Reviews of Adeline Mowbray

After reading some reviews of the book, Adeline Mowbray was received differently by different audiences. While the Lady's Monthly Museum had a favorable opinion, and said the book will be read "with infinite interest and no small degree of instruction", other reviews such as the Annual Review of History and Literature remark that Adeline is "considerably out of nature" and remark that Glenmurray is the hero. They argue that he is the hero of the novel because "several well imagined circumstances service to set in a strong light the native benevolence ans sensibility to his mind". This reviewers greatest objection to the novel was that "Berrendale put us out of love with husbands". This is not how I read the novel, but it seems that many people reading it either came in with different prejudices about the form or even Opie herself. The reviewers either approved greatly of the form and the message, or found Adeline's character distasteful and therefore did not enjoy the story at all. Other reviewers, however, remarked on how this novel made a good instruction against bad and inadequate education. This is why many of the positive reviewers commented that this form was able to achieve what other writing on the subject of education was not able to portray. By having a specific character, suddenly the effects of an improper education became clear.