When Belinda is sent by her aunt, Mrs. Stanhope, to stay with Lady Delacour, she soon realizes that Lady Delacour is not a good role model for a young woman. Lady Delacour is concerned only with popularity and the admiration of London's high society. She pretends to be bright and lively in company, but is very unhappy at home. She is also dying of a cancer in her breast, which has caused her to give up all hope that she could live a good life. As such, she has rejected domestic life, is estranged from her daughter, and ...
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When Belinda is sent by her aunt, Mrs. Stanhope, to stay with Lady Delacour, she soon realizes that Lady Delacour is not a good role model for a young woman. Lady Delacour is concerned only with popularity and the admiration of London's high society. She pretends to be bright and lively in company, but is very unhappy at home. She is also dying of a cancer in her breast, which has caused her to give up all hope that she could live a good life. As such, she has rejected domestic life, is estranged from her daughter, and argues with her alcoholic husband. Belinda, along with Lady Delacour's friend Clarence Hervey, determines that she will help Lady Delacour find happiness. As they proceed to do so, Mr. Hervey and Belinda fall in love.
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A delightful story of a beautiful and refreshingly rational and intelligent young lady (wouldn't mind a few more of those!) who learns from the mistakes of those around her, Belinda had me burning the midnight oil from beginning to end. There are characters aplenty - a scheming and mercenary aunt, a captivating, middle-aged bon vivant with a sad secret and a crumbling marriage, servants faithful and faithless, a few harpies, and not one but two handsome suitors - and smack in the middle of it all, Belinda - smart, well-read, and very aware of the craziness around her. This is a very briskly-paced, very funny novel, with lots of talk, certainly, but plenty of action at every turn. Clarence Hervey must be one of the most unusual and intriguing heroes I have come across in a novel from this period (could you see Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy dressing up in a hoopskirt to make a point?). I'm sure that there are a lot of very academic things I could say about this novel - its treatment of race relations in an England that had not yet abolished the slave trade, its commentary on women making their own marriage choices - but that's not why I enjoyed it. It's a great story on its own.