Belinda

Nicholas Mason (Essay Date 2001)

SOURCE: Mason, Nicholas. "Class, Gender, and Domesticity in Maria Edgeworth's Belinda. "In The Eighteenth-Century Novel, Vol. 1, edited by Susan Spencer, pp. 271-85. New York: AMS Press, 2001.

In the following excerpt, Mason examines Edgeworth's second novel as a work that encourages both males and females of the aristocracy and the middle class to accept the responsibilities associated with their social standing.

In 1847 the publishers Simpkin and Marshall contacted Maria Edgeworth, requesting that she prepare an autobiographical preface for a new edition they were planning of her novels. At the time, Edgeworth was seventy-nine years old and still widely considered one of England's greatest novelists. Comfortable in her status among readers, Edgeworth saw no need for further self-promotion through such a preface and decided to decline the publishers' request. In her Memoirs, she explained, "As a woman, my life, wholly domestic, cannot afford...