Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (1801)

(Text is based on 1803 edition—Oxford World's Classics).

Belinda was a favorite novel of Jane Austen's; the theme of a heroine using reason and not sensibility to choose a lover is one she would take up herself. Not to the reader's surprise, Belinda's own judgment makes her reject any match to a man she can't esteem, even when love might be involved. Today's readers may find this an obvious choice, but the introduction explains this was not so among contemporary reviewers, who preferred heroines to be less logical and more feeling.

The story does follow Belinda and how she learns to use her own judgment in the marriage market. But just as important (and way more interesting) is the parallel story of dissipated, fashionable Lady Delacours, Belinda's guardian, who hides a dark secret beneath her sparkling celebrity.

Lady D.'s sparkling flow of witty talk is well portrayed (maybe because Edgeworth was known for the same wit), and her celebrity-like selfishness is too; at some points she seems like a classic case of borderline personality disorder. It's all very entertaining, like reading a tabloid. Nevertheless, she can't go on like that, in part because of the big secret. Belinda is considered a novel of female formation, but it's also a novel of transformation for Lady D.

Lady Delacour is unable to stop the paranoid self-concern at first, no matter how kind and reliable Belinda is, and I appreciated the realism of that. The chief flaw of this novel is that as soon as crisis is reached, that transformation is far too easy--almost as easy, and cheap, as "it was all a dream." Around this point (roughly halfway through) I began to get impatient with the very long-drawn-out account of Belinda's suitors and which is right for her and how he can prove it. As much fun as this was to read, eventually the novel felt fat and out of shape.