Belinda

Discuss the moral evolution of Clarence Hervey. Explore the pivotal chapter in which he nearly dies in the Serpentine River as his tipping point.

Is Belinda a character? Can readers sympathize with her? Does she seem to even have a heart? Does she have the emotional and psychological development associated with protagonists? Or does she function better as a philosophical position?

Analyze how Lady Delacour, not Belinda, serves as the novel’s primary character, meaning the character who begins with one set of assumptions but ends with those assumptions upended.

Investigate the story of Rachel Hartley/Virginia St. Pierre as a deconstructed fairy tale.

Research the literature of Restoration England and the Neoclassical era. How does Edgeworth’s use of character, theme, and story both embody that literature and direct it into new areas? How does that literature help appreciate Edgeworth’s florid prose style?

Explore the novel as a critique of the wealthy. Is this a class-biased novel? How are the moral and psychological profiles of the characters Belinda meets in London tied to their wealth and to their unseemly obsession with money?

The closing epigraph asserts that, surely, the reader has learned the moral of the story. Discuss this narrative as an action between reader and writer. What lesson is the reader meant to have learned?

In London, Belinda is exposed to many different kinds of marriages, some successful, most not. Using comparison and contrast, how does the novel define a good marriage?