The weakness and irresolution of the heroine are made the pivot of each turning point in the plot.  When she yields to her lover’s entreaties to consummate a hasty marriage; when fear of her father’s displeasure induces her to keep their union a secret; when her love of luxurious grandeur at court persuades her to contract a more exalted match; when her terror of Clermont forces her into a shameless expedient for the sake of mollifying his anger; and when after her exposure by her husband, the Marquis, she brazens out her trial in hopes of maintaining the splendor of her rank and fortune, she is welding link by link the chain of circumstance that draws her to ultimate disaster.  She is by no means a simple heroine motivated by the elementary passions; instead she is constantly swayed by emotions and desires of the most diverse and complex nature.  After her first taste of court life she learns to look back on her husband’s rusticity with a sort of contempt, and to regret her precipitate action.

“Not that she hated Clermont; on the contrary, she had yet very great Remains of her former Passion for him, whenever she reflected on the Endearments which had past between them:  but then she depis’d the Meanness of his Extraction, and the Thoughts that she had put him in possession of a Title, which gave him the Power, whenever he pleas’d to exert it, of calling her from the present Grandeur of her State, and obliging her to live with him in a mean Retirement; made all Desires instigated by her Affection, immediately give way to that new Idol of her Wishes, Greatness!  And she more ardently endeavour’d to find some Stratagem to prevent him from ever seeing her again, than she had formerly pray’d in the Simplicity and Innocence of her Affections, never to be separated from him.” (p. 14).

When an ambitious marriage is proposed, her first horror at the thought of deserting her country husband yields to a sort of resignation when she persuades herself of the necessity of the step.  And when she considers the riches, title, and agreeable person of the Marquis, she almost disdains herself for hesitating to prefer him to Clermont.  Her life is the tragedy of a soul too indolent to swim against the current of events.  Mrs. Haywood managed to give extraordinary vividness and consistency to the character of the vacillating Henrietta by making the plot depend almost entirely upon the indecision of the heroine.  Consequently none of the author’s women are as sharply defined as this weak, pleasure-loving French girl.  The character drawing, though too much subordinated to the sensational elements in the story, is nevertheless distinct and true to life.