Belinda

Lady Delacour’s maid keeps as a pet an exotic, expensive blue macaw imported from the jungles of South America. On one level, the bird symbolizes the life of ostentation and careless spending that defines the wealthy in Edgeworth’s satire of their mores and foibles. The bird is for show, and none of Lady Delacour’s frenemies have such an exotic bird. The bird is hardly there for companionship and it is hardly a pet. In its elaborate cage, it is more an ornament, a decoration like the mansion’s elegant furnishings, the gold-trimmed equipage in which Lady Delacour rides about the neighborhood, and the expensive draperies and lush carpets that the guests at the masquerade ball marvel over, all of which symbolize the shallowness and pretentiousness of the Delacours’ lifestyle.

Belinda is a moral tale. It is like the parables that make up the wisdom literature of organized religions or the animal fables of antiquity. Thus, virtually every element of the narrative is designed to teach. Unlike the objects that are routinely transformed into complex, multilayered symbols in modern literature and, in turn, encourage debate and discussion among modern readers, the symbolism of the objects in Belinda is clear and relatively explicit. They are shorthand ways for Edgeworth to instruct her reader. The blue macaw, so completely out of its element, so unhappy in its cage (its nearly constant plaintive screeches irritate Lady Delacour) symbolizes Lady Delacour herself, trapped in a marriage that does not bring her emotional satisfaction. Like the beautiful caged bird, she has become a fixture, an object, kept essentially and vitally against her will (she confesses to Belinda how she gave up the love of her life to marry the weak-willed Lord Delacour).

But complaining does no good. The problem with the macaw, as Lady Delacour tells her maid, is its constant screeching, the ceaseless cacophony that signals the bird’s unhappiness with its confinement. That squawking is the reason Lady Delacour decides to get rid of the bird, to effectively silence it. In return for getting rid of the macaw, Lady Delacour is gifted a bowl of exotic gold fish. Although equally kept, equally captive, and equally exotic, the gold fish are quiet in their bowl/prison. The lesson is clear: make no noise about captivity that cannot be changed. Until Belinda’s powerful influence encourages Lady Delacour to voice the emotional traumas of her life and find her way to healthier living, she is like the flashy blue macaw and the shiny gold fish.

Belinda can be challenging for a contemporary reader. Not because of the complexity of the characters, as they are offered as tools of instruction rather than psychologically nuanced individuals, and not because of its themes, as they are largely accepted insights and hardly arguable. For example, wealth does not ensure moral living or wise life choices; a woman must be part of decisions that impact her emotional life; husbands and wives, parents and children must maintain open lines of honest communication; successful long-term marriages should rely on compatibility rather than lust or some misguided sense of obligation.

Yet Belinda as a text can be intimidating to a contemporary reader because of its formal construction. Although Belinda is often defined as a precursor to the generation of women’s novels that have become standards in the canon (most notably the novels of the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen), Belinda is more a transitional novel, a manifestation of the novels of late Restoration England. These novels were written in elaborate and studied prose that reflected the Neoclassical sensibility, most notably the social satires of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift and the novels of Henry Fielding and Oliver Goldsmith. These are important works that have nevertheless not fared as well with modern readers as the Brontës and Jane Austen.

In Belinda sentences are unapologetically ornate and carefully terraced. The vocabulary is heightened and erudite. The simplest descriptions are rendered in complex, involved prose. Even conversations are elaborately constructed and do not read at all like conversation. Lady Delacour’s confession to Belinda about her past stretches credibility as her confession goes on for close to 20 pages. Letters sent from character to character go on for pages. Emotional epiphanies, those flash-moments of cutting insight, are rendered in lengthy sentences that are themselves elaborate constructs. Even the simplest decisions can seem inaccessible and unnecessarily convoluted. When Vincent returns to Oakly-park, for instance, we are given this sentence to explain his understanding that talking with Belinda did not indicate any special relationship: “Mr. Vincent returned to Oakly-park—but upon the express condition that he should not make his attachment public by any particular attentions, and that he should draw no conclusions in his favour from Belinda’s consenting to converse with him freely upon every common subject” (144).

Restoration novelists prided themselves for being writers, and as such they wanted to be appreciated for the craft of their language and the application of their language skills. They did not aspire to pedestrian clarity. The prose aspired to be musical or lyrical; these writers did not seek to emulate the crude pattern of conversational prose or the inelegant directness of newspaper prose. Indeed, they argued that the work of the writer was to fashion common sense in uncommon language. If the action and characters here inspire right living, the prose that rendered such moral fables should inspire admiration and appreciation. Belinda is best read as it was intended to be read: as a written thing, each sentence admired for its supple, intricate construction.

The game of EO costs Augustus Vincent dearly. The game is an early and nonmechanical version of the modern roulette wheel in which players put money on the chance that the wheel will stop on a particular number despite long odds. Vincent, the wealthy West Indian planter who stays for a time with the Percivals, is a compulsive gambler driven nearly to suicide by his addiction. He loses first a considerable fortune, then his reputation in London as a man of principle and honor, and ultimately any chance he has to marry the virtuous Belinda. At the most obvious level, the gaming tables, like the alcohol that others in the same circle abuse, represent the immoral excess of the careless rich in London’s glittery world. It represents the dead-end distractions and immoral amusements the rich seek to escape the boredom of their comfortable lives. In Belinda, a moral tale, gambling is a vice, and the story of Augustus Vincent is an appropriate cautionary tale against giving in to such weakness.

On the surface, then, Vincent’s bad luck at the roulette wheel can be seen as part of the foolishness and immorality of gaming itself. But there is more: Vincent loses at a rigged gaming table run by some of the more unscrupulous members of London’s high society. In a novel in which the central character is determined to break free of the expectations of a close-minded society, to make her own decisions and accept the responsibilities for those actions, the rigged roulette takes on additional symbolic value. The wheel of fortune has long symbolized the often illogical and inexplicable turns of fortune, the crazy pattern of luck and chance that impacts and shapes individual lives. Good or bad, the wheel of fortune represents how every person’s life plays out. Lady Delacour and Lord Delacour, who abdicate their hearts and follow the dictates of society in their commitment to a love-starved marriage, lose at what is essentially a rigged roulette wheel. Hervey, who resolves to deny his heart and marry Rachel, nearly loses everything at what is essentially a rigged roulette wheel. Only Belinda, the novel’s heroine, engages life on its own terms, and only Belinda plays a game that is not rigged.