Yet another "dangerous" novel, with a twist

I'm starting to see a pattern here.  Everything we've read (Lady Susan, Desmond, Sense and Sensibility, Romance of the Forest, Northanger Abbey, and now Adeline Mowbray) features women in a tragic position.  These women stay trapped in this position quite literally until a man comes in and saves her via his own male agency through marrying her or dying so she can finally be free.  Now, continuing with our pattern, one must take a look at how each author treats her tragic heroine up until this moment of salvation comes.  Without much exception, these authors treat their female protagonists with true sympathy in light of their own potential mistakes, flaws, and failures in judgment (in fact, several of these women scarcely have flaws at all according to the author!).  Through this, she (subtly or quite obviously) points out her character's "quasi-imprisonment" by the shackles of an unforgiving society.  As such, the author, whether Austen or another, cleverly makes a statement about the terrible state of women's rights at this time in their country via a common damsel-in-distress plot device.

Here's where the difference comes in: Adeline Mowbray denies her man the right to exert his agency in refusing to marry him.  Because of this, Opie sings the same song to a quite different tune.  Through what at times feels like an extended case study, Opie follows the life of a woman who--through one early, unforgivable choice--completely ostracizes herself from society. We watch as Adeline quite literally loses everything in choosing to reject marriage.  Given her education and her lack of worldly experience, Adeline can hardly be blamed for her choice.  She lacks the societal knowledge to see how detrimental her choice is until it practically hits her in the face, after which she spirals downward into a life of continuous tragedy.  What does Opie say about marriage, then?  Nothing terribly different from any of our other authors, with the exception of a "I'll show you just how bad it can get" mentality.  Opie, like others we've studied, hopes to show rather than tell her audience how the institution of marriage, the laws holding back single women, and all the ideals that surround them are inherently flawed through the example of an intelligent girl who wants a relationship more intact than many marriages represented in the novel, and yet is thrown out of society for failing to make it legal.  Clearly, the female authors of this time have some serious issues with the law and it's relationship to single women.