Saturday, March 17, 2012
Descriptions of Women
As I was finishing the novel, a passage reminded me of Pat's comments that Opie seems to overlook women's appearances in her descriptions. While she may expound the details of Barrendale's features, she gives Adeline only a few lines. However, Colonel Mordaunt may help explain Opie's reasoning behind this. Speaking about Emma Douglas, he claims, "she has one of the finest countenances I ever saw,--a countenance never distorted by those feelings of envy, and expressions of spite, which so often disfigure some women" (253). He quotes Edward Young, who wrote, "What's female beauty--but an air divine,/ Thro' which the mind's all gentle graces shine?" Young proposes that true beauty is from virtue, not appearance. Mordaunt, in his later years, comes to the conclusion that good sense and virtuous living are the things that are of value in a woman, "admir[ing Emma] wholly for her own sake" as "the best of women" (255). It seems that Opie, as well as Mordaunt, sees the veracity in Young's ideas. Although she doesn't describe what her female characters look like in detail, she certainly reveals there inner virtues or vices. Through this moral method, we do get a picture of the women in the novel, perhaps a much clearer one than a merely physical description. Perhaps this is a feminine approach, but through Mordaunt's statements, perhaps Opie's tactics are better understood.
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I also noticed the lack of female descriptions. This is a stark contrast to the elaborate descriptions we received in Jane Austen’s novels, especially the descriptions of Marianne and Elinor in Sense and Sensability. I remember talking in class about why we needed the descriptions of the women when we would see their personalities play out throughout the novel. I think that the description of the women before the introduction of her character in the plot limits the reader's ability to form his or her own decision about the female character. I would argue that Opie’s approach is not just a feminine approach, but it is a feminist approach. Opie presents educated women that are making their own decisions and dealing with the consequences of their actions. This allows readers to form their own opinions about the strong willed women in the novel. The novel goes beyond marriage and inheritance and explores the education of women, the decision to marry through the relationship of a mother and daughter.
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