Being unwed, Belinda is sent to live with Lady Delacour, whom Belinda considers fascinating and charming. Lady Delacour believes herself to be dying of breast cancer. She hides her emotional distress from Belinda through wit and charm. The first half of the novel is concerned with the blooming friendship between Belinda and Lady Delacour, which is eventually broken, "I see...that she [Belinda] who I thought had the noblest of souls has the meanest! I see that she is incapable of feeling."
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Being unwed, Belinda is sent to live with Lady Delacour, whom Belinda considers fascinating and charming. Lady Delacour believes herself to be dying of breast cancer. She hides her emotional distress from Belinda through wit and charm. The first half of the novel is concerned with the blooming friendship between Belinda and Lady Delacour, which is eventually broken, "I see...that she [Belinda] who I thought had the noblest of souls has the meanest! I see that she is incapable of feeling."
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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.