Customer Reviews

Memoirs of Emma Courtney (World's Classics)

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I usually love reading books written pre-20th Century, as this one was (1796) but I didn't really enjoy this one as much as I expected. Even though it caused a mild scandal when first published, it is (naturally) rather tame by today's standards. The heroine's great crime is to declare her love for a man before he declares his. How shocking!

The book is written as a series of letters to her beloved's son telling him about her great crime, in order to save him from making the same mistakes. I did admire the way she examined and analyzed her feelings, and how she could stand back and see how her actions didn't always coincide with her intentions. She just loved this guy passionately and she couldn't talk herself out of it, no matter how hard she tried. It got to be rather tedious though, after a while, and I wished she could just get over it and get on with her life.

All the melodrama in the book comes in the last thirty pages, which is such a contrast to the mild, slow-paced rest of the book. It seemed very foreign to the first part, like the author felt she ought to throw in some action at long last. All in all, it was okay, but not great.

Any fan of Mary Wollstonecraft should turn next to books like this one. Hays's novel is part of the first wave of responses to *A Vindication of the Rights of Woman* (1792) and shows that Wollstonecraft could produce thoughtful responses from British radicals that balance the unthinking ones from conservatives. With Amelia Opie's *Adeline Mowbray*, this novel tells us much about early British feminism and its interest in the novel. Broadview's texts, furthermore, are excellent and provide wonderful supporting materials; this one is no exception.

Any fan of Mary Wollstonecraft should turn next to books like this one. Hays's novel is part of the first wave of responses to *A Vindication of the Rights of Woman* (1792) and shows that Wollstonecraft could produce thoughtful responses from British radicals that balance the unthinking ones from conservatives. With Amelia Opie's *Adeline Mowbray*, this novel tells us much about early British feminism and its interest in the novel.