardy, and Thomas Holcroft crystallized the philosophical differences between revolutionary sympathizers and a nervous British government. An ardent admirer of revolutionary principles, Amelia Alderson attended the trials and later "confessed" that they marked "the most interesting period of [her] long life."² In letters home, Alderson exults in...